Contingency and necessity in Evald Ilyenkov’s communist cosmology

Penzin, Alexei

dc.contributor.author	Penzin, Alexei
dc.date.accessioned	2018-03-13T15:47:47Z
dc.date.available	2018-03-13T15:47:47Z
dc.date.issued	2018-02-01
dc.identifier.citation	Penzin, A. (2018) Contingency and necessity in Evald Ilyenkov’s communist cosmology, e-flux, 88, Article No 174178	en
dc.identifier.issn	0000-0000
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/2436/621177
dc.description.abstract	The article argues for contemporary relevance of "Cosmology of the Spirit" by the outstanding Soviet philosopher Evald Ilyenkov, and explores its historical and intellectual contexts. This short treatise was written in the first half of the 1950s, but only published posthumously in the 1980s as it was too heretical to be published in the author’s lifetime. The text was heretical because of its enormous speculative drive. Addressing the physicist idea of the “entropic death of the universe” and using a combination of materialist dialectics and Spinoza’s concept of attribute, Ilyenkov claimed that thought is a necessary attribute of matter as it is able to prevent the terminal entropy of the universe. The paper uses the ideas of Ilyenkov’s cosmology in order to critically address contemporary currents of “speculative” philosophy.
dc.language.iso	en
dc.publisher	e-flux
dc.relation.url	http://www.e-flux.com/journal/88/174178/contingency-and-necessity-in-evald-ilyenkov-s-communist-cosmology/
dc.subject	Philosophy
dc.subject	Hegel
dc.subject	Spinoza
dc.subject	Speculative Realism
dc.subject	Dialectical Materialism
dc.subject	Alain Badiou
dc.subject	Philosophy of Cosmology
dc.subject	Culture in the Soviet Union
dc.subject	Quentin Meillassoux
dc.subject	Cosmology
dc.subject	Friedrich Engels
dc.subject	Evald Ilyenkov
dc.subject	Soviet Marxism
dc.title	Contingency and necessity in Evald Ilyenkov’s communist cosmology
dc.type	Journal article
dc.identifier.journal	e-flux
dc.identifier.articlenumber	174178
dc.date.accepted	2017-11-30
rioxxterms.funder	Jisc
rioxxterms.identifier.project	UoW130318AP
rioxxterms.version	VoR
rioxxterms.licenseref.uri	https://creativecommons.org/CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
rioxxterms.licenseref.startdate	2018-03-13
dc.source.issue	88
dc.source.beginpage	1
dc.source.endpage	13
refterms.dateFCD	2018-10-19T08:32:40Z
refterms.versionFCD	VoR
refterms.dateFOA	2018-03-13T00:00:00Z
html.description.abstract	The article argues for contemporary relevance of "Cosmology of the Spirit" by the outstanding Soviet philosopher Evald Ilyenkov, and explores its historical and intellectual contexts. This short treatise was written in the first half of the 1950s, but only published posthumously in the 1980s as it was too heretical to be published in the author’s lifetime. The text was heretical because of its enormous speculative drive. Addressing the physicist idea of the “entropic death of the universe” and using a combination of materialist dialectics and Spinoza’s concept of attribute, Ilyenkov claimed that thought is a necessary attribute of matter as it is able to prevent the terminal entropy of the universe. The paper uses the ideas of Ilyenkov’s cosmology in order to critically address contemporary currents of “speculative” philosophy.