To the 50th anniversary of debates with E.V. Ilyenkov on the problem of the ideal

Abstract

The article examines a number of issues that remain relevant in this long-standing debate. Among them, a significant place has being occupied by the deaf-blindness problem and the interpretation of the results of the famous “Zagorsky experiment”. In the late 1970s, E.V. Ilyenkov, his followers, as well as the mass press and official bodies called it “an outstanding achievement of the world-class Soviet science”: four congenitally deaf-blind people, bereft of psyche and consciousness were able to graduate from the Lomonosov Moscow State University faculty of psychology, thanks to Marxist methods of education. This was the basis for E.V. Ilyenkov’s concept of the personality formation from “the mental scratch”, as a purely social formation, excluding the role of genetic factors, which was used for broad philosophical conclusions about the nature of consciousness and cognition. However, soon all the four were found out to have lost their sight and hearing at a fairly late age, having already developed consciousness and formed speech. These decisive facts refuted the concept of E.V. Ilyenkov, but were hidden by him and his followers that was supported by the official bodies. During perestroika, this falsification was publicly exposed. However, this falsification is still suppressed in many philosophical publications by E.V. Ilyenkov’s followers, and the Zagorsk experiment is extolled as an outstanding scientific achievement. The article critically examines these publications in terms of the biosocial problem analysis, which has become especially acute in the context of the global environmental crisis. It is emphasized that in the context of developing technological capabilities for vision and hearing prosthetics, it is necessary to develop new methodological, pedagogical and psychological approaches to solving the problems of deafblindness.