2. Cosmism and Cosmology
Evald Ilyenkov was an exemplary representative of Soviet Marxist philosophy in its nondogmatic and, as they used to say, “creative” aspect. In an intellectual context not known for indulging individual theoretical “peculiarities,” Ilyenkov was an outstanding exception. For the most part, his work was a bright, shining expression or reinterpretation of inherited Soviet discourse on dialectics, historical materialism, and so-called “activity theory” (i.e., the theory that subordinates all social, political, and cultural phenomena to elaborated schemata derived from the analysis of labor and praxis). But “Cosmology of the Spirit” is something more than this. Revealing a number of theoretical “anomalies,” this posthumously published early text puts Ilyenkov’s thought in an absolutely fascinating and astonishing perspective.
As mentioned above, a considerable international scholarship around Ilyenkov’s legacy has emerged in recent decades. This research covers various later aspects of his thought—his reading of Das Kapital, his elaborations on dialectical logic and the concept of the “ideal,” as well as his contributions to activity theory, which became a broad international methodological platform. However, there are only a few works and commentaries about this particular early essay—or, as Ilyenkov himself defined its genre, this “phantasmagoria.”
Regarding the immediate circumstances surrounding the writing of “Cosmology,” intellectual historians and biographers emphasize the influence of one of Ilyenkov’s most important friends in the 1950s, the scientist and self-taught speculative thinker Pobisk Kuznetsov (1924–2000). Everything about Kuznetsov was peculiar, starting with his first name: “Pobisk” is not a typical Russian name, but an acronym of the sentence “[P]okolenie [O]ktyabrskikh [B]ortsov [I] [S]troitelei [K]ommunizma,” i.e., “A Generation of the October Revolution Fighters and Builders of Communism.” Kuznetsov was an interdisciplinary scholar with a wide range of interests—from biology, chemistry, and physics to engineering, economics, and systems theory. He also spent time in a labor camp late in Stalin’s regime for organizing an unsanctioned discussion group where students addressed an ambitious question at the intersection of evolutionary biology and philosophy: What is the function or goal of life at the scale of the universe? In the course of his talks with Kuznetsov, Ilyenkov convinced him to write the entry on “Life” for the Encyclopedia of Philosophy that Ilyenkov coedited in the 1950s and ’60s.
Kuznetsov considered the function of life to be “anti-entropic.” Life brings higher forms of organization, creating an order from “chaos.” Entropy is a measure of the dispersal of energy; the Second Law of Thermodynamics states that in closed systems, entropy can only increase, which eventually leads to a final dispersal of energy and ultimately the “death” of the system. Accordingly, “anti-entropic” refers to the capacity of some forms of matter (such as life) to counterbalance the increase of entropy. In the 1950s, Kuznetsov also wrote about the problem of the “thermal death of the universe”—its entropic collapse—with reference to Engels’s discussion of this question in his Dialectics of Nature. He also linked the “thermal death” problem to the anti-entropic function of life, hinting at a possible way out of this predicament.
Kuznetsov was not alone in generating ideas about the anti-entropic function of life. His work was part of a broader Soviet debate in the 1950s and ’60s about the meaning and final goal of both humanity and communism in the universe. Participants in this debate were aware that similar questions had been discussed in texts by earlier cosmists, albeit without much reference to the communist horizon. For example, another friend of Ilyenkov, the sci-fi writer and scientist Igor Zabelin, expressed similar views about the anti-entropic function of life in his book Chelovek i chelovechestvo: Etjudy Optimisma (The Human and humanity: Optimistic essays), published in 1970. Zabelin critically notes a striking detail in the work of the pioneering cosmist Nikolai Fedorov. Fedorov’s famous idea of the “resurrection” of humanity, Zabelin claims, seems to concern only men, whom the founder of cosmism calls “fathers” and “sons.” It seems that women—at least according to the verbal formula of Fedorov, who speaks only of the “resurrection of the fathers” by “sons”—are excluded from this process. For Fedorov, sociobiological reproduction involving both sexes should be replaced by a technologically enabled literal “resurrection” that is opposed to the “lust of childbearing.” Zabelin, quite reasonably, condemns Fedorov as a “misogynist” (today we would see this attitude as a sexist expression of patriarchy). At the same time, Zabelin approvingly quotes a later cosmist, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who had also discussed the “anti-entropic process” in the universe. This example gives a clear idea of how advanced, critical, and differentiated was the reception of Russian cosmism in the semi-official Soviet culture of the post-WWII period. Ilyenkov definitely shared this attitude.
However, as we will see, although Ilyenkov uses the scientific themes of thermal death and entropy in his text, he does so in combination with elaborate arguments based on his interpretation of classic philosophy texts by Spinoza and Hegel, as well as on inspiration he draws from Engels’s work, and on important implicit assumptions about the crucial role of communism in the anti-entropic process.
3. Dialectical Materialism as Phantasmagoria
Let’s begin by summarizing the argument of “Cosmology of the Spirit.” The main question the text addresses is the role of “thinking life” or “thought” in the universe—no more, no less.
The long explanatory subtitle of the text reads as follows: “An Attempt to Give a Basic Outline of the Objective Role of Thinking Matter in the System of Universal Interaction (A Philosophical-Poetic Phantasmagoria Based on the Principles of Dialectical Materialism).” Throughout the text, Ilyenkov stresses his adherence to dialectical materialism, in an attempt to neutralize its unusual and risky contents as a “philosophical-poetic phantasmagoria.” He also uses, reservedly, another word borrowed from the scientific lexicon: he calls his entire proposition a “hypothesis.”
The themes and questions of the text are the core questions of materialist ontology: the relations between matter and thought. The text suggests a cosmological hypothesis that links together the emergence of life and human intelligence on earth with the entropic nature of the material universe, and, no less important, with the historical achievement of communism.
“Matter constantly possesses thought, constantly thinks itself,” begins Ilyenkov. Of course, he doesn’t mean this literally; he’s not trying to suggest, as an idealist or animist might, that matter “thinks.” But since matter had already emerged in human form, and since the universe is infinite, the law of probability dictates that there will always be another complex form of matter that achieves the faculty of thinking, in some space and time. The “thinking brain” always emerges and reproduces itself somewhere in the universe: in this specific sense, “matter constantly thinks itself.”
It is important to comment further on several points here. In the orthodox Soviet “diamat” (the official, dogmatic version of dialectical materialism), matter was understood as an ensemble of its “forms of movement,” i.e., as an ascending hierarchy of development, from the lowest forms, which are covered by the realms of physics, chemistry, and biology, to its highest forms, which are the human brain and intelligence, which in turn shape matter’s “social” form. Each lower form supports the emergence of the higher ones. But then what is the function of the highest form of matter if it does not have anything above it?—this question shapes the field of Ilyenkov’s hypothesis.
These views on the movement of various forms of matter were derived from Engels’s Dialectics of Nature, to which Ilyenkov refers in his text many times. Actually, though, Dialectics of Nature has a bad reputation in the history of Marxist philosophy; it is regarded as the source of the brutal “dialectical laws” that constituted Soviet diamat. However, the text is in fact very insightful and at times ascends to heights of speculative thought that Marx himself would probably have never dared.
The second point in Ilyenkov’s argument evolves from the first: since the universe is infinite in space, its development, paradoxically, is already finished, and everything already exists, including the highest forms of intelligent life. Of course, the dialectics of development nonetheless continues to unfold, in specific parts and zones of the universe that have not yet achieved higher forms of matter’s organization. But if we take matter as a whole, as infinite substance, thinking life is always there. Thus, suggests Ilyenkov, when considered in its totality, matter can be grasped as Spinoza’s substance, eternal and unchangeable. One of the rare commentators on “Cosmology” notes on this point that Spinoza had exactly the same “famous picture of the Universe as a homeostasis, which as a totality remains unchanged although all its constituent parts incessantly move like pieces in a kaleidoscope.” But it seems to be even more complicated than this, as the homeostasis, for Ilyenkov, is restored through its opposite: a catastrophe of a specific kind that excludes, perhaps, contemplative and untroubled Spinozan views about substance.
In Spinoza, substance, interpreted as matter, possesses at least two attributes: thought and extension. In contrast to this, “vulgar” materialism says that intellect and thought emerge from a dialectical movement of matter, i.e., matter is necessary for the emergence of thought, but never vice versa. In this picture, the existence of thought is contingent, not necessary; it is thus “the product of a fortuitous combination of circumstances,” as Ilyenkov sums up this view. But a subtler materialism would, in a dialectical movement, also claim the converse—that thought is necessary for matter. “Matter cannot exist without thought,” writes Ilyenkov.
At this point in his argument, Ilyenkov lingers over the question of how these assumptions can change our philosophical understanding of thinking itself. According to the general understanding of this question in Soviet diamat, thought is the supreme form of matter’s development. But Ilyenkov is more specific, emphasizing that thought is the final stage of this development. There are no higher forms of matter than thought. Indeed, if higher forms of matter could exist, this would mean that they are inaccessible to thinking, being a kind of Kantian inconceivable “noumenon”; a kind of fideism could be built on these higher forms, pointing to the existence of an unknowable God. For Hegel, notes Ilyenkov, suprahuman Reason is still comprehensible, as it is based on the same logic as the human mind and so is still a form of thought.
Ilyenkov argues that there is only one way of understanding this cosmic “situation”: as a cyclical movement from the lowest forms of matter to the highest (“the thinking brain”) and back, to their decomposition into the lowest forms of matter (biological, chemical, and physical). If we admit the limit of the highest development of matter, writes Ilyenkov, we should also admit its lowest, most primitive level, where matter contains only the simplest qualities. Borrowing ideas from the discipline of physics as it existed at the time (in the 1950s), Ilyenkov associates this lowest form of matter not with particles—atoms, electrons, etc.—but rather with a “field” as the minimal form of the existence of matter.
The idea of the limits of the development of matter (the highest limit and the lowest limit), as well as the assumption that thought is necessarily an attribute of matter (and let the record show that a truly decisive argument for this necessity remains to be discovered), constitute the two main speculative frameworks on which Ilyenkov builds his cosmology, which he reservedly calls a “hypothesis.” The third premise connects the previous two: it is the assumption that this cyclical development of the universe passes through a phase involving the complete destruction of matter—through a galaxy-scale “fire.” This premise reflects both the “spirit” of dialectical negation, known since Heraclitus, as well as theories of the “big bang” and the so-called “thermal death of the universe,” which presumably precedes the final explosion.
This universal destruction will inevitably involve the destruction of humanity, endowed with the faculty of thought. At this point, Ilyenkov’s speculative drive accelerates even more. As we remember, he started from the premise that thought is a necessary attribute of matter. But how is this necessity of thought effectuated? How does it prove itself? Here we enter the proper realm of Ilyenkov’s cosmology. The elements that Ilyenkov introduced at previous points in his argument come together into an astonishing narrative.
As he himself acknowledges, this narrative is a rather “poetic fantasy.” However, he still grounds his argument in the authority of dialectical materialism, mostly referring to Engels’s Dialectics of Nature, which also raised questions about the end of the universe due to its thermal death—definitely not what one expects from the optimistic coauthor of the Communist Manifesto! Engels devotes several pages to the issue of thermal death and suggests that the movement of matter will overcome the entropic threshold in an as-yet-unknown way. Here Engels also discusses the ideas of Rudolf Clausius, a nineteenth-century German physicist and mathematician who was the first to introduce the concept of entropy based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Engels notes that “only a miracle” can neutralize entropy.
What Engels called a “miracle” will, in Ilyenkov’s hypothesis, turn into a gesture of self-destruction on the part of communist reason. When thermal death is imminent, the sun and other stars will gradually cool down. But with scientific-technological progress, argues Ilyenkov, humanity will be able to access a new and more powerful source of energy, as well as the capacity to restructure matter itself. This will lead to humanity’s increasing autonomy from the material conditions of its existence, including from the most fundamental laws, such as the law of the cosmic growth of entropy. However, these new powers will not save humanity from a lethal cosmic standstill: “This turns out to be the absolute boundary in which all conditions under which the thinking spirit can exist, inevitably disappear.” We have arrived at the most striking part of Ilyenkov’s cosmological narrative.
He claims that contemporary science still cannot explain the transition from the thermal death of the universe to the big bang, since the law of entropy only suggests that the collapse of the universe will bring it to a “zero outcome”—absolute homeostasis at the lowest point. The universe needs a special intervention to rechannel the energy that was radiated during the cycle of matter’s development into a new “global fire.” The question of what (or who) sets the universe on fire is crucial. According to Ilyenkov, it is the cosmological function of thought to provide the conditions to “relaunch” the universe, which is collapsing due to thermal death. It is human intelligence which, having achieved the highest potency, has to launch the big bang. This is how thought proves in reality that it is a necessary attribute of matter. As Ilyenkov writes:
In concrete terms, one can imagine it like this: At some peak point of their development, thinking beings, executing their cosmological duty and sacrificing themselves, produce a conscious cosmic catastrophe—provoking a process, a reverse “thermal dying” of cosmic matter; that is, provoking a process leading to the rebirth of dying worlds by means of a cosmic cloud of incandescent gas and vapors. In simple terms, thought turns out to be a necessary mediating link, thanks only to which the fiery “rejuvenation” of universal matter becomes possible; it proves to be this direct “efficient cause” that leads to the instant activation of endless reserves of interconnected motion, in a similar manner to how it currently initiates a chain reaction, artificially destroying a small quantity of the core of radioactive material … This being said, thought remains a historically transitional episode in the development of the universe, a derivative (“secondary”) product of the development of matter, but a product that is absolutely necessary: a consequence that simultaneously becomes the condition for the existence of infinite matter.
Especially touching here are phrases like “in concrete terms” or “in simple terms,” which contrast with the universal scale and singularity of the event. After proposing such a mind-blowing hypothesis, Ilyenkov is very careful to repeat that this narrative does not break with any of the principles of dialectical materialism. For Ilyenkov, this science-inspired speculation, based on contemporary physics, also matches with the classic philosophy of Spinoza and his notion of the attribute; an “attribute” designates something that is strictly necessary for the infinite existence of substance (i.e., matter, from a dialectical-materialist point of view). As Ilyenkov notes, if the thinking brain, as the highest form of matter, were only contingent and “useless,” it would be, in Spinoza’s technical language, merely a “mode” (modus) and not an “attribute.”
Ilyenkov’s hypothesis also undermines any religious or idealistic teleology that ascribes to human (or nonhuman) intelligence the goal of self-perfection or absolute knowledge. The real goal, notes Ilyenkov sarcastically, is “endlessly greater” than “those pathetic fantasies.”
Finally, there is one more important point in this narrative, which appears rather marginal in the text but remains crucial for its interpretation. The political condition that Ilyenkov mentions in his text, as something obvious, is communism, or a “classless society”:
Millions of years will pass, thousands of generations will be born and go to their graves, a genuine human system will be established on Earth, with the conditions for activity—a classless society, spiritual and material culture will abundantly blossom, with the aid of, and on the basis of, which humankind can only fulfill its great sacrificial duty before nature … For us, for people living at the dawn of human prosperity, the struggle for this future will remain the only real form of service to the highest aims of the thinking spirit.
What was obvious for Ilyenkov is far from obvious to us now, in a so-called “postcommunist” time that is much more pessimistic about social progress. Ilyenkov’s hypothesis now appears as more conditional and more dramatic: if humanity is unable to achieve communism, then collective human intelligence will not achieve its highest stage of power either, as it will be undermined by the capitalist system, which is as far as one can get from any self-sacrificial or otherwise sublime motivation. If, to follow the assumptions of Ilyenkov’s phantasmagoria, the final thermal death of the universe is imminent, and even the materialist ontology will crack, then thought ceases to be an attribute of matter, degrading into a contingent outcome of its local development. Thus, “Cosmology of the Spirit” proclaims the necessity of communism from the point of view of the universe’s immanent logic of becoming. In Ilyenkov’s text, communism turns out to be a much more serious historical and cosmic event, not limited to the scale of the planet. If the world still exists, this is because it was shaped by a previous cycle of the ontological machine whose necessary cog is fully actualized communist reason.”
– Alexei Penzin, “Contingency and Necessity in Evald Ilyenkov’s Communist Cosmology.” e-flux #88, February 2018 issue
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