Ilyenkov and Vygotsky on imagination

Abstract

This paper explores Ilyenkov’s conception of imagination as it is expressed in his writings on aesthetics and in his 1968 book Ob idolakh i idealakh (Of Idols and Ideals). Ilyenkov deemed imagination and creativity to be central to the character of distinctively human forms of mental activity. After examining the many different contexts in which Ilyenkov sees imagination at work—from the most basic operations of perception to the expression of artistic and scientific genius—I bring his ideas into dialogue with the account of imagination developed in Vygotsky’s writings. I argue that, though there are significant differences, their respective approaches are complementary. Both see imagination not simply as a vehicle of fantasy, but as intimately involved in disclosing reality. Moreover, both thinkers are reluctant to cast imagination as a discrete mental function on a par with reason, memory, will, etc. Imagination, rather, is critical to the way in which mental functions express themselves. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of whether children can be taught to be creative and imaginative.

Evald Ilyenkov is a philosopher much celebrated for his originality and creativity (see, e.g., Bykova 2009–2010, pp. 3–4; Lektorsky 2012, pp. 281–87; 326–31, 334–45; Guseynov 2021, pp. 389–90, 395–7; Bakhurst 1991, 2019, 2021a). Indeed, Alex Levant and Vesa Oittinen (2014) coined the term “Creative Soviet Marxism” to designate the tradition of Russian thought in which Ilyenkov played a leading role. So, in 2024, the centenary of his birth, I shall honor Ilyenkov by considering what he had to say about imagination and creativity, qualities he deemed central to the distinctive character of the human mind (Ilyenkov 1984b [1964], p. 225). Ilyenkov emphasized the universality of human thought, understood as the mind’s power to trace the form of any object (Ilyenkov 2009–2010, p. 13; 2009 [1974], p. 25). Critically, and notwithstanding the Soviet preoccupation with “reflection”, this power is not merely reproductive; it is transformative. Our minds do not just picture reality. We are also able to see, not just how things are, but how things might have been or might be. Moreover, we can see in how things are how things might be and change the world to make that vision a reality. This involves the work of creative imagination.

In what follows, I bring Ilyenkov’s views into conversation with the ideas of another sublimely creative figure, namely Lev Vygotsky, who also wrote instructively on imagination. At first sight, it might be thought that Ilyenkov and Vygotsky are at odds on this topic. In his essay, “A Contribution to a Conversation on Esthetic Education”, Ilyenkov—rather provocatively—describes the power of imagination “not as the ability to think up what does not exist but as the ability (skill) to see what does exist, what lies before one’s eyes” (2007 [1974], p. 81). Seemingly in contrast, Vygotsky, in his “Lectures on Psychology”, asserts—more in line with conventional belief—that “the essential feature of imagination is that consciousness departs from reality” (Vygotsky 1987b, p. 349). But the conflict is merely apparent. Ilyenkov is well aware that our imaginings sometimes amount to pure fantasy. Indeed, like Vygotsky, he ventures that children’s play is the developmental root of the imagination (1984b [1964], p. 265). His point is just that, as Vygotsky himself asserts on the same page as the phrase just quoted, “imagination is a necessary, integral aspect of realistic thinking”.¹

Though I am optimistic that Ilyenkov’s and Vygotsky’s views can be reconciled, it is by no means obvious how far their accounts of imagination are complementary because their respective treatments are rather loose.² Many of Ilyenkov’s musings on imagination occur in his writings on art and aesthetics, essays in which various interwoven themes compete for attention.³ Vygotsky, for his part, has a number of writings specifically devoted to imagination, but they have a somewhat provisional and speculative character. As a result, the works of both thinkers afford ample opportunity for misinterpretation. So, before entering more deeply into their respective positions, I propose to reflect briefly on the concept of imagination as such. This will provide us with a basis on which to interpret and evaluate what Ilyenkov and Vygotsky have to tell us. The outcome, I hope, will illuminate the idea of imagination as it finds expression in their works, against the background of their broader theories of mind and its place in reality, and put us in a position to address an important pedagogical question: Can imagination be taught? But, first, let us indulge in some old-fashioned conceptual reflection.

Imagination: a brief conceptual analysis

The question “what is imagination?” can be read in two ways. First, it can be interpreted as asking by what criterion or criteria do we identify something as an exercise of imagination or an act of imagining. Or, second, it might be taken to be asking what place imagination has in the architecture of the mind—that is, when we speak in English of “the imagination”, or when Vygotsky speaks of “the child’s imagination”, are we referring to a distinct component, module or faculty of mind akin to memory, reason, will, etc., and if so, what is its nature?

Let us begin with the first question and defer the second—the answer to which will necessarily presuppose a good deal of theory—for later in the discussion. There is no doubt that we tend to think that whatever else it might entail, to imagine is to engage in a kind of mental fabrication where we rehearse an unreal scenario before our mind’s eye. So, you might catch me staring into space with a smile on my face and wring from me the confession that I was imagining scoring the winning goal in the Stanley Cup Final. In this case, what I was imagining is not only something that has not happened, rather it is something that is never going to happen since I am an aging philosophy professor who cannot skate. But, such is the power of imagination that these harsh realities are no obstacle to my imagining this particular triumph. An NHL player might engage in such imaginings at the behest of his sports psychologist in the hope of making it true that he scores the cup-winning goal, but I can have no such aspiration. I am daydreaming for no other reason than that it amuses me to do so.⁴

Of course, not all imaginings are quite so fanciful. Suppose I am lecturing on Ilyenkov and I ask my audience to imagine how he spent his days in his apartment on Gorky Street. In such a case, my purpose may be to draw attention to the circumstances of Ilyenkov’s life and in that regard the exercise of imagination is designed not to wallow in falsehood, but to disclose truth. If I ask my audience to describe what they are imagining, we can evaluate their descriptions according to whether they are true of, or true to, Ilyenkov’s situation. So, someone who describes Ilyenkov as working at his desk on his typewriter in the morning, telephoning his friends after lunch to invite them to visit in the evening to discuss his morning’s work, eating borsch and bread for lunch, resting in the afternoon, listening to his Wagner records, and discussing philosophy with friends over food and drink in the evening, would be offering an account of Ilyenkov’s day with some verisimilitude,⁵ while someone who imagined him playing video games on his computer and talking on his cell-phone would be badly wrong. So, here imagination is very clearly answerable to the truth.

It is important to observe that such imagining need not involve mental imagery. Of course, someone familiar with Ilyenkov’s features and with the look, sound, touch, and smell of Soviet Russia might engage in vivid imagining that was phenomenologically realistic. But, equally, someone might imagine Ilyenkov’s situation simply by entertaining propositions and without rehearsing scenes in their mind’s eye: to imagine that $p$ can involve no more than prosaically supposing that $p$ (for the purposes of argument or conversation). We should also note that, whether imagistic or propositional in form (or in some combination), imagining will be necessarily indeterminate. I can imagine Ilyenkov eating bread without imagining him eating a particular number of slices. But in this respect, imagination is no different from perception: I can see slices of bread in the breadbasket without seeing a determinate number of slices. Perception, imagination, memory and other psychological events and processes have intentional objects that are indeterminate in the way that their real objects, if there are such things in the case under consideration, are not.⁶

In my example of imagining Ilyenkov at home, fidelity to reality is the measure of the imagining. But there are other ways in which imagination, even when it portrays what is not the case, can serve the determination of reality. After all, when we act intentionally, we do so with the aim of bringing about something that is not yet the case, a conception of which is, we might surmise, supplied by imagination. And, as we deliberate about how to realize our ends, so we will likely entertain counterfactual thoughts about the outcome of certain courses of action, simulated, presumably, in imagination. Similarly, counterfactual thinking plays a vital role in theoretical reasoning, everyday and scientific, when we, e.g., determine that, had $x$ not happened, $y$ would not have occurred. The representation of such counterfactuals is, we might again suppose, the province of imagination, though once more this need not involve mental imagery. And of course, though the counterfactual situation envisaged is not (or not yet) real, counterfactual reasoning depends on knowledge of relationships and laws deemed to be the case.

So, with these preliminaries in mind, let us turn to Ilyenkov’s account.

Ilyenkov, imagination and reality

As I already observed, Ilyenkov treats imagination as a defining feature of human life activity. While imagination is relevant to understanding human creativity in its “highest” forms—e.g., in acts of theoretical, technological or artistic genius—it is also present in the mundane activity of ordinary people. A person is imaginative, Ilyenkov maintains, if they are alive to novelty, nuance and particularity and if they can adapt to the unexpected and are unintimidated by the hitherto unencountered. He contrasts such people to those whose responses are rigid, repetitive and predictable, people who prejudge situations and are unable to see things anew—vices that Ilyenkov associates with the influence of narrow specialization promoted by the division of labor, a form of social organization that stultifies our universal human powers and encourages “professional cretinism”. Imagination liberates us from being dictated to or defined by circumstance; it enables us to reflect creatively about what to think and do. In this respect, imagination distinguishes us from nonhuman animals, whose modes of experience, thought and action are dictated by biological imperatives and the contingencies of their environments. Human beings, in contrast, are able to act in light of reasons that they freely endorse as universal grounds for thought and action (see Ilyenkov 1968b, 2007 [1974]).

Ilyenkov’s treatment of the imagination therefore engages a number of themes familiar in his work. Exploring the imagination is part of the “science of thought”, or Logic with a capital “L”, that is the true subject matter of philosophy (see Bakhurst 2021a). It is also central to the conversation between philosophy and psychology that Ilyenkov sought to foster, as it is to his vision of education, with its emphasis on “learning to think” and the cultivation of independence of mind (see the essays in Ilyenkov 1977 and 2002). However, as already noted, much of Ilyenkov’s discussion is to be found in his writings on art and aesthetics, perhaps the most neglected part of his legacy. These works enlarge the political subtext because in them Ilyenkov targets forms of positivism and scientism that disparage the arts as the province of subjective, and ultimately arbitrary, attitudes and emotions. Unfortunately, however, Ilyenkov’s preferred alternative is a conservative form of aesthetic realism that embraces the classical identification of truth, goodness and beauty and extols the merits of a canon comprising such figures as Michelangelo, Goethe, Beethoven, Tolstoy and so on. As a result, he disdains modern art, particularly forms that intellectualize art and that deliberately eschew realism, and he is especially withering about art that welcomes the formulaic and the repetitive. The sole standard of aesthetic appreciation Ilyenkov discusses is beauty; no other aesthetic predicates or axes of evaluation are considered.⁷ Ilyenkov’s aesthetics are thus rather a distraction if one is trying to come to terms with his vision of imagination. We need therefore to draw out the various strands in his treatment of imagination and weave them together.

The contexts in which Ilyenkov discerns the imagination at work include the following (the citations given are merely illustrative and are not intended to be exhaustive):

• in the formation of perceptual representations (1968a, pp. 212–21; 1968b, pp. 33–35)

• when we recognize someone despite their appearance having changed (1984b [1964], p. 225)

• when we cross the street through traffic (1984b [1964], p. 225)

• when we see things from another person’s point of view (1968a, pp. 241–42)

• when we see things from the perspective of humanity (1968a, pp. 241–42)

• when we form general concepts (1984b [1964], p. 225)

• when we make judgments about what to think and do (1984b [1964], p. 250; 1968a, p. 226)

• when we grasp wholes in relation to their parts (1984a [1960], pp. 222–3; 1968a, pp. 261–62)

• in intuition (1968a, pp. 250–52)

• when we theorize (1968a, pp. 223–6)

• in technological innovation (2007 [1974], pp. 83–4)

• in artistic creation (1968a, pp. 221–23)

Ilyenkov seems to detect imagination everywhere in the workings of the mind. How can we find order and unity in this diversity?

A prominent theme which runs throughout Ilyenkov’s discussions of imagination is sight or vision, understood both literally (e.g., seeing a cat on the mat) and metaphorically (e.g., seeing the significance of such-and-such).⁸ However, while Ilyenkov’s emphasis is on sight, much of what he says can be applied or adapted to other senses.⁹ Ilyenkov denies that in perception we passively apprehend the world. In perceiving, the mind is active. This is true even of the formation of visual imagery on the basis of the sensory stimulation of our retinas. Ilyenkov, it seems, embraces something like the Kantian view that what we receive in sensation must be synthesized into a perceptual representation and that imagination plays a role in this. As Kant puts it in the Critique of Pure Reason, “the imagination is to bring the manifold of intuitions into an image” (Kant 1998 [1781], A 120). In contrast to Kant, however, Ilyenkov maintains that the capacity to do this is acquired. As infants we must “learn to see” and the vehicle of this learning is object-oriented activity: As the infant manipulates objects, so she is able to form an image of them in three-dimensional space by virtue of the way they impose their form on her bodily movements. Such learning occurs spontaneously and involuntarily, and the experience of it is not later available to memory. Ilyenkov’s account is casually sketched and highly speculative, but, for present purposes, we need only observe that Ilyenkov uses “imagination”—in Russian “voobrazhenie”, the words are etymologically parallel—to refer to the formation of images, that is, in an etymologically literal sense with no suggestion that those images are mere fabrications or that what they represent is unreal.

Ilyenkov also asserts that imagination is involved in recognition, giving the example of recognizing a friend—call him Sergei—notwithstanding the fact that Sergei has recently grown a beard. Ilyenkov does not tell us whether he is thinking of a case where one immediately recognizes Sergei or one where one has to work out who the person in question is. He just supposes that it takes imagination to find your friend in the appearance of the person before you. I do not think Ilyenkov supposes this requires us to rehearse mental imagery (e.g., imaginatively removing Sergei’s beard). It is more a case of seeing as—seeing this person as Sergei, or to put it more naturally, seeing Sergei (i.e., seeing similarity in and through difference).¹⁰

The case of crossing the street through traffic introduces further dimensions of imagination. Here, I have to discern whether, given the present location and speed of that on-coming car, I have time to cross its lane or whether I need to wait and let it pass. If there is a lot of traffic and several lanes, and if the cars are accelerating or decelerating, my task will be a complex one involving much counterfactual thinking. In the moment, this will likely not involve overt reasoning. What is at issue is the seeing of possibilities and opportunities, and the anticipation of obstacles and of disaster, and this, Ilyenkov believes, is the domain of imagination.

A still further dimension of imagination is introduced by Ilyenkov’s frequent claim that imagination enables us to “see things through the eyes of another person”, to enter and adopt other people’s perspectives on things. This he means both literally—i.e., grasping another’s perceptual standpoint—and in an extended sense where what is at issue is understanding not just other people’s perceptions, but their beliefs, emotions, interests, dispositions and so on, and how such states motivate and explain their actions. In addition, Ilyenkov maintains that we can see things through the eyes of no particular other or “though the eyes of mankind”, by which he means that we can adopt a disinterested viewpoint, a universal standpoint that is not relative to local interests but that can represent the world objectively and embody the interests of humanity as such (2007 [1974], p. 83).

It is important to stress that, in all the examples given so far, the role played by imagination need not be conscious and deliberate, and in some cases cannot be. As we saw, if imagination is at work in the constitution of the perceptual awareness of objects, this is not something of which the perceiver is aware—I am aware of the room in which I am working but not of my imagination’s role in constituting my visual awareness. And when it comes to recognition, or navigating obstacles, or grasping others’ perspectives, I may find myself deliberating and engaging in imaginative reflection, but I may not. I may effortlessly weave my way across the road through the traffic and, though this demands careful attention and a willingness to adjust my speed and direction of movement as I go, it may not involve any mental imagery. Similarly, my awareness of what another sees, thinks or feels need not employ mental simulation. It might be that my friend’s grief evokes in me feelings of compassion because I actively imagine how she must be feeling. But, my compassion might be moved simply by the knowledge of her loss without my engaging in any kind of mental rehearsal of her grieving.

In his discussion of artworks, Ilyenkov is concerned with, among other things, what it is to perceive something as an aesthetic object. He draws a distinction between perceiving how things are and determining how things are by an exercise of conceptual thinking. He argues that there is a mode of apprehending the world that is prior to conceptual articulation, and it is precisely this form of “seeing” that is cultivated by the visual arts. We take in the sense of a painting in perception, grasp its form and appreciate its beauty (if we do), prior to being able discursively to articulate its significance.¹¹ There are various dimensions to this. Ilyenkov thinks we can grasp the work as a whole and appreciate its formal qualities (how its parts constitute a whole), prior to being able to describe how the work is composed. Our awareness of beauty emerges, at least in part, from this appreciation of the work’s form. Ilyenkov is also concerned with how we see in the work a significance over and above the play of its formal properties and their relations. Artworks disclose to us aspects of reality, including the reality of human thought, perception, sensibility, and emotion. This is something ideal that we discern in the material properties of the work, and, if the work is good, we do this prior to and independently of discursive thought. This is not to say that our appreciation of the work is entirely preconceptual for our apprehension of it may draw concepts into play (we see this configuration of paint as a wolf; we see the wolf’s expression as threatening; we see other figures in the painting as hunters who are responding to the threat in such-and-such ways etc.). But the overall form and significance of the work is something that we can appreciate even if it outruns our conceptual resources (indeed, the fact that it does so is important to appreciating its uniqueness; if we immediately construe the painting as an instance of a genre, we limit our capacity to see novelty in the work). Our awareness of the artwork thus has a unity and integrity that issues from the activity of mind: That activity is not discursive thought but creative imagination.

All this makes most sense with respect to the visual media of the fine arts, but it can be extended (deploying a suitably metaphorical sense of “seeing”) to works of literature, though in those cases the work’s form is not something that can be immediately taken in, but must gradually be perceived as the reader or viewer progresses through it. Similarly, the significance of any particular episode of a narrative may depend on events not yet narrated and must be read back into the text. Ilyenkov does not discusses such matters. Nor does he touch on the specifics of more abstract aesthetic objects, such as musical works, in which the apprehension of form over time is critical.

What is important is that anything we learn about the apprehension of form and content in the context of art, film, literature and music seems to have broad relevance to nonartistic contexts. Taking in the significance of a situation that is, say, of moral import is a matter of grasping the contours of the situation, perceiving formal relationships between its elements and apprehending the normative significance of its morally salient features. It is a matter of seeing what matters and how it matters (or seeing the moral “shape” of the situation, as Jonathan Dancy likes to say (see Dancy 2018)). “Learning to see” is a matter of attunement to what is important, and this in turn requires us to attend and discern. This demands imagination: We need to allow ourselves to see more than might appear at first sight. Such insights apply not just to aesthetic and moral cases, but also to theoretical cognition, the perception and adjudication of epistemic reasons, the building of models and theories and to all matters of interpretation that require us to find and evaluate significance in circumstances and in words and deeds. This is why Ilyenkov thinks that the arts can educate the senses in ways that go beyond the making and interpreting of art itself.

While much of Ilyenkov’s discussion of imagination is focused on the nature and cultivation of ways of seeing, he also deems imagination in play in the formation of concepts and their application, citing Lenin’s remark that even the simplest general idea contains an element of “fantasy” (Lenin 1976 [1915]). The point here is that even a simple empirical concept is formed on the basis of exposure to a limited number of samples. Having encountered this dog and that, the child somehow acquires a concept that governs any and all dogs. Some scholars speak of this process as involving “decontextualization”, but the term does not do justice to the child’s achievement. On the basis of the finite, she grasps something infinite. She thereby goes beyond what is given to her in experience and communes with the ideal, the realm of freedom.¹² This is what imagination is invoked to explain. Again, this is not a matter of mental imagery. It is not that acquiring a concept somehow involves calling to mind the infinite number of things to which it applies. Rather, to acquire the concept is just to acquire a power of imagination, a power to think of dogs, actual and possible, real and unreal.

If we follow Kant and think of concepts as rules for thought, we have to acknowledge, with Wittgenstein (1953), that the application of those rules cannot itself be rule-governed on pain of a regress. To deploy a concept consistently from case to case, we must apply it to instances of the same kind, but the ideas of sameness and similarity cannot be simply taken for granted. Judgment must often be exercised in deciding whether this is indeed a case of such-and-such a kind. Although judgment aspires to conform to necessity, it can take imagination to fit our judgments to the particularities of the situation at hand (Ilyenkov 1984b [1964], pp. 247–51; 1968a, pp. 248–53). Judgment, like perception, is not a merely passive apprehension of how things stand. It involves an activity of mind akin to what Aristotle called “phronesis”, though it applies not just to practical, but to theoretical judgment too. Ilyenkov prefers the term “intuition”.¹³ And for him, intuition is a power of imagination: It is the ability to determine that this concept applies here, but more than this, it is the ability to see what matters in the determination of thought and action.¹⁴

As we saw, Ilyenkov argues that, when we apprehend a painting, we are somehow able to grasp the whole while having a merely inchoate appreciation of its parts and how they are related. This ability immediately to discern something as an integral whole, he argues, is important in all modes of inquiry, including mathematics and science. In the latter, we need to be able to rule out hypotheses by something more than trial and error. To this end, we must glean a sense of the object of inquiry, of how it is organized and intuit which among its parts might prove to be the crucial “cell” or “unit of analysis”, understanding the development of which will unlock the organic unity of the whole. All of this requires engagement of the imagination. This is one of the reasons the cultivation of aesthetic sensibility represents the education of the senses. Moreover, Ilyenkov finds this sensibility at work in every stage of scientific thinking, understood as the “ascent from the abstract to the concrete”: a process in which we go beyond the kind of simple ideas just discussed to form a genuinely scientific concept of the object under study that portrays the object as an organic whole, the development of which is governed by laws that express its essence (see Ilyenkov 1960; Bakhurst 1991, ch. 5).¹⁵

Much of what Ilyenkov has to say about imagination concerns what we might call the exercise of judgment, where this requires the mind to go beyond what is given in experience, or by past practice, and extrapolate, project, discern, interpret or otherwise make sense of reality in potentially novel ways. Of course, his aesthetic writings also discuss cases of artistic creativity, where imagination is obviously in play in various senses. In such creation, the freedom of the artist is constrained by necessity. Artistic genius is a matter, not of freedom from necessity, but of a sublime appreciation of how the work must be realized (or, we might say, must realize itself). There is therefore nothing arbitrary in a great work of art even if it transcends previous expressions of its genre or represents the dawning of a new genre.

This concludes my account of the ways in which Ilyenkov discusses imagination and the phenomena he takes to be illuminated thereby. One might protest that Ilyenkov’s treatment stretches the concept of imagination too thin. Does it make sense to see the same faculty at work in the constitution of a perceptual image, in concept formation and rule-following, in counterfactual thinking, in empathy, in artistic appreciation and composition? This objection invites us to consider the second way of hearing the question “what is imagination?” noted at the outset of our inquiry: Namely, what is imagination’s place in the architecture of mind? I do not think that Ilyenkov sees imagination as akin to a discrete mental component or module. Rather, imagination is better understood simply as the mind’s power to envisage.¹⁶ If that is how imagination is construed, it is no wonder it is present in all aspects of the free, creative activity that is distinctive of human mental life—activity that is self-conscious and self-determining, such as thinking and judging—but also in more fundamental forms of mental activity, such as the constitution of our “perceptual field” and concept formation.

We will return to this issue later. For now, having explored Ilyenkov’s approach, let us bring his ideas into dialogue with Vygotsky’s.

Vygotsky on imagination

Vygotsky’s writings on imagination primarily focus on its development in childhood and adolescence. True to form, Vygotsky looks for a path between two misbegotten approaches. On the one hand, he rejects associationist psychology that represents the work of imagination entirely in terms of the combination and recombination of antecedently given components and so cannot properly explain how imagination can be truly creative. On the other, he rejects idealist psychology that simply portrays creative imagination as “inherent in consciousness” (Vygotsky 1987b, p. 341). In contrast, Vygotsky aspires to show how genuine forms of creative imagination emerge and evolve in the course of the child’s development. He also criticizes attempts to cast “fantasy” as a fundamental dimension of the infant’s pre-social psychology, either in its Freudian variant or in Piaget’s notion of autistic thinking. In contrast, he insists that from the beginning there an intimate connection between imagination and what he calls “realistic thinking”.

Vygotsky, like Ilyenkov, is therefore quick to counter views that associate imagination exclusively with the false and fantastical. “[I]n actuality”, he writes:

Imagination, as the basis of all creative activity, is an important component of absolutely all aspects of cultural life, enabling artistic, scientific, and technical creation alike. In this sense, absolutely everything around us that was created by the hand of man, the entire world of human culture, as distinct from the world of nature, all this is the product of human imagination and of creation based on this imagination. (Vygotsky 2004, pp. 9–10)¹⁷

Expanding on the intimate relation of imagination and the real, Vygotsky points out, first, that imagination necessarily draws its resources from reality (p. 13). This leads him to argue against the popular belief that children’s imaginations are more powerful than adults’. Although children spend much time in vivid imagining and pretend play, their imaginations are limited by their lack of experience and so are significantly poorer than adults’ (though of course many adults do not use their powers of imagination and have perhaps lost the ability to do so). Second, imagination often serves the understanding of reality. For example, we deploy our powers of imagination when we listen to another’s testimony. When someone describes events that we have not ourselves experienced, their words enable us to see them in our mind’s eye (p. 17).¹⁸ Third, imagination enables us to experience real emotions in response to fictional and imaginary situations (pp. 17–20). Fourth, imagination becomes embodied in reality in the form of the products of human activity (a very Ilyenkovian thought) (pp. 20–21). Finally, Vygotsky speaks of the “extraordinary kinship” between imagination and cognition: “No accurate cognition of reality is possible without a certain element of imagination, a certain flight from the immediate, concrete, solitary impressions in which this reality is presented in elementary acts of consciousness” (Vygotsky 1987b, p. 349). Imagination permits us to penetrate beneath what is immediately presented to us in perception. We have to understand what we are perceiving, see significance in it and understand why things are as they are, how they might have been different, what is likely to happen next, and so on. It follows that “a more profound penetration of that reality demands that consciousness attain a freer relationship to the elements of that reality, that consciousness depart from the external and apparent aspect of reality that is given directly in perception” (ibid.).

This all seems compatible with—indeed complementary to—Ilyenkov’s position. It might be thought, however, that there is a fundamental difference between their approaches. When Ilyenkov writes of the development of imagination, his point of departure is the material on “Estranged Labour” and “Private Property and Communism” in Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts (Marx 1959 [1932]). Here, the history of industry is described as “the open book of man’s essential powers”, psychology is enjoined to understand the human mind’s capacity to objectify itself in its environment, and Marx’s offers various reflections on the contrast between perception in human beings and nonhuman animals and on the distinctively human capacity to create not from biological need, but according to “the laws of beauty”. Ilyenkov takes Marx’s reflections to entail that psychological development is primarily driven by our relation to and interaction with artefacts, man-made objects that embody human purposes.¹⁹ Thereafter, our powers of imagination develop as we learn to navigate the enculturated environment in which human purposes are objectified. Vygotsky, however, focuses not on the mastery of artefacts, but on the role of speech in the development of the imagination. It is the emergence of speech, Vygotsky tells us, that “frees the child from the immediate impression of an object” (Vygotsky 1987b, p. 346) and enables children to reflect, ponder and represent things they have not seen, thereby going beyond the limits of their sensory experience. This distancing from immediacy is furthered by schooling, which both encourages children to think before they speak or write and increases the social contexts in which their imaginations are exercised.

It would be easy to suppose that this difference of emphasis reflects a deep contrast between Ilyenkov’s and Vygotsky’s respective accounts, indeed, one indicative of the fundamental tension between the activity-theoretical approach, exemplified by Vygotsky’s successors such as Leontiev and theorized by Ilyenkov, and the kind of cultural–historical theory espoused by Vygotsky himself, particularly in the latter part of his career, with its focus on meaning and semiotic mediation in contrast to labor and practical activity (see Bakhurst 1990 [2023, ch. 3]). The significance of speech and language, more generally, to the development of the distinctively human “higher mental functions” is a prominent theme in Vygotsky’s mature writings (see, e.g., “Tool and Symbol in Child Development” (Vygotsky and Luria 1994) and Thinking and Speech (Vygotsky 1987a), but there is no such emphasis in Ilyenkov. On the contrary, Ilyenkov is consistently critical of styles of philosophy that are preoccupied with language as the key to understanding mind and world, such as logical positivism, analytic philosophy and hermeneutics.

The contrast, however, is not as deep as it may seem, and it is important not to exaggerate its significance. Ilyenkov’s hostility to “language-centered” approaches targets theories that portray thinking exclusively as an occurrence in inner space, a play of propositions that are essentially linguistic in character. In response, he proposes that we see thought as manifest in the life activity of embodied beings (“thinking bodies” as he likes to say), negotiating the normative landscape of a world humanized by the objectification of social activity, or labor broadly conceived. For Ilyenkov, language is one dimension of the ideal realm constituted by social activity: Words are a distinctive kind of artefact, i.e. material phenomena (sounds, marks) lent meaning through their role in human practice.²⁰ Vygotsky is no less interested in the relationship between word and activity. Hence, his focus is on not language as such, but speech (‘rech’) and the role it plays in the child’s life—in the child’s calling to others, in initiating and mediating joint activity, in structuring the child’s solitary activity, in organizing thought, in systematizing and unifying mental functions. It is true that Vygotsky is fascinated by inner speech and its role in our mental lives, but he portrays inner speech as internalized (and restructured) public speech and hence never loses sight of its origins in action, so I see nothing that Ilyenkov cannot endorse. It is important to remember that both Vygotsky and Ilyenkov seek to find a path between Cartesian pictures of the mind and reductive forms of scientific naturalism, and both do so by embracing views that appeal to culture, meaning and activity, but while, in the context of philosophy, Ilyenkov’s priority is to attain a satisfying sense of the embodiment of mind, Vygotsky’s concern is to insist that scientific psychology cannot eschew the concept of meaning. Of course, this results in differences of emphasis and intellectual orientation, but I do not see any fundamental incompatibility between their positions.

One real difference between Vygotsky and Ilyenkov is that, while Ilyenkov orients his discussion almost entirely within Marxism and its German philosophical antecedents, Vygotsky the psychologist, though philosophically astute, shows far more interest in empirical matters pertinent to the child’s developing imagination and invokes a fair amount of the then-relevant literature, discussing children’s drawing, creative writing and theatrical performance. Vygotsky is particularly interested in the changing role of imagination in adolescence, a period in which the child typically ceases to engage in pretend play or stops drawing or writing for their own sake.²¹ In the place of such activities, we see a division emerge between “subjective” and “objective” imagining—that is, between imagining occurring in the child’s inner world, private and self-directed, and imagining realized in objective space, whether in the form of artistic, literary or musical creation, technological innovation or theoretical reflection (Vygotsky 2004, p. 36; 1994, pp. 283–4).²² Adolescence is an important period in the child’s development into adulthood, and Vygotsky is particularly concerned to recognize the emotional and social challenges of this life stage, while acknowledging the greater integration of mental functioning that evolves in adolescence and the empowerment that that brings.

There is, however, a fascinating dimension to Vygotsky’s account to the imagination, which recalls Ilyenkov’s conception of the dialectic of the abstract and the concrete previously mentioned. Vygotsky argues that, while the imagining of young children involves visualizing concrete imagery—i.e. images of particular people and events—imagination in adolescents, though it remains highly visual, involves content abstracted from its association with particular circumstances and creatively reworked and transformed. This is only possible, Vygotsky argues, because the imaginings of adolescents are infused with conceptual content. As a result, the concreteness of adolescent fantasy—its orientation towards particular persons and events—“is achieved only with the help of the abstract. The fantasy of the adolescent moves from concrete visual images, across concepts, to imaginative forms” (Vygotsky 2004, p. 85), which aspire to express a higher, more universal concreteness.

Vygotsky’s conception does not just anticipate Ilyenkov’s thinking on the dialectics of abstract and concrete, it also embodies Vygotsky’s view of the role of the conceptual capacities in the unification of thinking and speech and the transformative effect this has on the integration of all the higher mental functions. At the conclusion of “Imagination and Creativity of the Adolescent”, Vygotsky pursues this idea (in a passage in which the word “new” appears nine times!):

We have established that a whole new and complicated world of new longings, strivings, motives and interests is created following puberty, that new moving forces drive the adolescent’s thinking process forward and that new problems open up before us.

Later we saw how these new problems lead to the development of the central and leading function of the entire psychological development, i.e. to the formation of concepts, and how a great number of entirely new psychological functions come into being as a result of the formation of concepts, how the adolescent’s perception, memory, concentration and practical activity are transformed as a result of the new reigning principles, and, more important of all, how they become part of a new structure and how gradually new bases for higher synthesis of personality and world view become established. (Vygotsky 1994, pp. 285–6)

He then comments that we see how these “new forms of behavior”

begin to serve the adolescent’s emotional strivings, how the adolescent’s emotional and intellectual aspects of behaviour achieve their synthesis in his creative imagination, and how longings and thinking become combined in a complicated new way, in the activity connected with the creative imagination. (p. 286)

Vygotsky’s compelling summation inevitably returns us to the question of imagination’s place in the architecture of mind. What exactly does Vygotsky think we are talking about when we speak of “imagination”? Is imagination a mental function alongside others—thought, speech, memory, will etc.? Or does it have a different kind of status?

Of course, much depends on what is meant by “mental function”. Is the term just used to indicate “something the mind does” (what we might call “a power of mind”)? Or is it intended to refer to a distinct mental component or module? Earlier, I argued that Ilyenkov’s treatment suggests we should treat imagination as the mind’s power to envisage, a power present in, but not distinct from, perception, thinking, memory and will. How, though, does Vygotsky see things? In the Lectures on Psychology, he writes:

Approaching this issue from the perspective of classification, it becomes apparent that we cannot view imagination as a function existing alongside other functions. It is not a homogeneous, recurrent form of brain activity. Imagination is a complex form of mental activity that is based on the unification of several functions in unique relationships. This kind of complex activity, one that exceeds the boundaries of the processes that we habitually call functions, can be called a psychological system. It is a complex functional system. The essential characteristic of this kind of system are the interfunctional connections and relationships that dominate it. The analysis of the varied forms of imagination and thinking demonstrates that it is only by approaching these forms of activity as systems that we can begin to describe the dependencies and connections between them. (Vygotsky 1987b, p. 348)

Here Vygotsky offers us the view that imagination is a mental activity present in, or emerging out of, interfunctionality—that is, the holistic interplay of mental functions constituting “a psychological system”. What he means is not entirely clear, but I will venture the following interpretation, consistent, I hope, with his position in Thinking and Speech. We can identify discrete mental functions that in their elementary forms have different “genetic roots”. As the child acquires natural language so the functions of thinking and speech are gradually unified: Thought becomes linguistic (propositional) and speech rational. This unity serves in turn to unify the mind as such. In the mature mind, mental functions interpenetrate, so, for example, memory draws into play powers of thought, which in turn involve exercises of imagination. Remembering can be voluntary, take propositional form, be emotionally rich and so on. Similarly, my figuring out how to compose this paragraph is an act of thinking that contains elements of imagination, memory, will, emotion and so on, “functions” that are equally co-present in acts of speaking—consider, for example, my efforts to explain what I am trying to say to an interlocutor. On such a view, the mental processes we call activities of thinking, imagining, speaking etc. all emerge out of the operations of mental powers that may begin their developmental trajectory as more-or-less discrete functions, but in their higher forms they constitute a system in which the exercise of any one of them draws into play the others. Though we can find the genetic root of imagination in pretend play,²³ the evolution of imagination does not issue in a mental function that exists on a par with other mental functions. Rather, imagination modulates the way in which other functions manifest themselves. For example, when we consider the relationship between imagination and thought, it is not that there are two processes going on in tandem, thinking and imagining (so that we can ask: How does the imagining contribute to the thinking?); rather, there is one process: thinking imaginatively. Similarly, there are not two processes, remembering and imagining; rather, imagination comprises a mode of remembering, in the formation of occurrent memories.

So, while we can find the genetic root of imagination in pretend play, the mature imagination is really the power to envisage, which can be employed for its own sake (in daydreaming, wishful thinking or fantasy writ large), or more usually in the service of the other mental functions.²⁴ Reading Vygotsky in this way makes his position plausible, serves to cast light on his view of the architecture of the mind and, I believe, renders his approach to the imagination consistent with Ilyenkov’s.

Can imagination be taught?

In “A Contribution to a Conversation about Esthetic Education”, Ilyenkov maintains that teaching the arts, broadly conceived as including drawing, music, literature etc., is a means to develop “productive imagination” (Ilyenkov 2007 [1974], p. 84). I want to conclude by briefly considering the question of whether we can be taught to be imaginative.

It is natural to think that there are significant limits to our ability to inculcate imagination and creativity in students. Of course, it might be said, we can give students some formal guidelines for, say, composing a story. We can teach them narrative structure, convey principles of plot construction, character development and so on. But conformity to principles of composition does not ensure an original piece of writing; indeed, the more students conform, the more formulaic their stories will seem. The creative student will find a way to transcend, even transgress, standard norms, or discover other ways to surprise and delight the reader. But there is no formula or rubric for that kind of imagination, and so no instructions the teacher can give. Better to see the power of imagination as an innate gift and admit that all that teachers can do is stand aside and let it come forth as it will.

Neither Vygotsky nor Ilyenkov would have time for this analysis, for both are skeptical of nativism in psychology. They constantly remind us of the myriad ways in which the child’s life activity, including their mental life, is mediated—assisted, enhanced, structured, scaffolded etc.—by adults and peers. This influence, though before our very eyes, often goes unseen.²⁵ Skepticism about whether imagination can be cultivated looks plausible only if one works with an unsubtle conception that reduces teaching to instruction and then wonders how one could ever tell someone how to be creative. A vast amount of teaching, however, does not take this form. For example, we teach philosophy by doing philosophy, not by giving students instruction in how to do it. The role of the teacher is to exemplify philosophical styles of thinking and to create conditions in which the students can emulate that in discussion with others, in solitary reflection, in their writing and so on. We can think about how to create the conditions that will best encourage students to think philosophically, which is not only a matter of offering them compelling material and engaging role models, but of inspiring them to be motivated to do philosophy by philosophy itself, rather than the prospect of external sanctions and rewards. To this end, teachers must do everything they can to avoid stifling students’ interest and to foster their confidence and their desire to learn. None of this involves instruction. And what is true about teaching philosophy is true of the cultivation of creativity in general (see Ilyenkov 1968a, p. 224; Bakhurst 2020, 2021b). Here, we see a parallel with our earlier discussion of the social influences on the development of mind: We must attend to the myriad ways that we may foster learning in others.

Vygotsky offers an interesting discussion of Lev Tolstoy’s essay “Should We Teach the Peasant Children to Write, or Should They Teach Us”? (Tolstoy 1982 [1862]). In this work, Tolstoy recounts his attempts to encourage a group of peasant children to write stories. His efforts were unsuccessful until Tolstoy himself began recounting a tale, whereupon the children joined in, eventually taking over the creative process, excitedly debating characters and plot and acting out scenes, while Tolstoy was reduced to the role of scribe. Tolstoy recounts how the outcome, achieved collectively, attained remarkable levels of artistic creativity. This, Tolstoy asserts, was accomplished precisely by not teaching the children, but letting them find their own voices and pursue their own interests instead of foisting upon them adult standards and conventions. Vygotsky, however, disagrees, writing that

It is easy to see, even in our secondhand account, that what Tolstoy did with the peasant children, cannot be described otherwise than the teaching of creative writing. He awakened in these children a method of expressing their experience and attitude toward the world that had been completely unknown to them previously… [H]e transmitted his excitement to them and gave them a topic, that is, basically directed the entire process of creation, showed them its techniques, and so forth. This is education in the precise meaning of the word… The right kind of education involves awakening in the child what already exists within him, helping him to develop it and directing this development in a particular direction.²⁶ Tolstoy did all this with the children he tells us about. What is important for us now is not Tolstoy’s general theory of education, but his marvelous description of the excitement engendered by the process of literary creation that he provides in these pages. (Vygotsky 2004, pp. 50–51)

It is important to heed Vygotsky’s words, so that we do not set about the pedagogy of creativity the wrong way: For we encounter many temptations to go awry, even if they are different from the educational errors Tolstoy railed against more than a century ago. Today, for example, we like to audit and regiment, and this inclines us to not trust teachers to teach as they see fit, but to give them curricula, plans and procedures, and to measure student performance by identifiable, and supposedly “objective” criteria of success. None of this helps promote inspired teaching designed to foster creativity. Of course, in creating conditions conducive to the flowering of creativity, we need to give our students tasks that are appropriate to their present capacities, bearing in mind the insights contained in Vygotsky’s notion of the zone of proximal development and cognate notions. And we need to find ways to foster genuine forms of collective participation (so much “group work” in education is inauthentic and loathed by students), a problem that takes us beyond issues of classroom dynamics into questions about the conception of individual and community in societies like our own. We must also realize that the “training of the imagination” is not a matter of fostering unrestrained free expression, but of helping students negotiate necessity: Students’ creativity must be channeled to respond in ways appropriate to the situations in which we they find themselves, whether that be confronting a moral dilemma, engaging in a musical improvisation, painting a portrait or struggling with a mathematical proof. As Ilyenkov would have said, we must enable students to find, in creative ways, the means to resolve contradictions in the reality they confront and to open up new ways of thinking and doing. Both he and Vygotsky believed that the teaching of literature and the arts is a way to cultivate that imaginativeness in students, not just by awakening their aesthetic sensibilities, but by enriching and diversifying their experience, though where Vygotsky would have assumed his audience saw this point, Ilyenkov felt he had to argue for it in the face of the positivist and scientistic currents of thought that had infiltrated and now dominated Soviet society.

In lieu of a conclusion

These reflections on teaching students to be imaginative have a preliminary feel to them, and the same could be said of the theoretical reflections of Ilyenkov and Vygotsky that preceded them. We might surmise that we can unlock the intricacies of the imagination only if we are equipped with more and better theory, and we might rebuke Ilyenkov and Vygotsky for failing to provide this. What they offer us are speculative reflections that are by turns inspiring, illuminating, perplexing and frustrating. They provide plenty of ideas but stop short of a comprehensive vision. Yet, on a subject like the imagination, perhaps that is the best we can hope for. After all, we know a lot about imagination merely by being self-conscious subjects of thought and experience in whom the imagination is always, in one way or another, in play. What we need is not more theory, but, as Iris Murdoch once put it (after Shelley), the power—or perhaps the courage—to imagine what we know (Murdoch 1999 [1958], p. 181). Ilyenkov was a thinker who had that power and who showed that courage. May his work continue to provide food for creative thought for many years to come.