On the Dialectics of the Ascent from the Abstract to the Concrete
The author reflects on the resurgence of interest in the area of Marxist methodology, arguing that the Soviet-era debate about the dialectics of the abstract and the concrete may be relevant in this new context. His main claim is that the very methodology of dialectics ought to be described as the ascent from the abstract to the concrete; he therefore begins by analyzing dialectics in Plato. Evald Ilyenkov's book about the dialectics of the abstract and the concrete was heavily censored based on how the dialectical method of Marx's "Das Kapital" was understood by official Soviet philosophy. Ilyenkov's book was published in the original form and under his original title only in 1997. A Marxist perspective on the ascent involves sifting through such philosophical problems as dialectics of contradiction, dialectics of form and content, and induction vs. deduction. There can be no way forward for dialectics without a firm methodological foundation established first.