Cultural-historical theory
and dialectics
Manolis Dafermos
Department psychology
University of Crete
Two meanings
of the title of my presentation
• 1.The necessity to study the influence of
dialectics in the formation of culturalhistorical theory
• 2. The need to rethink cultural-historical
theory from a dialectical perspective
What is dialectics?
• Naive, spontaneous dialectics offers a living, sensory concrete
perception of the world in the
process of its change and becoming
• Conscious (or systematic) dialectics
stood against the metaphysical
method of thinking (German
classical philosophy, Marxism)
- examination of things in their
mutual connections, movement and
development.
- Representation of the
developmental process of an
concrete object in its
interconnections with other objects
The disappearance of
dialectics
• Dialectics has disappeared
from sight in North Atlantic
Academy.
• Increasing individualisation
and fragmentation of social
life in North America and
Western Europe
• the lack of dialectical
mode of thinking and the
tendency of the reception
of CHT through the lens of
the dominant ways of
thinking in North Atlantic
Toward a dialectical approach to cultural
historical theory
• 1. the dialectics of history - the historical
context of the formation of cultural historical
theory in Soviet Union in 1920s early 1930s.
• 2. the dialectics of development of sciencethe crisis of psychology as a discipline in early
20th century.
• 3. the dialectics of Vygotsky’s creative
development as a personality - building of
new theory in the domain of psychology.
Dialectic of history
• Hegelian dialectic was called by Russian thinker
• Herzen as the "algebra of revolution”
• “...it is not difficult to see that ours is a birth-time
and a period of transition to a new era. Spirit has broken with
the world it has hitherto inhabited and imagined, and is of a
mind to submerge it in the past, and in the labour of its own
transformation” (Hegel)
• “Наша наука не могла и не может развиться в старом
обществе. Овладеть правдой о личности и самой
личностью нельзя, пока человечество не овладело
правдой об обществе и самим обществом. Напротив, в
новом обществе наша наука станет в центре жизни.
(Vygotsky, 1997a, p. 342).
Dialectic of the
development of
science
• Crisis in psychology and the first
attempts to overcome the crisis in
psychology on the basis of a
dialectical framework emerged.
• “Science commences to be
understood dialectically in its
movement, i.e., from the
perspective of its dynamics, growth,
development, evolution. It is from
this point of view that we must
evaluate and interpret each stage of
development. Thus, the first thing
from which we proceed is the
acknowledgement of a crisis”
(Vygotsky, 1997a, pp.292).
Dialectic
of Vygotsky’s creative
development
• Vygotsky's creative and
dramatic journey - The
development of Vygotsky's
scientific programme
• . “...a shift of ascent (or
epochs of development) is
possible in human life as in
a drama or a tragedy, and
each of them lasts for
several years” (Zinchenko,
1999, p.8).
Turning points
of Vygotsky’s creative development
• 1.The transition from subjectivism and idealism to objectivism and
materialism under the influence of October Revolution (1919-1920)
• 2. Vygotsky's transition from reflexology and behaviorism to cultural
historical theory (1927). In contrast to dominant naturalistic
accounts in psychology, Vygotsky focused on investigation of
cultural development of higher mental functions.
• 3. Reformulating CHT (1931-1932). Vygotsky elaborated a set of
concepts (psychological system, meaning, unity of the affective and
intellectual processes, perezivanie, etc.) in order to develop an
integrative, monistic and dialectical theory of consciousness and
human subjectivity.
• CHT as a developmental process
• Cultural - historical theory was not a pure
individual endeavor, but rather a collaborative
project. Vygotsky’s scientific school
• Broader process of social change in Soviet
Union in 1920s - early 1930s.
Dialectics in psychology:
an open-ended question
• Vygotsky’s theory: internal bond between methodology and
psychology.
• “Диалектический метод вовсе не един - в биологии,
истории психологии. Нужна методология, т е. система
посредствующх, конкретных, примененных к масштабу
данной понятий науки” (p.419)
• The reconstruction of the Dialectical Logic of K.Marx’s
“Capital” in 1960 (Rosental, Ilyenkov, Vazioulin, etc.).
• Formal logic prevailed both before and after Vygotsky’s time
(Davydov, & Radzikhovski, 1985,p.61)
Development:
a dialectical perspective
• Development as the core concept of cultural
historical theory was formulated on the basis
of the dialectical method.
• Human development in terms of a drama.
Development:
a dialectical perspective
• Human development was examined by Vygotsky as a
contradictory unity of progression and regression, integration
and disintegration, rather a linear progression or an
accumulation of quantitative changes.
• «Development …is the struggle of opposites. This view alone
can support truly dialectical research on the process of
children's development” (Vygotsky, v.4, 99).
• «Научное сознание… рассматривает революцию и
эволюцию как две взаимно связанные и предполагающие
друг друга формы развития. Самый скачок, совершаемый
в развитии ребенка в момент подобных изменений,
научное сознание рассматривает как определенную точку
во всей линии развития в целом».
Dialectical understanding of development
and creative, future oriented activity
Dialectical understanding of development
and creative, future oriented activity
Human potentialities, creating the
future and transforming the present
forms of human being.
Hegelian dialectic and cultural historical theory
• In contrast to Piaget who accepted a Kantian approach to
knowledge construction, Vygotsky sustained a Hegelian
understanding of consciousness as a historical construct.
• Man is not a separate Robinsonian individual who thinks.
Thinking as a intersubjective, collective, historical activity.
Internal connection of thinking with Consciousness and SelfConsciousness.
Replacing isolated, individual subject with cultural-historical
subject
• The true being of Man is Becoming in historical Time, in
cultural history.
• Hegel proposed that human being is as a process of both selfcreation and self-alienation.
• “The outstanding achievement of Hegel's Phänomenologie
and of its final outcome, the dialectic of negativity as the
moving and generating principle, is thus first that Hegel
conceives the self-creation of man as a process, conceives
objectification as loss of the object, as alienation and as
transcendence of this alienation; that he thus grasps the
essence of labour and comprehends objective man—true,
because real man—as the outcome of man's own labour”
(Marx, 1975, p.332-333).
Vygotskian concept of mediating activity Hegelian idea of cunning of Reason
•
«Разум столь же хитер, сколь могуществен. Хитрость
состоит вообще в опосредующей деятельности, которая,
дав объектам действовать друг на друга соответственно их
природе и истощать себя в этом воздействии, не
вмешиваясь вместе с тем непосредственно в этот процесс,
все же осуществляет лишь свою собственную цель».
Dialectical relationship
between necessity & freedom
• Cultural historical theory as a theory of higher mental
functions has been developed by Vygotsky as a way to achieve
freedom in its dialectical connection with determinism.
• A dialectical understanding of freedom as internally linked
with necessity. In contrast to common-sense notion of
freedom as ‘freedom from restraint’ or freedom from
necessity, dialectics enables to bridge freedom with necessity,
freedom with determinism: “not freedom from necessity, but
freedom understood as reorganizing necessity” (Vygotsky
1997, p. 217).
• «Прыжок из царства необходимости в царство свободы»
неизбежно поставит на очередь вопрос об овладении
нашим собственным существом, о подчинении его
себе”(Vygotsky, t.1, 436).
Conclusion
• 1. CHT as a developing, collaborative unfinished project that
emerges in a dramatic and creative period of radical social
change.
• 2. CHT as an attempt for the rethinking and overcoming the
crisis in psychology. CHT illuminates prospectively human
development. Human becoming may be described from a
cultural historical perspective in terms of a drama.
• 3. Dialectical understanding of human development is
internally related to the concept of freedom. Human
emancipation has been conceptualized in CHT through the
development of mediating activity of subjects, rather as an act
of pure will.
• 4.Τhe application of the dialectics in psychology remains
unsolved problem. “…психология сейчас есть психология —
до «Капитала».
Dialectical understanding of development
and creative, future oriented activity
• “The first such factor is always, as psychological analysis has
established, the human need to adapt to the environment. If life
surrounding him does not present challenges to an individual, if his
usual and inherent reactions are in complete equilibrium with the world
around him, then there will be no basis for him to exercise creativity. A
creature that is perfectly adapted to its environment, would not want
anything, would not have anything to strive for, and, of course, would
not be able to create anything” (Vygotsky, 2004, p.28-29).
• Vygotsky proposed the idea of creative, future oriented activity, that
“...makes the human being a creature oriented toward the future,
creating the future and thus altering his own present” (Vygotsky, 2004,
p.9). Human potentialities, creating the future and transforming the
present forms of human being.
“Reason is as cunning as it is mighty. Its cunning
generally consists in the mediating activity which, while
it lets objects act upon one another according to their
own nature, and wear each other out, executes only its
purpose without itself mingling in the process” (Hegel,
1991, p.284).