Cultural-historical theory  

and dialectics  

Manolis DafermosDepartment 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 cultural-historical 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 Academy.

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 science- the 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 Self-Consciousness.

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 self-creation 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).