DIALECTICS AND LOGIC 75 many ways a development of his earlier work on The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx^s Capital which one hopes will also be made available soon. As is clear from its sub-title, Ilyenkov's book is not a treatise in the traditional sense, rather it is a collection of interconnected monographs on the subject. The book has two parts entitled respectively ^From the History of Dialectics" and ^Certain Problems of the Marxist-Leninist Theory of Dialectics". Basing himself on one of the fundamental principles of Marxist method, that the ^most promising means of resolving any scientific problem is the historical approach to it" (p 11), Ilyenkov undertakes, in Part One of bis book, the exercise of a ^repetition of the past, made wise by experience, repetition of the work of Marx, Engels and Lenin..,9' (p 75) showing how in the history of philosophy ^the difficulty constantly facing every theoretician lies in understanding what it is that links knowledge (the totality of concepts, theoretical constructions, and ideas) and its subject matter together, and whether the one agrees with the other, and whether the concepts on which a person relies correspond to something rjpal, lying outside his consciousness? And can that in general be tested? And if so* how?" (P 16). This is a restatement of what Engels called the re basic problem in philosophy", namely the relation between thought and being. Since the solution of a problem includes rcworking it historically, the ^problem of the theoretical understanding of thought (logic)... comes down to solving the cardinal problems of philosophy...And that assumes mastering the culture of the genuinely theoretical thinking represented by the classical philosophers, who not only knew how to pose problems with maximum clarity, but also knew how to solve them" (p 26). In a series of six essays Ilyenkov therefore analyses the positions of Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Fichte, Schclling, Hegel and Feucrbach tracing in this series the gradual crystallisation of a materialist dialectical position. Though this part of the book does not necessarily present any startlingly new perspective it can be considered as a useful amplification of the fundamental position available to us in the writings of Engels and Lenin. In Part Two of his book Ilyenkov deals with the current problems in the Theory of Dialectical Logic and it is in this section that readers will find a significant contribution to the continuing discussion on the philosophical issues in the creation of a Logic as part of the materialist dialectical position. Although, as both Ilyenfcov ^nd Orudzkev point out there is no unanimity on the issue of(Dialectical Logic' among Marxist philosophers, there is ofcourse no disagreement regarding the perspective from which the Dialectical Logic will be worked out. The perspective is based on the understanding of the materialist -dialectic.