Analysis Of Ilyenkov's Ideal

Ilyenkov discusses the problem of the ideal as an inquiry about the relation of the internal world of thoughts and experiences, on the one hand, and the external world of objects on the other. In brief, for Ilyenkov the ideal is the reflection of things emerging in objective, reality-transforming activity, existing in ‘patterns and images’ of object-oriented activity of man as the active agent of social production (Ilyenkov 1977a, p. 261), supervening above individuals as accumulated signs, remnants and reflections of their past practice.
According to Ilyenkov, Marx’s deployment of value form is a typical and characteristic case of ideality in general (Ilyenkov 1977b, p.90-91), the most typical case of the idealization of actuality (Ilyenkov

Thus, Ilyenkov’s ideal turns to be a subjective image of objective reality. The mechanism of the mutual conversion of object to subject, which expresses the dialectical transition of the form of activity into the form of thing, is human labour.
These two conclusions taken together seem to point to an alternative answer to the problem of the metaphysical status of abstract models. According to it, they could be construed neither as fictions nor as abstract entities. Rather, if we read Ilyenkov’s conception of ideality in terms of scientific cognition we get an account that pays equal justice to both epistemological and ontological concerns. How this is done, may be elucidated by the third conclusion.
3) Ilyenkov maintains that ideal phenomena exist objectively as aspects of the mind-independent world. Although it is sensuously imperceptible, ideal is objective, part of objective reality, since it is being objectified in human activity

The ‘things’ Ilyenkov refers to have a representative function and are expressing their essence in the symbolic mediation of activity. The phenomena which have such a symbolic or ideal function are objectified in verbal expressions, sculptural, graphic and plastic forms, in the form of the ‘routine-ritual’ ways of dealing with things and people etc; their objectification is expressed in language, in drawings, models and such symbolic objects as coats of arms, banners, or as money, including gold coins and paper money, credit notes etc. (Ilyenkov 1977b, 79). Thus, ideality is the form of social human activity represented as a thing (Ilyenkov 1977b, 86); it is not the whole of culture but one of its aspects, one of its dimensions, determining factors, properties (Ilyenkov 1977b, 96). The point, then, is that artifacts embody human aims (expressed in human activity that produces them), which are nothing but the material process and outcome of activity in ideal