Review by Corinna Lotz

First published by Marx & Philosophy Review of Books

Bakhurst plays a kind of devil’s advocate, pausing mid-book to ask: ‘Ilyenkov is long dead. Philosophy of mind, cognitive science, neuroscience and evolutionary biology have been busy – very busy – in the intervening years. So why dwell on a thinker like Ilyenkov, who is so remote from the contemporary scene?’ (285)

The answers come thick and fast in The Heart of the Matter, a compilation of essays chronicling Bakhurst’s 30-year intellectual journey, which begins by presenting thinkers who were terra incognita for non-Russian readers – until, that is, his groundbreaking Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy (1991).

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