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Notes
1 In this respect, this study can be considered as a part of the discussion of Vygotsky’s and Ilyenkov’s thoughts on language and consciousness discussed by Azeri in his article titled “Vygotsky and Ilyenkov on Language, the ‘Ideal’ and the Constitution of ‘Consciousness’”. As Azeri stated “Just as Vygotsky (1997a) defines consciousness in terms of the capability of social body to stimulate its own activity with the use of cultural artefacts such as language and sign-systems, Ilyenkov too defines consciousness in terms of tool-mediated activity, where tools are socially-constituted artefacts” (2020: 7). This research sets out from such a point of view.
2 In Capital (Vol. 1), Marx explains commodity fetishism as the appearing of the relation between people as one between things, and the relation between things as social relations. Commodities appear as if they have a life of their own. Marx relates fetishism to the dual nature of capitalist commodity and labour. A fetish-commodity is a commodity abstracted from its use value, that is, from its “sensuous” properties and thus acquires a supra-sensual existence. According to Marx, the realm of commodity fetishism is analogous to “the misty realm of religion” (Citation1992: 165).
3 “The abstract and the concrete are thereby metaphysically distributed between two different worlds-the world of ‘the subject of cognition’ and the world of ‘the object of cognition’” (Ilyenkov Citation1982).
4 “The abstract is a synonym of the purely ideal, mental, intellectual, while the concrete is a synonym of the individual, sensually perceived” (Ilyenkov Citation1982).
5 “In my opinion, the little that we know about these questions suggests that the mind, like the body, is in effect a system of organs – we could call them “mental organs” by analogy – that is to say, highly specific systems organized according to a genetic program that determines their function, their structure, the process of their development, in quite a detailed manner; the particular realization of these fundamental principles naturally depends on their interaction with the environment, as in the case of the visual system which we mentioned previously” (Chomsky Citation2007: 83).
6 According to Chomsky, human language, in contradistinction to other non-human languages, have the property of “discrete infinity”. Every sentence is composed of a number of words. There is nothing that limits this number; however, sentences with six or seven words are composable while a sentence with six and a half words is not. On the other hand, the vocal system of apes are finite or the communication system of bees are infinite but not discrete. For further explanation see Chomsky (Citation2001, Citation2003).
7 It is implied here that “universal grammar” and “linguistic faculty” express the same thing. To denote the linguistic faculty, Chomsky uses “universal grammar” and “language acquisition device” interchangeably at different occasions. In 1996, after a series of conferences at the Department of Linguistics, Delhi University, he was asked about the difference between “universal grammar” and “language acquisition device”. Chomsky replies that these are only two different forms of looking at the same thing. The conference presentations and the discussions have been collected as a volume. For further details, see Chomsky (2000).
8 “There is no reason why we should not suppose that the child is born with a perfect knowledge of universal grammar, that is, with a fixed schematism that he uses, in the ways described earlier, in acquiring language” (Citation2006: 170).
9 According to Chomsky, generative transformational grammar explains linguistic production processes with the use of human linguistic transformations. During the linguistic production process, transformation rules, by facilitating the transformation of deep structures into surface structures, makes the production of linguistic expressions possible (Chomsky Citation1965: 16).
10 Chomsky frequently uses the terms “inner” and “innate”. We encounter different usages of these terms in Chomsky’s different works: “innate capacity” (Citation2007: 52); “innate schematism” (Citation2006: 46); “innate structure” (Citation2006: 69); “inner nature” (Citation2001: 154; Citation2015: 203); “inner structure” (Citation2007: 42), etc.
11 For a Marxian discussion of the relation between consciousness, activity, and language see Azeri (Citation2011).
12 Azeri (Citation2011) also draws attention to this specificity of human activity.
13 “The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It does not distinguish itself from it. It is its life activity. Man makes his life activity itself the object of his will and of his consciousness. He has conscious life activity” (Marx Citation2010: 276).
14 “This use of the term ‘abstract’ is not a terminological whim of Marx’s at all: it is linked with the very essence of his logical views, with the dialectical interpretation of the relation of forms of thinking and those of objective reality, with the view of practice (sensual activity involving objects) as a criterion of the truth of the abstractions of thought” (Ilyenkov Citation1982).
15 The term “traditional” here signifies “anti-dialectical” approaches.
16 This passage is based on Müldür (Citation2018).
17 Vygotsky provides a detailed analysis of the process of concept formation and the acquisition of scientific concepts; his analysis is also important for showing the dialectical relation between thinking and speech.
18 “In the late 1960s, when Ilyenkov came to Vygotsky's work through his association with Leontiev and Davydov, it was thus both the theoretical and practical dimensions of Vygotsky's psychology that attracted him. Ilyenkov recognized Vygotsky as an ally whose ideas strengthened his own theory of the mind” (Bakhurst Citation1991: 61).
19 Chomsky’s view of the innateness of the “universal grammar” is a reproduction of Kant’s transcendental forms and categories. Despite his “biologism” and “naturalism”, Chomsky assumes a form of Kantian a priori abstract categories that posits the principles of language.
20 The general principles that determine the functioning of languages can be conceived of as the universal “Concept” of language, which is rooted in activity. To own the universal laws of language means to own the “Concept” – the means of linguistic activity that develop within linguistic activity – of language.
21 Chomsky’s differentiation between the “interior” (mind) and the “exterior” (external world) should be considered in relation to these questions. In the Marxian approach, the “interior” is a moment of the “exterior”. If the exterior denotes the social and the interior the individual, then one can speak of the individual only as a moment of the social. Therefore, the mind, to the extent that it reflects the individual, is interior; however, the process of its formation shows it to be a moment of the social and therefore, exterior. Thus, the interior and the exterior are dialectically united; they constitute the two forms of appearance of the same social relations. Chomsky, on the other hand, by appealing to “internal” processes to reveal the process of the formation of language, separates the interior and the exterior traditionally from the outset. Thus, without appealing to a priori assumptions such as linguistic capacity and universal grammar, Chomsky is incapable of providing a satisfactory answer to the question of the process of language acquisition. All theories concerning the process of language acquisition and linguistic abilities that he has proposed, despite their differences, suffer similar shortcomings.
22 Lecercle (Citation2006), while discussing the results of Chomsky’s linguistics, concludes that “Chomsky has an interesting position on what the Anglo-American philosophical tradition calls the ‘mind-body problem” (20). This underlines the traditional, idealist and dualist aspect of Chomsky’s theory. Furthermore, Lecercle considers Chomsky’s a-historicism as a complement to his “naturalism”. Accordingly, for Chomsky “the science of language is a natural science, the language organ is a natural phenomenon” (Citation2006: 35). Yet Lecercle states that Chomsky’s naturalism is open to the accusation that it is physically reductionist or vulgarly materialist (Citation2006: 20). Lecercle further develops his critique of Chomsky by showing the latter’s rejection of historicity and sociality and his reduction of language into an individual nature. Clearly Lecercle, from a Marxist point of view, has drawn attention to the outcomes of Chomsky’s linguistic theories. However, I criticize Chomsky, from a Marxian–Ilyenkovian stance, on the basis of his anti-dialectical conception of the particular and the universal and the resulting conceptualisation of “universal grammar”.
23 “To bring any thing under the head of the general ‘universal’ of the existing means to explain absolutely nothing about it. This used to be the vacuous preoccupation of scholastics” (Ilyenkov Citation1982).
24 Of course, Vygotsky reprises Goethe’s Faust.