L.S. Vygotsky’s “Cultural Psychology” through the Lens of Spinoza and Marx

The book under review critically reconstructs the methodology of L.S. Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory that traces back to Spinoza and Marx. The second and third parts of the book focus on the experiences of applying the conceptual framework of this theory in the field of psychology of art and pedagogics. The book by S.N. Mareyev appears to be not so much a commentary to Vygotsky’s texts as a critical analysis of the concepts of cultural psychology and an attempt to reveal their heuristic potential. Mareyev tries to re-establish Vygotsky’s ideas the way it was done in the framework of Leontiev’s and Ilyenkov’s activity psychology. At the same time, Mareyev declares the importance of turning cultural-historical psychology around to face Spinoza; however, the book practically ignores the concept of affects that was developed in the Ethics and that Vygotsky considered to be the ‘guiding beginning’ of the new psychology. It is here that, in Vygotsky’s words, the genuine subject of psychological science, ‘the real uniqueness of mind’, emerges for the first time ever and ‘the central problem of all psychology, freedom’ is defined. Unfortunately, neither Mareyev, nor his teacher Ilyenkov, nor Vygotsky’s direct disciples could comprehend and further develop this Spinozian idea of his

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