David Bakhurst is George Whalley Distinguished University Professor at Queen's University, Canada. His writings include Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy and The Formation of Reason. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

• PrefacePart 1 Beginnings1 The Riddle of the Self Revisited2 Social Being and the Human Essence: A Dialogue with F.T. Mikhailov, V.S. Bibler, V.A. Lektorsky, and V.V. Davydov3 Social Memory in Soviet Thought4 The Meshcheryakov Experiment: Soviet Work on the Education of Blind–Deaf ChildrenPart 2 Ilyenkov5 Punks versus Zombies: Evald Ilyenkov and the Battle for Soviet Philosophy6 Meaning, Normativity, and the Life of the Mind7 Ilyenkov, Education, and Philosophy8 Ilyenkov on Aesthetics: Realism, Imagination, and the End of Art9 Ilyenkov’s HegelPart 3 Vygotsky10 Vygotsky’s Demons11 On the Concept of Mediation12 Vygotsky’s Concept of Perezhivanie: Its Philosophical and Educational SignificancePart 4 Contemporary Applications13 Memory, Identity, and the Future of Cultural Psychology14 Minds, Brains, and Education15 Reflections on Activity Theory16 Activity and the Search for True Materialism17 Activity, Action, and Self-Consciousness18 Freedom and Second Nature in The Formation of ReasonPermissionsBibliographyIndex

“At a time when the masters of Big Tech and far-right authoritarians seek to swamp the world with alt-truth and destroy humanist, objective forms of thought and education, taking forward the work of [Ilyenkov and Vygotsky] is vital.”—Corinna Lotz, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books