Articles & Research

Vygotsky and Modernity

The fields of empty efforts are wide, they are ineradicable in every I,
But look — and in them there are flowers
not a few!

Vygotsky's cultural-historical legacy is a zone of proximal development for the world of psychology and for the overall process of the development of humanity. Today culture, the greatest protector of the human being, stands as the antipode of the organization of the social environment. It is the space in which the “coordinates” of development lie, yet the human being, by his complex “spiritual” nature, acts in exactly the opposite way. In our era, the attempt to personalize education will give psychological science a chance to actualize its rich historical achievements in the practical life of the human being. The integrity of the psychological systems of society is a current horizon of development, one that in different periods of culture is sometimes reached and then recedes into the distance once more. Today the horizon has been pushed back again, and the task of the young generation of people is to take more independent steps, beginning the movement from common places — for instance, from the places of L.S. Vygotsky's thought. In this way a possibility will arise of solving the most difficult task in history — the achievement of the integrity of the world in all the spheres of the life of the human being, and in particular of its cultures.

The element of the structure answerable for the violation of integrity at the present time is the following: quantity. The cult of quantity exerts an enormous influence on the growth of places alien to the human being. The simplification of the psychological world and the mass integration of technical means give rise to a narrowly spatial situation in which there is no place for complex behavior. As L.S. himself asserted: “It is not so much underdevelopment that is guilty of the primitiveness of behavior as the primitiveness of behavior is guilty of underdevelopment.” In the cultural-historical development that has been taking place up to the present time, it is the possibility of the simple behavior of the human being that has been realized — a possibility that affirms a total rationalism and has destroyed the subject's capacity to reflect on himself and on his relations with the surrounding world. In labor the human being develops through the creation of “artificial organs,” auxiliary means of behavior, expressing the uniqueness of his development within the general biological process.

The demonstration of this uniqueness — or rather, the spread of the development-inhibiting results of labor — has brought science and society to challenges of unprecedented complexity. Having separated himself from the world of living nature, the human being does not regard it as a source of development, one in which his intellectual resources would be oriented toward mutual cooperation rather than need-driven exploitation. It may seem that the tasks of ecology, or of some other scientific discipline, do not concern the subject matter of psychology — consciousness. Unfortunately, this delusion of the human being has led to the depletion of the planet's natural resources, but what was depleted in the first place were the sources of the development of the personality — school, family, the university, society.

“Civilization is the power of things. Culture is the bond between people.” External exploitation serves as an example of the ideal form that the human being projects onto the organization of his own personality, giving rise to ruptures between the activity being carried out, the cultural-historical nature of the goals of development, and his own psychological constitution. L.S. Vygotsky showed us a multilevel psychological reality, a space whose composition can and must be integrated into the situation of the education of the human being's thinking. In the creation of “artificial organs” the human being learns not only to make his material life simpler but, most importantly, learns to master his own behavior. But with what character of “artificial organs” of the intellect is the development of the human being, as a whole with himself and the world, possible?

The process of the emergence of signs, language, and speech at the initial stage of development had precisely this character — the character of a strengthening of the intellectual function that fosters the formation of new qualitative paths of development and directly involves the personality in the creation of an integral picture of the world, in which responsibility toward the experience of culture and its future is a binding condition of all activity.

“A creature that is fully adapted to the world around it — such a creature could not desire anything, strive for anything, and of course could not create anything. That is why maladaptation always lies at the foundation of creativity: it is from maladaptation that needs, strivings, or desires arise.” The replacement of the intellectual function by a technical means is a character of simplification, and it most likely cancels out the possibility of the development of the moral side of the human being. The ensuing impossibility of the development of the personality as a whole is, in essence, testimony to the human being's historical betrayal of former achievements in culture. One's own behavior is understood, realized, and guided in the continuous process of a reflected-upon, realized, developing experience of intellectual or culturally oriented life.

An environment oriented toward the duality of pain and pleasure generates a complex of products of mental activity that replace, but do not strengthen. The materialization of “artificial tools” that demand no awareness creates an illusion of development, and as a result the integrity of the personality is violated, and consequently the integrity of human communities as well. Many things, more boredom, and still more dead meanings.

“The unity of lived experience and knowledge, the organic spiritual kinship between the artist and the thinker, the inner unity of scientific and artistic creativity”.

To L.S.'s holistic thinking something opens up in the sensation of “something more,” which undoubtedly attests to him as a source of living knowledge. Thanks to L.S.'s works, a deeply historical yet always current thought underwent development in science. It consists in the following: in order for certain sides of the integral organism — consisting of the personality, which generates creative events by materializing its imagination, and of society, oriented toward cultural-historical organization — to develop, a corresponding ideal form is required. Such a form begins development even in the most minimal composition of elements: awareness (reflection), flexibility of thinking (the ability to learn), inquisitiveness (cognitive needs). The problem is that the underdevelopment of these psychological sides of the human being leads him away from his own essence, dissolves subjectivity, turning him into an object subordinated to material needs. Can we today actualize the points of L.S.'s thinking in connection with the new paths that we live through in the course of our subjective experience, having recognized the importance of the elements of the ideal form of development listed above? Of course — for L.S. Vygotsky is not a passing phenomenon, but a having-been one. His thought is something fundamental, outside of time, objective, suprasituational — something that excludes the situation of “needed today, but not tomorrow” — which is more than can be said of the results of the labor of technological “development.”

“The ignoring of development. Everything shifts toward the beginning. But then everything shifts toward conception. What is most important is accomplished not at the beginning but at the end, for the end contains the beginning within itself.

The vertex point of view. Do not work all the time at the lower boundaries”.

A finished character of thinking according to the principle of “final meaning” violates both the course of scientific thought and the historical development of the human being.

Knowledge is modified all the time in the name of increasing the breadth of comprehension.

Within sciences where activity takes place by the criterion of “quantity,” the probability of a developmental generalization within them is negligibly small. The general science of which L.S. wrote, in which the generalization of the particular sciences takes place, is built on the laws of non-finality, mobility, the criticism of facts, new interpretations, and new organizations. For the human being to arrive at his own places, a new — qualitative rather than quantitative — level of the generalization of scientific thought is required, of the goals of society, of the composition of a personality ready to make the effort to understand, to reflect on itself and on the cultural situation in its historical development.

L.S. Vygotsky remains a striking example of interdisciplinary thinking, one that provoked the appearance of new theories, new subjects, and new knowledge, expanding the field of awareness of the psychological picture of the world. We live in his future — that is, with the idea of ourselves that has been present ever since. To think together with Vygotsky is a captivating journey of interest, for the character of his thought contains not a few possibilities for breaking out into the present time of thinking about the subjects of psychology.