The Cosmic Dead Conclude: Ewald Iljenkow and the Sacrifice of Humanity

Most political theorists view the arrival of a classless society as the ultimate finish line—a terrestrial paradise where the struggles of history finally cease. Ewald Wassiljewitsch Iljenkow, a Soviet philosopher and Marxist, took a different, more unsettling path. He didn’t see the classless society as a destination, but as a prelude to a cosmic reset.

Iljenkow’s “Cosmology of the Spirit” suggests a conclusion that borders on the apocalyptic: in the distant future, humanity must destroy itself to allow matter to be reborn in a new cosmic cycle. It’s a provocative, bleak extension of Marxist thought that challenges the traditional utopian narrative of the “worker-and-peasant state.”

A Life Defined by Collision

To understand Iljenkow’s radical cosmology, one has to look at the friction that defined his life. Born in 1924 in Smolensk to a teacher and a writer, Iljenkow’s academic journey was interrupted by the brutality of World War II. He began his studies at the Moscow Institute for History, Philosophy, and Literature (MIFLI) in 1941, but was drafted into the army by 1942.

The war ended for Iljenkow in Berlin. While many soldiers saw only rubble, Iljenkow saw a landscape of thought. In a moment that would likely inform his lifelong obsession with the dialectic, the young artillery lieutenant visited the grave of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. This encounter between a living soldier and a dead philosopher in a destroyed capital served as a paradigm for Iljenkow’s approach to the world: the intersection of material destruction and intellectual evolution.

Returning to Moscow, he completed his degree at the Lomonossow University in 1950. By 1953, he had defended a dissertation on the materialist dialectics found in Karl Marx’s Critique of Political Economy. He was quickly ascending, establishing a logic seminar on Marx’s Capital at the university and securing a position at the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences.

The Ideological Outsider

Intellectual independence in the Soviet Union rarely came without a price. Iljenkow’s refusal to simplify Marxism into party slogans made him a target. He developed a deep friendship with Michail Lifschitz, another outsider in Soviet philosophy, and translated Georg Lukács’ The Young Hegel into Russian.

The authorities grew suspicious. By 1955, Iljenkow was forced to depart the faculty of Moscow State University (MGU) under accusations of “Hegelianism.” The charges didn’t stop there. over the years, he was alternately labeled a Gnostiker and an idealist. Despite these attacks, he continued his work, eventually completing his habilitation on the “Nature of Thought” in 1968.

For Iljenkow, thought was not a byproduct of an individual brain. He argued that thinking exists as an over-individual form of matter. This wasn’t just an abstract theory; he applied it practically during the “Sagorsker Experiment” in the 1970s, where he focused on the education and social integration of deaf-blind children, proving that human cognition could transcend limited sensory access to the external world.

The Logic of the Cosmic Cycle

While his work with children was grounded in the immediate, his cosmology looked toward the end of time. Iljenkow believed that Marx’s analysis of capitalism was brilliant, but that the subsequent philosophy of history often led to a “utopian dead end.” He questioned the notion that a classless society was simply “paradise on earth.”

Instead, he proposed that the evolution of the spirit and the classless society would eventually lead to a point where humanity must be sacrificed to save the universe. In this view, the destruction of the human species is not a failure, but a necessary step in a cosmic cycle to rebirthing matter.

The Soviet Marxist Ewald Iljenkow thought the classless society konsequent zu Ende: In ferner Zukunft wird die Menschheit sich selbst vernichten, um die Materie in einem kosmischen Zyklus neu zu gebären.

Key Intellectual Pillars

• The Dialectic of Abstract and Concrete: Iljenkow frequently referenced Hegel’s views on abstract thought to explain how Marx made complex, abstract effects—like the contradiction between labor and capital—concrete.
• Over-individual Matter: He rejected the idea that thought is purely biological, viewing it instead as a social and material force that exists outside the individual.
• Cosmic Necessity: His cosmology posits that the ultimate end of human social evolution is the facilitation of a new universal beginning.

Iljenkow passed away in Moscow on March 21, 1979. He left behind a legacy of uncompromising intellectual rigor, having spent his life navigating the narrow space between official state ideology and a personal, cosmic vision of Marxism.

For those interested in the intersection of materialist philosophy and cosmology, the works of Ewald Iljenkow offer a challenging alternative to standard utopianism, framing the end of humanity not as a tragedy, but as a cosmic requirement.

What do you think about Iljenkow’s view of the “cosmic cycle”? Does the idea of a necessary end create the journey toward a classless society more or less meaningful? Let us know in the comments.