The Ideal Book editorial
The ideal, as the imagined perfection (achieved in the imagination of mankind), is characterised by the total and absolute overcoming of all contradictions between the individual and society. So the realisation of the ideal would coincide with the end of history. Because of this, according to Kant, the ideal is unattainable in principle and only constitutes an ‘idea’ of a regulative order. Rather than creating the image of one's own end, the ideal indicates the direction leading to it, and therefore guides man rather as a feeling of the right direction than as a clear image of the result (...)
Évald Iliénkov
Filosofskii entsiclopedicheskii slovar, Editorial Soviétskaia Entsiclopedia, Moscú, 1983.
The ideal, as the imagined perfection (achieved in the imagination of mankind), is characterised by the total and absolute overcoming of all contradictions between the individual and society. So the realisation of the ideal would coincide with the end of history. Because of this, according to Kant, the ideal is unattainable in principle and only constitutes an ‘idea’ of a regulative order. Rather than creating the image of one's own end, the ideal indicates the direction leading to it, and therefore guides man rather as a feeling of the right direction than as a clear image of the result (...)
Évald Iliénkov
Filosofskii entsiclopedicheskii slovar, Editorial Soviétskaia Entsiclopedia, Moscú, 1983.
