Philosophy of Language and Objective Psychology

Abstract

In this chapter of Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, the author cultivates a critical, dialectical and transformative reading of texts from the idealist tradition, its aim is to clarify the relationship between psyche and ideology. In Voloshinov’s view, the two psychological schools he discusses – the Diltheyian and the functionalist – although they have grown up on the basis of idealism, are in some ways completely opposed to each other: the former establishes some kind of community between the psychic and the ideological in the form of meaning, the latter strives for a strict demarcation between the two spheres. In the end, we get the author’s – dialectical – theoretical proposal for understanding this relationship, which at the same time legitimises the existence of a Marxist philosophy of language: a ‘new’ research discipline invoked by Voloshinov in the pages of Marxism and the Philosophy of Language.