I did my best to explore the tense relationship between Ilyenkov and the Soviet philosophical establishment, and to explain his passionate critique of reductionism and naturalism in the philosophy of mind. Since the publication of that work, I have written a number of articles exploring further the scope and limits of Ilyenkov's thought, the philosophical significance of Vygotsky's ideas, and other related themes. The Social Self Vygotsky and Ilyenkov argue that the appropriation of culture is a precondition of the development of our distinctively human mental capacities.
Reason is a deeply socio-cultural phenomenon.
My interest in the relation of culture and mind forces me to consider the nature of normativity and the strengths and weaknesses of naturalism in philosophy and psychology. This in turn fuels a concern with the nature of ethical reasons and the place of moral values in the world. I have therefore been writing recently on moral realism, and particularly on ethical particularism. I was fortunate that among my tutors were Jonathan Dancy and David McNaughton in philosophy, and Eugene Lampert in Russian. After graduating, I spent the 1982-83 academic year in Moscow conducting preliminary research for my doctoral studies.