Individuality, knowledge, and Language in the Vygotskyan dialectical approach of development

Abstract

This paper explores the relations between the individual in development and the richest forms of individuality, knowledge and language in the Vygotskian psychology. In Karl Marx’s classical analysis of the method of political economy, he sustains that human anatomy is the key to the analysis of the ape’s anatomy. Vygotsky transforms this methodological assumption in a moving force of human psychological development, defending that the relation between the adult and the child is indispensable to the development of the child. In the same way, for Vygotsky, the individuality develops from the “in itself” to the “for itself”, and the most developed systems of psychological tools are indispensable to the achievement of the highest levels of psychological development.