Aleksei Losev | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Aleksei Fyodorovich Losev (1893-09-22)22 September 1893 |
| Died | 24 May 1988(1988-05-24) (aged 94) |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Russian philosophy |
| Institutions | Moscow University University of Nizhni Novgorod Moscow Conservatory Moscow State Pedagogical University |
| Main interests | Culturology |
Aleksei Fyodorovich Losev (Russian:Алексе́й Фёдорович Ло́сев; 22 September 1893 – 24 May 1988) was a Soviet and Russianphilosopher,philologist andculturologist, one of the most prominent figures inRussian philosophical andreligious thought of the 20th century.[1]
Losev was born inNovocherkassk, the administrative center of theDon Host Oblast, the far western Russian territory held by theDon Cossacks on the banks of theDon River. He was named after his maternal grandfather, Aleksei Polyakov; a priest in theRussian Orthodox Church.[2] Losev's paternal great-grandfather was also named Aleksei, and was awarded for heroism during theNapoleonic Wars, while fighting in a Cossack Brigade.[3] Losev's father was Fyodor Petrovich Losev, a violinist and conductor by avocation and a teacher of mathematics and physics by trade. Attracted to abohemian lifestyle, Losev's father left the family in the hands of his wife, Natalya Alekseyevna Loseva (née Polyakova), who raised Losev as anonly child at her father's house.[2]
Losev was schooled in theclassics atgymnasium from the age of ten. He was little interested in his studies until he was introduced to philosophy. As well, he became fascinated by astronomy after reading a book byCamille Flammarion. His early interest in music continued, and he considered a career as a violinist.[2]
In his final year of gymnasium, Losev received a gift from his professor: an eight-volume set of writings by Russian philosopherVladimir Solovyov, which influenced him greatly. Losev enteredMoscow University in 1911. He held season tickets to theBolshoi Theatre where he watched every opera he could. During a study visit to Berlin, his luggage was stolen, including his books and all of his manuscripts. The trip was cut short by the start ofWorld War I.[2]
Losev graduated with adouble degree—philology and philosophy—in 1915. He stayed at Moscow Imperial University to prepare for a position as lecturer in Classical Philology.[2] In 1916 he published his first paper, "Eros in Plato".[4] When Russia erupted in the 1917February andOctober Revolutions, Losev kept a low profile, spending all of his time writing and studying. In 1919,typhus killed his mother. The same year, Losev's paper "Russian Philosophy" was published in a German-language volume composed of various articles about Russian cultural development. Losev was unaware of this publication until 1983. It was finally published in the Russian language after Losev's death.[2]
After the revolution, theBolsheviks stopped the teaching of the classics at Moscow University. In 1919, Losev became a professor of classical philology at the newly openedUniversity of Nizhny Novgorod. He also found work teachingaesthetics at the State Institute of Musical Science, at the State Academy of Artistic Science, and at theMoscow Conservatory where he was named professor.[2]
Losev married Valentina Mikhailovna Sokolova on 5 June 1922; she was a student of mathematics and astronomy who was five years younger than Losev. He had seen her since 1917 when he began renting a room from her parents in Moscow.[2]Pavel Florensky, a former priest and physicist working on the officialGOELRO plan to bring electrical utility service to Russia, performed the wedding ceremony inSergiyev Posad. Losev and his wife found they were matched artistically, intellectually and also spiritually; they both sought higher understanding in the study of Russian religion underArchimandrite David.Religion was being suppressed by the Bolsheviks, so this study was conducted in secret. On 3 June 1929 the two were ordained monks in the Russian Orthodox Church in a private ceremony officiated by David. They took the monastic names Andronik and Afanasiya. The Losevs successfully hid their monastic status from the public until five years after Losev's death in 1988.[2]
Losev wrote eight monograph volumes, beginning the work in 1923.[4] The titles were:The Ancient Cosmos and Modern Science,The Philosophy of Name,The Dialectics of Artistic Form,The Dialectics of Number in Plotinus,Criticism of Platonism by Aristotle,Music as a Subject of Logic,Essays on Classical Symbolism and Mythology, andThe Dialectics of Myth.[5] The series was to conclude with a ninth volume butThe Dialectics of Myth caused a great deal of controversy, and Losev never finished the final monograph.[4]
In these works, Losev synthesized the ideas of Russian philosophy of the early 20th century, of ChristianNeo-platonism, dialectics ofSchelling andHegel, andphenomenology ofHusserl. In 1930'sThe Dialectics of Myth, Losev rejecteddialectical materialism and proposed that myth (idea) should be treated on equal terms with physicalmatter.[4]
The Dialectics of Myth identified as false the constructs of the Soviet system; it pointed out the absurdity of the myths associated with stateideology, and with "the dogma ofCommunism". Soviet officials reacted quickly to suppress the book. On 18 April 1930 Losev was arrested and held insolitary confinement in the basement prison of theLubyanka Building. His wife Valentina was arrested on 5 June 1930; the couple's eighth wedding anniversary. Marianna Gerasimova, an investigator with theJoint State Political Directorate (OGPU), an agency of secret police, was assigned to investigate Losev with the goal of proving that he was a leader of the secret religious splinter group calledOnomatodoxy, based on the idea that theName of God isGod Himself, and that Losev was involved in planning violence against the Soviet government. Losev was indeed associated with Onomatodoxy but his role was theological, not practical. Gerasimova led a team of investigators who gathered and fabricated evidence over the course of 17 months while Losev was held in prison. Gerasimova listed false claims against Losev such as his being a member of theBlack Hundreds, anantisemite, and a religious bigot and fanatic. Losev's library and writings were seized, and his dwelling was lived in by an agent of OGPU.[2]
In the summer of 1930, the16th Communist Congress met, and Losev's case was discussed. The book was denounced by politicianLazar Kaganovich and playwrightVladimir Kirshon who said "for such nuances put him up against a wall" to be executed.[4] All 500 copies of the book were seized and destroyed.[2] After 4 months in Lubyanka, Losev was transferred toButyrskaia Prison where he was held for 13 more months. The Losevs were sentenced for his "militant idealism": Valentina to five years and Aleksei to ten years of hard labor in Northern Russia. Losev was sent toGulaglabor camps to work on the construction of theWhite Sea–Baltic Canal.[5] Initially, he was put to work hauling timber, but his health failed and he was assigned night watchman at a timber storage facility.[2] There he began to gradually lose his vision due to malnutrition,[4] though he was reunited with his wife in 1932 atBelbaltlag labor camp.[2] In December 1931,Maxim Gorky wrote acidly inPravda and inIzvestia that he regretted Losev was still alive to foul the Soviet air.[4][6]
Despite this, it was Gorky's first wife who obtained Losev's release from the Gulag.Yekaterina Peshkova, formerly an activist with thePolitical Red Cross and, in the 1930s, the chair of the follow-on group Assistance to Political Prisoners, worked to free Losev, finally succeeding in late 1932 in overturning his conviction.[4]
After returning to Moscow in mid-1933, Losev was allowed to pursue his academic career and to teach.Ancient philosophy,myth andaesthetics became his "inner exile": he was able to express his ownspiritualist beliefs.
Losev had been very admiring of the famous pianistMaria Yudina. He had met with her at his Moscow home in early April 1930, prior to a concert she performed on April 16.[7] Soon afterward, Losev was arrested because of his bookThe Dialectics of Myth. When he returned home in 1933, he wrote a novel using Yudina as the model:Woman as Thinker, orThe Woman Thinker.[8] The flawed heroine Losev created, Maria Valentinovna Radina, was a woman musician who spouted high-minded philosophy but slipped to lower standards in her personal life. The novel has been criticized as an outlet for Losev's difficult relationship with Yudina, and as a poor example of his capabilities as a writer.[9] Yudina disliked the character of Maria which she recognized as herself, and in early 1934 she broke with Losev, never to see him again.[7]
During the 1930s, Losev composed what he intended to be a definitive work on classic aesthetics, titledA History of Ancient Aesthetics. The manuscript was lost along with everything else in his Moscow apartment when it was hit by a German bomb in 1941.[2] In 1943, Losev was awarded a doctorate degree in the classicshonoris causa: from the mass of work previously accomplished. From 1942 to 1944, Losev taught at Moscow University and from 1944 on at theMoscow State Pedagogical University. Also in 1944, the Losevs brought a young post-graduate student into their home—Aza Alibekovna Takho-Godi—who continued in her studies of classical philology. Both the Losevs grew fond of Takho-Godi; when Valentina died from cancer on 29 January 1954 it was with her blessing that Losev and Takho-Godi would join in marriage. Takho-Godi became Losev's second wife and eventually his widow.[2]
Losev published some 30 monographs between the 1950s and 1970s. With regards to Western philosophy of the time, Losev criticized severely thestructuralist thinking.
In the USSR, his works were censored while he was praised as one of the greatest philosophers of the time. He was even awarded theUSSR State Prize in 1986 for his eight-volumeHistory of Classical Aesthetics, two years before his death.
In 1996, a controversy arose when authorKonstantin Polivanov, Jewish studies historianLeonid Katsis, and journalist Dmitrii Shusharin published three articles that described Losev as anantisemite who bargained withJoseph Stalin for his release from exile. According to translator Vladimir Leonidovich Marchenkov these three articles appearing in Russian newspaper Segodnya were a coordinated series of accusations.[2] Katsis compared Losev's supposed relationship with Stalin to the relationship betweenAlfred Rosenberg andAdolf Hitler, with Rosenberg helping to shape Hitler's ideology.[2] Olesya Nikolaeva responded to deny this assertion in the Russian Orthodox newspaperRadonezh: "The logic of the Bolshevist secret police" (1996). Losev's widow Aza Alibekovna Takho-Godi wrote a rebuttal of the claims in the magazineRusskaya mysl; to disprove the assertions she printed letters written by Losev to the state censors. The popular science magazineRodina moved to settle the matter by publishing materials from the 1930–31OGPU case file, which for the first time publicly demonstrated how Soviet secret police fabricated evidence against Losev.[2]
Swiss SlavicistFelix Philipp Ingold followed with "Zerbrechende Mythen" ("Crumbling myths") in 1996, in support of the idea that Losev was antisemitic.[2] Professor Alexander Haardt ofRuhr University Bochum responded to Ingold by defending Losev's reputation. Haardt said that Losev's legacy should not be smeared by a few words but judged by the whole of his life's work. He said the antisemitic statements listed in Gerasimova's politically motivated investigation from 1930 to 1931 could not be trusted as originating from Losev. Losev's defenders characterized him as a principled critic of all religions including Protestantism, Judaism, and his own orthodoxy, and said that he was never anti-Jew. He was also said to be in approval of Communist totalitarianism even while he freely criticized the emptiness of Communist ideology. Russian philosopherLeonid Stolovich wrote very strongly against those who called Losev an antisemite, the article titled "Losev should not be handed over as a gift to the Black Hundred followers!"[2] He said that mitigating documents that should have been included in the OGPU investigation case files appeared to be missing, likely because they did not support the antisemitic conclusions.[2] In 1999, Katsis re-examined the issue in light of the letters and files published in late 1996. He found the issue to be more nuanced than he previously thought, and agreed that "all attempts to distort" Losev's legacy were "politically motivated".[10]
Losev also entered into the controversy raging within Eastern Orthodoxy over the nature of the Name of God, siding with and clearly articulating theImiaslavie position which was at odds with the official stance taken by theRussian Orthodox Church.[11]
