Alexei Losev

Alexei Fedorovich Losev, 1893-1988. A leading figure in twentieth-century Russian humanistic scholarship.

Losev was born in Novocherkassk, where he spent much of his early childhood at the home and church of his grandfather, who was an Orthodox priest -- the source of his deep lifelong religiosity. At the age of 17, while still at gymnasium, he studied the works of the religious philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, his "first teacher" and the subject of his last book. Then at university in Moscow he joined the intellectual milieu of the religious thinkers of the "Silver Age."

Though Orthodox Christianity was the first tradition to shape Losev's mind, at university he also absorbed the philosophies of classical antiquity and modern Europe. (He graduated in 1915 in philosophy and classical philology.) In fact, ancient Greek philosophy seems to have become his main interest. His first book, published in 1916, was on Plato, and the papers he read to the Vladimir Solovyov Religious-Philosophical Society were all about Plato and Aristotle.

He published nothing more until 1927. Then between 1927 and 1930 no fewer than eight of his books appeared. It is on these that his current reputation rests. Four of these books were again on the thought of classical antiquity, but the other four developed his own ideas on art, music, names, and myth. He even dared to intersperse "The Dialectics of Myth" with caustic criticism of the Soviet ideology and way of life. How did it get past the censor? After all, this was no longer the relatively easy-going 1920s: Stalin was already firmly in the saddle. Presumably it slipped by precisely because it seemed so obscure.

In any case, the party leaders were soon alerted. At the 16th party congress in the summer of 1930 Losev was attacked by Kaganovich and by the dramatist Kirshon. To a comment that Losev was merely "expressing the nuances of philosophical thought," Kirshon responded with a charming little rhyme: "Za takie ottenki, stavit' k stenke" ("For such nuances put him up against the wall")

Losev was arrested and sent to a labor camp on the White Sea--Baltic Canal. Here he did not long withstand the heavy labor of felling and floating timber. He got rheumatism, scurvy, dystrophy, and hemorrhage into the optic nerve, which led a few years later to blindness. But he was rescued: in 1933 he was released thanks to the appeals of E.P. Peshkova, head of the Political Red Cross and first wife of the famous writer Maxim Gorky. (Gorky himself also complained, in Pravda -- that Losev was too slow in dying!)

Neoplatonik.

External Links

http://www.cdi.org/russia/Johnson/6571-9.cfm http://vt.fermentas.lt/philo/books.html