Dialektika mifa -- Raboty 1916-1988 godov -- Istorii︠a︡ filosofii kak shkola mysli.

The influence of Spengler on Wittgenstein's philosophical development is considered. The point of interest is in a significant methodological restructuring which it appears to have produced. After an initial over-enthusiastic reception, Wittgenstein is seen to object on some points which he attempted to emend in his own philosophy. Spengler's name disappeared inreworked manuscripts but traces persist in the Philosophical Investigations and an important section (§89-133) is found to be connected with it.

"Mysl"‘ Publishers timed the appearance of this book to mark the one hundredth anniversary of Friedrich Engels's work Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. Engels quite pointedly dubbed the theories which emerged in Germany in the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries as "classical philosophy." It was among the highest achievements of the world's wisdom, and it prepared the ground for the genesis of dialectical and historical materialism. German classical philosophy is the theoretical (...) wellspring of Marxism. (shrink)

Plato's Timaeus is taken as a background for certain views presented by Aristotle in his On the Heavens. The author discusses possible arguments for introducing a new (“fifth”) element.

The Five Greatest Kinds discussed in Plato‘s Sophist are taken to be just one instance of a fivefold structure found in various related texts. Contemporary linguistic theories are a source for ideas about its functioning.

Aristotle‘s categories are presented as a system relying on logic and syntax instead of on meanings. His square of oppositions is found to be of crucial importance.

Only now can we consider that the question of genuine mythical detachment has been fully clarified. We remember how difficult it was to find the true root of this detachment. We compared mythical detachment with general material detachment and poetic detachment but could not find a satisfactory answer anywhere. All the time we have faced a difficult task: to synthesize the sensuousness, extreme con-creteness, and purely material corporeality of myth with its otherworldly, fabulous, and generally acknowledged "unreal" character. After many (...) attempts we have only now finally found this genuine synthesis in the concept of miracle. Miracle is thus an absolutely necessary dialectical synthesis by which mythical consciousness lives and without which myth itself would not exist. From this point of view, myth's relation to other areas of human creativity also appears in a new light. (shrink)

Heidegger's comments about a pair of shoes painted by van Gogh are read with attention to their historical context.

Reading the Timaeus as an early attempt at mathematizing natural science runs into serious difficulties. The so-called Platonic Solids are five in number, more by one than the traditional 'elements'. Plato provides a proportional ratio for these elements but this ratio fails to tie in with their geometrical features. Appealing to the authority of mathematics appears to be a rhetorical move with no further consequences.

The study provides an overview of the discussion “What is the philosophy we need?”, that took place in the frames of “Modern Ontology - XI: Ontology and Religion” International Scientific and Practical Conference. The discussion spread around three main areas of philosophy teaching: philosophy as the history of philosophy, philosophy as the basis for the worldview, and philosophy as a system-categorical knowledge about the world as a whole. Supporters of the first position demonstrated the content diversity of philosophy, often emphasizing (...) the teacher’s right to choose historical and philosophical material, this position caused criticism from other conference participants, whose main argument was the erosion of the philosophy content. Regarding the second position in the frames of discussion, its participants either denied the involvement of philosophy in the worldview formation, or believed that philosophy is the basis for the worldview, and the task of philosophy, in particular, is to form the worldview of students. As arguments, supporters of this approach cited the need for the philosophy in the transformation of modern spiritual life in Russia. This approach was in harmony with the position of the discussion participants, who advocated a system-categorical approach in philosophy teaching. This approach supposed the combination of abstract section (Ontology) with a specific section, where it would be necessary to consider the three following sections of philosophy: 1 - philosophy of nature, 2 - philosophy of socio-anthropological reality, 3 - philosophy of religion. At the same time, the supporters of this approach suggested using the substantive part of Soviet philosophy as a basis, which needs to be transformed taking into account the achievements of modern knowledge. (shrink)

Audacity of the Spirit by A.F. Losev demonstrates the merits of the dialectical method to understand antiquity, history, culture and philosophy. The book is a guide to dialectics for beginners and a major philosopher's summing-up of his reflections to a general audience. It is an English translation from the Russian original Дерзание духа (Politizdat Moskva, 1988), translated by Peter R. Weisensel and Vitali I. Betaneli.

I identify the main underlyingcomponents of Losev''s philosophy(phenomenology, Neo-Kantianism, symbolism,onomatodoxy/imjaslavie) and undertake acomparative analysis of their similarities (theprinciple of the priority of pure sense) anddistinctive features (i.e., whether logic andnatural language are accompanied by an eideticlevel of pure sense, and whether the principleof correlation or of expression is dominant).On this basis I define the pivotal concept ofLosev''s radical project as ``eidetic language.''''The general contours of Losev''s radical projectand its neglected potential for the philosophyof language are described by means (...) of ananalysis of the relationship between eideticlanguage and logic, dialectics, myth, naturallanguage, and exterior ``reality'''' (in the worldof ``referents''''). (shrink)

Aleksei Fedorovich Losev's first work was published in 1916, and his last writings still continue to be published to this day. Over seventy years of a person's active scholarly work could not but contain substantial shifts and distinct periods, although at the same time they could not turn into a series of completely unconnected stages, separated by historical-biographical circumstances and semantically self-contained. The following is an outline of the initial period of Losev's creative work, with brief accompanying biographical (...) information and points of reference to the substantive and stylistic aspects of subsequent periods. It is superfluous to say that this outline in no way claims to give a full portrait of Losev; on the other hand, however, without an analysis of the initial period of his activity, one cannot pose the question of the general foundations of Losev's thought. (shrink)

The life of Aleksei Fedorovich Losev is in many respects a genuine riddle, which we, his contemporaries, will be puzzling over for a long time. "Man as symbol," "man as myth," "a servant of truth," "the last outstanding philosopher of the Russian ‘Silver Age,"’ "the greatest Russian humanist and philosopher of the present era," "an ascetic," "a guardian of intellectual tradition," "a chosen spirit," "a passionate devotee of the dialectic method," "a Russian thinker," "one of the most notable Russian (...) philosophers and philologists of the twentieth century," "a man in whose person Russian philosophical thought revealed such power of talent, such keenness of analysis, and such strength of intuitive speculation" and whose ideas may be called "unquestionably the work of genius"—all these rapturous words of past decades which we have picked at random seem fully to confirm the felicitous destiny of Aleksei Fedorovich Losev, who lived out only four months of his ninety-fifth year, after having completed an eight-volume History of Classical Aesthetics [Istoriia antichnoi estetiki] and the major work Vladimir Solov'ev and His Times [VI. Solov'ev i ego vremia], and having left a list of printed works with more than 460 titles and another whole series of writings awaiting publication—scholarly writings on mythology, logic, mathematics, and medieval dialectics, and even novels. (shrink)

A. F. Losev, one of the most important Russian philosophers and historians of ancient aesthetics and culture in the 20th century, develops in his ‘Dialectics of the Myth’ (Dialektika mifa), 1930, a personalistic ontology by using elements of neoplatonic philosophy and Orthodox Christian belief. According to Losev reality in all its different expressions and ontological strata must be understood as “mythical”, i.e. as “living mutual exchange of subject and object”. The subjective and personal aspect of reality is not (...) grounded in man’s epistemic relation to it alone; reality in itself has to be characterized as personal and subjective. The main philosophical opponent is Descartes, the founder of “modern rationalism and mechanism”. (shrink)