“Philosophy of Life” by Aleksei F. Losev: New Materials on the Problem. Aleksei F. Losev. Life, ed. by Elena A. Takho-Godi

Abstract

The paper focuses its attention on A.F. Losev’s ‘philosophy of life’, which is one of the key components of his creative heritage. The main stages of development of Losev’s ‘philosophy of life’ are identified: the early period, which is charac­terized by his interest in experimental psychology, in interpretation of percep­tions of the world and in music as an art analogous to life itself; the period of the 1920s when The Dialectics of Myth and Supplement to ‘The Dialectics of Myth’ are created drawing a phenomenologo-dialectical picture not only of social life – the concrete representations of various ‘relative mythologies’, but also of an ‘ab­solute mythology’ – the life of the Absolute Itself; the 1930s–1940s when, along­side the artistic presentation of the author’s ‘philosophy of life’ in philosopho-musical prose, attempts are made to formulate strict dialectics of life as a philo­sophical category, to determine its correlation with such categories as ‘essence’, ‘existence’, ‘non-existence’, ‘consciousness’, ‘the unconscious’, ‘miracle’, ‘genus’, ‘persona’, ‘genius’, ‘tragedy’, ‘death’, ‘instinct’, ‘mystic knowledge’, etc. The paper raises a question of the evolution of Losev’s ‘philosophy of life’, which is evidenced by the transfer of the logical emphasis – in the early 1940s in the short story “Life” (the author’s title is “On contempt for death”) – from such a critical for Losev’s philosophy of the late 1920s category as ‘miracle’ to the category of ‘sacrifice’, and also by abandonment of the category ‘myth’. It outlines the philosophical tradition of interpretation of ‘philosophy of life’ in Russian religious philosophy: E.N. Trubetskoy – S.L. Frank – A.F. Losev. At­tention is drawn to the connection of Losev's philosophy of life with his mathe­matical studies of infinitesimals, which makes to recall not only the ideas of G. Cohen, but also Leo Tolstoy’s ‘philosophy of history’. Losev’s notes of 1933 on the relationship between soul and body, as well as a strict dialectical notes notes “Life” (created approximately in the second half of the 1930s) are concep­tualized for the first time and introduced for scholarly use. The text of these notes is reproduced from the manuscript copies in the personal archive of the philosopher. All conjectures are placed in angle brackets, the spellingand the punctuation of the original has been preserved.