Russian Studies in Philosophy

ISSN: 1061-1967 (Print) 1558-0431 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mrsp20

Editor's Introduction

TARAS ZAKYDALSKY

To cite this article: TARAS ZAKYDALSKY (2005) Editor's Introduction, Russian Studies in
Philosophy, 44:1, 3-4, DOI: 10.1080/10611967.2005.11063501

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10611967.2005.11063501

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Russian Studies in Philosophy, vol. 44, no. 1 (Summer 2005), pp. 3–4.
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Editor’s Introduction
TARAS ZAKYDALSKY

The present issue consists of six papers that were presented at an international
conference on Aleksei Fedorovich Losev, titled “A.F. Losev and Twentieth-Cen-
tury Human Sciences,” held on 18–20 October 2002 at the Ohio State University,
Columbus, Ohio. Other papers delivered at this conference have appeared in a
special issue of Studies in East European Thought (vol. 56, nos. 2–3). The confer-
ence demonstrated that interest in Losev’s philosophical legacy is not confined to
Russia but is worldwide.
Since perestroika, the literature on Losev has grown exponentially, not only in
Russia but also in the West. Yet very little of his rich heritage has been translated.
Vladimir Marchenkov’s excellent translation of Losev’s major early work The
Dialectics of Myth (Routledge, 2003) is a breakthrough that gives non-Russian
readers access to Losev’s thought.
This is the third issue this journal is devoting to Losev’s life and ideas. The first
special issue on Losev came out in Summer 1996 (vol. 35, no. 1); the second one,
in Winter 2001–2 (vol. 40, no. 3).
In the first selection, Leonid Stolovich gives an outline of Losev’s thought and
raises the question of its unity. He argues that as a dialectical thinker Losev ab-
sorbed many philosophical tendencies, including some elements of Marxism, and
changed his views through the years without, however, sacrificing unity and fall-
ing into eclecticism. His thought can be characterized as “systemic pluralism.”
George Kline, in his contribution, brings out the many contradictions in Losev’s
personality, attitudes, and evaluative judgments. Losev could be very precise and
scientific but also extravagantly fanciful and far-fetched in his ideas. His general
assessments of Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, Husserl, Bergson, Florenskii, and Shpet
were contradictory and his criticisms of major thinkers varied from fair and bal-
anced to abusive and biased. The degree to which he accepted Marxism is a
complicated issue, which Kline attempts to clarify. Ironically, this contradictory
thinker was treated in a contradictory way by Soviet authorities during perestroika.
The paradoxes in Losev’s attitudes and judgments raise some doubt about the
unity of his thought.
Maryse Dennes shows that Losev used phenomenology in a rather unique way,

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which departed from its mainstream use in Russia at the time. He saw it as a method
for discovering meanings, which is the first step and not the whole task of philoso-
phy, and used it in his early works to discover the primordial experience that re-
veals the energistic nature of reality and grounds the dialectical method. She claims
that Losev rejected Husserl’s later analysis of intentionality as naturalistic.
Andrei Tashchian’s subtle analysis of Losev’s dialectical interplay between eidos
and logos shows that he did not have a consistent definition of these concepts and
that his thinking often ended up in a muddle.
Losev’s philosophy of history is outlined by Pavel Boyko, who uncovers two
main schemata—both of them three-stage dialectical schemata—of history in his
works. Boyko also analyzes the principal concepts in which Losev formulates his
views on history and relates his views to those of his Russian predecessors. It is
evident from this analysis that Losev’s theory of history was unfinished.
In the final selection, Irina Borisova shows how Losev was influenced by the
Romantics, who in turn were influenced by Gnostics and Christian mystics, in
treating music as an expression of mystical experience and a revelation of the
deepest nature of reality. The numerous parallels she finds between Losev’s and
the Russian Romantics’ formulations of similar ideas convincingly demonstrate
that his conception of music was based on the Romantic philosophy of resonance.

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