Nikolai Lossky

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From the bookcover Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical by C.M. Sciabarra

Nikolai Onufriyevich Lossky Николай Онуфриевич Лосский, (November 24 N.S. December 6, 1870–January 24, 1965) was a Russian philosopher, representative of Russian idealism, intuitionism, personalism, ethics and his intuitivism. He was born in the village of Kreslavka, Dinaburg uyezd (region), Vitebsk gubernia (province) of Russian Empire and died from natural causes at a nursing home near Paris. Lossky had four sons, one of the most famous being the Eastern Orthodox Theologian Vladimir Lossky.^[1]

Lossky undertook post-graduate study in Germany under Wilhelm Windelband, Wilhelm Wundt and G. E. Müller, receiving a Master's degree in 1903 and a Doctorate in 1907. Returning to Russia, he became Lecturer and subsequently Assistant Professor of philosophy at St Petersburg. Lossky called for a Russian religious and spiritual reawakening while pointing out post-revolution excesses. At the same time, Lossky survived an elevator accident that nearly killed him, which caused him to convert back to the Russian Orthodox Church under the direction of Father Pavel Florensky. These criticisms and conversion cost Lossky his professorship of philosophy and led to his exile (in 1922) from the Soviet Union as a counter-revolutionary.

Lossky was invited to Prague by Thomas Masaryk and became Professor at the Russian University of Prague at Bratislava, in Czechoslovakia. Being part of a group of ex-Marxists, including Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov, Gershenzon, Peter Berngardovich Struve, Seymon Frank. Lossky, though a Fabian socialist, contributed to the group's symposium named Vekhi or Signposts. He also helped the Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin with his Social and Cultural Dynamics

In 1947 N.O. Lossky took a position at Piously-Vladimir spiritual academy, a Russian Orthodox seminary, in New York. In 1961, after the death of his son Vladimir, Lossky went to France: the last four years of his life were spent in illness there.

In biographical reminiscences recorded by Barbara Branden in the early 1960s, Ayn Rand named Lossky as her primary philosophy teacher at the University of Petrograd or University of St. Petersburg until he was removed from his teaching post by the Soviet regime. However, some of Rand's statements have been called into question.^[1]

1 Philosophy
2 Quotes
3 Works
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Philosophy

Lossky was one of the preeminent Russian neo-idealists of his day. Lossky's Гносеология or epistemology adapted the Hegelian dialectical approach of first addressing a problem in thought in terms of its expression as a duality or dichotomy. Once the problem is expressed as a dichotomy the two opposing ideas are fused in order to transcend the dichotomy. This concept is expressed in the concept of sobornost, or mystical communal union. Lossky also followed and developed his ontological and gnosiological interpretation of objective reality from christian neoplatonism, in which the object, even being a part of an external world, joins the consciousness of the subject directly. This retention constitutes the process of learning. Consequently the existence of objects can not be completely expressed with logic or words, nor validated with knowledge, due to objects having a supernatural (in a Greek philosophy or Eastern Orthodox understanding of supernatural) component to their make up.

One of the main points of Lossky's отнология or ontology is that the world is an organic whole. Intuition is the direct contemplation of objects, and furthermore the amalgamation of the entire set of cognition from sensory perception. Intuition is beyond simply rational or logical thought. Сущность (the"essence") is possible as both the person transcends time and space while being closely connected with the whole world, while in this world.

[edit] Quotes

From the introduction of Value and Existence:

Due to the tradition of the Church, Russia had an implicit philosophy, a philosophy that was born of the Neoplatonism of the Church Fathers. This implict Neo-platonism is the true heritage of Russian thinking.

[edit] Works

The Fundamental Doctrines of Psychology from the Point of View of Voluntarism «Фундаментальные Доктрины Психологии с Точки зрения Волюнтаризма»(1903)
The Intuitive Basis of Knowledge «Обоснование интуитивизма»(1906)
The World as an Organic Whole «Мир как органическое целое» (1917)
The Fundamental Problems of Epistemology «Основные вопросы гносеологии» (1919)
Freedom of Will «Свобода воли»(1927)
Value and Existence «Ценность и существование»(1931) by Lossky N. O. and John S. Marshall published by George Allen & Unwin LTD, 1935
Dialectical Materialism in the U.S.S.R. «Диалектический Материализм в СССР» (1934)
Sensous, Intellectual and Mystical Intuition «Чувственная, интеллектуальная и мистическая интуиция» (1938)
Intellectual intuition, ideal existence and creative activity «Интеллектуальная интуиция и идеальное бытие, творческая активность» (1941)
Mystical Intuition «Мистическая интуиция» (1941)
Evolution and ideal life «Эволюция и идеальное бытие» (1941)
God and suffering «Бог и всемирное зло» (1941)
Absolute Good «Условия абсолютного добра»(1944)
History of Russian Philosophy «История российской Философии »(1951)
The world as the realization of beauty «Мир как осуществление красоты»(1945)
Dostoevsky and his Christian Understanding of the World «Достоевский и его христианское мировоззрение»(1953)

[edit] See also

[edit] References

Shein, Louis J. (1966). N. O. Lossky, 1870-1965: A Russian Philosopher. Russian Review, 25:2, pp. 214-216
Sciabarra, Chris Matthew (1995). Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01441-5.