Losev, Aleksei Fedorovich

Born Sept. 10 (22), 1893, in Novocherkassk. Soviet philosopher and philologist. Professor (1923) and doctor of philological sciences (1943).

Losev graduated from the faculty of history and philology at Moscow University in 1915. He gave courses in higher educational institutions in Moscow in classical literature, logic, aesthetics, and the history of philosophy. In 1944, Losev became a professor at the V. I. Lenin Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. In his works of the 1920’s, which were influenced by Plato, the Neoplatonists, G. Hegel, F. W. von Schelling, and E. Husserl, Losev strove to construct universal models of being and thought using the methods of idealist dialectics (Philosophy of the Name, 1927; The Ancient Cosmos and Modern Science, 1927; and The Dialectics of Myth, 1930). He also tried to construct universal models of artistic creation by the same methods (The Dialectics of Artistic Form, 1927; Music as an Object of Logic, 1927). During the same period he investigated the ancient perception of the world as a structural whole (Essays on Ancient Symbolism and Mythology; vol. 1, 1930). Losev subsequently adopted a Marxist position. His late works are characterized by a striving for broad generalizations on sociology and the philosophy of history, combined with a philologically scrupulous attitude toward every word and concept. He was a translator of Aristotle, Plotinus, Sextus Empiricus, Proclus, and Nicholas of Cusa. He edited the works of Plato (vols. 1-3, 1968-72).