Nikolay Lossky

Nikolai Onufriyevich Lossky
Nikolai Onufriyevich Lossky
Era	20th century philosophy
Region	Russian philosophy
School	Intuitionism
Notable ideas	Intuitivist-Personalism, gnosiology-Epistemology

Nikolai Onufriyevich Lossky (Russian: Николай Онуфриевич Лосский) (December 6 [O.S. November 24] 1870 – January 24, 1965) was a Russian philosopher, representative of Russian idealism, intuitionism, personalism, libertarianism, 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 three sons and a daughter who died as a child, the most famous son being the Eastern Orthodox Theologian Vladimir Lossky.^[1]

Life

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 abroad the famed Philosophers' ship (in 1922) from the Soviet Union as a counter-revolutionary.

Lossky was invited to Prague by Tomáš 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, Semen L. 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 or Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, a Russian Orthodox seminary, in New York. Teaching Eastern Orthodox theology. 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.

Philosophy

Template:Slavic Orthodox Christianity Lossky was one of the preeminent Russian neo-idealists of his day. Lossky's Гносеология or gnosiology called Intuitivist-Personalism in part 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 transition is expressed in the concept of sobornost, or mystical communal union.^[2] 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 causing different levels of maturing consciousness over time (reinterpretation). This dynamic retention constitutes the process of learning i.e. reflective differentiation. 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 this is expressed as metaphysics the essence of an object akin to Noumenon (opposed to it's appearance or phenomenon), being characteristically sumbebekos.^[3]

One of the main points of Lossky's онтология or ontology is, the world is an organic whole as understood by human consciousness. Intuition is the direct contemplation of objects, and furthermore the assembling of the entire set of cognition from sensory perception into a complete and undivided organic whole i.e. experience. This being consciousness without thought, raw and uninterpreted by the mind. Where re-action is without processing or is outside of comprehension via the mind. Intuition being analogous with instinctual consciousness. Intuition functions without rational or logical thought. Rational or logical thought via the nous then works in reflection as hindsight to organize experience into a comprehensible order i.e. ontology. Intuitive knowledge or Gnosis (pre-processed knowledge or uninterpreted) then being history or memory rather than a determining factor of or during an actual conscious experience. Once knowledge is abstracted from conscious experience it is then stored in an ontological format in the mind (the format itself a priori). The manipulation of memory and or reapplication of memory as knowledge being post-processed knowledge i.e. Epistemology. Сущность (the "essence") expressed as being and or becoming is possible as both the person transcends time and space while being closely connected with the whole world, while in this world. Lossky as a metaphysical libertarian taught that all people have uncreated potential as energy. Beings have potential (dynamis) being can act upon this potential (beings have energy). Agents or beings have energy, this energy is uncreated and as uncreated and or uncaused this underminds the concept of determinism. ^[4]
That spontaneous or organic reality structures or orders itself to reconcile opposing ideologies. Doing so while maintaining order and freewill. Each pole of existence or opposing ideology reaching compromise through value and existence and manifesting in a complete organic whole akin to the Plato's metaxy.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). Lossky's argument that determinism can not account for the cause of energy in the Universe. Energy being a substance that can not be created or destroyed (see the law of conservation of energy). Each agent accounting for their existence as their own dynamistic manifestation. Dynamistic manifestation as being that of energy.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).

Theology

Much of the theology that Lossky covers (as his own) in the book History of Russian is inline with Origen. Though the specifics of this are not nessassarily what Lossky taught in his theology courses, since dogma in a general sense, is what is taught as theology. N.O. Lossky was inline with the common distinction of Eastern theology being the understanding of the Greek concept of Energy. Though Lossky did pursue a position of reconcilliation based on mutual cooperation. Lossky taught this cooperation as organic and or spontaneous order called sobornost.

Influence

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]

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 implicit Neo-platonism is the true heritage of Russian thinking.

Selected bibliography

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)
Sensuous, 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)

References

^ ^a ^b Sciabarra, Chris Matthew. "Investigation: the Search for Ayn Rand's Russian Roots." Liberty 1999-10. 2006-08-10.
^ Sciabarra, Chris Matthew (1995). Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01441-5.
^ Value and Existence «Ценность и существование»(1931) by Lossky N. O. and John S. Marshall published by George Allen & Unwin LTD, 1935
^ *Sciabarra, Chris Matthew (1995). Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01441-5. - -

External links

[sciabarraEssay-1] Sciabarra, Chris Matthew. "Investigation: the Search for Ayn Rand's Russian Roots." Liberty 1999-10. 2006-08-10.

[2] Sciabarra, Chris Matthew (1995). Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01441-5.

[3] Value and Existence «Ценность и существование»(1931) by Lossky N. O. and John S. Marshall published by George Allen & Unwin LTD, 1935

[4] *Sciabarra, Chris Matthew (1995). Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01441-5. - -

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