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I have then understood that methodologically, the inquiry into Neoplatonism should precede any attempt to study Platonism itself. A host of separate hindrances which may completely block any further progress of Platonic studies clears completely with some help from PLOTINUS.

For example, how interrelate the categories of Sophistes and categories of Parmenides? Basing on the purely Platonic material, this problem is practically not solvable. But the inquiry into the later Platonic tradition, i.e., epoch of fully unfolded dialectics, demonstrates that the five categories of Sophistes are simply genera of noetic world(Plot. 6, 2) in contrast to the categories of sensual world (6, 3). Lets take a look at such a hard problem, equally unsolvable in the purely Platonic realm -- the interrelation of idea and thing. The dialectics of PLOTINUS and PROCLUS elegantly solves this problem too. And so on, and so further. In other words, it became clear to me that PLATO himself was only the beginnings, almost mere germ of Platonism, and to discuss any germ is possible only with adult organism in mind. Neoplatonic attitude in the theory of idea at once leads to the understanding of Platonic idea as a luminous symbol and the process of self-unfolding of Primordial One till the stage of that symbol.

3. Still, I had my way to go to come to this understanding of Platonic esprit. I have started to perceive the Classic Platonism in all its entirety no earlier than 1924, just after I examined all the main Neoplatonic literature, translated with my own hand almost entire corpus of logical treatises, and wrote a 550-page book named Classic kosmos and Contemporary Science. Before this, I, simultaneously with my Neoplatonic
You are reading the excerpts from: A. F. LOSEV, Essays on the Classic Symbolism and Mythology, IV, d, 3.
studies,  had undergone one more stage of my development <...>. That was the studies of HUSSERL. I never have been very close to him -- neither these days in 1915-18, nor, even less, now. Descriptiveness and little theoreticality of the phenomenology were for me the grounds to use it only during the startup stages of philosophical inquiry. But HUSSERL had for me the certain high position in the purely Platonic work. It was Ideen of HUSSERL which made me to explore the Platonic usage of termini eidos and idea. Free from Husserlian uplift, I have perceived from the very beginning that the phenomenological meaning of these words is very outstanding but by no means sole. In 1921 I finished analyzing this terminology and at once published its result in <...>  <press>.

So, HUSSERL helped me to develop phenomenological, and PLOTINUS with PROCLUS  -- dialectical and symbolistic understanding of PLATON. Both these approaches led my studies during 1917-22. Before 1922, I did not knew neither NATORP nor FLORENSKIJ, and my Platonism went without any influences by their ideas. But it is clearly visible in my works about eidos and idea that I nevertheless have found (maybe less than should) the traits of transcendentalism. Also I have stressed the expressive and luminous  character of idea, although the timely acquaintance with the ideas of FLORENSKIJ would undoubtedly have made my inquiry much more lucid and acute. Now, ten years after, I painfully regret that my ignorance of FLORENSKIJ` intense approach to the expressive visage of ideal objects thus disabled me to make a more deep insight into the expressive and symbolic components of Platonic idea. Of course, in the study of eidos I too spoke about a visage and even make an analogy with the human face. But my analysis still falls short in comparison with the shrewd and discriminating theory of FLORENSKIJ.

The single instrument in my possession was the phenomenological method of HUSSERL. But I myself expanded that method to include symbolism and mythology, of course, under influence of Neoplatonism which kept becoming more and more clear for me. It would be clear for the specialists that my study about eidos and idea exerted almost no Neoplatonic influence, and NATORP with FLORENSKIJ are manipulated in such a way that author took his terminology not from them but sovereignely, gone through his own system and his own terminology, has come to the similar inferences. <...>

It is worth mentioning that despite the Husserlian trend in the one of principal centers of philosophy in Moscow, my work, discussed in the Institute for Scientific Philosophy, have been met (with a pair of exceptions) with remarkable indifference and almost hostility. Despite the considerable progress in the philosophical science, Moscow then, and now too, has been paralyzed by the ZELLER`s beguile , and I was helpless to dispel that charm. One of the aforementioned pair , philosopher, living not in Moscow anymore, after serious reading of my work about eidos and idea, once told me: "The European air already was thick with the new understanding of Platonism. You guessed and formulated it".

4. Still, that "new understanding" not just waited to be found but already has been formulated by 1) FLORENSKIJ (that philosopher, like myself, has not known him),and by 2) NATORP in 1920. This ignorance of FLORENSKIJ has been, of course, our bad sin, although some weak excuse could be that the writings of FLORENSKIJ have been devoted primarily not to PLATON neither by theme nor by scope, and have been published in the obscure papers of Moscow Theological Academy. In contrast, the second edition of NATORP`s book has been totally inaccessible for us. The learned Moscow has been more busy with bartering than with PLATO and newest Platonic literature, without any access to foreign bookstores during several years. So, FLORENSKIJ, NATORP, and your humble servant totally independently, during a few years had come to the approximately the same and new understanding of Platonism, with which the European air has been really thick. For the sake of historical truth I wish remember one more author who has worked out the same inferences in the science of Platonism despite totally different philosophical mentality <...> - P. P. BLONSKIJ, whose Philosophy of PLOTINUS came out in 1918. <...>

So, <...>  <we foursome> almost simultaneously, during mere five-six years, independently, being in some questions fully antagonistic one towards other, have formulated optically-symbolic and dialectically-luminous theory of Platonism, all being harsh against ZELLER and even more cruel against liberal enlightenmentism,  leading in all scientific areas.

5. After my study about eidoi I enjoyed solely with the Neoplatonic studies, mainly, of PLOTINUS, PORPHYRIUS, JAMBLICHUS, PROCLUS, DAMASCENUS, and commentators, such as SYRIANUS, SIMPLICIUS, and ASCLEPIUS on ARISTOTELES, and OLYMPIODORUS on PLATON. Neoplatonism made me to understand the transcendental method and led to the high esteem of  Marburg school, which I earlier despised due to infamous Moscow superstition and did not bothered myself to get acquainted with it. I finally understood that transcendental method is an essential component of Plotinian and Proclian philosophy, and that question is better formulated as which type of  transcendentalism is immanent to PLOTINUS and which -- to COHEN and NATORP. In this connection, a whole lot has been to be re-estimated even in KANT,  although his dualistic metaphysics after my first reading once and forever annihilated any possibility to come to consensus with KANT. Then I understood that Neokantianism generally bears very little resemblance with KANT.  Neokantianism, and especially Marburgian, fights any dualism, subjectivism and metaphysics, and differs from Platonic eidology only in its interpretation of eidos as hypothesis and method, and not as visage. In other areas it is totally identical with Platonism. Those who knew me could remember that then I, fascinated by the similarity between Neokantianism and PLOTINUS, postulated not only the presence of hypotheseon in the Platonic Idea, but also predicted the transition of the Neokantianism to dialectics and visual eidology. My prophecies has begun to fulfill even earlier than I made them. At that time (1922-25) NATORP already had written his elegant  pre mortal essays, consciously steering the flow of Neokantianism towards Neoplatonism (Die deutsche Philos. der Gegenwart in Selbstdarst., hrgb. v. R. SCHMIDT, Lpz, 1921 I, 151-176), and only we living in Moscow kept knowing nothing about them, whereas CASSIRER too already had two volumes of his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms released. Transgression of Neokantianism to dialectics (LEVY H., Die Hegel-Renaissance in der deutschen Philos. Berlin, 1927), symbolism and mythology has been a tremendous substantiation of my transcendental inquiries in the sphere of Classic Neoplatonism. Absolutely clearly, I envisaged the fundamental unity of all three main methods in philosophy -- phenomenological, transcendental, and dialectical, i.e., unity of Husserlianism, Neokantianism, and Hegelianism on the fundament of all embracing Neoplatonism and symbolic mythology sensu FLORENSKIJ.

Now I too predict the disintegration of strict Husserlianism and its transgression to Hegelianism and Neoplatonism. This is the fundamental constraint in history of thought. Who has the perfect notion of eidos, cannot fail to see that he, being a whole, is the unity of objects defined by contradicting definitions (whole is simultaneously a sum and not a sum ot its parts). That spells dialectics.

This prophecy of mine starts fulfilling too.  At least Moscow Husserlians, who always deemed HEGEL as a metaphysicist which cannot grasp the social being as concrete, are starting a flirt with him. Those who frequently called me a formal ontologist and rational schematist due to my Neoplatonic Hegelianism are starting to study dialectic transgressions of HEGEL themselves. These thoughts and opposition against single sided Husserlianism, single sided transcendentalism, and naturalistic metaphysics (whereas in the form of materialism or spiritualism) directed my hand in 1925 when I went to the end of my Classic kosmos,  which I managed to get printed only that year.

Classic kosmos is fragmentary and deliberately abstract book. Who knows my circumstances knows why. Before printing, the book has undergone merciless reduction. Nevertheless, I managed, using a large and subtly interpreted textual material from Classic Platonism, to demonstrate that all them are already contained in Platonic Idea: phenomenology of HUSSERL, transcendentalism of COHEN and NATORP, along with dialectics of HEGEL, and mythical and symbolical Naturphilosophie of CASSIRER and FLORENSKIJ.

Despite the apparent fragmentarity, Classic kosmos depicts the elegant construction of Classic Platonism with the utmost clarity. This is accessible only when the reader abandons a bad habit of paging through and deals with the book seriously. It is sufficient only to note that I found and based on the texts the previously unreported  occurrence of anisotropic space in the Classic kosmos and the relationship of the Classic principle of relativity with the expressive symbolic dialectics of Platonic Idea.

6. My Platonic investigations went on, then. Totalizing and morphologizing trend in Western philosophy and science, including history of philosophy quckly gained its momentumand kept urging me to perform further detailed systematic analysis of  Classic Platonism. The very core, work on PLATON himself, has been still unfinished. That study of eidos and idea, made before my learning of FLORENSKIJ, NATORP and CASSIRER, become just obsolete, and was simply too specific. Still, my early aspirations in the tradition of SOLOVJOV, however naive they may have been, were much more synthetic than my later Platonic investigations. My mind, trained on the logic and dialectics of PLATON, PROCLUS, HEGEL, HUSSERL, and  Neokantians, have been expected to produce the such kind of analysis of Platonism in which some core motif combined the intuitive synthetism from my early years with the critical and constructive analysis of more mature period. Such kind of motif could be envisaged only as the systematic evolution of Platonic doctrine of ideas.

Here I come to the dialectical vindication of conception about Platonism which I unfold in that work about ideas. Dialectically, the historical placement of that work is absolutely clear. Neokantian transcendental approach might have been justified that time by the previous development of history of philosophy.  It was to be incorporated into my system. Husserlian phenomenological approach also was the historical necessity. I did incorporate it too. Dialectics itself -- the self-evident obligatory instrument of enquiry into Platonism. It too was not to left alone. The intuitions, method, and understaning of Platonism by early NATORP, HUSSERL and HEGEL I  accepted wholeheartedly, tested, and applied to the entire Platonic material. Besides, I followed the late NATORP, NATORP of 1920-21. This means that I applied these three methods not separately from each other, not from  their conflicting sides but in their synthesis, interweaving and uniting them. The understanding of Platonic Idea by NATORP of  1921 really is the unification of all three understandings and their mutual  communication as equally valid approaches. Besides, after intimate regard and thinking over the Platonic constructions of FLORENSKIJ,  the Germans, however advanced they may could been, appeared for me only as a certain stage of discovery. I have started to cenceive the Platonic Idea as not only some kind of logical construction with specific logical structure, and even not a logical structure of Myth, but as Myth itself, Symbol itself, the very Countenance of actual Life. I have realized that any logical analysis of Platonic Idea is possible only based on that original intuition of myth, not reducible to any other conceit, esp. logical conceit. The establishing of logical schematics and logical framework  is possible only after the apprehension and feeling of living and real Myth. Platonism is impossible with the logic alone, whatever precious and dialectical it may be. Also, Platonism is impossible with the mere raw myth, however exact and profound.

In such a way NATORP, HUSSERL, HEGEL and FLORENSKIJ become combined in my thinking. <...>

7. But, <...> my new exposition of Platonism has one more underlying motive, which  cast a finish onto my long lasting efforts in the Platonism and shaped them into their present state. That is, I laways have pursued the specificum of Classic culture. As a philologist, trained by ideas of NIETZSCHE, ROHDE, and SPENGLER,  and as a philosopher, having the expressive countenances of being always at a highest esteem, I always has hated that equalizing and blind empirism which I was being indoctrinated from my early University years. Any element of Classic culture always made me to find in it some specific trait which clearly separated it from all non-Classical. In 1924-27 I have attained some clarity in this <...>.

Some incompetent people could find me at fault of Spenglerianism. Such people have never seen in their lives other syntheses of history of philosophy exc. Spenglerian. <...> The studies of aesthetics of HEGEL and SCHELLING but no way SPENGLER have led me to the formulation of this volume read note.
I always loved and kept reading Logics and History of Philosophy by HEGEL, and often deployed the schemes from there. But only in 1924 I came through all three volumes of Hegelian Lectures in Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art by SCHELLING. These treatises have greatly moved me. From there, I learned the fascinating concept of Classic which ingenuously details its total specificity and impossibility of its reduction to any other cultural type, and finds its perfectly natural place in the dialectic system of other cultures. Of course, SPENGLER, along with WINCKELMANN, SCHILLER, and NIETSCHE greatly helped me to further develop my Hegelian-Schellingian attitude, to make it more expressive and simply more detailed.  Especially, he influenced my older Nietschean views of some Classic moments (but in no way of Sokratic or Platonic) very beneficially. But, as it is, only very hostile people might blame me of overly Spenglerianism. SPENGLER teaches that the main Classic intuition is that of dead body; whereas I think that of living. SPENGLER tries to prove the absence of infinity in Classic period, and I think that it is based on the concept of actual infinity. <...>

So, the specificum of Classic was found and verbalized. At this stage I might not limit myself in the interpretation of Platonic Idea not only by NATORP but even by FLORENSKIJ.  Specifically, now I am aware that FLORENSKIJ wasstill too much christianizing the Platonism. More exactly, he simply had the Christian Platonism in sight. His interpretations are too spiritual for Classic period. FLORENSKIJ has taught about the visage. This visage is full with immanent energies. Visage implies a personality, spiritual individuation, intrinsic freedom of soul, however constrained and distressed it may happen to be, -- freedom is no way impossible to rip from human soul. When someone digress that the Greek gods are too antropomorphic <...>, I always remember the saying of HEGEL that these gods are too different from  humans. Really, they are way too abstract, apersonal, soulless. Much more humanly are the Crucifixion, crucial anguish, spiritual and bodily resurrection, sacrifice for the sins of people. Greek gods, too, in FLORENSKIJ, are too real, too cozy, too personal and too full of expressive and telling energies of living soul. I could summarrize the differences between our understanding of Classic Platonism in following way. FLORENSKIJ understand that idea iconographically whereas I -- sculpturally. His Idea is too spiritual and too expressive for the Classical period. My Platonic Idea is colder, more impersonal, it is more beautiful than tender, more petrified than objective, it has more naked body than face and visage. It causes more cool admiration than sentiment, more rhetorics and art than adoration. Therefore magic too becomes for me more corporeal and massive, less saturated and more relaxed, and even entirely goes out of sight.

8. All that made me to accomplish this inquiry into Platonic Idea. Therefore, I have gone through at least four stages in my Platonic studies.

9. This typology of Platonic theory of ideas I proclaim as the today`s main task. The logical structure is out of question, it is universaly acknowledged. Now it is imposible to belie the logical structure in Platonic Idea or any of the three main logical methods. Of course, Platonic Idea is primarily logical idea, and, of course, it involves all three methods of logical construction. Discussion is possible only haw and when they are represented in PLATON. <...>

But typology is a different thing. It is something quite new, because it requires analyse  not only style, language, poetics, etc., of PLATON, but this analysis should additionaly yield the considerable results for the science of ideas. Style and mentality must be linked by any means, both should become another one`s reflection. Here comes together the imperative Zeitgeist (but in Russia) to apply the sociological method in the philosophical studies. For me, quite consistent dialectician,  social being is more concrete not only from logical point of view but more by its expressive, symbolical and mythological reality. Social being embodies the logic, symbolic, and mythology in a special way and entirely changes their abstract configurations. Therefore Platonic Idea must be revealed as a social phenomenon. For me it is the most concrete style of Platonic Ideenlehre. It is the typological style.

Logical slant, by the inertia of 19-20 centuries, is predominant in me too. I have treated the logical questions more consistently, and in more exact and detailed way. Yet typology is only sketched by me, fragmentarily and sometimes approximately. Further studies may fundamentally change all what is already done. Even major possible directions of further investigations  are yet unclear. My understanding of typology is very wide, it involves all possible positions from humanitarian symbolism till the special forms of it produced by political affairs. However, even that scope may eventually prove too narrow. Therefore I think that whereas logical analysis of Platonic Idea will hardly yield new discoveries beyond the various combinations of three main structures, typology, in contrast, holds a virgin domain full of discoveries. <...>

Hardly I will participate in these new explorations myself. If my circumstances be benign I will publish some typological works on Classic Platonism which have accumulated during the decade of highly intensive efforts in the history of philosophy and are awaiting for publishing. But they hardly will tell something new as compared to the present work. There are fields more attractive for me, which take my efforts avert me from the new typological projects. This is a task for many researchers if not for generations of them. I therefore restrict myself with the conception of Platonism which I have made organically descending from the present philosophical consciousness, and pass it ahead. Here my task is fulfilled.

Losev`s signature

* - Here LOSEV refers to the Essays, I, IV, 22 (in fin.), where he says:

<...> our understanding of Classic

  1. should envision in its basis the intuition of human body as the essential trait of overall being (SPENGLER),
  2. where the foremost moment is the plastic and visual elaboration of noble and beautiful body (WINCKELMANN),
  3. in opposition to any Romantic Sehnsucht towards infinite and mysterious (SCHILLER),
  4. but containing its propter endlessness and mystery, capable of surmounting into becoming and exstasis in its own way (NIETZSCHE);
  5. that all this mystical and -- simultaneously -- earthly corpuscularity, free of purely spiritual ambitions and askesis (Renaissance)
  6. yields clearly drawn and conceived, crisp and detailed shape and construction of being (Aufklärung)
  7. and happens to be a synthesis of finite and infinite, or ideal and real, realized, of course, by the means of real and finite, and essentially it lies in the realm of real and finite (SCHELLING and HEGEL).

    8. return to text