mythos and logos in losev's absolute mythology

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VLADIMIR L. MARCHENKOV MYTHOS AND LOGOS IN LOSEV’S ABSOLUTE MYTHOLOGY ABSTRACT. The paper analyses A.F. Losev’s argument for the identity of dialec- tical and mythical thinking which forms the key part of his theory of absolute mythology. Losev claims that dialectical thinking is limited by phenomenological intuition. He fails to recognise, however, that this intuition itself is a product of thinking. The same is true of Losev’s concept of ‘life’ that is designed to limit intellectual reflection. The mystery of the Absolute is, contrary to Losev’s claim, not a threshold that dialectical thinking cannot cross, but it is, in fact, realised only by such thinking. This has a bearing on the Christian Neoplatonist doctrine of energistic symbolism, which also plays a crucial part in Losev’s philosophy of myth. Under the pressure of the Neoplatonist tradition Losev violates the demands of dialectical thinking in favour of myth’s essential mysticism. And yet, because of the dialectical relation between rationalism and mysticism, Losev’s attempt was not a failure, but a valuable contribution to the task of illuminating this relation. KEY WORDS: absolute mythology, dialectics, energistic symbol, intuition, mysticism, rationalism, reflection, substance INTRODUCTION: SETTING THE TASK Losev’s analyses in The Dialectics of Myth had a goal that reached beyond scholarly interest in the problem of myth. They were to serve as a foundation for the ambitious project of articulating what Losev called “absolute mythology.” Absolute mythology, according to Losev’s design, required a dialectical treatment of myth because myth and dialectics were destined to be equal partners in its ultimate synthesis. The task of this paper is to examine the relation between mythical and dialectical thinking in Losev’s conception of absolute mythology, and to discuss some philosophical implications of this relation. Our ability to form an opinion of Losev’s attempt at bringing myth and dialectics together is limited by the condition of available sources. In particular, the formulation of absolute mythology seems Studies in East European Thought 56: 173–186, 2004. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Page 1: Mythos and Logos in Losev's Absolute Mythology

VLADIMIR L. MARCHENKOV

MYTHOS AND LOGOS IN LOSEV’S ABSOLUTEMYTHOLOGY

ABSTRACT. The paper analyses A.F. Losev’s argument for the identity of dialec-tical and mythical thinking which forms the key part of his theory of absolutemythology. Losev claims that dialectical thinking is limited by phenomenologicalintuition. He fails to recognise, however, that this intuition itself is a product ofthinking. The same is true of Losev’s concept of ‘life’ that is designed to limitintellectual reflection. The mystery of the Absolute is, contrary to Losev’s claim,not a threshold that dialectical thinking cannot cross, but it is, in fact, realisedonly by such thinking. This has a bearing on the Christian Neoplatonist doctrineof energistic symbolism, which also plays a crucial part in Losev’s philosophy ofmyth. Under the pressure of the Neoplatonist tradition Losev violates the demandsof dialectical thinking in favour of myth’s essential mysticism. And yet, becauseof the dialectical relation between rationalism and mysticism, Losev’s attempt wasnot a failure, but a valuable contribution to the task of illuminating this relation.

KEY WORDS: absolute mythology, dialectics, energistic symbol, intuition,mysticism, rationalism, reflection, substance

INTRODUCTION: SETTING THE TASK

Losev’s analyses in The Dialectics of Myth had a goal that reachedbeyond scholarly interest in the problem of myth. They were toserve as a foundation for the ambitious project of articulating whatLosev called “absolute mythology.” Absolute mythology, accordingto Losev’s design, required a dialectical treatment of myth becausemyth and dialectics were destined to be equal partners in its ultimatesynthesis. The task of this paper is to examine the relation betweenmythical and dialectical thinking in Losev’s conception of absolutemythology, and to discuss some philosophical implications of thisrelation.

Our ability to form an opinion of Losev’s attempt at bringingmyth and dialectics together is limited by the condition of availablesources. In particular, the formulation of absolute mythology seems

Studies in East European Thought 56: 173–186, 2004.© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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to have been a part of the notorious Addendum to The Dialecticsof Myth. The tangled history of this document and the state of itssurviving excerpts allow us to make only tentative observationsabout the author’s intent.1 The discussion and conclusions belowshould be viewed in light of these limitations. Nonetheless, fromthe fragments of the Addendum, which are quite substantial in size,and from other texts that pursue similar themes, we can grasp theoutline of Losev’s argument and evaluate some of its salient points.The texts that are particularly useful in this regard are the closingchapters of The Dialectics of Myth, the fragments of the Addendum,published in the most recent Russian edition of Dialektika mifa,and a number of essays, such as “Absolute Mythology=AbsoluteDialectics,” that may have belonged to the Addendum.

In the latter, Losev takes on the mission that he set himself inthe end of Dialektika mifa (The Dialectics of Myth). The closinglines of the book announce that the next step is “the enormoustask of elaborating dialectically the main structures of absolutemythology and the dialectics of the main types of relative mytho-logy” (Losev, 2001: 231). At the end of Chapter XII he states hisconviction that world myths form “a single global mythology lyingat the basis of individual nations and their outlooks and being gradu-ally realised by replacing one religious-mythological, and hencehistorical, system by another” (p. 212). The Addendum was tofuse philosophy with this global mythology. The setting of the tasklinks Losev to Friedrich Schelling and, as with the Romantics, itstems from the desire to heal the modern rift between myth andrational thinking. Unlike the early Romantics, however, Losev seesthe solution in restoring and philosophically justifying an alreadyexisting mythology, rather than in creating a new one. The tradi-tion in question is the Eastern Orthodoxy, modified in Losev’s ownunique manner. This he understands as the ultimate distillation ofglobal mythology and thus as the mythical ingredient of absolutemythology.

Losev’s quest for sources and predecessors reached beyondRomanticism, into ancient and medieval Neoplatonism. Proclus,who, in Losev’s view, summed up all of Greek philosophy and gavethe dialectic of ancient mythology, served as an important sourceof inspiration (Losev, 1927: 150). What Proclus did for Antiquity,

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Losev sets out to do for Eastern Orthodoxy. The way in whichEastern Orthodoxy can be combined with dialectics is, as Losevshows in the Addendum, to match dialectical categories withChristian mythologems. The dialectical triad of the one, the existent,and becoming, for example, is merged with the Holy Trinity (Losev,2001: 326–330).2 Fact, the fourth step in Losev’s series of dialect-ical concepts, becomes Sophia (Divine Wisdom) (pp. 338–341).Other elements of Christian myth, such as Paradise and Hell, receivesimilar treatment (pp. 373–374). When it is fused with mythology,dialectics becomes absolute, Losev believed, and, likewise, whenit is fused with dialectics, mythology becomes absolute, too. Theirsynthesis is at the same time the final completion of each.

LIMITS TO INTELLECTUAL REFLECTION

The idea that dialectics and mythology are mutually compatibleis rooted in Losev’s conviction that, in the final analysis, there isa point where they are identical. At first glance this may seemun-Losevian because dialectics is supposed to be self-consciousand reflective, whereas myth is naively intuitive (Losev, 2001:59). And yet the idea of their identity is not a casual sentimentin Losev’s worldview, but the result of a systematic construalof its key concepts. Losev argued, for example, that dialecticalthinking is bounded by a purely intuitive insight. A knowingsubject is always confronted with phenomenal reality which cannot,according to Losev, be reduced to concepts (1927: 150). As aresult, dialectics must be combined with phenomenology, henceLosev’s phenomenological-dialectical method.3 At the peak of itsachievement, as it approaches divine truths, dialectics is dissolved,Losev maintains, in the supra-rational One of Christian Neopla-tonism. There it meets face to face with “a full apophatic Abyssand Darkness” (1997: 275).

The limits that Losev sets to dialectical thinking call for a numberof comments. One can ask: how does one come to know aboutthe extra-conceptual opposition between the knowing subject andthe known object? This knowledge comes, of course, not fromsome pre-logical or extra-logical immediacy, but from logical and

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conceptual thinking. This undermines, in turn, Losev’s claim thatknowledge and faith are identical (2001: 135). They are radicallydifferent, rather, in their respective attitudes towards their objects.The object of knowledge is fundamentally open to rational cogni-tion, whereas the object of faith is closed to it. Faith is mystical;it acknowledges that the Absolute is inaccessible to reason. Byinsisting on mystery at the heart of dialectical thought, Losev’s argu-ment in fact presupposes the identity of dialectics and mythology –that is, of reason and faith – and this happens under the pressureof the Neoplatonist tradition. Neoplatonist dialectics can be calledapophatic – in the sense that it firmly adheres to the tenet of thesupra-rational One as the source of all concepts of rational thinking.As such it represents an attempt to accommodate mysticism withinphilosophy. Further, in his discussion of the dichotomy of faith andknowledge Losev unexpectedly reduces concepts to their purelysubjective plane (Losev, 2001: 135). This stands in a screamingcontradiction to Losev’s own view of the ontological status of intelli-gence. Thought, thinking, meaning, that very “logic” he is referringto, cannot be reduced, as he repeatedly claims throughout his writ-ings, to the purely subjective mode of existence, but are also part ofobjective reality.

There is a concept in Losev by which he summed up the limits ofthe rational grasp of things: he called it ‘life’. Our sense of the realityof things, he claims, comes from sensations. Sensations are “notthe domain of logic and dialectics, but of life.” “People have sensa-tions and have the objects of sensations,” writes Losev, “dependingon the life they lead. [. . .] Thus the logic of triunity has behindit some extra-logical experience, which no logic can implant orinculcate and which, conversely, no logic can refute” (Losev, 1997:146). It is instructive to recall here Hans-Georg Gadamer’s discus-sion of the phenomenological concept of ‘life’. In an attempt toovercome the reductive objectivism of scientific thinking, WilhelmDilthey and Edmund Husserl, Gadamer notes, wished to capturein this concept the immediate, intimate, and pervasive nature ofthe experience of the self. They ultimately discerned consciousnessin what they described by the term ‘life’, although both failed todevelop this insight more fully. In Gadamer’s opinion, Count Yorckvon Wartenberg came closer to the truth when he concluded that

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life and self-consciousness are identical – a conclusion that wasthoroughly Hegelian (1998: 248–253). Losev uses the term ‘life’to point to one’s immediate engagement with surrounding circum-stances, which is different from the introspective direction of itsphenomenological counterpart. But both attempts to break beyondphilosophical reflection and to get to the immediacy of experienceterminate in a return to reflection. Losev, however, does not recog-nise the inevitability of such a return and pits life against reflectivethinking.

To return to Losev’s project, since he relies on an existingmyth, his hermeneutic exercises in the Addendum are no longerpure philosophy, but theology. The difference consists in the atti-tude the two intellectual pursuits assume towards their foundations.Theology proceeds from an already accepted and thus unquestion-able body of belief, whereas the philosophical attitude consistsprecisely in questioning all beliefs. Throughout his life, Losev’sphilosophical position included a theological, mystical Leitmotif. Inhis History of Ancient Aesthetics, for example, he observed vis-à-vismyth in Plato’s philosophy: “In myth (as well as in consciousness ingeneral) there is something that can never be the object of reflection– something whose essence consists in the impossibility of beingreflected upon” (Losev, 1969: 153).

Contrary to what Losev and Neoplatonists believe, however,dialectics is incompatible with this radical – and abstract – senseof mystery, which it can recognise only as one of its own transientmoments but not as an absolute limit. When the supra-rational prin-ciple appears on the scene, dialectics raises the question about itsmeaning: dialectics reflects on it. This principle itself is the productof thinking and as such bears the imprint of the meaning of allthose categories that lead up to its appearance within the horizonof reflection. Hegel remarked in his Phenomenology of the Spiritthat the empty beyond of the mystics is filled with treasures, unseento the eye, or with darkness which is impenetrable to reason. “[I]norder . . . that in this complete void,” he remarked, “which is evencalled the holy of holies, there may yet be something, we mustfill it up with reveries, appearances, produced by consciousnessitself” (1977: 88–89). Such mysticism is characteristic of Plato,Moslem Sufis, and Byzantine Christian Neoplatonists. They fill their

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transcendent One with the richness of meaning that is drawn frompoetry, mythology, religion, and philosophy. Somehow, though, allthis varied and colourful content is supposed to flow from the divinedarkness of pure unity, in which no human mind can descry anydistinctions. But if poetry, mythology, religion, and philosophy didnot invest this darkness (or pure light, which renders things equallyinvisible) with all the significance that mysticism draws into itsorbit, the impenetrable One would hardly be richer in content thanthe notorious “shabby bath-house with spiders.”4 In other words,the divine unity of Christian Neoplatonists derives the wealth of itscontent from the creations of intelligence. It is a failure of reflectionfor philosophy not to recognise this fact. A similar deficiency ofreflection manifests itself in Losev’s energistic symbolism.

SUBSTANCE, ENERGY, AND SYMBOL

Christian-Neoplatonist energistic symbolism occupies a specialplace in Losev’s doctrine. Its main idea consists in the proposalthat the divine prototype is present in its depiction or expressionas energy, rather than as essence. The essence of the prototype hereis radically different from that of its material image, and it is allimportant from the theological point of view to maintain them asseparate essences or substances. Losev argues for this separation inthe following manner:

According to our main dialectical construction, the first three principles [that is,the one, the meon, and their combination, i.e., becoming – V.M.] are sharplyopposed to the fourth principle. The fourth principle is not the domain of puremeaning, which is what the first three principles are. The fourth principle isthat of implementation, realisation, and materialisation of meaning. Thus thesefirst three principles really exist not by themselves, but only along with theirimplementation and realisation. Likewise, the fifth category cannot be of the sameessence as the first three. The fifth category, i.e., Expression or Symbol, presup-poses the first three principles, and merely manifests them in external existence,takes them out into the open. (1997:145)

One finds here one of the most pervasive internal contradictionsin Losev’s philosophical outlook. Let us take the category of fact,which describes the material realisation of meaning. Losev writes

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eloquently about the abstract nature of the notion of matter andmateriality, but still opposes it to meaning. Materiality, however,is also a meaning. What Losev calls “blind and dead matter” inDialektika mifa is nothing other than a certain modification ofmeaning, which can be defined only in the context of other concepts.Sergej Khoruzhij notes this circumstance when he speaks aboutthe abstract nature of the concept of fact in Losev’s dialectics.Fact, according to Losev, is dynamic meaning incarnate. Khoruzhijreproaches Losev, however, for failing to notice that this “fact” isnothing but another concept. His criticism is correct to the extentthat it shows the futility of attempts to radically separate facts fromconcepts. But it deserves a closer look because it highlights animportant philosophical problem.

Khoruzhij complains, as was mentioned above, that Losev didnot recognise the abstract-ideal nature of the category of fact inhis dialectical pentad. He recalls Kant’s well-known remark aboutthalers in one’s pocket. No matter how much you may think aboutit, real money will not appear in your possession (Kant, 1965: 505).5

He also quotes Hajji Nasreddin, the Central Asian folklore character,who echoed Kant’s insight when he observed that, no matter howmany times you may say “halva,” it will not bring a sweet taste toyour mouth.

The concept of fact [writes Khoruzhij], if it is . . . inserted into a dialecticalconstruction, will be not less but more abstract and fleshless there than otherconcepts; it will be simply empty. [. . .] [T]he “fleshless idealism” of the dialectic(if such it was) cannot be changed one iota here. And what is achieved here isby no means a change in the whole character of philosophy, but only a patentcontradiction to Hajji Nasreddin. (2001: 44)

In response to this, one could recall another lesson of Kant’s philos-ophy: without categories of reason consciousness would not be ableto perceive any objects. To continue Khoruzhij’s own similes, amindless man will remain unaware of a dollar in his pocket evenwhen he has one. Or: it takes a clever hand to put halva intoone’s mouth. It goes without saying that abstract thinking cannotcreate objects; one must apply one’s hands, as it were, to makeone. But when applied mindlessly, the hands will create no objecteither.

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The point of my objection to Khoruzhij’s criticism consists in thenotion that the object of knowledge is not something fundamentallyalien to consciousness and reflective thinking, but, on the contrary,is of the same nature with it. This is an unpopular opinion outsideHegelianism and most philosophers today side with Kant and Losevon this issue. Without going into a full-scale defence of it, I shouldsay, however, that the substantive identity of thought and its objectforms, in my opinion, the basis of our cognition and purposefultransformation of the external world. Be that as it may, dialecticalthinking is pervaded with the awareness of the mutual unity andmutually defining relation between subject and object, whereasabstract metaphysical understanding, be it empiricism or idealism,is torn between them, unsure which to choose. As a dialectician,Losev fully shared the thesis about the single nature of subject andobject and persuasively criticised both materialism and idealism asabstract-metaphysical systems. But he rejected their mutual identityas a theologian who held fast onto the dogma about the differentessences of the Creator and the Creature. The contradiction is themanifestation of the struggle between logos and mythos withinLosev’s worldview.

What has been said about the category of fact, can also be appliedto the fifth category in Losev’s scheme, symbol.

The Palamite doctrine of essence and energy is insufficientlydialectical. It inserts the concept of energy between the proto-type and its expression, but this concept itself is problematic. Itis ambivalent because it is designed to simultaneously break andretain the connection between the two members of the symbolicequation. It is a device that receives divine essence but emits onlyits work and effect, without substance. But if energy comes fromdivine essence, one might ask, then would it not bear the imprintof the latter, however faint that imprint may be? To the extent towhich this imprint coincides with its source, however, energy isdivinity. One could go even farther and say that essence is essenceinsofar it is capable of expending itself in energy and showing itselfthrough its own work – a claim which is thoroughly consistentwith Losev’s own dialectical constructions. What is not manifestedthrough energy in essence is empty and receives its sacred signifi-cance, as was noted above, by way of reflecting energy back onto

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the essence from the object on which the energy performs its work.Essence is activity, work, energeia.

In her comments on Losev’s essay “Absolute Mythology= Abso-lute Dialectics,” Ljudmila Gogotishvili proposes to define Losev’senergistic symbolism as communicative (Gogotishvili, 1997: 566).The use of the concept of communication in this context, however,creates more problems than it solves. The purpose of energisticsymbolism, as was just pointed out, is to maintain a meaningfulconnection between God and His image, without claiming thattheir respective essences are identical. One may wonder, however,whether such a task can be fulfilled without recourse to miracles.It is a truism that participants in communication must be different,since otherwise the exchange of meaning between them will stop.One will be exactly the same as, and thus of no interest to, the other.They will collapse, in fact, into a unity which will be capable only ofmonologue. But the two-way flow of meaning is equally impossibleif the communicating sides do not become mutually identical onsome level. If there is no common language and experience theinterlocutors will be just as incapable of exchange as in the caseof their complete identity. “To be in communication with some-thing,” wrote Losev in the Addendum, “is to have something incommon with it. [. . .] Communication with the Absolute means thatone becomes similar to It. But to communicate with the Absoluteand to become similar to It is to become absolute” (2001: 360).Further, if this identity does not touch the substantive significanceof the communicating sides, then communication is substance-less.In fact, communication fails if the exchange does not reach thesemutual cores of meaning. This happens when someone misses thepoint. If by looking at the icon we are not communicating withdivine substance, then our communication with God has failed. Tothe extent to which the concept of energy insists on the essentialdifference between communicating sides, it actually undermines thenotion of communication rather than advancing it.

THE MYSTICISM OF MYTH

The notion of miracle does not appear accidentally in conjunctionwith the relation between mythos and logos. In order to appreciate

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their essential difference – which Losev’s absolute mythology seeksto dissolve – we need to recall Losev’s definition of myth: “unfoldedmagical name.” The term “magical” is clearly the key element inthis definition, for without magic and miracles myth immediatelyturns into history or an ordinary story. Further, Losev explainsmiracle as the coincidence of the two planes of personalistic being:the ideal and the real (Losev, 2001: 180–188). If the purpose ofmythopoeia, for example, is to enunciate divine truths, then thebreathing of a divine voice into Hesiod’s mouth by the Muses isthe ideal fulfilment of this purpose, and thus a miracle (Theogony,33). But the concept of miracle needs yet another notion, whichLosev develops only partially. This notion is mystery. For if Hesiod’sinspiration can be explained rationally, then it will be similar tosimply learning a song from another singer. There is no morewonder in it than in a pianist reading the notes of ModestMusorgskij’s Pictures at an Exhibition. What makes Hesiod’sconnection to the Muses miraculous is the inexplicable, myster-ious way in which it works. One needs to be aware of the radicalnature of mystery at the heart of miracle. It is not a riddle thatcan be unravelled by reason. Otherwise modern science wouldbe indistinguishable from magic. The mystic upholds the radicalunknowability of the object of his or her faith, whereas the philos-opher always seeks to rationally grasp his or her object. The twopositions are irreducible to each other, and their essential differenceis contrary to Losev’s claim that myth and dialectics are identical intheir depth.

It can be objected, of course, that in both cases the respectiveattitudes rest on no more than assumptions. The mystic assumes thathe or she faces the ultimate boundary of possible knowledge; thephilosopher assumes, on the contrary, that there is something yetto be known beyond this boundary. The mystic’s conviction is anassumption because, since one doesn’t know what lies beyond thelimit of one’s knowledge, how can one claim that nothing knowableis to be found there? The philosopher’s conviction is an assumptionbecause, as far as we mortals can judge, no one has ever possessedabsolute knowledge. The inexorable finitude of man’s historicallydetermined horizon was what made Gadamer reject Hegel’s doctrineof Absolute Concept (Gadamer, 1998: 355–357). These two atti-

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tudes, the philosopher’s and the mystic’s, can fully coincide witheach other only in the end of history, because, as long as historycontinues, the human being’s horizon changes and remains incom-plete. Thus Losev’s project of absolute mythology is eschatologicalin nature: the synthesis he wished to accomplish is possible onlywhen history ends.

CONCLUSION

What lesson can one draw from Losev’s attempt to create theabsolute synthesis of mythology and philosophy? Can the ration-alism of philosophy be reconciled with myth’s mysticism? It wouldbe presumptuous, of course, to suppose that this question can beresolved within a short paper but a few general remarks seem inorder. Such a reconciliation would be possible, if at all, only withinthe framework of conceptual thinking, but not within mysticism.The unknown, that which forever escapes rational grasp, is amoment within intelligence itself because only intelligence canrecognise it. It takes a highly developed consciousness to becomeaware of mystery. To return to Losev’s own insight, quoted above,about the irreducibly mystical element at the heart of both mythicaland rational consciousness, reflection is indispensable to becomingaware of this element. When Plato realises that myth is imperviousto reflection, what we find here, according to Losev himself, “is notthe absence of reflection which marks the original myth.” “There [inthe immediate possession of myth],” Losev continues, “one foundsimply the absence of reflection, but here one finds the awarenessthat myth cannot be reflected upon. Most importantly, one finds herea positive awareness of those aspects of myth that eschew reflection,and they are understood as myth’s deepest and most fundamentalaspects” (Losev, 1969: 153). But this means that the thought ofmystery is possible only alongside the thought about the meaningsthat are already open to consciousness. The very task of reconcil-ing myth and dialectics can only be formulated by dialectics, notby mythopoeia. Does this signify the triumph of rationalism overmysticism? Of the Enlightenment over myth?

Mysticism lives by the conviction that unity with the Absoluteis possible without the participation of reason, in a spontaneous,

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immediate act of revelation. Immediacy is crucial here. The mysticalOne is marked precisely by the lack of any mediating relationswithin itself: it is the utterly simple unity, and the experience of itmust be marked by the same utter simplicity. Philosophy’s knowl-edge, by contrast, is always mediated by doubt, questioning, anddistinctions. But precisely for this reason immediacy is just asnecessary a concept for philosophy as mediation. With its lackof inner distinctions, mystery is a category of thinking withoutwhich thinking will stop, i.e., stop being thinking. A completesubmergence in mystery and a complete rejection of mystery areequally lethal to thinking. Mysticism is a siamese twin of philosophyand neither of them can exist without the other. In fact, they fill eachother with meaning: philosophy begins with the recognition of itsignorance (“I know that I don’t know,” says Socrates at his trial),while the mystic’s mystery becomes important only thanks to thework of reason. Everything is a mystery to philosophy, for it asksquestions about everything, i.e., constantly confesses its ignorance.Conversely, mysticism carefully selects its mystery in the enigmaticworld and endows it with deep significance, derived from what themystic already knows. When philosophy hastily announces that ithas overcome myth, it becomes, in fact, mythical consciousness. Insuch moments it is moved by the longing for an unmediated unitywith its ultimate goal, absolute knowledge. But this longing andthe conviction that the final goal can be reached in an immediatecontact with it are characteristic features of mysticism and mythicalconsciousness. This is why the consciousness of the Enlightenmentis so mythical – despite the fact that it seems to be radically opposedto myth.

Given such a symbiotic relation between dialectical mediationand mystical immediacy, Losev’s attempt to reconcile them wasnot a failure, but a valuable contribution. Even if Losev’s dialecticsultimately retreated before the mysticism of myth, still his broadlyconceived and richly elaborated mutual approximation of mythosand logos is a step towards its fulfilment – whatever form such afulfilment may take. The pages that Losev added to the story of spiritmade the ultimate unity of mythology and dialectics weightier, moreintriguing, and more desirable.

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NOTES

1 For the most complete discussion of this story to date see Takho-Godi(2001). A summary of Takho-Godi’s account in English appears in Marchenkov(2003).2 A similar operation was performed by Hegel in The Philosophy of History(pp. 323–324).3 For a more detailed discussion of Losev’s method see my introduction to TheDialectics of Myth referred to in note 1 above.4 Allusion to the sardonic description of infinity by A.I. Svidrigajlov, a characterF.M. Dostoevskij’s novel Crime and Punishment, quoted by Losev (2003: 17 and212n7).5 Kant’s claim that “we must go outside [our concept of an object], if we areto ascribe existence to the object” (p. 506) in his discussion of the ontologicalproof of God’s existence sets the same limit to rational thinking as Losev’s asser-tion, discussed above, that objects of experience cannot be completely grasped byconcepts.

REFERENCES

Hegel, G.W.F. Phenomenology of Spirit, A.V. Miller (trans.), Oxford UniversityPress, Oxford, 1977.

Hegel, G.W.F. The Philosophy of History, J. Sibree (trans.), Prometheus Books,Buffalo, N.Y., 1991.

Gadamer, H.-G. Truth and Method, Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall(trans.), Continuum, New York, 1998.

Gogotishvili, L.A. “Losev, isikhazm i platonizm (Losev, Hesychasm, andPlatonism),” in A. Takho-Godi (ed.), A.F. Losev, Imja, Aleteija, Moscow, 1997,pp. 551–579.

Kant, I. Critique of Pure Reason, N.K. Smith (trans.), St Martin’s Press, NewYork, 1965.

Khoruzhij, S. “A Rearguard Action,” Russian Studies in Philosophy 40(3) (2001–2002), p. 44.

Losev, A.F. Dialektika khudozhestvennoj formy (The Dialectics of Artistic Form),Moscow [published by the author], 1927.

Losev, A.F. Dialektika mifa. Dopolnenie k ‘Dialektike mifa’ (The Dialectics ofMyth. The Addendum to The Dialectics of Myth), Mysl’, Moscow, 2001.

Losev, A. The Dialectics of Myth, V.L. Marchenkov (trans.), Routledge, London,2003.

Losev, A.F. Imja (Name), Aletejja, St Petersburg, 1997.Losev, A.F. Istorija antichnoj estetiki. Sofisty, Sokrat, Platon (History of Ancient

Aesthetics. The Sophists, Socrates, and Plato), Iskusstvo, Moscow, 1969.Marchenkov, V., “Aleksei Losev and His Theory of Myth,” in Losev, 2003, pp. 3–

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Takho-Godi, A., “ ‘Filosof khochet vse ponimat.’ Dialektika mifa i dopolnenie knej (A Philosopher Wants to Understand Everything.’ The Dialectics of Mythand the Addendum to it),” in Losev, 2001, pp. 5–30.

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