The "mystical, symbolical and mythological" world of pre-Socratic philosophy in the works of Alexey Losev

Alexey F. Losev is one of the greatest representatives of Russian philosophy in the 20th century. His philosophy of all-unity has acquired a truly unique form, which is due not only to external factors, such as the political regime and strict spiritual philosophy censorship, but also to the personality of Losev himself, as well as to the peculiarities of his thinking. Losev's contribution to philosophy is enormous and still has not been estimated completely. The guiding force in Losev's philosophy is Orthodoxy, that is why the main subject in many of his works is the problem of The One, or God. In socialist Russia it was not allowed to say "God" aloud. However, it is this maximum category, The One, the "divine intellect", penetrating and binding together all the disjointed essence of space, that really expressed the philosopher's religiousness; that is why his works are full of implications, and Losev himself becomes a matter of dispute and the object of prejudice among materialists. Since he was a historian of ancient philosophy, Losev finds first traces of The One in pre-Socratic philosophy. After analyzing the problem thoroughly, Losev emphasizes how unique were the ancient sages' beliefs and refers to pre-Socratic The One as having mythological, mystical and symbolic qualities. According to Losev, pre-Socratic The One is a perfect material form, a cosmic body, sole and indivisible, at the same time consisting of many parts, controlled and combined in a perfect unity by the power of Logos, or the divine intellect. The fact that pre-Socratics regarded substance as a category which expresses The One ultimately is explained by Losev as a result of the peculiarity of thought and conscience typical for people of that time. The immature language of scientific abstractions, seeing the world as a sole living organism, aesthetics of a completed body and sculpturness of space become a basis for constructing ontological guesses and insights about the world's structure. Nature-philosophic The One finds an earthly, sensual and material form, but Losev warns against confusion and says that ancient materialism differs from the materialism of the Early modern period, because it is religious and mystical. According to Losev, pre-Socratic philosophy is only the first step to the development of a stronger and more coherent philosophy, i.e. Platonism and neo-Platonism, on which Losev focused primary attention and which he regarded as a philosophical base for Russian Orthodox culture. And the prima materia, or The One, by Losev is a "mystical" symbol for the birth of the divine all-unity revelation of the living and breathing space-body.

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