Unity in multitude: Classical Symbolism in the Early and High Classical Period in the conception of A.F. Losev

The authors of this paper focus on the process of classical mythological symbolism formation (from the Pre-Socratics to Plato). The authors generally referred to the opinion of Alexey F. Losev, a famous antiquity researcher and Russian philosopher. The Pre-Socratic mystic-mythological physiophilosophy and Plato's dialectic generated conditions which became the root of Orthodox theology and Russian religious philosophy. Classical mythological symbolism is the existence expression theory. In archaic Greece, mythological ideology began to outlive. Pre-Socratic philosophers began to conceptualize nature of all, found causes of elemental manifestations in it and formed the first philosophy categories. Plato's theory of ideas is a specific new step in the construction of the classical symbolism view. This step determined the development of all western philosophical tradition until present. Alexey F. Losev dedicated most part of his fundamental treatise Ocherki antichnogo symvolizma i mifologii [Essays on Classical Symbolism and Mythology] to Plato. In Losev's opinion, Plato's symbolism shows five stages (levels) of reality: naive realistic (immediately perceived reality), descriptive phenomenological (conceptual reality out of factual one, eidos as a descriptively and speculatively given integrity), transcendental (symbol as a transcendental principle), dialectical (myth as an immediately perceived and understood relity), ar-rhythmological (mythic number as an immediately perceived and understood relity). Plato's symbolism is a special system, different, for instance, from Christian symbolism. That is why Alexey F. Losev was an opponent of Plato's Christianization tendency. Losev repeatedly emphasized that Plato's categories have an increased static character, which generated a need for the development of the theory of symbol. Later, the classical philosophic tradition used Plato's terminology and many Pre-Socratic philosophic ideas until it reached its height in Neo-Platonism philosophy. Plato's theory, expressed in mystical ideas, prepared conditions among its followers for generating new categories which gave dynamic features to classical symbolism and resulted in the form adopted by Christian theology in the Middle Ages. Classical symbolism is the basis of Alexey F. Losev's classical thinking theory, as well as of his own philosophic system which he identified as energetic symbolism and orthodoxly interpreted Neo-Platonism.

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