Nikolai Lossky
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Nikolai Onufriyevich Lossky (Russian:
Никола́й Ону́фриевич Ло́сский) (December 6 [O.S.
November 24] 1870 – January 24, 1965) was a
Russian philosopher, representative of Russian
idealism, intuitionism, personalism,
libertarianism, ethics, Axiology (Value theory),
and his philosophy he called intuitive-personalism.
He was born in the village of Kreslavka,
Daugavpils uyezd (region), Vitebsk gubernia
(province) of Russian Empire (now Krāslava in
Latvia) and died from natural causes at a
nursing home near Paris. Lossky had a daughter
who died as a child and three sons, the most
famous of which was the Eastern Orthodox
Theologian Vladimir Lossky.
Life
Lossky's father, Onufry Losski was Orthodox
Russian with Polish roots; his mother Adelajda
Przylenicka was Polish Catholic. Lossky
undertook post-graduate studies 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, on 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 teaching
Eastern Orthodox theology at Saint Vladimir's
Orthodox Theological Seminary, a Russian
Orthodox seminary in New York. In 1961, after
the death of his famous Orthodox theologian son
Vladimir Lossky, N. O. Lossky went to France.
The last four years of his life were spent in
illness there.
Intuitivism and Slavophilism
Lossky was one of the preeminent Russian
neo-idealists of his day. Lossky's Гносеология
or gnosiology is called Intuitivist-Personalism
and had 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, integrality or mystical communal
union. Lossky also followed and developed his
ontological and gnosiological interpretation of
objective reality from Christian neoplatonism
based on the Patristic Fathers. This along with
Origen and the works of Russian mystics
Kireevsky and Khomyakov and the later works of
V. Solovyov among many others. Understanding and
comprehension coming from addressing an object,
as though part of the external world, something
that joins the consciousness of the perceiving
subject directly (noesis, insight), then
becoming memory, intuitionism as the foundation
of all noema or processes of consciousness. In
that human consciousness comprehends the essence
or noumena of an object and the object's
external phenomenon which are then assembled
into a complete organic whole called experience.
Much of an object's defining and understanding
in consciousness is not derived discursively but
rather intuitively or instinctively as an object
has no meaning outside of the whole of
existence. Lossky summed up this concept in the
term "all is imminent in all". As such much of
reality as uncreated or uncaused is irrational,
or random (see libertarianism below) and can not
be validated rationally (i.e. freedom and love
as energy are uncaused, uncreated). Therefore
consciousness in its interaction with reality
operates not strictly as rational (only
partially) much of consciousness operates
intuitively. This is intuitively done by the
nous. The nous, consciousness or the focal point
of the psyche as the "organic connection" to the
object and therefore the material world as a
whole. The psyche here is the sensory input from
the physical body to the inner being, mind or
consciousness. This interaction causing
different levels of maturing consciousness over
time (reinterpretation). As a dynamic retention,
experience constitutes the process of learning
i.e. reflective differentiation.
Phenomenology and Axiology
Consequently the existence of objects can
not be completely expressed with logic or words,
nor validated with knowledge, due to objects
having a supernatural essence or substance as
their composition (supernatural in a Greek
philosophy or Eastern Orthodox understanding of
supernatural as uncreated or uncaused).
Following Orthodox Christian substance theory
(see Gregory Palamas) energy and potential do
not have ontology without an sentient agent
(i.e. idealism), Lossky coined the term "substative
agent" to validate that matter as well as energy
are uncreated in substance, essence. This
validation as part of gnosiology or Christian
mysticism (Orthodoxy) as opposed to the Russian
Materialist and nihilist position that states
that objects have no "thing in itself" or no
essence, substance behind their phenomenon (as
in Positivism). Lossky based his intuitivism on
gnosiology in that he taught first principles as
uncreated or uncaused. Lossky's Axiology was the
teaching of first principles dialectically.
Russian philosophy based on Soloviev is
expressed metaphysically in that the essence of
an object can be akin to Noumenon (opposed to
its appearance or phenomenon), but it can have
random characteristics to its being or essence,
characteristically sumbebekos. This is the basis
of V Soloviev's arguments against Positivism
which are the corner stone of Russian philosophy
contained in Soloviev's "Against the
Positivists". The validation (immediate
apprehension) of truth, value and existence all
being intuitive as expressed by Aristotle's
Noesis. Each event having value or existence
because of substantive agents being engaged in
the event, (via Neo-idealism) giving the event
value and existence.
Sobornost and the world as an
organic whole
One of the main points of Lossky's онтология
or ontology is, the world is an organic whole as
understood by human consciousness. Intuition,
insight (noesis in Greek) 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 expression
of consciousness as without thought, raw and
uninterpreted by the rational faculty in the
mind. Thus the mind's dianoia (rational or
logical faculty) in its deficiency, finiteness
or inconclusiveness (due to logic's
incompleteness) causes the perceived conflict
between the objectivism (materialism, external
world) and idealism (spiritual, inner
experience) forms of philosophy. Where intuitive
or instinctual re-action is without rational
processing of the rational faculty of the mind.
It is outside of comprehension via the dianoia
faculty of the mind, consciousness (Nous).
Intuition being analogous with instinctual
consciousness. Intuition functions without
rational or logical thought. Rational or logical
thought via the dianoia component of the nous,
which then works in reflection as hindsight to
organize experience into a comprehensible order
i.e. ontology. The memory, knowledge derived
from the rationalizing faculty of the mind is
called epistemological knowledge. Intuitive
knowledge or Gnosis (preprocessed knowledge or
uninterpreted) then being made into history or
memory. Rather than a rational determining
factor it manifests as an integral factor of or
during an actual conscious experience. Lossky's
ontology being consistent with Leibniz's
optimism expressed as the Best of all possible
worlds in contrast to the pessimism and nihilism
of more Pro-Western Russian philosophers.
Lossky's work is also opposed to the pagan
elements of the pagan philosophers that were an
influence on his work. In that the logical
faculty of the mind was only finite in a
temporal sense and will eventually become
infinite (by theosis), as such it seeks the
infinite rather than opposes it. Lossky believed
that philosophy would transcend its rational
limits and manifest a mystical understanding of
experience. This would include an understanding
that encompasses the intuitive, irrational,
philosophically (as done in stochastics) rather
than the strictly pagan approach of a good
deterministic force opposed to an irrational
indeterminate force. This of course being the
teaching of Christian faith as a philosophical
principle (called free will) and intrinsic
component to conscious existence, one that
manifests sobornost in the transcending of the
pagan dichotomy of reason versus superstition or
determinism versus indeterminism.
Knowledge and Memory
Once knowledge is abstracted from conscious
experience it becomes epistemological knowledge
and 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 as post-processed knowledge
i.e. Epistemology. Lossky's Ontology as an
agent's 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. Much of Lossky's working out of an
ontological theory of knowledge was done in
collaboration with his close friend Semen L.
Frank.
Metaphysical libertarianism
Lossky as a metaphysical libertarian taught
that all people have uncreated energy
(Aristotle) or potential (Plotinus). This being
very much inline with the vitalism of his day.
Though Lossky did not strictly adhere to
vitalism but rather to its predecessor
Monadology and its living forces (dynamis)
theory. This is to contrast Leibniz's theory of
Monadology against Cartesian mind-body dualism.
This as a rejection of vitalism in its dualism
of mind and body being of different substances.
For Lossky's Substantive Agents have potential (dynamis)
and they can act (beings have energy) upon, from
this potential. All power or potential comes
from the individual. That spontaneous or organic
reality structures or orders itself to reconcile
opposing forces (sobornost), doing so while
maintaining order and freewill. Each pole of
existence (the created and uncreated of
gnosiology) or opposing ideologies, reaching
compromise through value and existence and
manifesting in a complete organic whole (sobornost).
“ Second Section: That selection is the
agent's free act. Consequently, the temporal
order of events is not uniform even in the
inorganic nature. It is quite possible that
although some two electrons have millions of
time repulsed each other, they will not do so
the next time. But functional connections
between ideal forms conditioning the existence
of the world as a system-e.g. mathematical
principles and the laws of the hierarchy of
values and their significance for conduct
conditioning the presence of meaning in the
world-are independent of the agents' will.
Violation of these laws is unthinkable, but they
do not destroy the agent's freedom: they merely
create the possibility of activity as such and
of its value. Those laws condition the cosmic
structure within the frame work of which there
is freedom for an infinite variety of
activities. The system of spatiotemporal and
numerical forms provides room for activities
that are opposed to one another in direction,
value, and significance for the world. The
absence of rigidly uniform connection between
events does not make science impossible. It is
sufficient for science that there should be more
or less regular connection between events in
time. The lower the agent's stage of
development, the more uniform are their
manifestations. In those cases there may be
statistical laws. Many misunderstandings of the
doctrine of free will are disposed of by
distinguishing between formal and material
freedom. Formal freedom means that in each given
case an agent may refrain from some particular
manifestation and replace it by another. That
freedom is absolute and cannot be lost under any
circumstance. Material freedom means the degree
of creative power possessed by an agent, and
finds expression in what he is capable of
creating. It is unlimited in the Kingdom of God,
the members of which unanimously combine their
forces for communal creativeness and even derive
help from God's omnipotence. But agents outside
the Kingdom of God are in a state of spiritual
deterioration and have very little material
freedom, though their formal freedom is
unimpaired. Life outside the Kingdom of God is
the result of the wrong use of free will. ”
—From History of Russian Philosophy
section on "N O Lossky the Intuitivists" pg 260
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 act or energy
derived from a Neoplatonic interpretation.
“ First section: Determinists deny freedom
of the will on the ground that every event has a
cause. They mean by causality the order of
temporal sequence of one event after other
events and the uniformity of that sequence.
Causation, generation, creation and all other
dynamic aspects of causality are ruled out.
Lossky proves that the will is free, taking as
his starting point the law of causality but
defending a dynamistic interpretation of it.
Every event arises not out of itself, but is
created by someone: it cannot be created by
other events: having a temporal form events fall
away every instant into the realm of the past
and have no creative power to generate the
future. Only supertemporal substantival agents-i.e.,
actual and potential personalities- are bearers
of creative power: they create events as their
own vital manifestations. According to the
dynamistic interpretation of causality it is
necessary to distinguish among the conditions
under which an event takes place the cause from
the occasion of its happening. The cause is
always the substantival agent himself as the
bearer of creative power, and the other
circumstances are merely occasions for its
manifestations, which are neither forced nor
predetermined by them. The agents' creative
power is superqualitative and does not therefore
predetermine which particular values an agent
will select as his final end.From History of
Russian Philosophy section on "
N O Lossky the Intuitivists" pg 260 ”
Theology and Neoplatonism
Much of the theology that Lossky covers (as
his own) in the book History of Russian
Philosophy is inline with the idealism of
Origen. Lossky's idealism is based on Origen's.
In that the relationship between the mystic,
religious understanding of God and a
philosophical one there have been various stages
of development in the history of the Roman East.
The nous as mind (rational and intuitive
understanding) in Byzantine philosophy is given
the central role of understanding only when it
is placed or reconciled with the heart or soul
of the person. Earlier versions of Christian and
Greek philosophical syncretism are in modern
times referred to as Neoplatonic. An example of
this can be seen in the works of Origen and his
teaching on the nous as to Origen, all souls
pre-existed with their Creator in a perfect,
spiritual (non-material) state as "nous," that
these minds then fell away so to pursue an
individual and independent existence apart from
God. Because all beings were created with
absolute freedom and free will, God, not being a
tyrant, would not force his creations to return
to Him. According to Origen, God's infinite love
and respect for His creatures allowed for this.
Instead, God created the material world,
universe or cosmos. God then initiated the aeons
or history. God did this for the purpose of,
through love and compassion, guiding his
creations back to contemplation of His infinite,
limitless mind. This was according to Origen,
the perfect state. Though the specifics of this
are not necessarily what Lossky taught in his
theology courses, since dogma in a general
sense, is what is taught as theology. N.O.
Lossky also was inline with the common
distinctions of Eastern theology. Like the
Essence-Energies distinction for example. Though
Lossky did pursue a position of reconciliation
based on mutual cooperation between East and
West. Lossky taught this co-operation as organic
and or spontaneous order, integrality, and unity
called sobornost. Sobornost can also be
translated to mean catholic.
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.
