Losev, Aleksei Fëdorovich (1893–1988)

A leading Russian philosopher, religious thinker and classical scholar of the twentieth century, Losev made important contributions to the theory of language, myth and symbol, as well as to the understanding of ancient Greek thought and culture. He strongly resisted central aspects of modernization, in particular the spread of what he saw as ’bourgeois’ and ’philistine’ secularism, positivism, materialism, atheism, selfish individualism and ’machine civilization’.

A scholar of staggering erudition with a lifelong passion for the ancient world, especially the thought of Plato, Losev could be a fierce, sometimes abusive polemicist. His relation to the Soviet regime ranged from open defiance in the late 1920s (which led to prison and the gulag for almost three years) to at least pro forma acceptance of certain key elements of Marxist ideology and philosophy in the period between 1953 and 1988.