Only now can we consider that the question of genuine mythical detachment has been fully clarified. We remember how difficult it was to find the true root of this detachment. We compared mythical detachment with general material detachment and poetic detachment but could not find a satisfactory answer anywhere. All the time we have faced a difficult task: to synthesize the sensuousness, extreme con-creteness, and purely material corporeality of myth with its otherworldly, fabulous, and generally acknowledged "unreal" character. After many (...) attempts we have only now finally found this genuine synthesis in the concept of miracle. Miracle is thus an absolutely necessary dialectical synthesis by which mythical consciousness lives and without which myth itself would not exist. From this point of view, myth's relation to other areas of human creativity also appears in a new light. (shrink)

Aristotle‘s categories are presented as a system relying on logic and syntax instead of on meanings. His square of oppositions is found to be of crucial importance.

The influence of Spengler on Wittgenstein's philosophical development is considered. The point of interest is in a significant methodological restructuring which it appears to have produced. After an initial over-enthusiastic reception, Wittgenstein is seen to object on some points which he attempted to emend in his own philosophy. Spengler's name disappeared inreworked manuscripts but traces persist in the Philosophical Investigations and an important section (§89-133) is found to be connected with it.

Heidegger's comments about a pair of shoes painted by van Gogh are read with attention to their historical context.

The Five Greatest Kinds discussed in Plato‘s Sophist are taken to be just one instance of a fivefold structure found in various related texts. Contemporary linguistic theories are a source for ideas about its functioning.

Четвертая работа из знаменитого восьмикнижия Лосева "Диалектика художественной формы", представляет собой изложение эстетической теории, созданной автором с "привлечением диалектического метода".

"Mysl"‘ Publishers timed the appearance of this book to mark the one hundredth anniversary of Friedrich Engels's work Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. Engels quite pointedly dubbed the theories which emerged in Germany in the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries as "classical philosophy." It was among the highest achievements of the world's wisdom, and it prepared the ground for the genesis of dialectical and historical materialism. German classical philosophy is the theoretical (...) wellspring of Marxism. (shrink)

Audacity of the Spirit by A.F. Losev demonstrates the merits of the dialectical method to understand antiquity, history, culture and philosophy. The book is a guide to dialectics for beginners and a major philosopher's summing-up of his reflections to a general audience. It is an English translation from the Russian original Дерзание духа (Politizdat Moskva, 1988), translated by Peter R. Weisensel and Vitali I. Betaneli.

Plato's Timaeus is taken as a background for certain views presented by Aristotle in his On the Heavens. The author discusses possible arguments for introducing a new (“fifth”) element.

Dialektika mifa -- Raboty 1916-1988 godov -- Istorii︠a︡ filosofii kak shkola mysli.

Reading the Timaeus as an early attempt at mathematizing natural science runs into serious difficulties. The so-called Platonic Solids are five in number, more by one than the traditional 'elements'. Plato provides a proportional ratio for these elements but this ratio fails to tie in with their geometrical features. Appealing to the authority of mathematics appears to be a rhetorical move with no further consequences.