Nikolay Lossky’s Cosmology

• Main Authors: Gennadii Aliaiev, Svetlana Kutsepal
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: International Society of Philosophy and Cosmology 2018-02-01
• Series: Философия и космология
• Subjects: beauty; freedom; intuitionism; metaphysics; organic worldview; personalism; substantival agent; Nikolay Lossky
• Online Access: http://ispcjournal.org/journals/2017-20/Philosophy_and_Cosmology_vol_20_Aliaiev_Kutsepal.pdf

The paper focuses on cosmological ideas of a twentieth-century Russian philosopher Nikolay Lossky (1870-1965). It specifies the place of these ideas within the entire framework of his philosophical views, as well as in the context of his topology of philosophical systems, in particular ― the discrimination between organic and non-organic worldview. A historico-philosophical analysis of Lossky’s cosmology allows revealing the interaction of gnoseological and ontological principles of his system, e.g. explicating the difference of Lossky’s intuitionism from the one of Bergson. The key section of the organic worldview is the doctrine of the hierarchy of substantival agents: the hierarchical personalism, as well as the notions of transcreation, dynamic understanding of matter, and the doctrine of free will closely related to it. The paper specifies the peculiarities of Lossky’s interpretations of panvitalism and panpsychism, as well as the doctrine of reincarnation, which has a particular place in his system. The final stage of Lossky’s cosmological ideas development is his ontological aesthetics: on this stage he understands the world as an embodiment of beauty. The conclusion is drawn that Lossky’s cosmological doctrine is Christian and metaphysical in its nature.