Nikolay Lossky’s Cosmology

by Gennadii Aliaiev¹ and Svetlana Kutsepal^2
1 Poltava National Technical Yuri Kondratyuk University (Poltava, Ukraine)
² Poltava Law Institute of Yaroslav the Wise National Law University (Poltava, Ukraine)
DOI: http://doi.org/10.29202/phil-cosm/20/15
Received: 20 August 2017 / Accepted: 10 October 2017 / Published: 30 January 2018

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.

Keywords: beauty, freedom, intuitionism, metaphysics, organic worldview, personalism, substantival agent, Nikolay Lossky.

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Aliaiev, Gennadii and Svetlana Kutsepal (2018) Nikolay Lossky’s Cosmology. Philosophy and Cosmology, Volume 20, 154-162. http://doi.org/10.29202/phil-cosm/20/15