Boris Asaf'ev and the Soviet Musicology - E-thesis

condensed Losskij’s philosophy well in her book Bergson and Russian Modernism
1900–1930 (1999):
Losskii’s philosophy is based on two interrelated theories: “epistemological
coordination” (gnoseologicheskaia koordinatsiia) and intuitivism, the latter made
possible by the former. Epistemological coordination represents for Loskii the process by
which the “I” substantival agent (or simply the cognizing subject) becomes unified with
the substance of “non-I” (or the object of knowledge) as parts of the same organic whole
of existence. Losskii opposes this latter concept to the Western tradition of
epistemological individualism or subordination established by Cartesian rationalism and
continuesd up through Kantian critical philosophy, according to which the subject can
never truly know the “thing-in-itself”, and the object is thus subordinated to the knowing
subject. According to Losskii, the meaning of the external world is not determined by the
knowing subject’s impressions but rather but rather depends on the “coordination” of
subject and object resulting from the closing of the gap between them. Losskii’s theory of
intuitivism, then reflects both the immanence of the “thing-in-itself” in knowledge as
well as the general organic interconnectedness (konsubstantsial’nost’) of the “human I”
(chelovecheskoe ia) with all the other substantival agents in the world. 245
According to Losskij, the newest philosophy (his own philosophy) is able to coordinate
the universalism of Greek philosophy with the individualism of the “new” philosophy
(Kant’s philosophy) in order to reach an organic higher level of understanding of the
world 246 . Losskij announced himself of being a supporter and a follower of Bergson’s
philosophy, but criticized his dualistic theory of knowledge that was divided into
intuitive and rationalistic 247 .
In his study The Intuitive Philosophy of Bergson, Losskij presented Bergson’s criticism
towards the mechanistic worldview as well as his famous example of experience of
245 Ibid.
246 Ibid., p. 32.
247 According to Bergson, there are two profound aspects of knowledge: rational and intuitive. Rational
knowledge derives from the comparison between the object and other objects, formulating a general law
out of them, which is followed by an analysis, formed of the general open ideas. A general idea is an
impersonal aspect of an object. It lacks its individual characteristics. The object contains always more or
less behaviour that gives it broader capacity. [--] This kind of understanding can not serve as an
expression of vital reality. It does not express living reality. It can only function more or less as its
symbol. Because it does not express object individually, we have to recreate the junction between our
mind and the object. We combine the multitude of ideas into one group. However, this kind of inspection
of general ideas between themselves cannot ever produce a total object of the living reality. In fact living
reality is always something inseparably total, fluid and creatively changing. (Losskij 1914, pp. 6–7.)
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