Myth in two Russian perspectives: Yuri M. Lotman and Boris A. Uspensky in correlation with Alexei F. Losev

Abstract

In the present article, our purpose is to assess correlationally, from the standpoint of an epistemic historiography, the conceptions of myth offered by the dialectical phenomenology of Aleksei F. Losev [1893–1988] and by the semiotic and cultural perspective of Yuri M. Lotman [1922–1993] and Boris A. Uspensky [1937–]. To this end, we employ an epistemic analytics of the ideas and concepts systematized and defended by these authors, particularly in: (a) The Dialectics of Myth [Dialektika mifa], by Losev (Lóssev, 2021 [1990]); and (b) Myth – Name – Culture [Mif – imia – kulʹtura], by Lotman and Uspensky (Lótman; Uspiénski, 1992 [1973]). Our aim is to identify and highlight the similarities between these conceptions, as well as the differences that may indicate a discontinuity between the respective theoretical positions advanced. Examples of results include: a) the convergence between Lotman, Uspensky, and Losev in rejecting the reduction of myth to a primitive stage, instead understanding it as an irreducible form of consciousness grounded in identity and dependent on a non-representational language; b) the divergence regarding the status of myth, conceived as a semiotic-cultural phenomenon by the former two and, in Losev, as a phenomenological experience of the Person expressed symbolically, which entails differences in their notions of identity, name, etc., and reveals distinct epistemic foundations. Through this study, we seek to contribute to a broader and more faithful dissemination of Losevian philosophy within the Brazilian academic context – where it is still little known and undervalued – as well as to expand our perspective on the possibilities of epistemic relations between the semiotics of culture and twentieth-century Russian philosophy.