Valentin Ferdinandovich Asmus (russian: Валенти́н Фердина́ндович А́смус; December 30, 1894 – June 4, 1975) was a Soviet

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

. He was one of the small group who continued the classical European philosophical tradition through the early Soviet times. He was an independent thinker and unorthodox

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

, with interests in the history of philosophy and aesthetics. He graduated from St. Vladimir University in 1919, then moved to Moscow in 1927. At this period he attacked the views of William James. In the mid-1920s, he was a theorist of literary constructivism. Through his wife Irina, he became a friend of

Boris Pasternak Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (; rus, Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к, p=bɐˈrʲis lʲɪɐˈnʲidəvʲɪtɕ pəstɛrˈnak; 30 May 1960) was a Russian poet, novelist, composer and literary translator. Composed in 1917, Pa ...

, from about 1931. His major work ''Marx and Bourgeois Historicism'' (1933) was influenced by György Lukács. At this point an opponent of formal logic, he changed position and wrote a textbook on it. There is a story of his being summoned to see Joseph Stalin, and required to give logic lectures to Red Army generals. He was Professor at Moscow State University from 1942 to 1972. In the 1960s he edited Plato, with

Aleksei Losev Aleksei Fedorovich Losev (russian: Алексе́й Фёдорович Ло́сев; 23 September 1893 – 24 May 1988) was a Russian philosopher, philologist and culturologist, one of the most prominent figures in Russian philosophical and rel ...

. Outside the Soviet Union, Asmus was mostly known for his contributions to studying Immanuel Kant.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Asmus, Valentin 1894 births 1975 deaths Moscow State University faculty Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv alumni Stalin Prize winners Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour Soviet literary historians Soviet logicians Soviet male writers Soviet philosophers Soviet translators