Aesthetics as a “Rigorous Science” (on A. F. Losev’s Scientific Papers at GAChN)

This article provides a brief review of work A. F. Losev’s (1893–1988) — the famous philosopher and professor of
the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory — at the State Academy of Art Sciences (GAChN) in the 1920s. A special
attention is given to certain aspects of his work, in which Losev attempted to demonstrate that aesthetics could and
should be made into a rigorous scientific discipline, which went against the dominant formalistic and psychologic
tendencies in musicology of this period. Previously unknown texts of A. F. Losev’s scientific papers and subsequent
discussions, recently discovered in the GAChN archive at RGALI, are published here for the first time.