Valentin Asmus (philosopher)

{{short description|Russian philosopher}}File:Асмус Валентин Фердинандович.tif

Valentin Ferdinandovich Asmus ({{langx|ru|Валенти́н Фердина́ндович А́смус}}; December 30, 1894 – June 4, 1975) was a Soviet philosopher. He was one of the small group who continued the classical European philosophical tradition through the early Soviet times.{{cite book

| last = Bakhurst

| first = David

| title = Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy: From the Bolsheviks to Evald Ilyenkov (Modern European Philosophy)

| publisher = Cambridge University Press

|date=June 1991

| pages = 5

| isbn = 0-521-40710-9 }} He was an independent thinker and unorthodox Marxist,[http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/philruss01.htm PostSoviet Russian Philosophy] with interests in the history of philosophy and aesthetics.

He graduated from St. Vladimir University in 1919, then moved to Moscow in 1927.{{cite book

| last = Barnes

| first = Christopher

| title = Boris Pasternak: A Literary Biography

| publisher = Cambridge University Press; New Ed edition

|date=February 2004

| pages = 5

| isbn = 0-521-52072-X }} At this period he attacked the views of William James.{{cite book

| last = Grossman

| first = Joan Delaney

|author2=Rischin, Ruth

| title = William James in Russian Culture

| publisher = Lexington Books

|date=February 2003

| pages = 7

| isbn = 0-7391-0527-2 }} In the mid-1920s, he was a theorist of literary constructivism.{{cite book

| last = Makaryk

| first = Irena R.

| title = Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory: Approaches, Scholars, Terms (Theory / Culture)

| publisher = University of Toronto Press

| date = April 1993

| pages = [https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofco0000unse_v4p8/page/18 18]

| isbn = 0-8020-6860-X

| url = https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofco0000unse_v4p8/page/18

}}

Through his wife Irina, he became a friend of Boris Pasternak, from about 1931.{{cite book

| last = Marsh

| first = Rosalind

| title = Women and Russian Culture: Projections and Self-Perceptions (Studies in Slavic Literature, Culture, and Society, V. 2)

| publisher = Berghahn Books

|date=November 1998

| pages = 168

| isbn = 1-57181-913-4 }}

His major work Marx and Bourgeois Historicism (1933) was influenced by György Lukács.{{cite book

| last = Delanty

| first = George

| title = Handbook of Contemporary European Social Theory

| publisher = Routledge

|date=February 2006

| pages = 159

| isbn = 0-415-35518-4 }} 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.Bazhanov, Logic and Ideologized Science Phenomenon (Case of the URSS), in {{cite book

| last = Sica

| first = Giandomenico

| title = Essays on the Foundations of Mathematics and Logic 1

| publisher = Polimetrica

| year = 2005

| pages = 51

| isbn = 978-88-7699-014-4 }}

He was Professor at Moscow State University from 1942 to 1972.{{cite book

| last = van der Zweerde

| first = Evert

| title = Soviet Historiography of Philosophy: Istoriko-Filosofskaja Nauka (Sovietica)

| publisher = Springer