Gassiev Biography

The first Ossetian humanist philosopher, one of the advanced figures of the Ossetian intelligentsia. He left a rich creative heritage in philosophy, history, ethnography, the history of religion, pedagogy, jurisprudence, journalism and linguistics. He possessed perfectly Ossetian, Russian, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, German and Old Slavonic languages. His scientific and creative activity dates back to the second half of the 19th century, the time of the formation of Ossetian science.

Scientific knowledge then developed mainly in the field of the humanities - history, ethnography, folklorism, philosophy, etc. This was explained by the characteristics of the Ossetian society, which has taken the path of national revival. And Afanasy Gassiev became one of the vivid representatives of the scientific community of that time. Gassiev was the first among the Ossetians to rise to the level of European philosophical thinking, to criticism of the philosophy of Kant, Herbart, Religion.

Highly interlocked, knowing several languages, he impressed with erudition. A graduate of the Kyiv Theological Academy, he was most interested in the philosophical problems of Christianity and Islam.

His works “Analysis of the Koran, Dogmatics and Morality”, “The latest philosophical realism about the foundations of religion and morality” and others characterize A. Gassiev as a gifted scientist, an expert in the history of world religions. Gassiev paid a lot of attention to the problems of training and education. A follower of outstanding teachers - Pestalozzi, Ushinsky, Goggebashvili, he condemned everything that interfered with public education, in particular, was against the dominance of the church in school affairs.

Gassiev formulated a number of principles of the educational process of the foreign national school, which today are interesting and relevant. School programs, the scientist believed, should be free from the material that does not develop a mental horizons, and curricula, textbooks, methodological manuals should take into account the interests of students of indigenous nationality.

The scientist closely monitored the state of public education in Ossetia, was a supporter of improving school teaching methods. For Russian schools, he wrote two grammar textbooks of the Russian language. And, by the way, Afaco is the father of the famous inventor of the photo -collecting machine Viktor Gassiev. The rich scientific heritage of Athanasius Gassiev has not yet been fully studied.

Therefore, his life and activity - under the close attention of scientists, graduate students, students of North Ossetia. In recent years, one after another his works, collections of articles, monographs have been published.