KIREEVSKIJ, IVAN VASILEVIČ. - Russian thinker and publicist, b. in Moscow on 22 March 1805, d. in St Petersburg on 11 June 1856. In his youth he came under the influence of German idealist philosophy; he became one of the foremost exponents of the Slavophile school.
In 1832 he founded the Europese (European). Important, for its historical insights and its vigorous polemic against the “Westernizers,” is the essay O Charakter prosvetlenija Europy i ego otnočeni k prosvetleniju Rossii (On the character of European culture and its relations with Russian culture), in Moskovskij Sbornik (1852).
To Western Aristotelian philosophy, reproached for failing to grasp the authentic laws of reality, K. opposes another philosophy, in his view deeper and fuller, whose foundations are to be found in full and pure faith, that is, in “orthodoxy.”