**TRUBETSKOJ, Evgenij.** - Russian national philosopher and politician, younger brother of Prince Serghej, b. 23 Jan. (5 Feb.) 1863 in Moscow, d. 23 Sept. (5 Oct.) 1919 in Novorossijsk. He was professor at the Universities of Kiev and later Moscow. After the collapse of the old regime he was associated with the White Army and, as a layman, attended the All-Russian Council in Moscow in 1917-18.
Like his elder brother, he passed through positivism and atheism in his youth and returned to the faith through the study of the history of modern philosophy and the reading of Schopenhauer. In his professional activity he first dealt with the philosophy of law. He wrote dissertations on historical themes, namely on St Augustine and *The Religious-Social Ideal of Western Christianity in the 11th Century*, Kiev 1897. In 1904 he published in Moscow *The Philosophy of Nietzsche*. In his less independent thought, he was strongly influenced by Soloviev, to whom he devoted his most voluminous work, *The World-View of Vladimir Soloviev*, 2 vols., Moscow 1913. To overcome Kant and Kantianism he wrote: *The Metaphysical Presuppositions of Knowledge*, Moscow 1917. His most mature work, published only after his death, is *The Meaning of Life* (Berlin 1922), written in Moscow in 1918, in which he outlined, drawing especially on Soloviev’s doctrine of Divine Wisdom, but without accepting certain extreme conceptions of the Sophianic school dependent on Soloviev, his universal and Christian philosophy.
T. was a good stylist and aesthete. Notable are some of his essays on art, especially on ancient Russian icons; valuable are his *Memoirs*, published posthumously, Sofia 1921, and *From the Past*, Vienna 1920.
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**SERGHEJ**, brother of the preceding, Russian national philosopher, publicist and politician. B. 23 July (4 Aug.) 1862 in the Moscow district, d. 29 Sept. (12 Oct.) 1905 in St Petersburg.
Of an ancient princely family, he underwent a religious crisis in his youth and for a short time was under the influence of positivists; then, through reading the Slavophiles, Dostoevskij and especially Soloviev (of whom he was a close friend), he returned to Christianity and to a religious metaphysics. He studied at the University of Moscow, specializing particularly in Kant, German idealists and mystics. He then taught the history of ancient philosophy. He was the first elected rector of the University of Moscow. During a trip abroad he came into contact with Harnack.
Especially in his doctoral thesis, *The Doctrine of the Logos in its History*, he gave an excellent exposition of Greek and Christian philosophy. He outlined his own system of concrete idealism, though critically inspired by Kant (and Hegel). Notable is his long article on the nature of human consciousness, which he conceived, drawing on the Slavophile idea of *sobornost’* and Soloviev’s idea of *theandrism*, as a communal idea.
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