TRUBETSKOJ, EVGENIJ. — Russian national philosopher and politician, younger brother of Prince Serghej, born on 23 January (5 February) 1863 in Moscow, died on 23 September (5 October) 1919 in Novorossiysk. He was a professor at the University of Kiev and subsequently at that of Moscow. After the collapse of the ancien régime, he was associated with the White Army and attended, as a layman, the All-Russian Council of Moscow in 1917–18.
Like his elder brother, in his youth he passed through positivism and atheism, and returned to the faith through the study of the history of modern philosophy and the reading of Schopenhauer. In his professional activity he initially devoted himself to the philosophy of law. He wrote dissertations on historical subjects, namely on s. Agostino 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 strongly felt the influence of Soloviev, to whom he devoted his most extensive work, The Worldview of Vladimiro Soloviev, 2 vols., Moscow 1913. For the overcoming of 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 sketched, drawing especially upon Soloviev’s doctrine of divine Wisdom, though without accepting certain overly radical conceptions of the sophiologists dependent on Soloviev, his universal and Christian philosophy.
T. was a good stylist and aesthete. Some of his essays on art, especially on ancient Russian icons, are noteworthy; valuable are his Memoirs, published posthumously, Sofia 1921, and From the Past, Vienna 1920.
SERGHEJ, brother of the preceding, Russian national philosopher, publicist, and politician. Born on 23 July (4 August) 1862 in the district of Moscow, died on 29 September (12 October) 1905 in St Petersburg.
Of an ancient princely family, he underwent a religious crisis in his youth and was for a short time under the influence of the 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, devoting particular attention to Kant, the German idealists, and mystics. He subsequently taught there the history of ancient philosophy. He was the first elected rector of the University of Moscow. During a journey abroad he drew close to Harnack.
Especially in his doctoral dissertation, The Doctrine of the Logos in Its History, he offered an excellent exposition of Greek and Christian philosophy. He sketched his own system of concrete idealism, though drawing critically upon Kant (and Hegel). Noteworthy is his lengthy article on the nature of human consciousness, which he conceived, drawing inspiration from the Slavophile idea of «sobornost» and Soloviev’s idea of «theandrism», as a communitarian idea.