LOSSKY, NICHOLAS O

LOSSKY, NICHOLAS O., Russian philosopher, theologian, educator (6 December 1870-January 1965). He studied at the Imperial University of St. Petersburg and was professor of philosophy there until 1921. He was expelled from Russia by the Soviet government in 1922, whereupon he lived and taught philosophy in Prague until 1942. From 1942 to 1945 he was philosophy professor at Bratislava University in Czechoslovakia. He was professor of philosophy at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (q.v.) from 1948 and is the author of the first history of Russian philosophy to appear in English, A History of Russian Philosophy (1957). His own epistemological theory is called intuitivism and may be compared with Bergson’s. In his theological formulations, Lossky accepts the sophiology of Russian religious thinkers, but in a greatly modified form. He occupies himself with the Kingdom of God in his aesthetics (q.v.) and ethics, but is especially concerned with the task of working out a Christian metaphysics and interpretation of the world. His major works in English include The Foundations of Intuitism (1906), The World as an Organic Whole (1928), Value and Existence: God and the Kingdom of God as the Basis of Values (1931), Sensuores, Intellectual and Mystical Intuition (1938), and God and World Evil (1941), among others.