Nikolay Onufriyevich Lossky

Nikolay Onufriyevich Lossky (born Nov. 24 [Dec. 6, New Style], 1870, Kreslavka, near Vitebsk, Russia—died Jan. 24, 1965, Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, France) was a Russian intuitionist philosopher who studied the nature of cognition, causation, and morals. His philosophy was a compound of many influences, especially Leibnizian monadology and Bergsonian intuitionism.

Lossky graduated from the University of St. Petersburg, received a doctorate in 1907 under Wilhelm Wundt in Germany, and then taught at St. Petersburg until 1921. The following year he was exiled by the Soviet government for his religious beliefs. He taught at the Russian University in Prague for many years before becoming a professor at the University of Bratislava (1942–45). After World War II, in 1946, he emigrated to the United States to become professor at St. Vladimir Russian Orthodox Seminary in New York City (1947–50). His important works include Osnovnye ucheniya psikhologi s tochki zreniya volyuntarizma (1903; “The Fundamental Doctrines of Psychology from the Point of View of Voluntarism”), Obosnovaniye intuitivizma (1906; The Intuitive Basis of Knowledge), Mir kak organicheskoe tseloe (1917; The World as an Organic Whole), Chuvstvennaya intellektualnaya i misticheskaya intuitsiya (1938; “Sensory, Intellectual, and Mystical Intuition”), and Bog i mirovonye zlo (1941; “God and Cosmic Evil”).