Background
He was the son of Prince Nikolai Petrovitch Troubetzkoy, co-founder of the Moscow Conservatory, and Sophia Alekseievna Lopouchina. His mother was a big influence on his religious thought.
He was the son of Prince Nikolai Petrovitch Troubetzkoy, co-founder of the Moscow Conservatory, and Sophia Alekseievna Lopouchina. His mother was a big influence on his religious thought.
In 1885 Troubetzkoy graduated from Moscow University. But he continued to work there until his death, lecturing in philosophy.
As a teenager South. North. Troubetzkoy was an adherent of the British Positivists, Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill. Later he became disappointed with both and turned to Schopenhauer. Study of his philosophy led Troubetzkoy to a conclusion that Schopenhauer"s pessimism was the result of denial of God.
Troubetzkoy himself described this dilemma the following way: "Either God exists or life is not worth living".
He became an Orthodox Christian, and also an adherent of the Slavophiles: his beliefs at that time were influenced by the writings of Aleksey Khomyakov. In 1890 Troubetzkoy became Professor of philosophy in Moscow University.
Later he played a significant role in the Russian liberal movement. In 1905 he was elected rector of Moscow University.
But he died just a month later, of brain hemorrhage.
South. North. Troubetzkoy"s brother, Evgenii Nikolaevitch (1863-1920), was also a philosopher and a Professor at Moscow University, who largely shared South. North. Troubetzkoy"s beliefs. Evgenii Troubetzkoy died of typhus in the Crimea while he was trying to emigrate. Working in the same field as Solovyov, Troubetzkoy sought to establish a philosophic foundation for an Orthodox Christian worldview, which would be equally rooted in faith and reason.
The religious beliefs of Troubetzkoy are sometimes defined as Christocentrism.
These views are set forth in Troubetzkoy"s work, The Teaching on Logos. His viewpoint differed both from the official doctrine of the Orthodox Church and from the beliefs of liberal intellectuals, who reduced the Christian faith to an egalitarian ethical system.
In 1890 he defended his Master"s thesis, "Metaphysics in Ancient Greece", in which he argued that the Holy Scripture and Christian theology largely stemmed directly from the idealistic philosophy of ancient Greece.
