Boris Petrovich Vysheslavtsev, the Russian philosopher and religious thinker, was born in Moscow. He studied at the University of Moscow under the Russian jurist and philosopher P. I. Novgorodtsev and later at the University of Marburg under the neo-Kantians Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp. Upon the publication in 1914 of his dissertation, Etika Fikhte (Fichte's ethics), he received a doctorate from the University of Moscow and in 1917 was made professor of philosophy at that institution. Expelled from the Soviet Union in 1922, he emigrated first to Berlin, then in 1924 to Paris, where he became a professor at the Orthodox Theological Institute and was associated with Nikolai Berdyaev in affairs of the Russian émigré press. Prior to World War II Vysheslavtsev was active in the ecumenical movement. From the time of the German occupation of France until his death he lived in Switzerland.

Vysheslavtsev's lifelong...