In Praise of Philosophy and Other Essays explores Lavelle, Bergson, and Socrates and provides themes from Merleau-Ponty lectures at the Collége de France including “The Problem of Speech” and “Nature and Logos: The Human Body.”  

Russian philosophy begins through the impregnation of the ancient Byzantine tradition of Old Russia by the Western thought of the French Enlightenment, and then by German Romanticism. The first original Russian philosopher, Gregory Skovoroda, the "Russian Socrates," was followed by the early philosophy of history and culture, Alexander Radishchev and Peter Chasadayev. The fateful break of Russian philosophiers into two opposed camps of the Slavophiles was accomplished by the middle of the nineteenth century.

The second half of the nineteenth century in Russian philosophy sees it more or less definitive triumph of Westernizing currents over the Slavophiles. There is no doubt that both Nihilism and Populism as successive schools of Russian philosophy, are the authentic progeny of the senior Westernizers—though in the development of their philosophical doctrine they owe much less to German Romanticism than to British utilitarianism, French positivism, and the socialism of left-wing Hegelians. Toward the end of the century these philosopher come increasingly under the influence of the scientific socialism of Karl Marx.