Semën Liudvigovich Frank

Semyon Lyudvigovich Frank (28 January 1877 – 10 December 1950) was a Russian philosopher. Born into a Jewish family, he became an Orthodox Christian in 1912. In 1922 he was expelled from Soviet Russia and lived in Berlin. In 1933 he was replaced as head of the Russian Scientific Institute. In 1945, he moved to Britain. Frank was born in Moscow in a Jewish family. His father died when he was young, and he was raised by his maternal grandfather. He became interested in Marxism at secondary school and studied law at Moscow University. He found Marxist economic theories unsatisfactory and completed his studies in Berlin. He published a critique of Marx's theory of value in 1900. He later received his bachelor's degree at the University of Kazan, after which philosophy became his main focus. He contributed to collections criticizing materialism and positivism. In 1908, he married Tatyana Sergeevna Bartseva, with whom he had four children. He converted to Orthodox Christianity in 1912 and began lecturing at St Petersburg University. He wrote 'The Object of Knowledge' (1915) and 'Man's Soul' (1917). He was appointed dean of the arts faculty at the University of Saratov in 1917 and later took a chair in philosophy at Moscow University, joining Nikolai Berdyaev. In 1922, he was among intellectuals expelled from Soviet Russia on a 'philosophers' ship'. He settled in Berlin, then fled Nazi persecution, moving to Paris in 1937. He survived World War II by hiding near Grenoble. He moved to Britain in 1945 and died in London in 1950. His philosophy was based on ontological theory, emphasizing intuitive knowledge, the dynamic potential of existence, and the existence of free will.