Metafilozofia Władimira Erna

Vladimir Ern is often seen as a philosopher that focused mainly on defining the characteristic featuresof Russian philosophy. When his philosophical works are interpreted in such a way, the biggeststress is being put on the fact that he formulated a certain idea of national philosophy, which wasthen transformed by him into a kind of national ideology during the World War I. The article triesto show, that Ern should be treated first of all as an author who considered metaphilosophical issues(and that this fact distinguishes him from the majority of the philosophers of Russian religiousphilosophicalrenaissance, who were mainly interested in solving the metaphysical issues). He focusedon metaphilosophy because he was convinced, that philosophy is a field of the battle between twonotions of the essence of philosophical knowledge which exclude one another. Seen as such, hisphilosophy should be interpreted as an attempt to find a proper way in philosophy and to rejectthe wrong way. The authentic way, which gives a correct answer to the question concerning theessence of philosophical knowledge, was seen by him in Christian Platonism. He tried to show, thatin the works of Plato can be found a certain theory of the spiritual development of man, whichis at the same time a genuine epistemology that shows the way of true philosophical knowledge.