Abstract
<jats:p>This article focuses on the critique of anti-metaphysical doctrines (positivism, empiriocriticism, and pragmatism) in Russian theological academies philosophy of the 19th – early 20th century. The authors reconstruct the main lines of this critique and demonstrate how it led to the development of an original epistemological model based on the recognition of the value of intuitive perceptions. The article reveals that Comte’s positivism, by reducing knowledge to the study of the laws of nature and excluding speculative philosophy, in fact leads to relativism and limits the possibility of addressing worldview questions. Empiriocriticism, in its attempt to reduce all knowledge to the data of experience, cannot provide knowledge of anything absolutely true. Pragmatism, for all its striving to overcome the «lifelessness» of philosophy, eliminates metaphysics, replacing it with one-sided psychologism and instrumentalism. In opposition to these currents, Russian theist philosophers argue for the possibility of metaphysical knowledge through an act of direct intuition, which is independent of external conditions and realized by the nature of self-consciousness. Faith, in their view, does not oppose knowledge but rather serves as a condition for the analysis of the realm of transcendental being, thus constituting the foundation of religious metaphysics.</jats:p>