Lodii, Petro

Lodii, Petro [Лодій, Петро; Lodij], b 15 May 1764 in Zboi, in the Prešov region, d 22 June 1829 in Saint Petersburg. Philosopher, jurist, and educator. After studying philosophy in Nagyvárad (now Oradea, Romania) and theology in Uzhhorod and Lviv, he taught philosophy, mathematics, and law at the Studium Ruthenum in Lviv (1787–1802), served as dean of its philosophy faculty (1797), taught at Cracow University(1803), and held the chair of philosophy and law at the Saint Petersburg Pedagogical Institute (1804–19) and its offspring, Saint Petersburg University (1819–29). He also lectured at other higher schools in Saint Petersburg and was principal of the Saint Petersburg Commercial School (1819–25) and dean of the university’s philosophy and law faculty (1819–25). Lodii’s translation of a part of Friedrich Christian Baumeister’s Elementa Philosophiae dealing with practical philosophy (1790) is important for the development of Ukrainian philosophical terminology. Lodii wrote one of the best Russian logic textbooks of his time (1815); it provides an introduction not only to logic but to philosophy in general and is one of the first attempts in the Russian Empire to refute Immanuel Kant’s system. Embracing deism in theology and realism in epistemology, Lodii followed Christian Wolff on most philosophical issues. His contribution to practical philosophy consists of Teoriia obshchikh prav (A Theory of Universal Laws, 1828).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]