Count Hermann Keyserling was one of the first European thinkers who sought to establish in intellectual everyday life the idea of a planetary culture that went beyond any nationalism and cultural ethnocentrism. In 1911, he undertook a long trip around the world, the experience of which formed the basis of his literary work, which later became known as “The Travel Diary of a Philosopher.”

From the title itself, one can already understand that the speech in Keyserling’s work is not so much about the curiosity that drives every traveler and the desire to see a wide horizon of phenomena, but about the metaphor of such curiosity - about transferring it to the spiritual, intellectual plane, where the main role is no longer played by the breadth of one’s horizons, but by the depth in understanding what one sees, insight in comprehending the original features of various cultures and civilizations and that common, universal thing that always stands out for their particular boundaries, constituting the very concept of one human race. The final goal of such an intellectual journey, of course, cannot be anything other than a return to oneself, in achieving that ultimate knowledge of oneself, which in the language of philosophy has long been called “wisdom.”

The publication of Keyserling's fascinating descriptions of the journey of the human soul through the kingdom of light, during which step by step it discovers and recognizes itself and its status in this world, will be another contribution to that richly experienced section of the universal Library in which human confessions and diaries.

Travel diary of a philosopher. St. Petersburg: Vladimir Dal, 2010