The article is devoted to the key issue of slavophile essays of 1830-1850s, to the question of the integrity of the human knowledge, integrity of life itself. In the centre of authors attention is the controversy between the founders of slavophilism I. Kireyevsky and A. Khomyakov. Started in 1839, the exchange of the polemic epistles, the dispute went on and on. Both publicists try to reconcile the reason and faith, scientifi c and intuitive knowledge. In the view of both authors integrity is connected with the synthesis, but it is understood in different ways. Explaining their views, they turn to the ancient Russia and in its life to fi nd confi rmation of their words. The uniqueness of the Russian, eastern education they see in the absence of conquest, a special way of life, the orthodox faith. Since Russia hadnt experienced the infl uence of Greco-Roman world, it maintained the innermost meaning of the life, the integrity of the spiritual and social life. The article reveals the slavophile idea of true enlightenment, based on the joining, the integrity of the spiritual and the material beginning, scientifi c and intuitive knowledge. Basing on the analysis of slavophile essays, the author concludes that the synthesis, to which strived the slavophiles, supposed the double knowledge of the world - the logical, scientifi c knowledge, and the knowledge based on imagination, intuition.