One of the features of Russian empirio-criticism is an attempt to use the concept of "life" as a fundamental philosophical category that allows you to substantiate a cognitive access to reality. The paper analyzes the "philosophy of life" presented in the article by S. Suvorov, which opens the collection "Essays on a Realistic Worldview" (1905), and concludes that the problems of life are characteristic of the second positivism in Russia as a whole.