Background
Shestov was born Lev Isaakovich Schwarzmann on February 12 1866 in Kiev into a Jewish family. His father, Isaak, was a Jewish merchant and committed Zionist who attended the synagogue, but was reputed to be a "freethinker. "
(This book (1929) constitutes a collection of Shestov's es...)
This book (1929) constitutes a collection of Shestov's essays on Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Blaise Pascal, Descartes, Plotinus and Spinoza written in the 1920's. Shestov's sharp gift for philosophical criticism finds here its best examples.
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(This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)
This book was digitized and reprinted from the collections of the University of California Libraries. It was produced from digital images created through the libraries mass digitization efforts. The digital images were cleaned and prepared for printing through automated processes. Despite the cleaning process, occasional flaws may still be present that were part of the original work itself, or introduced during digitization. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found online in the HathiTrust Digital Library at www.hathitrust.org.
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( For more than two thousand years, philosophers and theo...)
For more than two thousand years, philosophers and theologians have wrestled with the irreconcilable opposition between Greek rationality (Athens) and biblical revelation (Jerusalem). In Athens and Jersusalem, Lev Shestov??an inspiration for the French existentialists and the foremost interlocutor of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Martin Buber during the interwar years??makes the gripping confrontation between these symbolic poles of ancient wisdom his philosophical testament, an argumentative and stylistic tour de force. Although the Russian-born Shestov is little known in the Anglophone world today, his writings influenced many twentieth-century European thinkers, such as Albert Camus, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, Czes?aw Mi?osz, and Joseph Brodsky. Athens and Jerusalem is Shestovs final, groundbreaking work on the philosophy of religion from an existential perspective. This new, annotated edition of Bernard Martins classic translation adds references to the cited works as well as glosses of passages from the original Greek, Latin, German, and French. Athens and Jerusalem is Shestov at his most profound and most eloquent and is the clearest expression of his thought that shaped the evolution of continental philosophy and European literature in the twentieth century.
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Shestov was born Lev Isaakovich Schwarzmann on February 12 1866 in Kiev into a Jewish family. His father, Isaak, was a Jewish merchant and committed Zionist who attended the synagogue, but was reputed to be a "freethinker. "
As a youth Shestov was attracted to radical ideas, and it was involvement in political activities in his Kiev gymnasium which forced him to continue his studies at a Moscow school, from which he graduated in 1884. At Moscow University he first studied mathematics, but then transferred to law. His political views forced his transfer to Kiev University. He graduated in 1889, but his dissertation on worker laws was not approved for publication by the censors.
In 1898 he entered a circle of prominent Russian intellectuals and artists which included Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Diaghilev, Dmitri Merezhkovsky and Vasily Rozanov. Shestov contributed articles to a journal the circle had established. During this time he completed his first major philosophical work, Good in the Teaching of Tolstoy and Nietzsche: Philosophy and Preaching; two authors profoundly impacting Shestov's thought.
He developed his thinking in a second book on Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Frederich Nietzsche, which increased Shestov's reputation as an original and incisive thinker. In All Things Are Possible (published in 1905) Shestov adopted the aphoristic style of Friedrich Nietzsche to investigate the difference between Russian and European Literature. Although on the surface it is an exploration of numerous intellectual topics, at its base it is a sardonic work of Existentialist philosophy which both criticizes and satirizes our fundamental attitudes towards life situations. D. H. Lawrence, who wrote the Foreword to S. S. Koteliansky's literary translation of the work, summarized Shestov's philosophy with the words: " 'Everything is possible' - this is his really central cry. It is not nihilism. It is only a shaking free of the human psyche from old bonds. The positive central idea is that the human psyche, or soul, really believes in itself, and in nothing else". Shestov deals with key issues such as religion, rationalism, and science in this highly approachable work, topics he would also examine in later writings such as In Job's Balances.
Shestov's works were not met with approval even by some of his closest Russian friends. Many saw in Shestov's work a renunciation of reason and metaphysics, and even an espousal of nihilism. Nevertheless, he would find admirers in such writers as D. H. Lawrence and his friend Georges Bataille.
In 1908 Shestov moved to Freiburg, Germany, and he stayed there until 1910, when he moved to a small Swiss village named Coppet. During this time the author worked prolifically. One of the fruits of these labours was the publication of Great Vigils and Penultimate Words. He returned to Moscow in 1915, and in this year his son Sergei died in combat against the Germans. During the Moscow period, his work became more influenced by matters of religion and theology. The seizure of government by the Bolsheviks in 1917 made life difficult for Shestov, and the Marxists pressured him to write a defence of Marxist doctrine as an introduction to his new work, Potestas Clavium; otherwise it would not be published. Shestov refused this, yet with the permission of the authorities he lectured at the University of Kiev on Greek philosophy.
Shestov's dislike of the Soviet regime led him to undertake a long journey out of Russia, and he eventually ended up in France. The author was a popular figure in France, where his originality was quickly recognized. In Paris, he soon befriended, and much influenced, the young Georges Bataille. That this Russian was newly appreciated is attested by his having been asked to contribute to a prestigious French philosophy journal. In the interwar years, Shestov continued to develop into a thinker of great prominence. During this time he had become totally immersed in the study of such great theologians as Blaise Pascal and Plotinus, whilst at the same time lecturing at the Sorbonne in 1925. In 1926 he was introduced to Edmund Husserl, with whom he maintained a cordial relationship despite radical differences in their philosophical outlook. In 1929, during a return to Freiburg he met with Edmund Husserl, and was urged to study Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.
The discovery of Kierkegaard prompted Shestov to realise that his philosophy shared great similarities, such as his rejection of idealism, and his belief that man can gain ultimate knowledge through ungrounded subjective thought rather than objective reason and verifiability. However, Shestov maintained that Kierkegaard did not pursue this line of thought far enough, and proceeded to continue where he thought the Dane left off. The results of this tendency are seen in his work Kierkegaard and Existential Philosophy: Vox Clamantis in Deserto, published in 1936, a fundamental work of Christian existentialism
Despite his weakening condition Shestov continued to write at a quick pace, and finally completed his magnum opus, Athens and Jerusalem. This work examines the dichotomy between freedom and reason, and argues that reason be rejected in the discipline of philosophy. Furthermore, it adumbrates the means by which the scientific method has made philosophy and science irreconcilable, since science concerns itself with empirical observation, whereas (so Shestov argues) philosophy must be concerned with freedom, God and immortality, issues that cannot be solved by science.
In 1938, Shestov contracted a serious illness whilst at his vacation home. During this final period, he continued his studies, concentrating in particular on Indian philosophy as well as the works of his contemporary Edmund Husserl, who had died recently. Shestov himself died at a clinic in 1938 in Paris.
( For more than two thousand years, philosophers and theo...)
(This book (1929) constitutes a collection of Shestov's es...)
(This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)
(Book by Shestov, Lev)
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Although Shestov believed in God, he maintained that there is no such thing as fate or the divine will. Man's aim in life is to fight this illusion, to continuously assert his subjective ever-changing self. It is this struggle to overcome certainty and inevitability that defines existentialism, as expounded in Kierkegaard and the Existential Philosophy (1934).
He wrote: "But why attribute to God, the God whom neither time nor space limits, the same respect and love for order? If God loves men, what need has He to subordinate men to His divine will and to deprive them of their own will, the most precious of the things He has bestowed upon them?"
Disgusted with the Bolshevik regime, in 1920 Shestov left Russia with his wife and children and settled in Paris.
Quotations: Shestov's own key quote from this work is probably the following: ". .. we need to think that only one assertion has or can have any objective reality: that nothing on earth is impossible. Every time someone wants to force us to admit that there are other, more limited and limiting truths, we must resist with every means we can lay hands on".
Shestov was selected for membership in the Kant and Nietzsche societies.
In 1895 Shestov suffered a complete physical and mental breakdown. It is likely that the crisis was primarily caused by the tremendous tension caused by being caught between a strong-willed, authoritarian father and his romantic involvements with Russian Orthodox women, marriage to whom his father would never approve.
Attempting to regain his health, Shestov traveled to Europe in the spring of 1896.
Early the next year, he met a bright, young Russian medical student in Rome, Anna Berezovskaia, who helped nurse him back to health and who eventually became his wife. They had two children, Tatiana (1897) and Nathalie (1900).