According to l Shestov, man originated from. Lev Shestov: biography life ideas philosophy: shestov
Lev Shestov: irrationalism and existential thinking. L. Shestov's contemporaries invariably noted his original mindset and brilliant literary talent. The talent of a loner who did not join either the Westerners, or the Slavophiles, or the church believers, or the metaphysicians. In life, he invariably remained both “remotely smart” (V.V. Rozanov) and “bottomless-hearted” (A.M. Remizov).
L. Shestov (this is a literary pseudonym, his real name is Lev Isaakovich Shvartsman) was born on January 31, 1866 in Kyiv, in the family of a large manufacturing merchant. He studied at the Kyiv Gymnasium, then at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University, from which he transferred to the Faculty of Law of Kyiv University. He graduated from it in 1889. Shestov's first book, Shakespeare and His Critic Brandeis, was published in 1898. Followed by “Good in the teachings of gr. Tolstoy and F. Nietzsche” (1900), “Dostoevsky and Nietzsche” (1900) and “The Apotheosis of Groundlessness” (1905). October 1917 L. Shestov does not accept and in 1919 becomes an emigrant. The most significant works of Shestov were published in exile: “The Power of the Keys”, “On the Scales of Job (Wanderings to the Souls)”, “Kirkegaard and Existential Philosophy (The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness)”, “Athens and Jerusalem”, etc. L. Shestov died in Paris November 19, 1938.
The origins of Shestov's philosophical comprehension should be sought in the great Russian literature of the nineteenth century. Shestova characterizes concentrated attention to the “small”, often “superfluous” person; situations - deeply significant (later they will be called borderline); tragedy of historical existence, and in connection with this - an increased interest in the revelations of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, the revelations of Russian literature. The influence of the spiritual field of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche is undeniable. Shestov himself, in an article dedicated to the memory of Husserl, writes: “... Shakespeare was my first teacher of philosophy. From him I heard so mysterious and incomprehensible, and at the same time so formidable and disturbing: time has gone out of its rut ... ”.
Fame for L. Shestov was brought not so much by his first books (“Shakespeare and his critic Brandes”, “Good in the teaching of Count Tolstoy and F. Nietzsche”, “Dostoevsky and Nietzsche”), but by his “Apotheosis of groundlessness (Experience of adogmatic thinking)” - a book of “aphorisms, outrageous and cynical for the mind, which is not fed with porridge, but give a “system”, “lofty idea”, etc. (Remizov). Shestov's irony about various philosophical systems confused the reader. It was an outrageous notoriety.
Most of Shestov's ideological heritage is captured in the form of philosophical essays - "wanderings through the souls" of his favorite thinkers and heroes - Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Socrates, Abraham, Job, Pascal, later Kierkegaard. He writes about Plato and Plotinus, Augustine and Spinoza, Kant and Hegel; argues with Berdyaev and Husserl (personal friendship connected Shestova with both of them). He "philosophized with all his being," - this is how N. Berdyaev will say about him.
“To teach a person to live in the unknown...” One of the main problems for Shestov is the problem of philosophy. Already in “Apotheosis...” he defined his vision of the tasks of philosophy: “To teach a person to live in the unknown...”, - a person who is most afraid of the unknown and hides from it behind various dogmas.
However, in certain circumstances, every person feels in himself a tremendous desire to comprehend the fate and purpose of his own existence, as well as the existence of the entire universe. The appeal of a particular person to life-sense and world-sense problems, to “beginnings” and “ends” leaves a person face to face with “damned” questions: the meaning of life, death, nature, God. In such circumstances, people turn to philosophy for answers to questions that torment them. “... In literature,” ironically Shestov, “since ancient times, a large and diverse stock of all kinds of general ideas and worldviews, metaphysical and positive, has been prepared, which teachers begin to recall whenever too demanding and restless human voices begin to be heard” .
These existing worldviews turn into a dungeon of a searching spirit, because in these stocks of ideas and worldviews "philosophers strive to 'explain' the world so that everything becomes visible, transparent, so that there is nothing in life or there would be as little as possible problematic and mysterious." Shestov doubts the usefulness of such explanations. “Shouldn't it be necessary,” he says, “on the contrary, to strive to show that even where everything seems clear and understandable to people, everything is extraordinarily mysterious and mysterious? To liberate ourselves and others from the power (our italics. E. V) of concepts that kill the mystery with their certainty. After all, the origins, beginnings, roots of being are not in what is revealed, but in what is hidden: Deus est Deus absconditus (God is a hidden God).
That is why, Shestov believes, when “they say that intuition is the only way to comprehend the ultimate truth”, it is difficult to agree with this. “Intuition comes from the word intueri - to look... But one must be able not only to see, one must also be able to hear... For the main thing, the most necessary thing, cannot be seen: one can only hear. The secrets of life are silently whispered only to those who know how, when necessary, to turn to the ear.”
And he sees the task of philosophy not in reassuring, but in embarrassing people.
Such assumptions in the spirit of the absurd pursue completely human goals: to show the openness, “non-guaranteedness” of any existence, including the existence of people, to help find the truth where it is usually not sought. “... Philosophy is the doctrine of truths that are not obligatory for anyone.” Speaking against classical metaphysics, more precisely, against metaphysical reason, Shestov calls to recognize the reality of the incomprehensible, irrational, absurd, which does not fit into reason and knowledge, and contradicts them; rebelling against logic, against everything that makes up the familiar, habitable world, imperceptibly and inevitably idealized, and therefore false, deceptive - the world of human existence. The illusions of this world are carefully rationalized so that they look solid, stable, but this is only until the reality of the unforeseen arises. As soon as the reality of the unforeseen, catastrophic and unconscious declares itself, all this habitation and routine suddenly turns out to be the crater of an awakened volcano.
"Faith calls everything to its judgment." Shestov does not accept traditional metaphysics and theology. In the period from 1895 until about 1911, a radical anthropocentric turn to the philosophy of life and the search for God takes place in his views. And this is not about the Christian God (for him, the God of goodness is a god with a small letter), but about the God of the Old Testament. In his judgments about God, L. Shestov was restrained and did not really hesitate to admit the existence of God, rather, he hesitated to say anything affirmative about him. Here are the words that are quite typical for Shestov; they, in fact, begin his large work, already published in exile, “The Power of the Keys” (Berlin, 1923): “Did at least one philosopher recognize God? Except for Plato, who recognized God only halfway, everyone else was looking only for wisdom... Of course, from the fact that a person is dying, or even from the fact that states, peoples, even high ideals are dying, it does not “follow” that there is an omnipotent, omnipotent, omniscient Being, to whom one can turn with prayer and hope. But if it followed, then there would be no need for faith; one could confine oneself to one science, which includes all “shoulds” and “shoulds”.
Let us pay attention to how Shestov, speaking about the destructive processes of reality, is concerned about their incompatibility with the all-good, omnipotent, omniscient Being, but it is precisely from the desire to overcome this incompatibility that, from the point of view of Shestov, the need for faith arises. “And yet people cannot and do not want to stop thinking about God. They believe, they doubt, they completely lose faith, then they start believing again.”
“Doubt...”! From these doubts arise arguments “about an all-perfect being” - “we talk willingly” about him, “we are used to this concept” and even “we sincerely think that it has a definite, identical meaning for everyone.” Shestov invites the reader to reveal the concept of an “all-perfect being” through some of the features that can first of all be named when solving problems of this kind. First of all, there is the certainty of two signs - omniscience and omnipotence. “Is omniscience really a sign of the most perfect being? Shestov asks and immediately gives a negative answer, explaining at the same time: “Foresee everything, always understand everything - what could be more boring and hateful than this? “An all-perfect being must not be all-knowing! To know a lot is good, to know everything is terrible.” With omnipotence, Shestov believes, the same thing. “He who can do everything needs nothing.”
And the third sign, often called the sign of eternal rest, Shestov also finds no better than those already analyzed. So what are people guided by, ascribing certain qualities to a perfect being? Shestov's answer is quite definite - “they are guided not by the interests of this creature, but by their own. They, of course, need the supreme being to be omniscient - then he can be entrusted with his fate without fear. And it is good that it be omnipotent: it will help out of any trouble. And to be calm, impassive, etc. ".
Anticipating possible objections and even reproaches of narrow-mindedness, inability to understand the “sublime beauty” of omniscience, omnipotence, undisturbed peace, Shestov reasonably adds to what has been said above: “But those who admire these heights, they are not people, or something, and not limited? Is it not possible to object to them that, due to their limitations, they invented their own perfect being and rejoice at their invention? ". As for Shestov himself, his God is primarily a “hidden” God, unknown and powerful enough to be the way he wants, “and not the way human wisdom would make him if her words were turned into deeds .. . "
Shestov's judgments about God most of all correspond to the Old Testament ideas about an unknown being that inspires not so much hope as horror and fear. The God of the Old Testament is “higher than compassion, higher than good.” And from man “God requires the impossible. God only asks for the impossible.”
The secrets of biblical faith became decisive for him in the book "Sola fide - Only by faith." “Faith calls everything to its judgment,” Shestov asserts in another of his books, Kierkegaard and Existential Philosophy. For "faith is ... a new dimension of thinking, opening the way to the Creator."
Faith is not this-worldly, but other-worldly, it is where there is already madness, the original Divine freedom and the transition from the visible to the invisible world. “Only on the wings of faith can one fly over all the “stone walls...”.
It is an absolutely unreasonable and groundless personal meeting with God of a person chosen by him, which opens up “impossible” possibilities. Any theological rationalism Shestov resolutely rejects. "Faith not only cannot, it does not want to turn into knowledge."
“So, when the truth that comes from faith is converted by us or comprehended as self-evident truth, this should be seen as an indication that we have lost it.”
Athens and Jerusalem. Or or. Faith or reason... This opposition is not uncommon in philosophy. In the most pronounced form, it was revealed by Kierkegaard, to whose reading Lev Shestov was prompted by Edmund Husserl (Shestov and Husserl had a friendship based on mutual respect since 1928, despite the fact that their understanding of philosophy was at opposite poles). It was a surprise for Shestov to learn that Kierkegaard saw the source of philosophy not in surprise, as the ancients thought, but in despair, and that he contrasted Job with Plato and Hegel. It was from Kierkegaard that Shestov borrowed the expression "existential philosophy", applied to his own reflections, in order to distinguish them from speculative philosophy.
In Shestov's philosophy we encounter not so much opposition as denial of the truths of reason. The world of "laws of nature," he says, "is a nightmare from which we should wake up. Shestov contrasts Athens and Jerusalem, the Hellenic and Biblical principles of European thought, the eternal truths in ancient philosophy and the sphere of revelation. The meaning of the opposition: the untruth of the mind is not in what it essentially possesses, but in the fact that in the renunciation of freedom (and the root of this renunciation, according to Shestov, in the ethical sphere), a person is oriented in the mind not to his creative insights, but to immutability and necessity. And the painfulness of the situation lies in the fact that the mind leaves a person alone with his worries and anxieties.
Reason disappoints Shestov primarily because it does not give a person reconciliation with reality, with a world in which life is “a meaningless, desperate cry or insane sobbing.” Reason does not know the “mystery of the eternal” - death, this is “the most incomprehensible”, the most “unnatural of all that we observe in the world”. And trying to calm a person, the mind only deceives him, leads him away from reality. It is painful for Shestov to realize that “on the scales of Job, human sorrow turns out to be heavier than the sand of the sea,” that “the groans of the perishing reject the evidence.”
One should not think that Shestov's attacks on reason lead him to cognitive skepticism. Everything can be known, and knowledge can be unlimited. However, in a certain, one might say existential, sense, they turn out to be unnecessary. One after another, we see pictures of the dying of Ivan Ilyich, the torment of the “underground” man Dostoevsky, the revelations of the frantic Plotinus, the cries of Job - through death, catastrophes and penal servitude, a certain initial delusion of man is highlighted. What is it connected with?
To clarify this issue, Shestov, following Kierkegaard, turns to the Fall. Is it for him? the result of a kind of fright, fright before nothingness. The tempting serpent is the mind itself, instilling in man distrust of divine freedom and wishing to take the place of God. Reason offers man its “reliable necessity” and guarantees of rightness in distinguishing between good and evil, but how many times has reason deceived us.
Nevertheless, man prefers the security of reason to the mysterious, unsecured, paradoxical freedom of belief. And people do not need God, but guarantees. Whoever is able to “give” or create the illusion of these guarantees will become God for them. (Motives of this kind were clarified by F.M. Dostoevsky. Perceiving sharply the correlation of freedom and necessity, inspired by reason and “self-evidence”, L. Shestov could not help but dwell on this topic). The book “On the Scales of Job” includes the part “What is Truth. On Ethics and Ontology”, where Shestov reproduces the story of the “murder” of God by both the Hellenic sages and Spinoza... The place of God is occupied by necessity, which, they say, opposes the religious wisdom of the ancients and those who, like Job and depths of despair, not to eternal reason, but to a personal God.
The search for truth where it is not usually sought. Shestov notes that the entire history of philosophy is the history of the search for truth, and this same history reveals that “for man, the search for truth has always been the pursuit of generally binding judgments. It was not enough for a man to possess the truth. He wanted something else ... so that his truth would be the truth "for everyone."
Shestov says that the deepest and most daring philosophers, both among the ancient Greeks and among us, “still remained naive realists in their methodological methods and proceeded from the assumption that truth is adaequatio rei et intellectus” (the correspondence of a thing and intellect. - E. IN). He gives an Aristotelian definition: “... To say what is, about what is, and to say what is not, about what is not, means to affirm the truth ...”. For the needs of a sane layman and for the needs of a scientific researcher (which, according to Shestov, do not differ from each other in this respect), this definition is sufficient. Inherited this position from science and philosophy. But just the philosopher cannot follow his truths to those places “where the mathematician learns that the sum of the angles in a triangle is equal to two straight lines”. Truth as authenticity, as human truth, is opposed to the truths of science, morality and human communication. It has nothing to do with logical truths and judgments.
It is not born in a dispute either. "Truth comes into life without presenting any supporting documents to anyone." “Truth does not need any grounds - can it not carry itself! The last truth, what philosophy is looking for, what is most important for living people, comes “suddenly”. It is like a miracle, a mystery. “Truth is like a treasure, it is not given into hands ... We are worried, we are tormented, we strive for the truth, but the truth needs something from us. She, apparently, is also vigilantly watching us and looking for us, as we are for her ... ”.
The search for “living”, “real”, “ultimate” truth, both in antiquity and in our time, has more than once led to a loss of confidence in reason (Plotin, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky), and yet rationalism with all its “arguments from consequences” is not it is given to drown out the vague feeling that lives in people that the last truth, that truth that our forefathers so unsuccessfully sought in paradise, lies on the other side of reason and is comprehensible by reason, and that it can be found in that dead and motionless world in which rationalism alone can rule , impossible. Truth in its originality is transcendent, it is identical with revelation, it is God. “To see the truth, one needs not only a keen eye, resourcefulness, vigilance, etc., but one needs the ability for the greatest self-denial” and readiness for a miracle.
According to Shestov, miracle and mystery are the fundamental qualities of being. Every being is a miracle, since it meets all the requirements of the latter. “Our mind, having learned so many absurdities in childhood, has lost the ability to defend itself and accepts everything except what it was warned against from childhood: that is, from a miraculous, in other words, action without a reason ... What, for example, understands modern man in the words "natural development of the world"? Forget your “school” for a moment, and immediately be convinced that the development of the world is terribly unnatural: it would be natural if there was nothing - neither peace nor development.
Tragedies will not be banished from life by any social restructuring... Shestov's existential philosophy with the new, above-mentioned dimension of truth is tuned not to "understanding", but to "life" ("the righteous will live by faith"). Life was experienced by him as “freedom of individual existence”, as a miracle, as a “creative mystery” and unlimited possibility. When Shestov wanted to emphasize that he was talking about real realities, he used the expressions "living truth", "living being", "living person" - in contrast to the philosophers' favorite "man in general". Spinoza's advice seems terrible to Shestov: "Don't laugh, don't cry, don't hate, but understand...". On the contrary, says Shestov, a person would have to shout, yell, laugh, mock, protest. Again he mentions the biblical Job, who, to the great indignation of his wise friends, groaned and wailed.
To Shestov, any peace of mind is suspicious, for the earth on which we live does not in the least favor this. He loved those who, like Pascal, "seek, groaning." Referring again and again to the category of “life”, each time he emphasizes that life is creativity, unpredictability and freedom. Even death (and the theme of death is practically present in all his works) is considered by him in the context of the transition of the individual from one order of the world to another. Death is directly related to human existence. "Death is the most unnatural, mysterious and enigmatic of everything that happens around us." Death has its own truths, its own evidence, its own possibilities and impossibilities.
Shestov's reflections on death are associated with the concepts of fear, horror and loneliness. In the "Revelations of Death" he writes: "In order for there to be great delight, great horror is needed ...". In the chapter "At the Last Judgment" Shestov reflects on the last works of L. Tolstoy. He believes that Tolstoy was given to hear and understand the mysterious language of death. This refers to Tolstoy's stories "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", "The Master and the Worker". “Death cuts all the invisible threads by which we are connected on earth with our own kind. And absolute loneliness, which is fuller neither at the bottom of the sea, nor underground, - loneliness that cannot be endured ... ”. “The last law on earth is loneliness,” Shestov writes in Apotheosis....
But there is still routine and chance; everyday life and violence are perhaps the main features of reality. Dostoevsky's "underground" man is pathetic, but a "normal man," that is, a man living in the same underground, only unaware that the underground is an underground, and convinced that his life is a real, higher life..., such a person even in the "underground" hero causes Homeric laughter.
And Dostoevsky's heroes are not alone! The terrible cry of Gogol: “It is boring to live in this world, gentlemen! - refers, Shestov believes, not to the worst of us (the Chichikovs, Nozdrevs, Sobakevichs, etc.). It's about the best. They are “living automata, wound up by a mysterious hand and not daring anywhere and in anything to show their own initiative, their personal will. Some, very few, feel that their life is not life, but death.”
The heroes of Tolstoy “leave” life at the behest of a terrifying insidious accident. Happening? not yet a borderline situation, this is a kind of routine. Shestov is interested in his meaninglessness and mass character. This is a trifle of a special kind - stupid, illogical - but it puts a person on the border of being in the world. When “chance” brings us to the abyss, when, after many years of a carefree, calm life, suddenly, like in Hamlet, some formidable rises before us, hitherto not even possible “to be or not to be,” it begins to seem that what something new, mysterious - maybe a beneficent, maybe a hostile force directs and determines our actions. Randomness is what deprives life of any objective meaning.
Each of us is forever hidden from prying eyes in an absolutely impenetrable shell of our body. “Nature,” says Shestov, “arranged it so that one person does not notice at all, does not even dare to know another.” And the being itself, called I, what can it know about itself and desire? For the Self, which directly perceives itself, are “judgments based on purely external signs” really so important - kind, quick-tempered, gifted, etc.? Of course, as a cosmic and social being, he is "obliged" to apply them when confronted with a world that follows its own laws, with a world of necessity; but don't they burden and disfigure him?
“The main feature of every person is impermanence, and he values \u200b\u200bthe privilege of impermanence most of all: impermanence is life and freedom.” However, this inconstancy irritates others, and for the ego itself it turns out dangerous property how dangerous it turned out, contrary to the advice of the ancients, and the commandment “Know thyself”. Before our forefathers violated the commandment forbidding a person to eat the fruits of the tree of knowledge, were they ashamed of their nakedness? “... They admired her, not 'judged' her. Their existence was not subject to external judgment, they generally did not judge themselves, and no one judged them. And then there was no nudity, but there was beauty. But “know thyself” came, and the “judgment” began. “It is clear,” Shestov emphasizes, “that the rule “know thyself” is a human rule. Its meaning is that everyone appreciates and measures himself in the same way as he is valued and measured by the people around him.
Shestov is sad to realize that I am very fragile compared to the force that is outside, but Shestov is even more disturbed by the fact that, getting used to dealing only with his image, “how it is reflected on the surface of being”, a person “has forgotten how to see his essence” . Moreover, what is “inside” gradually loses its inherent properties. And a person gets used to “know” about himself only what others know. But if he wanted and was able to look at his real I, then “his real I would seem to him ugly, and meaningless, and insanely terrible,” because it would turn out to be “inconsistent with and not like anything from that what we generally consider proper and legal.” And it is possible that from this real (essential) I he would have rushed to the “appearing”: with him, at least, it’s calmer, because “before the unjust and selfish judgment of others” it “still not so mercilessly exposed as our real I".
“Necessity” besieges the Self both “outside” and “inside”, despite this, a person wants to be (emphasis added by the authors) and does not want to “hide and hide anything, as we have to do now”. A person truly begins when he rises against the ordinary and necessity, when he appears in the audacity of freedom and creativity. Creativity, Shestov believes, is a universal characteristic of the true world, it is discontinuity, it is a leap, as a result of which the unprecedented, the unknown is born “out of nothing”. But creativity is also unprecedented torment mixed with unprecedented delight. In creativity, human existence appears as a beginning that has no end, as an openness to infinity, as an infinite possibility and the possibility of infinity...
We have shared only a small fraction of Shestov's philosophical reflections. This could complete this section. But one cannot ignore the resonance that these reflections had among contemporaries - sometimes followers, and more often opponents of Shestov. It was the latter who called him "anti-philosopher". Those who were inclined to see in Shestov a kind of philosophical “prophet” of the coming century called his philosophy differently: philosophical impressionism, perhaps for aphorism and understatement of judgments (from impression fr. `impression "); more often - existentialism. To Shestov himself was inclined to the latter name after coming into contact with the philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard.
Albert Camus calls Shestov, along with Kierkegaard, the protagonist of paradox and absurdity. In his work “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Camus defines the difference between the position of his Parisian contemporaries and Shestov’s: “For Shestov, reason is barren, but there is something higher than reason. For the man of the absurd, reason is barren and there is nothing higher than reason.” A special opinion about the fact that Shestov himself (and some of his friends) brought his constructions closer to existential philosophy was expressed by Fr. Vasily Zenkovsky is the author of a two-volume work on the history of Russian philosophy: “... Regarding this very dubious “compliment” to Shestov, it must be said that, with the deduction of several motives, Shestov’s work goes completely away from “existentialism” (in both of its forms - atheistic and religious). In essence, Shestov is a religious thinker, he is not at all anthropocentric, but theocentric ... ”.
Lev Shestov is the pseudonym of Lev Isaakovich Shvartsman (1866-1938). Like many other famous Russian thinkers, he did not accept the October Revolution and in 1919 emigrated to Europe.
The tasks of philosophy. Shestov saw the task of philosophy in "teaching a person to live in the unknown." He believed that a person is most afraid of the unknown and hides from it behind various dogmas. Therefore, philosophy should not reassure, but confuse people. It is necessary for a person in order to find answers to "damned questions." By these we mean the questions of the meaning of life, the essence of death, the existence of God and being with God, “what is my destiny?”, “what is my destiny?”. In philosophy and literature, many ready-made answers to such questions have accumulated. But Shestov believed that the adoption of any particular worldview-answer is a "dungeon of the seeking spirit." Any system tries to explain the world in such a way that everything in life becomes clear and understandable. Shestov doubted the usefulness of such explanations. He believed that nothing could be clear and understandable. Everything is extraordinarily mysterious and mysterious in the world.
The reality of the incomprehensible. Shestov opposed traditional philosophy. There is only one reality - the reality of the incomprehensible, absurd, irrational, which does not fit into reason and knowledge, contradicts them, rebels against logic, against everything that makes up the familiar world. Our world is idealized
Section VIII Russian Philosophy
van us, and therefore ideas about him are false and deceptive. These illusions seem to us strong and stable. But at any moment an unforeseen reality may emerge. Since the reality we have created is illusory, then the newly emerged reality can lead to a catastrophe of the usual life.
Shestov's thoughts turned out to be prophetic: the suddenly emerging reality of the post-communist world on the ruins of the USSR turned out to be a real tragedy for many of his former citizens.
Shestov denied the truths of reason. He was disappointed in reason, because it does not give a person reconciliation with reality and knows nothing about such an eternal mystery as death. The mind tries to calm a person, but only by deception, leading him away from reality. And yet man prefers the "reliability" of reason to the mysterious and paradoxical freedom of belief. People do not need God, but guarantees. Whoever is able to create the illusion of these guarantees will become God for them.
The search for truth. Shestov believed that the entire history of philosophy is the history of the search for truth. At the same time, it is not enough for this or that thinker to simply possess the truth, he definitely needs it to be the truth “for everyone”. At the same time, Shestov was sure that the true truth cannot be deduced with the help of logic and, therefore, is opposite to the truths of science and human morality.
True does not belong to the world it is transcendent, akin to a miracle and is on the other side of the mind. Truth is God. Miracle and mystery are the fundamental qualities of being, and every being is already a miracle. Shestov believes that children are taught incorrectly from childhood, refuting the miracle: “What, for example, does modern man understand in the words “natural development of the world”? Forget the "school" for a minute, and immediately see that the development of the world is terribly unnatural: it would be natural if there was nothing - neither peace nor development.
Existential philosophy of Shestov. Existential philosophy Shestov developed in the later period of his work under the influence of the works of S. Kierkegaard. In Shestov's view, life is creativity, unpredictability and freedom. Life is a miracle with unlimited possibilities. "Alive" is the true, real reality, everything that is opposite to peace.
Death is directly related to human existence. It is necessary for "revival" life, because "for there to be great delight, great horror is needed." Shestov considered inconstancy to be one of the main features of individual human existence, although it irritates the people around the person (in essence, they are also unstable). However, it is with him that the concepts
Topic 28 Features of Russian philosophy at the end of the 20th century - the middle of the 20th century
true life and freedom. They allow a person to rebel against routine and necessity, allow his creativity. Only in this case does a person truly begin.
Creativity, according to Shestov, is universal characteristic of the true world, discontinuity, a leap, as a result of which an unprecedented, unknown is born from nothing. In creativity, human existence appears as a beginning that has no end.
Briefly and clearly about philosophy: the main and basic about philosophy and philosophers
Philosophy of L. Shestov
Lev Shestov (Shvartsman) (1866-1938) was a philosopher for whom philosophy was not just an academic specialty, but a matter of life and death. He was single. Striking was his independence from the surrounding currents of time. He was looking for God, looking for the liberation of man from the power of necessity. His philosophy belonged to the type of existential philosophy, that is, it did not objectify the process of cognition, did not tear it away from the subject of cognition, connected it with the integral destiny of man. This type of philosophy assumed that the mystery of being is comprehensible only in human existence. For Lev Shestov, the source of philosophy was human tragedy, the horrors and suffering of human life, the experience of hopelessness. Shestov called his philosophy "the philosophy of tragedy."
The thinker puts forward the thesis about the fundamental incompatibility of philosophy and science. In philosophy, the starting point should be a person, questions about the place and purpose of a person in the world, about his rights and role in the Universe. And objective science cannot solve the problems facing man, since man is generally inaccessible to scientific knowledge as such. Philosophy, he believes, must proceed from premises that are directly opposite to scientific ones. She is an art that "strives to break through the logical chain of conclusions and brings a person into the boundless sea of fantasy, fantastic, where everything is equally possible and impossible." In addition, philosophy should be the philosophy of a person, and he can be understood only by living his whole life, understanding and sharing all of his positively and negatively colored sensory experiences (love, the horror of despair).
In addition, L. Shestov struggles with the all-powerful necessity, indifferent to the fate of man. In a world where nothing can happen in spite of necessity, people feel like "powerless wheels" of one big machine.
Shestov sees the task of man in liberating a living and feeling being from the power of dead necessity and subordinating it to himself, that is, regaining freedom.
Russian philosophy of the XX century
Russian philosophy of the 20th century, having experienced an undoubted rise at the beginning of the century, after the revolution of 1917 gradually lost its national identity, turning into an international Marxist-Leninist philosophy.
The idealistic trends in Russian philosophy of the 20th century cultivated not political, but moral or religious ways of saving Russia. This orientation of Russian philosophical thought could be comprehended in terms of freedom, the coincidence of the ideal and reality.
Both the materialistic and idealistic currents of Russian philosophy were the philosophy of life. They are characterized by a predominant attention to the problems of the philosophy of history, sociology, the problem of man, ethics, that is, those that directly led to the solution of the burning problems of our time. Russian philosophy affirms the indivisibility of subject and object. The subject of knowledge in it acts as a fact within being. Russian philosophy comprehends objective reality not as impersonal, opposing reality, but experiences it as its own destiny, thus conjugating epistemology with evaluation and morality. This, however, did not mean that the so-called metaphysical problems of ontology, methodology, epistemology were not developed in Russian philosophy.
The anthropological orientation of Russian philosophy is a universally recognized national feature. Throughout its history, it has demonstrated constant attention to the problems of the essence and existence of man, offering a wide range of solutions. Since the middle of the 19th century, the questions of the existence of a person, his value, freedom have come to the fore in Russian philosophy; it is all imbued with anxiety in connection with the realization of the imperfection of being, the presence of irrational principles in it.
It was Russian philosophy at the beginning of the 20th century that formulated and proposed a solution to the main questions of the philosophy of existence - existentialism, becoming, as it were, the forerunner of its European currents. The development of existentialism in Russia is associated with the names of L. Shestov and N. Berdyaev.
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Read the biography of a philosopher thinker: facts of life, main ideas and teachings
Lev Isaakovich Shestov
(1866-1938)
Russian philosopher-existentialist and writer. In his philosophy, full of paradoxes and aphorisms, he rebelled against the dictates of reason (generally valid truths) and the oppression of universally binding moral norms over a sovereign person. He contrasted traditional philosophy with the "philosophy of tragedy" (in the center of which is the absurdity of human existence), and philosophical speculation with revelation, which is bestowed by the almighty God. Shestov anticipated the main ideas of existentialism. Major works: "Apotheosis of Groundlessness" (1905), "Speculation and Revelation" (published in 1964).
Shestov Lev Isaakovich (real name and first name Shvartsman Yehuda Leib) was born on January 31 (February 12), 1866 in Kyiv. Father, Isaac Moiseevich Shvartsman, was a major merchant, a merchant of the 1st guild. Coming from a poor environment, he created his own big business - "Manufactory warehouses of Isaac Schwartzman." He was distinguished by his outstanding knowledge of Hebrew writing and enjoyed authority in the Jewish community. The son, however, remained a stranger to all these interests of the father.
For many years, his father's commercial and financial affairs were Shestov's painful "karma". At the age of 12, he was kidnapped by an anarchist organization, which for six months vainly expected a ransom for him from Father Shestov, then, having already become a famous writer, he was forced to sit at the accounts day after day and, right up to the revolution itself, sort out money litigations between numerous members of the family clan .
Shestov began his studies in Kiev, but graduated from the gymnasium in Moscow. In 1884 he entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University, then moved to the Faculty of Law, studied for one semester in Berlin, graduated from the university already in Kiev. His dissertation "On the Condition of the Working Class in Russia" was banned from publication by the censors. So, without becoming a doctor of jurisprudence, Shestov was recorded in the class of lawyers, although he never acted in the legal profession.
After graduating from the university, in 1890-1891, he served in the military as a volunteer, then for a short time was an assistant to a barrister in Moscow. In 1891 Shestov returned to Kyiv to help his father. It was a period of intensive literary and philosophical studies, the first literary experiments, an in-depth study of W. Shakespeare, which had a great influence on Shestov. Kyiv newspapers publish his critical notes on Shakespeare and Vl. Solovyov, as well as a number of articles on financial and economic issues.
Shestov participated in his father's trading business until the end of 1895, when he fell ill with an acute nervous breakdown, probably caused by the oppressive atmosphere of the enterprise. It was the time of Lev Isaakovich's deepest despair, his inner catastrophe. In 1896 he went abroad for treatment, visited Vienna, Karlsbad, Berlin, Munich, Paris. Finally, in early 1897, he moved from Berlin to Rome.
In the restaurant, he was overtaken by a Russian student excursion. They talked, and he, as having arrived earlier, served as her guide for two days. Some tragic feature in his face struck the medical student Anna, and when her comrades went on, she remained a nurse, a support for an unknown young Jew. Probably, she really saved Shestov, but, perhaps, later, more than once, her calmness, sobriety and self-sacrifice served as his support.
In February, Lev Isaakovich Shestov and an Orthodox Russian girl, Anna Eleazarovna Berezovskaya, got married. The religious intolerance of his father forced him to keep this marriage a secret for many years and prevented the return of the Shestov family to Russia. For 10 years, the Shestovs lived apart, in different cities, in order to hide the marriage from their parents. Apparently, Shestov's father never found out about him, and he confessed to his mother after his father's death. According to Russian laws, this marriage was invalid, and the children born in it were illegitimate.
In 1897, the Shestovs had a daughter, Tatiana, and in 1900, Natalia. With the consent of the father, the children were baptized. Only in the autumn of 1908 did Shestov reunite with his family. But back to his creative life. In 1897, Lev Shestov finished his first book Shakespeare and His Critic Brandes (1898) and began work on the book Good in the Teachings of Count Tolstoy and F. Nietzsche. Philosophy and Preaching (1899). Both books remained almost unnoticed by the critics Shestov does not raise social questions, he is primarily concerned with ethical and metaphysical problems. That is why he rebels in his first book against the positivist-philistine interpretation of Shakespeare by the Danish critic G. Brandes.
Shestova is outraged that "Brandes does not hear how the 'connection of times has broken', and therefore Shakespeare does not prevent him from sleeping. Hence the moralistic lack of taste in relation to the tragic depth of life "we feel with Hamlet", "we experience with Shakespeare". If for Shakespeare the horror and catastrophic nature of human existence led either to awakening or to death, for Brandeis this is only an excuse to talk about the "artistic" and "moral" merits of literature.
An even stronger protest against the deification of morality is expressed in the second book of Shestov. The author experienced the philosophical drama of F. Nietzsche as a “shock”, “internal upheaval”, “I felt that the world was completely overturning,” he later recalled. "Good - brotherly love - we now know from the experience of Nietzsche - is not God." "Woe to those who love who have nothing higher than compassion." "Nietzsche opened the way. One must seek that which is higher than compassion, higher than goodness. One must seek God."
This thesis remains fundamental in the further work of Lev Shestov. All his subsequent articles and books are animated by one all-consuming passion - the fight against the idols of philosophy, morality, religion or science, claiming to be the last judge. True, at first this struggle was waged by Shestov in line with romantic aesthetics. However, unlike the Romantics or the Symbolists, Shestov does not recognize any hidden "true essence", as if lurking under the "crust of matter" or "veils of everyday life." Revealing the fundamental principles of human existence means for him not doubling the world into a false "here" and a true "there", but a fearless discovery of the catastrophic illogicality, senselessness, absurdity of the prevailing order of things, based on a rationalistic and scientistic worldview.
In 1901, Sergei Diaghilev offered Shestov cooperation in the journal of Russian modernists "World of Art". Since that time, Shestov's rapprochement with Petersburg and Kiev writers, philosophers, preachers of the "new religious consciousness" - D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius, V. Rozanov, A. Remizov, N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov, G. Chelpanov. Shestov publishes his articles in journals or collections edited by them, one after another his books Dostoevsky and Nietzsche (Philosophy of Tragedy) (1903), Apotheosis of Groundlessness (Experience of Adogmatic Thinking) (1905), Beginnings and Ends (1908) are published. ), "Great Eves" (1911).
In this first decade of his creative activity, Shestov does not separate literary criticism from philosophy. The vocation of the writer and the vocation of the thinker for him coincide Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy for him, not only great artists, but also teachers of life, guides to the world of unsolved revelations about the ends and beginnings of human existence. It is in dialogue with them that Shestov's own method is formed, replacing his hated dialectics ("dialectics has power only over general concepts and cannot keep track of the agitated, capricious life"), this method is "wandering through the souls" dialogic living "foreign words", touched which in itself gives rise to an endless spectrum of relationships with the author's word.
One of the best works of this period is the article "Creativity from Nothing" (1905), dedicated to A.P. Chekhov. In contrast to the generally accepted view of Chekhov as a "soft, gentle lyricist", "poet of twilight moods" and "singer of gloomy people" - Shestov characterizes Chekhov as a merciless writer and recognizes in him "the amazing art of killing everything with one touch, even with breath, with a look, what people live and are proud of." The book "Great Eve" (1911) ends the first - "literary-critical" - period of Lev Shestov's work.
In 1898-1902, Shestov lived in Berlin, Italy, Switzerland, visiting St. Petersburg and Kyiv for a while. In November 1903, due to his father's illness, he returned to Kyiv, where he ran family affairs. In the autumn of 1908, Lev Shestov settled with his family in Freiburg (Germany), from March 1910 he lived mainly in Switzerland, in the small town of Koppe on the shores of Lake Geneva, studying classical European philosophy and theology. Here Shestov discovered a new hero - Martin Luther, studied the works of medieval mystics and scholastics, multi-volume German histories of dogmatic teachings, the medieval church, Lutheranism, during this period he practically did not write.
In 1913, he began work on a new book - "Sola Fide" ("Only by faith"), but did not have time to finish it due to the outbreak of the First World War, he was forced to return to Russia (the manuscript he had begun remained abroad, in 1920, already while in exile, Shestov managed to get it, partly the chapters from this manuscript and the ideas expressed in it were included in his other books or were published separately, and the entire manuscript "Sola Fide" was published after the death of the thinker, in Paris in 1966) .
In the summer of 1914, the Shestovs returned to Russia and settled in Moscow on Plyushchikha. Now he often speaks in literary and philosophical societies, maintains friendship with Vyach. Ivanov, M. Gershenzon, N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov, Gertsyk sisters, G. Chelpanov, G. Shpet. His articles are published in the journals "Russian Thought", "Problems of Philosophy and Psychology". Shestov did not accept and did not understand the October Revolution (his 1920 pamphlet "What is Bolshevism" - the only thing that he wrote on this topic - repelled even admirers of his talent with its short-sighted helplessness and triviality of judgments).
After the death of his only son at the front in June 1918, Shestov moved to Kyiv, where he taught the course "History of Ancient Philosophy" at the People's University, and also delivered reports and public lectures. In October 1919, a family from Kyiv moved to Yalta in the hope of going abroad from there. At the request of Bulgakov and the professor of the Kyiv Theological Academy I. Chetverikov, and also due to the wide popularity of his works, Shestov was enrolled as a Privatdozent of the Tauride University. However, already at the beginning of 1920, together with his family, he left Yalta for Sevastopol, from there to Constantinople, and then through Italy to Paris.
The Parisian period is the most productive in the creative life of Lev Shestov. He works a lot and intensively, teaches a course at the Sorbonne on Russian religious philosophy, delivers reports and lectures, publishes articles in major French journals, takes an active part in the publication and translation of his books. During these years, he personally met the "rulers of thoughts" of our century - T. Mann, A. Gide, M. Buber, A. Einstein, E. Husserl, M. Heidegger, L. Levy-Bruhl, M. Scheler, A. Malraux.
Shestov's most important books were written in Paris: On the Scales of Job (Wanderings of the Soul) (1929), Kierkegaard and Existential Philosophy (in French in 1936, the first Russian edition appeared posthumously, in 1939), Athens and Jerusalem (French and German translations appeared in 1938, the first Russian edition in 1951). And although the main thing in these books is the fundamental philosophical problems, Shestov remains faithful to the topics chosen at the beginning of his literary path. For him, his original question, which has tormented him all his life, is still important: what have we come to together with our entire new European civilization, what are we going to?". While it was fun, cause and effect explained everything, it was better with them than with God for they never reproached. But what is it like to live with them in grief? When misfortunes, one after another, fall upon a person, when poverty, illness, resentment replace wealth, health, power? terrible memories of the death of all loved ones?
This excerpt is from Shestov's first book Shakespeare and His Critic Brandeis. The book "On the Scales of Job", written thirty years later, is not so much an answer as a "confession of faith" of the modern Job, who has not come to terms with the consolations and promises of the priests of Reason, Morality and Progress. At the center of this confession is Shestov's conviction, reinforced by the testimony of Plotinus, Pascal, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, that the path we all follow and which we are childishly proud of is the path of slavery and death, and not the path of freedom and life. This path began in Athens, which proclaimed the supreme power of speculative truths, and has already taken us far from Jerusalem, with its bold faith in the possibility of the impossible.
Modern man, like our entire civilization, is unable to admit that he is in slavery to the deified mind, tyrannically ruling over life - in slavery to scientific thinking, to "universal and necessary truths" (it does not matter whether this is the truth of idealism , materialism or atheism). Have "objective" laws and impersonal moral principles. The highest achievement of man is unquestioning obedience to the laws of the autocratic mind and the morality generated by the mind. After all, it is the mind - and only it alone - that determines the true boundary between reality and dream, between good and evil, proper and improper.
“Even God himself, if he wants to receive a predicate of being, must turn to reason for it. And reason, perhaps, will grant him this predicate, and perhaps, and even most likely, will refuse.” That is why it is in vain to wait for help from philosophy and philosophers to today's Job. His suffering, cries, curses are just a single "special case" for them, which does not change anything in the universal laws of the universe, established with mathematical precision by the mind.
Two is always more than one. One plus one is two. And if the modern Job still persists, refusing to bow before these unshakable truths, if he claims that one and only in mathematics is constantly equal to two, but in reality it also happens that it equals three, and five, and zero, if he continues to curse and yell about his "human, all too human" rightness, then perhaps the philosopher will investigate his "shouts with the same indifference and calmness with which he explores perpendiculars, planes, circles."
In 1928, on the advice of the philosopher Edmund Husserl, Shestov began to study the work of the Danish thinker Soren Kierkegaard (Shestov calls him Kierkegaard), the forerunner of "existential philosophy" of the 20th century. The striking coincidence of the most important initial positions, the path of Shestov's final conclusions with the ideas of Kierkegaard, who rebelled against the speculative philosophy of Hegel and also turned to the "private thinker Job" for support - all this helped Shestov to formulate his ideas even sharper.
Now the main word, the supporting symbol for him is the word "faith", "freedom from all fears, freedom from coercion", "man's insane struggle for the impossible, the struggle and overcoming the impossible."
Shestov lived in France until the end of his days. Until 1930 he lived in Paris, in 1930-1938 - in the Parisian suburbs, where he led a very secluded life. From June 1921 Shestov became a member of the Russian Academic Group.
In February 1922, he was appointed lecturer (1 hour per week) at the Faculty of History and Philology of the Russian Department of the Institute of Slavic Studies at the University of Paris. Here, for almost 16 years, Shestov taught free courses in philosophy ("free" - because he always read and spoke only about those problems of philosophy that occupied him in this moment). "Russian Philosophy of the 19th Century", "Philosophical Ideas of Dostoevsky and Pascal", "Basic Ideas of Ancient Philosophy", "Russian and European Philosophical Thought", "Vladimir Solovyov and Religious Philosophy", "Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard", "Religious and Philosophical Ideas of Tolstoy" and Dostoevsky. During these years, Shestov's works were published in translations into European languages, he gave public lectures and reports in Germany and France, in 1936, at the invitation of the cultural department of the workers' federation, he visited Palestine, lectured in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa.
Shestov's reputation among French intellectuals was very high. Since 1925 he was a member of the Presidium of the Nietzsche Society, a member of the Kantian Society. In December 1937, Lev Isaakovich fell seriously ill (intestinal bleeding), after recovering, he could not fully restore his strength and soon stopped lecturing. In October 1938, Shestov fell ill with bronchitis, which turned into tuberculosis. The thinker died on November 20 at the Boileau clinic, and was buried at the New Cemetery in Boulogne, a suburb of Paris, in the family vault.
Shestov is one of the most original thinkers of the early 20th century, anticipating the main ideas of later existentialism. According to the testimony of people who knew Shestov closely, he did not like to write, he hatched his thoughts in solitary walks, and only after that he forced himself to "fix" them on paper; the language of his works is distinguished by classical simplicity, precision and emotionality.
The main theme of Shestov's philosophy is the tragedy of individual human existence, the experience of hopelessness Shestov rejects the possibility of a rational, reliable judgment about the meaning of the universe, does not believe in logic as the only way to know the environment and tries to find other forms of penetration into the secrets of the world. Knowledge is considered by him as the source of the fall of the human race, which fell under the power of "soulless and necessary truths" and lost its freedom. Man is a victim of the laws of reason and morality, a victim of the universal and obligatory Shestov rebels against the dictates of reason over the sphere of life experiences, fights for the individual against the power of the general, for the individually unique. Shestov seeks liberation from the shackles of necessity, from the laws of logic and morality in God, he wants to return to paradise, to true life, which is on the other side of known good and evil. Essentially, the main theme of Shestov's reflections is the conflict between biblical revelation and Greek philosophy. Faith gives him the opportunity to break through to the secrets of the world and their comprehension.
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Basically, our site (blog, collection of texts) is dedicated to the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (his ideas, works and life), but in philosophy everything is connected and it is impossible to understand one philosopher without reading at all those thinkers who lived and philosophized before him...
... The 19th century is the century of revolutionary philosophers. In the same century, European irrationalists appeared - Arthur Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Bergson ... Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are representatives of nihilism (the philosophy of negation) ... In the 20th century, existentialism - Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre can be distinguished among philosophical teachings. .. The starting point of existentialism is the philosophy of Kierkegaard...
Russian philosophy (according to Berdyaev) begins with the philosophical letters of Chaadaev. The first Russian philosopher known in the West is Vladimir Solovyov. Lev Shestov was close to existentialism. The most widely read Russian philosopher in the West is Nikolai Berdyaev.
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Berdyaev Nikolay
The main idea of Lev Shestov's philosophy
I have already written about Lev Shestov several times in the pages of The Way. But now there is a need to speak differently about him and honor his memory. Lev Shestov was a philosopher who philosophized with all his being, for whom philosophy was not an academic specialty, but a matter of life and death. He was single. And his independence from the surrounding currents of time was striking. He was looking for God, looking for the liberation of man from the power of necessity. And that was his personal problem. His philosophy belonged to the type of existential philosophy, that is, it did not objectify the process of cognition, did not tear it away from the subject of cognition, connected it with the integral destiny of man. Existential philosophy means the memory of the existentiality of the philosophizing subject, who puts existential experience into his philosophy. This type of philosophy assumes that the mystery of being is comprehensible only in human existence. For Lev Shestov, human tragedy, the horrors and sufferings of human life, the experience of hopelessness were the source of philosophy. No need to exaggerate the novelty of what is now called existential philosophy, thanks to some currents of modern German philosophy. This element was present in all genuine and significant philosophers. Spinoza philosophized by the geometric method and his philosophy can give the impression of a cold objective philosophy. But philosophical knowledge was for him a matter of salvation, and his amor Dei intellectualis does not at all belong to objective science-like truths. By the way, L. Shestov's attitude to Spinoza was very interesting. Spinoza was his enemy, with whom he struggled all his life, as with a temptation. Spinoza is the representative of the human mind, the destroyer of revelation. And at the same time, L. Shestov loved Spinoza very much, constantly remembered him, and often quoted him. IN last years L. Shestov had a very significant meeting with Kierkegaard. He had never read it before, knew it only by hearsay, and there can be no question of Kierkegaard's influence on his thought. When he read it, he was deeply moved, shocked by Kierkegaard's closeness to the main theme of his life. And he ranked Kierkegaard among his heroes. His heroes were Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Luther, Pascal and the heroes of the Bible - Abraham, Job, Isaiah. Like Kierkegaard, the theme of L. Shestov's philosophy was religious; like Kierkegaard, Hegel was his main enemy. He went from Nietzsche to the Bible. And he turned more and more to biblical revelation. The conflict between biblical revelation and Greek philosophy became the main theme of his reflections.
L. Shestov subordinated to the main theme of his life everything he thought, said and wrote. He could look at the world, make assessments of the thoughts of others exclusively from within his theme, he related everything to it and divided the world in relation to this theme. He was shocked by this topic. How to formulate it? He was shocked by the power of necessity over human life, which gives rise to the horrors of life. He was not interested in the crude forms of necessity, but in the refined forms. The power of inevitable necessity was idealized by philosophers as reason and morality, as self-evident and obligatory truths. Necessity is generated by knowledge. L. Shestov is completely captured by the idea that the fall into sin is connected with knowledge, with the knowledge of good and evil. Man ceased to feed on the tree of life and began to feed on the tree of knowledge. And L. Shestov fights against the power of knowledge, which subordinates man to the law, in the name of the liberation of life. This is a passionate impulse towards paradise, towards a free paradisiacal life. But paradise is achieved through the aggravation of the conflict, through disharmony and hopelessness. L. Shestov, in essence, is not at all against scientific knowledge, not against reason in everyday life. That wasn't his problem. He is against the claims of science and reason to solve the question of God, of the liberation of man from the tragic horror of human destiny, when reason and rational knowledge want to limit possibilities. God is first of all unlimited possibilities, this is the basic definition of God. God is not bound by any necessary truths. The human person is a victim of necessary truths, the law of reason and morality, a victim of the universal and obligatory.
The realm of necessity, the realm of reason, is opposed by God. God is not bound by anything, is not subject to anything, everything is possible for God. Here L. Shestov poses a problem that still bothered scholastic medieval philosophy. Is God subject to reason, truth, and goodness, or are truth and goodness only what God thinks? The first point of view comes from Plato; St. Thomas Aquinas. The second point of view was defended by Duns Scotus. The first point of view is associated with intellectualism, the second with voluntarism. L. Shestov is related to Duns Scotus, but he poses the problem much more radically. If there is a God, then all possibilities are revealed, then the truths of reason cease to be inevitable and the horrors of life are conquered. Here we touch upon the most important thing in Shestov's theme. Connected with this is that profound shock which characterizes Shestov's entire thought. Can God make what has been become what has not been? This is the most incomprehensible to the mind. It was very easy to misunderstand L. Shestov. Poisoned Socrates can be resurrected, Christians believe. Kierkegaard's bride may be returned, Nietzsche may be cured of the Terrible Disease. This is not what L. Shestov wants to say. God can make sure that Socrates was not poisoned, Kierkegaard did not lose his bride, Nietzsche did not fall ill with a terrible disease. An absolute victory over the necessity that rational knowledge imposes on the past is possible. L. Shestov was tormented by the inevitability of the past, tormented by the horror of the once former.
The opposition of Jerusalem and Athens, the opposition of Abraham and Job to Socrates and Aristotle is connected with the same theme of the necessary compelling truth. When an attempt was made to unite the reason discovered by Greek philosophy with revelation, apostasy from the faith took place, and this has always been done by theology. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was replaced by the God of theologians and philosophers. Philo was the first traitor. God was subject to reason, necessary, obligatory truths. Then Abraham, the hero of faith, perished. L. Shestov is very close to Luther, Luther's salvation by faith alone. Man's liberation cannot come from himself, but only from God. God is a liberator. It is not reason, not morality, not human activity that liberates, but faith. Faith signifies a miracle for the necessary truths of the mind. The mountains are moving. Faith requires madness. This is what the apostle Paul says. Faith asserts a conflict, a paradox, as Kierkegaard liked to say. L. Shestov expressed a truly existing and eternal problem with great radicalism. The paradoxical nature of thought, the irony that L. Shestov constantly resorted to in his manner of writing, made it difficult to understand him. Sometimes he was understood just upside down. This happened, for example, with such a remarkable thinker as Unamuno, who sympathized with L. Shestov very much.
The philosophical thought of L. Shestov met with great difficulty in its expression, and this gave rise to many misunderstandings. The difficulty was in the inexpressibility in words of what L. Shestov thought about the main theme of his life, the inexpressibility of the main thing. He often resorted to a negative form of expression, and he was more successful at it. It was clear what he was fighting against. The positive form of expression was more difficult. Human language is too rationalized, too adapted to the thought already generated by the fall - the knowledge of good and evil. The thought of L. Shestov, directed against universal obligatoriness, involuntarily took the form of universal obligatoriness. And this gave an easy weapon in the hands of criticism. Here we are faced with a very deep and little-studied problem of communicating creative thought to another. Is the most primary and the most recent communicated, or only the secondary and the transitional? This problem is really posed by existential philosophy. For her, this is the problem of moving from “I” to “you” in true communication. For a philosophy that thinks of itself as rational, this problem does not seem to be troublesome due to the assumption of a universal mind. The same universal mind makes possible an adequate transmission of thought and knowledge from one to the other. But in reality, the mind of the steps is of different qualities and depends on the nature of human existence, on existential experience. The will determines the nature of the mind. Therefore, the question is raised about the possibility of transmitting philosophical thought not through a rational concept. And truly rational concepts do not establish messages from one to another. L. Shestov was not directly interested in this problem and did not write about it; he was completely absorbed in the relationship of man and God, and not in the relationship of man and man. But his philosophy poses this problem very sharply, he himself becomes a problem of philosophy. His contradiction was that he was a philosopher, i.e. a man of thought and cognition, and cognized the tragedy of human existence, denying cognition. He fought against the tyranny of reason, against the power of knowledge, which expelled man from paradise, on the territory of knowledge itself, resorting to the tools of reason itself. This is the difficulty of a philosophy that wants to be existential. I see the merit of L. Shestov in the aggravation of this difficulty.
L. Shestov fought for the individual, for the individually unique against the power of the general. His main enemy was Hegel and the Hegelian universal spirit. In this he is related to Kierkegaard, related in theme to Belinsky in his letters to Botkin and especially to Dostoevsky. L. Shestov's truth is in this struggle. In this struggle against the power of the obligatory, he was so radical that what was true and salvific for one he considered not true and not obligatory for another. He, in essence, thought that each person has his own personal truth. But this raised the same problem of communication. Is it possible to communicate between people on the basis of the truth of revelation, or is this communication possible only on the basis of the truths of reason, adapted to everyday life, on the basis of what L. Shestov, following Dostoevsky, called "allness"?
Until the last days of Lev Shestov's life, he had a burning thought, agitation and tension. He showed the victory of the spirit over the infirmity of the body. Perhaps his best books, Kierkegaardt and Existential Philosophy and Athens and Jerusalem, an Experience in Religious Philosophy, were written by him in the last period of his life. Now is not the time to criticize the philosophy of my old friend Lev Shestov. There is only one thing I would like to say. I very much sympathize with Lev Shestov's problems, and the motive of his struggle against the power of the "common" over human life is close to me. But I have always disagreed with him in my assessment of knowledge; I do not see it as the source of the necessity weighing over our lives. Only existential philosophy can explain what is at stake here. The books of L. Shestov help to answer the basic question of human existence, they have an existential significance.
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