Lev Shestov
Lev Isaakovich Shestov (Лев Исаакович Шестов), born Yehuda Leyb Schwarzmann (Иегуда Лейб Шварцман)) was a Russian - Jewish existentialist philosopher. Born in Kiev (Russian Empire) on January 31 (February 13) 1866, he emigrated to France in 1921, fleeing from the aftermath of the October Revolution. He lived in Paris until his death on November 19 1938.
Life
Shestov was born Lev Issakovich Schwarzmann in Kiev into a Jewish family. He obtained an education at various places, due to fractious clashes with authority. He went on to study law and mathematics at the Moscow State University but after a clash with the Inspector of Students he was told to return to Kiev, wherein he completed his studies there.
Shestov's dissertation prevented him from becoming a doctor of law as it was dismissed as being too revolutionary. In 1898 he entered a circle of prominent of Russian intellectuals and artists which included Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Diaghilev, Dmitri Merezhkovsky and Vasily Rozanov. Shestov contributed articles to a journal the circle had set up. During this time he completed his first major philosophical work, Good in the teaching of Tolstoy and Nietzsche: Philosophy and Preaching; both authors mentioned in the title had a profound impact on Shestov's thinking.
He developed his thinking in a second book on Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, which increased Shestov's reputation as an original and incisive thinker. All Things Are Possible was published in 1905, whereby Shestov had adopted the aphoristic style of Friedrich Nietzsche. Shestov dealt with such issues as religion, rationalism, and science in this brief work, issues he would examine in later works.
Shestov's works however 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, with an espousal of nihilism. Nevertheless, he would find admirers in such writers as D. H. Lawrence.
In 1908 Shestov moved to Freiburg, Germany, and he stayed there until 1910 where he moved to a small Swiss village named Coppet. During this time Shestov worked prolifically and during this period Great Vigils and Penultimate Words were published. He returned to Moscow in 1915, during which his son Sergei died in combat against the Germans. During this period, his work became more influenced by matters of religion and theology. The seizure of government by the Bolsheviks in 1919 made life difficult for Shestov, and the Marxists forced Shestov 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 where he eventually ended up in France. Shestov was a popular figure in France due to the recognition of his originality. He was asked to contribute to a prestigious French philosophy journal also. In the interwar years Shestov continued to become a thinker of great prominence. During this time he had become totally immersed in the study of great theologians such as Blaise Pascal and Plotinus, whilst at the same time lecturing at the Sorbonne in 1925. In 1926 he met Edmund Husserl, with whom he maintained a cordial relationship with despite radical differences in their philosophical outlook. In 1929, during a return to Freiburg he met with Martin Heidegger, and was urged to study Danish philosopher Soren 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 thought 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 are seen in his work Kierkegaard and Existential Philosophy: Vox Clamantis in Deserto, published in 1936, a foundational work of religious existentialism.
Despite his weakening condition Shestov continued to work at a quick pace finally completed his magnum opus, Athens and Jerusalem. This work examines how reason must be rejected in the discipline of philosophy. He adumbrates how the scientific method has made philosophy and science irreconcilable, since science concerns itself with empirical observation, whereas, Shestov argues that philosophy must be concerned with freedom, God and immortality, issues that cannot be solved by science.
In 1938, Shestov contracted a terrible illness whilst at his vacation home. He continued to work on studying the works of his contemporary Edmund Husserl, who had died recently, and studied Indian philosophy. He died at a clinic in Paris.
Philosophy
The Philosophy of Despair
Shestov's philosophy is, at first sight, not a philosophy at all: it offers no systematic unity, no coherent set of propositions, no theoretical explanation of philosophical problems. Most of Shestov's work is fragmentary: with regard to the form (he often used aphorisms), the style (which is more web-like than linear, and more explosive than argumentative) as well as to the content. He seems to contradict himself on every page, and even seeks the paradox. This is because he believes that life itself is in the last analysis deeply paradoxical, not understandable through logical or rational inquiry. Shestov believes that no theory can solve the mysteries of life. His philosophy is not 'problem-solving', but problem-generating, and tries to make life appear as enigmatic as possible. His point of departure is not a theory, an idea, but an experience. It is the experience described so eloquently by James Thomson in The City of Dreadfull Night:
- The sense that every struggle brings defeat
- Because Fate holds no prize to crown success;
- That all the oracles are dumb or cheat
- Because they have no secret to express;
- That none can pierce the vast black veil uncertain
- Because there is no light beyond the curtain;
- That all is vanity and nothingness.
It is the experience of despair, which Shestov describes as the loss of certainties, the loss of freedom, the loss of the meaning of life. The root of this despair is what he frequently calls 'Necessity', but also 'Reason', 'Idealism' or 'Fate': a certain way of thinking (but at the same time also a very real aspect of the world) that subdues life to ideas, abstractions, generalisations and thereby kills it, by ignoring the uniqueness and livingness of reality.
'Reason' is the obedience to and the acceptance of Certainties that tell us that certain things are eternal and unchangeable and other things are impossible and can never be attained. That's why his philosophy is a form of irrationalism, though it is important to note that he doesn't oppose reason, or science in general, but only rationalism and scientism: the tendency to consider reason as a sort of omniscient, omnipotent God that is good for its own sake. It's also a form of individualism: people can't be reduced to ideas, social structures, or mystical oneness. We are all irrevocably alone with our suffering, and can't be helped by others, nor by philosophy.
Penultimate Words
But despair is not the last word, it is only the 'penultimate word'. The last word can't be said in human language, can't be captured in theory. His philosophy begins with despair, his whole thinking is desperate, but Shestov tries to point to something beyond despair - and beyond philosophy.
This is what he calls 'faith': not a belief, not a certainty, but another way of thinking that arises in the midst of the deepest doubt and insecurity. It is the experience that everything is possible (Dostoevsky), that the opposite of Necessity is not chance or accident, but possibility, that there does exist a freedom without boundaries, without walls or borders. Shestov never affirms that life is meaningful, that there is 'light beyond the curtain'. He even doesn't contradict that 'every struggle brings defeat'. But Shestov maintains that we should continue to struggle, to fight against Fate and Necessity, even when a successful outcome is not guaranteed. Exactly at the moment that all the oracles remain silent, we should listen very carefully, because at that moment we could hear something very important which we have failed to hear before.
Influence
Shestov isn't very well known, in fact he is so much as nearly forgotten, even in the academic world. This is partly due to the fact that his works aren't readily available anymore (which has changed with The Lev Shestov homepage), partly also to the specific themes he discusses and the sombre and yet ecstatic atmosphere that permeates his writings, but mostly perhaps to his quasi-nihilistic position and his religious outlook - an unsettling and incongruous combination at first sight.
He did however influence writers like Albert Camus (who wrote about him in Le Mythe de Sisyphe), Benjamin Fondane (his 'pupil'), and notably Emil Cioran, who writes about Shestov: "He was the philosopher of my generation, which didn't succeed in realizing itself spiritually, but remained nostalgic about such a realization. Shestov [...] has played an important role in my life. [...] He thought rightly that the true problems escape the philosophers. What else do they do but obscuring the real torments of life?" (Emil Cioran: Oeuvres, Gallimard, Paris 1995, p. 1740, my translation.)
Main Works
These are Shestovs most important works, in their English translations, and with their date of writing:
- The Good in the Teaching of Tolstoy and Nietzsche, 1899
- The Philosophy of Tragedy, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, 1903
- All Things are Possible (Apotheosis of Groundlessness), 1905
- Potestas Clavium, 1919
- In Job's Balances, 1923-29
- Kierkegaard and the Existential Philosophy, 1933-34
- Athens and Jerusalem, 1930-37
References
- Martin, Bernard (1966) Lev Shestov - Introduction. Retrieved 02 January, 2006.