PETER LANG New York Washington, D.C./Baltimore Bern Frankfurt Berlin Brussels Vienna Oxford
Preface
If the readerapicks upoffrom bookshelf theShakespeare books written by Levoccasional Shestov during period fortya years, fromany hisoffirst and His Critic Brandes—printed in St Petersburg in 1898—to the last one entitled Athens and Jerusalem published in Paris shortly before his death in 1938, he will find in all of them statements about the wretched character of human life and the impossibility to cope with the tragic human predicament by using only the tools devised by our own minds. Te corollary of this thought is that human beings need to have faith, to believe in something radically different from the mere products of their consciousness. In turn, such an affirmation begs the question about the nature of the “object” of our belief: is this an absolute ranscendental God or an immanent one, as it seems at times to be the case in the Judeo-Christian monotheisms. What was Shestov’s choice? Was he a philosopher or a religious thinker? Was he a representative of modern Fideism (his constant interest in ertullian might hint to it) or a late follower of the Latin Averroists who believed in the doctrine of the twofold truth? In turn, these questions project themselves on the attempted answers and determine to a large extent the nature of the hermeneutical enterprise. One is left to wonder if while discussing these issues we are in the realm of philosophy or in that of
viii Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker religious thinking, theology or philosophy of religion. What can bring somebody to the conclusion that the human life, while manifesting itself in myriads of forms which often give birth to hope and at timesthe even instances of happiness, in reality merely a constant struggle with all to pervasive adversity of evil? isReaders of Shestov’s works might suspect the author was suffering from a hidden affliction, and they may look for a built-in predisposition toward chronic pessimism; however, the author under discussion was not a sick man, and, according to all witnesses, he was not at all a pessimist. Even so, if we are not born with an affliction we might acquire it: a traumatic experience might set in much like darkness may fall suddenly when during a hot summer day heavy clouds cover unexpectedly the sun. It is a central thesis of this book that Lev Shestov had quite early in his life such a “formative experience” that set him on a track he would follow his entire life. However, if that were all, our author would be of interest only to psychologists and perhaps psychiatrists and this is certainly not the case; Shestov was an important existential philosopher and at the same time an srcinal religious thinker. His efforts in this domain represent an important contribution to the attempt to rethink Judaism in terms acceptable to an increasing number of Jews trapped between a secular modus vivendi and a longing for a new and renewed self-definition in traditional terms. In this approach he is joining Buber, Rosenzweig, and Levinas, to mention only a few prominent names who contributed to this domain during the last century. Shestov is also an authora relevant the cultural historya of modern Russia; he was at times considered (Russian)toorthodox thinker, literary critic, and one of the major representatives of the Russian nihilistic literature of the twentieth century. Everybody recognized the exceptional quality of his writing style, to the point that he was often upset by this observation considered to constitute rather a disadvantage as it menaced to eclipse the message of his writings. Moreover, he was also part of a European existential philosophy anchored in Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, and as such, he influenced many contemporary philosophers and literary authors, from Gabriel Marcel to Albert Camus and from Benjamin Fondane to Czeslaw Milosz. While I will not insist on the Russian aspects of his a recent work,respect Geneviève Pironexistential did that very successfully—I willactivities—in try to make clear in what Shestov’s philosophy is distinguished from what we call “existentialism” (be it the secular branch represented by Sartre and Heidegger or the religious one exemplified by Gabriel Marcel or Nikolai Berdyaev). In spite of the fact that Shestov did not have followers, with the exception perhaps of Benjamin Fondane, his ideas often resonated with those of various artists and thinkers (I shall often use this concept of resonance borrowed from physics in order to avoid complicated psy-
Introduction
Introduction
“Philosophers seek, with all the passion of which man are capable, universal and necessary truths—the only thing according to them, which is worthy of being called ‘knowledge’’ “For Shestov, the Biblical proclamation of an omnipotent Creator God for whom nothing is impossible is central,” —Bernard Martin
About Lev Shestov’s work oneof should write perhaps only style. First, because of the adequacy the fragmentary writing to in theaphoristic subject matter; second, because the mere notion of a systematic rendering of a thought that departed from the conventional ways of philosophy not only by denying to rational thinking the ability to unveil “truth” but also its claim to arrive at the true philosophical discourse, would have probably offended him. One might say, as in fact many did, that Shestov was involved in a life long quarrel with the tyranny of the rational thinking; this point must be understood properly,
2 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker however, as he never denied the legitimacy or the usefulness of rational thinking while claiming its limited status. Te knowledge based on rational thinking srcinated from the need to adress practical and immediate goals, and as such it represents a wisdom mainlythat to the of successful solutionsscifor such problems. Shestovlimited recognized onefinding may develop a magnificent ence based on this knowledge; however, logical thinking cannot address all the problems facing the human being and to an even lesser extent can it propose solutions to those issues which—by their very nature—cannot be settled on purely rational grounds. Tis meant implicitely that in real life, one is confronted with specifically human problems of an affective nature, that a “human predicament” exists outside and beyond the “natural” world explained by science. Te solutions to these problems, if they exist at all, cannot be found within the confines of rational thinking. Tat does not mean that one should cease for a moment even, to seek them; Shestov believed that one can find a way out from the existential traps some authors called abyss, others, gouffre. In his works he proposed at different times different solutions; in the following chapters we set out to identify some of these solutions and follow the dynamics of their evolution in Lev Shestov’s works. Why should the so-called “tyranny of reason” be rejected? Because it is useless and silly, would answer ironically Shestov. On a more serious note, his disciple Benjamin Fondane added later that not doing it would significantly weaken the philosophical reasoning as rational thinking eliminates affectivity and thus leaves us helpless situations which affective states dominate our lives. Tere isinnothose knowledge thatincan makethese us happy when we are unhappy and in despair: nothing will satisfactorily explain love or hate, and there is no method to eradicate evil and ugliness. Tese states exist and rational knowledge is often (if not always) powerless when called to confront them. Moreover, by eliminating the affective, an “affective void,” as Fondane called it, comes into being. Tis void, in turn, creates the anguish that engenders boredom (ennui). Fondane, through an elaborate intellectual construct tried to substantiate in his book on Baudelaire, written after his master’s death, this evolution and the existential dangers it poses: lives based exclusively on rational principles are menaced by a new “fall” into the nightmare of an existential bottomless swamp. However, let us return to Shestov: readers unfamiliar with his philosophical works may find some of his pronouncements, at a first glance at least, somewhat strange.1 A statement such as “it is not enough for truth to be constraining, necessary, it must also be persuasive” would illustrate well this point: is not “truth” by its very natureconstraining and persuasive at the same time? For the typical “lover of wisdom,”, as for any practitioner of critical thought for
4 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker and Existential Philosophy (1936) and Athens and Jerusalem (1938),3 often used to present and discuss such essential ideas as those of existence, existential thinking contain as well extensive discussions regarding the question of the truth. But, 4
Potestas Clavium s Balances, , In Job’articles published during twenties Paris, as well as many scattered that precede these two the works addressinalso these ideas in the context of a philosophical discourse that evolves from a deconstruction of classical and contemporary philosophy toward a personal one. In a brief article dedicated to the theme discussed here, 5 I pointed out already that Shestov often talked about the need to “restate” philosophy and rebuild it outside the confines of reason, to create a new philosophy destined to guide man in his real, individual existence. “Te whole art of philosophy should be directed towards freeing us from the ‘good and evil’ of cooks and carpenters, to finding that frontier beyond which the might of general ideas ceases,”6 Shestov wrote. When it came to explaining to the great public his daring and somewhat uncomfortable ideas, Shestov often trusted better his disciple, the poet and philosopher Benjamin Fondane. (After the publication of the article, “A propos du livre de Léon Chestov: Kierkegaard et la pensée existentielle,” a very pleased Shestov told Fondane that he succeeded exceptionally well in presenting his ideas and added, a few days later, “Schloezer [Shestov’s translator into French] m’a dit que votre étude était la meilleure introduction à la philosophie existentielle que l’on a fait jusqu’à présent”7). Indeed, often Fondane’s presentation of the
issues related to theofnature of truth kind, and truth in theand frame of an existential philosophy the Shesovian wereseeking more direct sometimes he expressed in a more straightforward and direct way the ideas of the master. For instance, in the article mentioned above the subject of the battle waged by Shestov against the domination of rational knowledge and its corollaries is brought up from the very beginning by Fondane; Shestov’s queries, he writes, “challenge firmly and insistently the fundamental questions concerning knowledge, religion, existence . . . his works represent the most radical critique of the ‘theory of knowledge’ and of knowledge itself.”8 In spite of this fact, observes sadly Fondane, his philosophical outlook is not valued by the representatives of the established philosophy. the question of “why wouldofitthe be self-evident so ?” the pupil answers bluntly: because o he deared deny the legitimacy truths.9 Tese are not easy matters: the only way to sustain such a radical uttering is by postulating that the genuine way of philosophizing is that based on faith. Shestov, writes Fondane, “soutient qu’il n’y a qu’un seule mode véritable de pensée: la pensée de la foi” (“Shestov believes that there is only one kind of thinking, that of the faith,” ibid.). Te “real” and the “reality,” are given to us in a process in which we do not have to, or rather must not take into account the
6 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker a brief survey of classical philosophy, from Plato to Kant, Shestov concludes in the foreword to Athens and Jerusalem that all philosophers “seek, with all the passion of which men are capable, universal and necessary truths—the only 12
thingthis according to represent them, which worthy of being called but ‘knowledge.’” For him, does not “theisproblem knowledge” rather the issue of “the knowledge as a problem.” In what sense can one refer to knowledge as being a “problem”? At a superficial glance, it seems that we notice a slip from the epistemic to the ontic realm in the Shestovian argument: being submerged by the problem of knowledge means making it into the essence of the human being. If that would be the case it will follow—do to the fact that knowledge is always constrained by the general and the universal—that we will for ever be held prisoners by these logical, rational, constrains. Te frequent critical references to Socrates should, indeed, lead to such an inference: did not the Greek philosopher believe that the supreme command for the human being was selfknowledge? In addition, even the biblical symbolism hints sometimes in this direction: was not the first human being tempted by the ree of Knowledge, and did not this temptation trigger history itself? Shestov, though, is not playing metaphysics in his writings; he is in this sense, too, very modern, very inclined to submit any “evidence” to the thorough examination of an as unbiased and rigorous philosophical approach as possible. He begins his last book by simply stating the evidence of the presence in our world of the mystery and of the mysterious, of that which is not given to rational interpretation; to events, to with facts of life that do not understand, and in spiteweofare it, exposed we still have to cope them. Beingweunhappy, miserable, and getting caught in extreme situations, in which, no matter what degree of effort we display and regardless of the ruses we use, we are not led out of the predicament we are trapped in, are undeniable facts. Te fight against evil, the attempts to find solace in defeat and to confront the absurd turns of fate, represent all existential situations to which human beings are exposed everywhere and at all times. Clear and distinct ideas cannot make sense of our unhappiness or account for the presence of evil in the world, of the absurd which often seems to rule our lives, points out Shestov. Tey can explain them away sometimes, and they may offer perhaps consolation, cannot dissipate the uncomfortable feeling produced by their constantbut andthey mysterious presence around us. More disturbing than the mere presence of the mystery is the fact that its existence induces in us the feeling that “we are somehow definitely and forever cut off from the sources and beginnings of life.”13 Tat means that our ways of reflecting upon our own experiences are not bringing us closer to an understanding of the mysterious nature of our lives and of our surroundings; on the contrary, it seems that they rather push us away from this understand-
Introduction 7 ing. Worse even, our ways of attempting to reach knowledge only increase the gap that separates us from the possibility of true understanding. What could this true understanding possibly mean? For one, it would be an understanding usual that addresses the problem truth inwilla completely from the one in philosophy: its of criterion not be baseddifferent on the way principles of identity and of contradiction but on that of the possible. In the last part of Athens and Jerusalem, a fragment entitled “Te Possible” reminds the reader of the simple fact that truths have also a history; thus “four hundreds years before Christ the truth ‘the Athenians poisoned Socrates’ still did not exist; it was born in the year 399. And it still lives . . . does this mean that it will live eternally?”14 asks Shestov. As observed above, at a first glance such a question might seem silly. However, in the context of a philosophy which claims faith as its second dimension and in which the cry becomes the method—Shestov borrowed this latter metaphor from Pascal—the question is perfectly legitimate. Moreover, the introduction of the absolute transcendental in the realm of this philosophy requires a discontinuity, a rupture in the continuity of the rational truth and in the requirement for self-consistency: for God everything is possible, as seen in the histories of Abraham and Job, and, therefore, He could, if he so wished, undo the “truth” of the poisoning of Socrates by the Athenians. We tend to reject such a simple truth, says Shestov, because we are used to think that the truths discovered by human reason are self-evident and constraining. Persuasion does not have any role to play in the realm of rational his ownwill existence knowledge. man(and whogeneric) is regarding realities of , not those of the Te general man orthea universal mankind, always be tempted to ask however, as Job did, “isthat valid for me too?” He will try to plead his cause at the court of the almighty transcendental. Are we still, in this case, in the domain of the philosophical thinking, or have we shifted already to that of religious thought? o this question Shestov answers in the following, somewhat indirect, way: “One can of course, interest himself in metaphysical problems and occupy himself with them, but on the condition of not connecting them with our own fate. . . .”15 Yes, one can separate the concrete and individual lives from the reflected upon realities of the concept and of the
constructs based logicalcan inferences, as one does in natural science. but A metaphysics useful foron society thus be obtained according to Shestov; how “true” are the “truths” thus uncovered, in other words, how relevant are they for the real, lived-in-reality lives of the concrete individuals? At this point in his argumentation, Shestov postulates that the truth that is relevant for the individual living in the reality of his or her concrete life must not only constrain through its logic but persuade as well. Tis is not a matter of accepting the necessity of the reasonable and bending the knee in front of
8 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker the possible only. It is a matter of choice: man can choose to opt for the challenge posed by the implementation of what is allegedly impossible through an act of will of God, a “hidden partner” endowed with unlimited powers. Moreover, man must be ready and willing confront this transcendental force which sometimes, when challenged, mighttoaccept to become involved with his life. Fondane, in the already mentioned article on Shestov, “Kierkegaard and the existential philosophy,” pointed out that in each individual one may find a residual of the Kirkegaardian thought that at some moment, sooner or later, one shall come into a direct confrontation with the general and the universal, in order to be able to face the absurd element folded in our own, personal, individual destiny: “each of us must decide by himself whether he accepts the general . . . , whether by following ethics he will transform God into a ‘powerless idea’ or if, on the contrary one will establish and absolute relationship with the absolute in order to challenge God.”16 Facing a constraining reality, man is convinced that he is finite and deemed to death. His only choice is the absurd gesture of refusal through an act of faith; once this move through which he denies his own finitude is accomplished, the individual finds himself in a realm where the truth is not constraining any longer but persuasive. He willingly accepts the challenge of giving up the power of the logic and of the reasonable and enters an “absolute battle with the absolute.” Shestov was aware that such a discourse would hardly be acceptable not only to the philosophers but to the general audience as well. Te world is understoodpoints through the repetitive, the reproducible, the do predictable; the singularity, the of rupture, the non-reproducible events not lend themselves to “understanding.” One cannot adopt truths that are not verified by experiment and guaranteed by underlying theories. “I irritate people—wrote Shestov— because I am always repeating the same thing . . . No one would get angry if the things that I repeated were those to which people were accustomed, which have always been admitted and are therefore comprehensible and agreeable to everyone,” and he added ironically, “we must believe that people become irritated for the same reason that a sleeper gets angry when one tries to awaken him.”17 Wahl—one of the major figures oftotheread inter-war landscapeJean in France—encouraged by Fondane Shestovphilosophical replied, “I cannot read Shestov as I cannot read Voltaire today.” o explain his refusal and in order to clarify this somewhat surprising comparison, he added, “that is because I know all too well and for many years already the meaning of both irony and despair.”18 Wahl, who was also considered at the time the main authority on Kierkegaard in France, knew quite a few things about existential philosophy: after rejecting a thought entirely based, in his opinion, on irony and despair, he
Introduction 9 qualified and tempered to some extent his statement by writing that he could agree with a revolt against reason if this were undertaken in the manner William James or D. H. Lawrence understood it. “Si vous êtes avec James (qui veut les chosesjedans leur plenitude) ou Lawrence (quitoveut les hommes la plénitude), suis avec vous,” he wrote in his letter Fondane (ibid.).dans After WW II, Jean Wahl wrote extensively about existential philosophy, mainly about Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre, and the other French existentialist thinkers. Te above observation about humans and things in their” entirety/totality, “les hommes et les choses dans leur plénitude,” is a hint to the fact that he was seeking the ontological aspect of the existential thinking. However, as I wrote already and as we will see more in detail in the following chapters, the ontological preoccupation was lacking in Shestov’s philosophy because he refused to seek the essence of Being or even to consider the question regarding the evolution of a “being,” be it authentic or not. For him, these were questions posed in the framework of a philosophy “which does not dare to rise above autonomous knowledge and autonomous ethics, the philosophy that bows down will-lessly and helplessly before the material and ideal ‘data’ discovered by reason”; such a philosophy cannot “lead man toward truth but forever turns him away from it.” 19 An existential thinking that rejects ontology and confines itself to an epistemology that does reject the principle of non-contradiction can be hardly considered philosophy in the accepted sense. Was not, therefore, Lev Shestov a religious thinker rather than a philosopher? Many critics and interpreters of his worksthus thought that entitled the answer to this and question was without any doubt affirmative: in a book published by Jacques Existence the Existent Maritain immediately after the war in France (1946; the first English edition, 1947), the famous neo-Tomist philosopher pointed out that Shestov’s existential thinking was “an essentially religious irruption and claim, an agony of faith, the cry of the subjectivity towards God.”20 In his introduction to an anthology of texts published in the volume Great 20th Century Jewish Philosophers, Bernard Martin wrote that “for Shestov, the Biblical proclamation of an omnipotent Creator God for whom nothing is impossible is central.”21 However, these kinds of statements, while based on factual quotes from Shestov’s works, fail to taketointo account thebyfact tothe theaffective transcendental is determined a large extent thethat needhis to attraction incorporate into philosophy: one may interpret Shestov’s attitude toward reason and knowledge and their role in the philosophical thinking as representing his sentiment of revolt and his refusal to accept the exclusion of the affective from philosophy. Shestov was convinced that rational thinking was only too happy and too quick to eliminate the affective from reasoning in order to arrive at objective universally acceptable and accepted truths. Tis interpretation left the concrete individual utterly
10 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker helpless in existential situations in which those very affective states dominate our lives. His message, often spelled out explicitely and at times only in subtle and implicit ways was that there is no knowledge that can make us happy when weaare unhappy and inmay despair. introductionasofrepresenting an absoluteatranscendental as point of reference thusTe be interpreted philosophical device rather than a religious one. In the end, one might ask why did Shestov persist over the years in following a philosophical enterprise destined to remain at the best incomprehensible and at worst, unacceptable to those who came to know it? His answer to this question sounds more like a prophetic utterance than a philosophical statement: “I certainly do not hope to succeed in waking sleepers, but . . . the hour will come and someone else will wake them, not by discourses, but otherwise, quite otherwise.” Such an answer begs of course the question posed in the title of the present book: was Lev Shestov an existential philosopher or a religious thinker? And if he was a religious thinker, was Shestov relevant to the contemporary efforts to re-define Judaism, to Christian theology or rather to some sui generis Judeo-Christian religious philosophy he hints at in his writings? It becomes apparent that even an attempt to answer this partial question would require a full book-length work. o define even the subject matter might turn out to be a very difficult enterprise: Bernard Martin considered Shestov a great 20th century Jewish philosopher but when Hugo Bergman wrote about a book about the modern Jewish thinkers,22 he did not include Shestov among those who triedcompared to redefinewith Judaism during century. the Russian realm, he was Solovyov, andthe at previous times with SemenInFrank or Rozanov even (who before him stated that God was the creator of the world not its intendent in charge of moral behaviour and ethics); Nikolai Berdyaev did not believe that Shestov could accept in earnest the basic tenets of Christianity while Serghei Bulgakov was more nuanced concerning this matter. Perhaps for good reason: in a letter addressed to him just a few days before his death, Shestov stated explicitly that he did not see any difference between the primeval Judaism and the Christianity unaltered by the Greek philosophy which preceeded the establishment of the Church and its Dogma. litterateur could also become an Shestov was before a philosopher or a the issueWhether in itself and that even we consider question about him being an existential philosopher; I assume that he used literary works merely as illustrations of philosophical ideas and will not dwell on this point here (although it is an interesting one and merits a thorough discussion in the context of a certain, postmodern way of approaching literary criticism). Insofar the discussion of Shestov as a philosopher of existence is concerned, in order to meaningfully engage in it, one should first establish a clear distinction between existentialist
12 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker all the finesse of his style, the wit, the humor, the conversational tone, the aporistic clusters, (Shestov’s work) remains fundamentally discursive—that is, rational” 26! (Lawrence, too, seems to have interpreted in a very peculiar way Are Possible Shestov; “positive in his “Foreword” , heorconcluded the author’s central ideatoisAll thatTings the human psyche, soul, realy that believes in itself, and in nothing else”). Beyond these scattered references, Shestov was introduced to the English speaking public in a serious and systematic way through the translations and the studies of Bernard Martin; by referring to him as to a “Russian Jewish existentialist,” Martin draw upon him the attention of the practitioners of three distinct disciplines, Russian studies,27 existential philosophy28 and Jewish studies.29 Later, Kent Hill and Andrius Valevicius wrote about Shestov (also in English) and quite recently, a book by Ramona Fotiade considers Shestov’s existential philosophy (together with that of his disciple, Benjamin Fondane) in the broader context of the role played by the concept of the absurd in the French surrealism.30 As mentioned above, rather than considering Shestov in the light of his contemporaries or of that of his later interpreters, I will attempt here to evaluate Shestov’s philosophical works by analyzing and discussing his own oppinions about the philosophers he referred to, that is,in his own frame of reference. Sometimes in the course of this exercise, we will posit the discussion in an external frame (of reference) and ask whether, assuming Shestov’s own pos-
tulates concerning the role,forthe definitions, and the ormeaning of philosophy, his analysis of Nietzsche, instance, was accurate reasonably complete or “transparent”? In other words, how does his evaluation of Socrates and the other Greek philosophers, of Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche, or Husserl compare with other modern and postmodern hermeneutical attempts? In spite of this occasional intellectual “excursions,” I will not emphasize the “contextual approach” and that first and foremost because Shestov himself never intended to render an “objective” or “exhaustive” presentation of the philosophers he wrote about. Even if he had tried, he could not have done it: Shestov did not write philosophy from the vantage point of philosophy itself (and this was true about Nietzsche, too; perhaps less when it comes to Pascal. was somewhat different from this point of view and I will relate toKierkegaard him later when we discuss Shestov’s interpretation of his work in the context of his religious thought). Tis approach might be considered somewhat “marginal,”’ but did not Derrida teach us recently the virtues of “marginality”? Moreover, there is another aspect that must be taken in consideration: Shestov never tried to be self-consistent in his intellectual constructs. He accepted the principle of “paradoxical thinking,” in the sense that as in real life—
14 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker the acceptation of a God “who cannot love, yet demands love for himself ”34; in this statement we find the beginning of Shestov’s quarrel with Spinoza. In a book written during the years which preceded WW I entitled Sola Fide narrowed philosophers down furtherand on Spinoza, timeIninthe themidst light of his, Shestov’s reading offocus the Medieval of young this Luther. of a discussion about St. Augustine and Luther, Shestov dedicates an entire chapter to Spinoza. In spite of the fact that the new, scientific ways of philosophizing, began with Spinoza (and not with Kant!)—and in support of this affirmation he quotes proposition 33 in Ethics I about God not being able to create the things in any way different from that in which they were created—Spinoza is not considered to be a “soulless philosopher.” rue, he claimed that “the order and the connection between things and that between ideas we have about things is the same”35 and considered two strange attributes of God (reason and spatial extent) to be the most significant ones. He did agree that God was the perfect being. Moreover, in his works Spinoza hinted at a way of thinking about the human being that would not make one into an eternal prisoner of logical knowledge. Indeed, referring to the famous paradox related to Buridan’s ass, Shestov singled out the fact that Spinoza observed that “if a man would be put in the situation of the ass he would be the stupidest creature if he dies of hunger.” Spinoza was a man who lived on the edge; he was sick, and he was trembling and fearful, and one should search the sources of his philosophy in the depths of this troubled soul, wrote Shestov. His submission to logic was
an illusion; he needed thinking to build upon it the magnificent edifice he was working on, torational implement his impossible attempt to “explain human action and motivations as if one would treat lines, surfaces and volumes.”36 But one should not be fooled, “Spinoza did not succeed in going beyond the wish to be logical.”37 On the other hand, there was something in him that reminded Shestov of the strength of the prophets, of those who speak a truth that srcinates from a realm beyond human authority: “the source of his philosophy is to be found in a mysterious and unutterable experience which belongs to him only; that is what gives birth to his imperative statements which do not seek neither justifications nor proofs.”38 Very different would be. Here the Spinoza a decade in theconsidarticle contained In Job’s Balances Shestovdescribed begins with a fewlater general erations about the principles of contemporary philosophy (the text was published during the twenties), which sounded very much like a reaction to . . . postmodern philosophy (if one replaces the word “postulate” with “narrative” or “worldview”): “Te postulate has been declared a deadly sin, and he who makes one is the enemy of the truth.” After introducing Descartes, Shestov states that it is beyond doubt that Spinoza was a follower of the French philosopher.
Introduction 15 Pascal, too, enters the discussion, and, as we will see in a later chapter, from the comparison with the two French philosophers, a new Spinoza emerged. However, by then it would not bethe philosopher who would decide upon the fate Aof somewhat Spinoza but Shestov, the religious similar analysis could be thinker. performed insofar as the evolution of Shestov’s critique of Nietzsche is concerned; exept that in this case, under the influence of Dostoevsky—one must remember that for Shestov Dostoevsky was as much of a philosopher as Nietzsche was—he adopts a confessed “non-philosophical” attitude (in the sense that the discussion is situated in a frame of reference in which philosophy and religion have the same “metrics,” that is, are measured from the very beginning by the same yardstick ). Departing from Nietzsche’s observation that a sick man has not the right to be a pessimist, Shestov turns around its meaning and applies it to the man who is continuously traumatized by adverse forces and who has thus the right to become religious, that is to believe (as that makes him into an optimist). Applied now to Nietzsche, this leads Shestov to the conclusion that the German philosopher “employed all the power of his soul to find a faith.” 39 In his next book, Shestov continued in this direction and arrived at the conclusion that Nietzsche concluded that all metaphysical and moral ideas had ceased to exist for him whereas his greatly slandered ego had grown to unprecedented, colossal proportions. . . .”40 Would a philosopher holding such views care about making sure that he (and his reader) understand the exact meaning of the cyclical character of adopt the “eternal return” the significance of the concept of (I prefer to here and in theorfollowing this translation of the Nioverman etzschean concept of Übermentsch proposed by Walter Kaufmann rather than that of superman)? I should not anticipate in this introductory chapter matters to be discussed in the comming chapters; I only want to point out that it would be superfluous to enter into long discussions and elaborate arguments concerning possible errors of interpretation insofar Nietzsche is concerned (or Socrates, or Plato, or the relationship between Socrates and Nietzsche for that matter), in order to understand Shestov as philosopher. On the other hand, if one approaches Shestov with the idea that his writings contribute to one’s better understanding of such thesecomparisons philosophersand themselves, would41certainly be important to follow up detailed itanalyses ; as already stated, in this book we will concentrate on Shestov and not on Socrates, Plato, Kant or Nietzsche. Te same arguments hold insofar as the discussion about Shestov’s possible misunderstanding and misrepresentations of Kierkegaard are concerned; to some extent, I will touch upon these topics in one of the following chapters. Levinas disagreed already in 1936, immediately after the publication of
16 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker Shestov’s book on Kierkegaard, with his conclusion that the Danish philosopher identified knowledge with evil. More recently, an article by James Mc Lachlan for instance, points out Robert Perkins criticism of Shestov’s misreading ofMcLachlan Kierkegaard’s attitude reason. Revisiting the point made by Levinas, shows that toward Shestov’s inference that Kierkegaard “hated 42 reason more than anything in the world” is wrong. Moreover, he observed that Shestov misinterpreted Kierkegaard’s concept of repetition and had a completely different view of the fall and of the concept of sin; again, as in the discussion concerning Nietzsche, such observations are pertinent and very important for a better understanding of Kierkegaard, but they are, in my opinion, less relevant in the context of the presentation of Lev Shestov as philosopher and religious thinker. (I wrote “less relevant” and not “irrelevant”; certainly, discussing the differences between the two thinkers and understand their meaning, reflects to some extent upon Shestov and has a “backlighting” effect when it comes to judge his work). Unlike Kierkegaard, Shestov was not too worried by such abstract questions as that regarding the relation between the finite and the infinite or the relationship, at a conceptual level, between the eternal and the temporal. For him, “eternal” and “infinite” aredata that make clear the absolute transcendental nature of God. If a philosopher is defined by a system that comprises epistemology, ontology, ethics, and aesthetics, Shestov is lacking severely; he definitely is a philosopher insofar as he is taking issue with major epistemological problems posed by other philosophers beforewriting him. For had theoretically) to be overcome, merely (andhim, not ethics discussed andaesthetics ontolapplied in one’s ogy is to be sought in God. However, from Pascal to Nietzsche and beyond, there were other philosophers, who were lacking from these points of view. If, however, another kind of philosophy, one that does not try to constrain, to demonstrate but rather to persuade, a philosophy that is not acting only in the name of the ratio and for its glory, a philosophy that accepts other dimensions and uses tools different from the classical ones could be defined, a metasophia rather than philosophia, Shestov is a philosopher. Finally, to be able to argue his status of “religious thinker,” we would need to set some in “religious our thoughts and try“philosopher to establish distinctions such concepts as order that of thinker,” of religion,”,between “theologian,” or that of a “thinker who is religious.” Since the notion of religion is involved, the definitions of the concepts mentioned above will change as a function of the meaning we chose for “religion.” o further complicate matters, “religion” and the related notion of religiosity, are connected to personal faith and belief at the level of the individual (again, two additional concepts difficult to pin down) and to norms and practices at the level of the community. o discuss
Introduction 17 all these in abstract terms is a work in itself, beyond the scope of this book, a non-productive labor for our purpose here. As we know, under given historical circumstances, such definitions are specific to given religions; thus for example, for the Judaism the period theand Second concept tied of religion, regardless of theofdefinition of of faith belief,emple would the be strongly in with rituals around the emple and norms of behavior of the people who lived, at the time, in Judea. Te religiosity of the early Christians was very different from that of those living in medieval times, exactly as a Sufi’s understanding of religion in twelfth century Persia would turn out to be very different from that of a common Shiite practitioner of Islam in today’s Iran. Matters become even more complicated if we were to include in a theoretical discussion about religion and religiosity non-monotheistic beliefs. In order to exit this labyrinth, we must introduce some simplifications into our discussion. Shestov was born Jewish, and his first contact with religion was within the Jewish religious tradition. At the time he grew up, in assimilated families (and his family was an assimilated one, however, not to the degree secular Jews were assimilated in Germany at the time), Judaism meant basically a superficial observance of rituals and ceremonies devoid of any meaning to their practitioners. Tere was just enough ritual and ceremonial to give them the sentiment of belonging to a group that would thus not be defined exclusively in terms of the hatred and exclusion of the surrounding ethnic groups. When he looked around him, the assimilated or quasi-assimilated Jew saw everywhere thethem signs,carefully; the symbols, and athe values of a Christian world. interested He began Shestov looking at it is not mere coincidence that Heine from his earliest years. Te cultural magnetism of the Christian world around him was enormous; from the little we learnt about Shestov so far (the next chapter expands on this subject), we know that he lived intellectually under the spell of the Russian and the Western European cultures. He had to cope with a problem that by far was not unique to him; on the contrary, I contend that it was quite a common one for the majority of the Jewish intellectuals of his generation. Franz Rosenzweig, in a very different context and at a later time, faced also the dilemmas Shestov was facing at the turn of the century: what the best way to theworld surrounding and wouldtothis act imply a totalisabandonment of enter his own or ratherworld, an adjustment the new one? Rosenzweig, as Shestov, wanted at first to take the radical step of total rejection of his Jewish roots and in the end he did not. He remained “at home,” but as soon as he made his decision, he began to rebuild it so that he could live there. Shestov was also tempted to step across the line, but his circumstances were different, and his personal make up was unlike that of the the German Jews mentioned. He did something similar as Rosenzweig, though, in the sense that
18 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker he also tried to redefine the religious tenets of both Judaism and Christianity, but unlike Rosenzweig who found a way to make the two religions coexist instead of staying mutually exclusive, Shestov tried to integrate a certain form primevalthat Christianity intomade the realm of asuch Judaism redefined by him in such aofmanner it could have possible a fusion. I made this long detour hoping that I will be able to simplify the discussion about the meaning of the concept of “religious thinker.” Lev Shestov certainly considered religion a personal matter; moreover, for him religion was based on a faith defined by a strong connection between man and God. Te God in this binomial relationship is absolutely transcendental while man is submitted totally to contingency. Immanence is absent in his weltanschauung. With all these considerations in mind, it will be left, after all, to the readers of the Shestovian oeuvre to decide whether he was a philosopher or a modern prophet in the guise of a religious thinker.
ONE
The Portrait of the Philosopher as a Young Man
“Generally biographies tell us everything except what it is important to know.” “Let us go in together, And still your fingers on your lips, I pray. Te time is out of joint—O cursèd spite, Tat ever I was born to set it right!” —Hamlet
At the end of the only exhaustive biography of Lev Shestov, written by his daughter Nathalie Baranoff-Chestov1 one finds two photographs: one of the young Shestov at the age of nineteen or twenty (that is during the second half of the 1880s) and a family photograph, which includes the parents and his brothers and sisters, dated 1910. It would not be usual perhaps to try to understand a philosopher’s personality by carefully scrutinizing his photographs but in the case of a thinker who refuses to make the distinction between vivere and philosophare this temptation becomes overwhelming. Te young man seems to say, with Pushkin, “I want to live so that I might think and suffer”; twenty and some years later the unhappy Shestov in the photograph looks like someone who—while posing for the family album—cannot help brooding over the meaning of a statement he made in one of his already published books: “long
20 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker journeys should be undertaken only after family connections have become a burden,”2 In fact, the forty-four-year-old man who stares at us with an absent minded look and an utterly bored regard is indeed preparing a long trip from Kiev toofCoppet in daughters Switzerland. he lives life ofofaanmarried man, father two little (at Tere this time he is the alsosecret the father illegitimate son born from a romantic involvement with one of the maid servants in the Schwartzman household). Between 1910 and the outbreak of the Great War, Shestov spent most of his time in Switzerland. During the years he lived abroad—due to his responsibilities toward the family business—Shestov was still forced to make occasional trips to Russia. Against his will he carried this burden through his mature years till the Bolshevik revolution abolished private property in Ukraine. Te Schwartzman3 business consisted mainly of a fairly large textile factory producing “high quality English fabrics and other items based on supplies from the best producers of Moscow.”4 From the very beginning, the family enterprise and the feeling of duty and loyalty toward the parents and the family stood in the way of young Shestov; as soon as he graduated from law school in 1889 in Kiev, he tried to go to Moscow to practice law, but after a few months he had to return as “his father got entangled in his affairs and he had to help him muddle through. . . .”’5 Tis decision was not easy for the young man who during his student years got involved in “revolutionary activities” (which consisted mainly in writing about the miserable condition of the Russian workers and studying MarxHowever, and Plekhanov) and learned despise, if not toand hatetheeven, the bourgeois life. the tension betweentothe path chosen realities imposed upon him by external circumstances (how external were they in fact?) was to manifest itself in more than one aspect of Lev Shestov’s life. His father, Isaac M. Schwartzmann, had been brought up in ways that mixed to a large extent Jewish orthodoxy with the values of secular emancipation. Isaac Moiseievich kept some basic Jewish values and traditions re-enforced through centuries of exilic life by a large number of ”musts” and “must-nots”, even though many of the practices instilled by the religious commandments had been long abandoned in everyday life. “He enjoyed making fun of the narrow-minded fanatics of faith” Herman Lovtzky, brother-in-law; “nevertheless,” he the quotes himwrote saying that “when on aShestov’s solemn occasion they carry the orah 6 scrolls through the synagogue, I kiss them.” Moreover, the old man was a Zionist. Te son Lev, was sent to a gymnasium (Russian high school), then to the university where he first studied sciences, seemingly more in sign of a protest against the elimination of the science courses from the high school curriculum. He served after graduation in the army, for a few months only, most probably as a volunteer. One might assume that being exposed to a secular,
Te Portrait of the Philosopher as a Young Man 21 non-Jewish way of life while away from home for relatively long periods of time, the adolescent and the young Shestov had developed habits of which the father would disapprove. We can only imagine the clashes between this father still imbued conservative ideastraditions and the of young son educated in the new spirit of the with left-wing intellectual Bielinsky and Chernishevsky and who thus found himself very much under the spell of the literature of Lermontov, urgenev, and Dostoevsky. Te conflicts between father and son were probably aggravated also by the very unstable political situation prevailing in Russia during the 1870s and the beginning of the 1880s (the Czar, Alexander II, was assassinated in 1881). Te father was very much stressed by the events; according to Nathalie Baranoff-Chestov’s account, in 1878 the twelve-year-old Lev was kidnapped by an anarchist group, and the government forbade the father to pay the demanded ransom. Kent Hill, based on information contained in letters Shestov wrote later to Remizov and to his father, claimed that at the time of the kidnapping, he was fifteen years old already and that he willingly cooperated with those who took him hostage.7 Either way, the fact remains that the adolescent boy was returned to his parents unharmed but after a six-month absence from home! During the same troubled period, one of Isaac’s daughters from a previous marriage, Dora, in spite of her father’s will, married a non-Jewish Russian intellectual (the headmaster of a technical school in the provinces) and became herself a revolutionary. Te old man angrily rejected her, and it was her half-brother Lev, who later interceded on her to behalf in an attempt to heal the wounds . . . Te of the led the eruption of pogroms all over Ukraine; in assassination Kiev lives were lost,Czar and many Jewish businesses were destroyed. Te Schwartzmann factory was spared since due to his legal status—Isaac Moiseievich belonged to the upper guild— he was protected by the local authorities. Tus, while the father was coping with his troubles, the son was torn between a strong desire to join history in its march toward right and righteous accomplishments and the difficulty to put up with the anti-Semitic overtones of the revolutionary movement. Dostoevsky’s attitude toward the Jews during this period—which was to be the last decade of his life—is well known, and Shestov, who was already studying carefully his works, could havecritic missed As a student, Nikolai Mikhailovsky, the not literary andit.a reputed theoristheofwas theinvited Russianby populist movement, to join the Narodnaya Volya group. Young Shestov who studied Marx to became one of his first commentators in Kiev could not have missed some remarks bordering on anti-Semitism in both Marx (see his Jewish Question essay of 1844) and Mikhailovsky. Much later, in a conversation with his disciple Benjamin Fondane, he would claim that he abandoned Marxism only when he realized that socialism was on its way to become scientific. In any
22 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker event, it is quite clear that young Shestov had to confront a multifaceted reality in which forces of very different kinds and various intensities pushed and pulled him simultaneously in different directions. May 11, 1920, in Shestov’s reads as follows: “wentyfive Te yearsentry haveofalready passed since ‘the time diary fell out of joint,’ or more exactly, twenty-five years will have been elapsed this fall, at the beginning of September. I mark this down, in order not to forget it since often the most important events in one’s life, events about which nobody but oneself knows might in fact be easily forgotten.”8 What happened in September 1895? We have seen that in 1891 Shestov returned to Kiev: “He works in the family business, reads a lot and continues his involvement with economic and financial problems. At the same time, during this period he tries to write novels and stories” writes Baranoff-Chestov in her biography.9 From the story of his alter ego, young Mirovich, the hero of an aborted literary attempt of this period, we learn that he was familiar with such classics of Russian literature as Pushkin, Lermontov, and Gogol since the age of thirteen. He then continued with Nekrassov, Belinsky, and Dostoevsky and among foreign authors he read intensively Shakespeare and Goethe (it is somewhat surprising that Goethe would disappear almost completely from Shestov’s writings later on). “Poetry seemed to me to be the apotheosis of truth; or rather of the good . . . I always believed that life is nothing else but the effort of the ‘good’ to vanquish the evil, that the number of those who believe in goodness is steadily increasing, and their victory is just 10
a matter or of was time. . .” under Was hethealready acquainted with Solovyov’s idealist philosophy, he. still influence of the “ideologues” Lavrov, Bakunin, and Mikhailovsky? Whatever might have been the case, outwardly Shestov seemed preoccupied at the time by the economic realities: between 1892 and 1895 he published in local journals several articles on the economic issues of the day. View his optimistic frame of mind and the positivistic subtext of the ideologies he adhered to, this fact should not be surprising: any improvement in the economic situation—and a theoretical work on economic issues would represent in itself an effort toward such an improvement—would lead to progress on the road toward the eradication of the social evils. Te great Russian writers mentioned above have shown themselves way; in their convinced the emancipated readers that everythingtheis possible. Wasworks, not thethey essence of their greatness contained in the message of their works? However, the young man had other interests beside the societal ones. He had a pleasant bass voice that he sought to cultivate in order to become an opera singer. Furthermore, he was attracted by young women. One of them was Aniuta Listopadova, the housemaid who, as already mentioned, would give birth in 1892 to their son, Sergei. Shestov loved the boy and in later years
Te Portrait of the Philosopher as a Young Man 23 he would often visit him and his mother in Moscow (Sergei’s premature death during World War I would be another catastrophe in his life, and it would probably influence quite significantly his thinking in the years immediately following the war). nobody in in thethose family got and too upset this story; probably it wasApparently not a rare occurrence times, anyhowbysuch an “adventure” posed no problem as it did not bring with it the danger of a “mixed marriage”: Aniuta was merely a servant girl and young Lev a young and romantic fool. After her departure, things settled down in a way way which could remind a Chekhovian routine: the young man did what he was expected to do and in return he got the freedom to keep alive his literary dreams as well as his literary connections.11 One of them was the writer Varvara Grigorevna Malakhieva-Mirovich (Mirovich, as we remember was the name of the hero of Shestov’s aborted novel mentioned before). Events got, however, an unsettling turn when during the summer vacation of 1985 Shestov realized that he had fallen in love with Varvara, who at the time was the governess of his sister Sonia’s daughters. He dared open his heart only to receive a very chilling answer: Varvara Grigorevna explained to him in a letter written at the end of the summer that he was not in love with her but with a “beautiful image” constructed by his own mind.12 She recognized also that in their specific circumstances, the fact that she was a Christian might pose an insurmountable problem. Shestov knew it all too well, but he loved to imagine himself in the role of a modern Evgheni Oneghin (with Varvara playing atiana’s role) and this prosaic aspect of the things—the mismatch—could in the Varvara persisted inreligious her refusal, Shestov fell in not lovefitwith her picture. younger When sister, Anastasia (Nastia). One can only speculate about the details and the meanings of such a story: was Nastia just a consolation for his unreciprocated love for Varvara? Did Varvara feel betrayed by Shestov when he began courting her sister? Te two, Shestov and Malakhieva-Mirovich, would continue a platonic relationship over the years; in a letter written to his wife in 1902, Shestov mentions Varvara openly, and years later, they would collaborate in literary matters.13. However, beyond this hypothetical (and perhaps irrelevant) question remains the fact that young Shestov found himself in 1895 in a situation in which he did,predicament, somebody was be hurt,toincluding, obviously, himself. o exitwhatever this impossible hetodecided marry Nastia. Tis information is provided by the letters he wrote to his parents from Europe in 1896: in April that year, he writes to his mother, “I cannot live without Nastia . . . o this girl I owe my life, more than my life. If it had not been for her, only God knows what would have happened to me. She came to me in the most horrible moment of my life, when I was ready to do anything, when I was as close to madness as to death and she saved me.”14
24 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker His passionate plea was a voice crying in the wilderness as his father remained unyielding: as he was before toward Lev’s half-sister Dora, as he remained during the six months of his kidnapping. Yet, in spite of his unhappiness andand hisdiligently reiteratedfulfill claims sickness andways utter despair, Shestov would faithfully his of filial duties in that resemble Kierkegaard before him and anticipate Kafka in the future. However, his father did not give in: to his attempts to convince him through a long string of pronunciations about Nastia’s qualities and in spite of his loyalty to the family,he answered in a harsh and uncompromising tone, calling him a “criminal” (he perhaps thought of the Hebrew connotation of the word, not the Dostoevskyan one) and telling him bluntly that he would never accept her into his house. His mother, Anna Schreiber—Isaac’s second wife—was also a tough lady, known to the family as “the Duchess of Podolsk,” was of no help since she too was as unwilling to compromise as the father was. (Again, we are left to speculate, not knowing enough about Shestov’s parents and their relationship, what would have been the outcome if she had supported her son’s plea. Te fact is that when a year later he married a Russian woman abroad, he kept the marriage secret till the death of the father in 1914 but told his mother about it immediately after that). Young Lev was shattered. Te beautiful absolute truth vanished and his willingness to seek the good was destroyed forever. An impenetrable wall arose in front of him, a forbidding barrier was erected by external, impenetrable forces, between him and the person he wanted to be. Since he was convinced of hisforces truth, of he evil. had no he was confronting the dark Hedoubt beganthat to feel thatrepresenting his personalthe liferight acquired more and more a tragic character. Tis was the personal drama he underwent around the fatidic year 1895, a drama that would define the turning point for the thirtyyear-old Lev Shestov. From this moment on, he lost interest in economic and political matters. Life appeared no longer as a glorious march toward a rosy future but rather under the guise of an unfolding tragedy. Te question posed to the individual is not one related to his social life but one which has to do with an alienated self cast brutally in a hostile surrounding environment. Man (meaning mankind15) lives a tragedy, and the question is how he should muddle through it. At this stage, Shestov believes thatpredicament; the solution such was to be found in the understanding of the depthsstill of this human a profound understanding must lead to an exit, to a way out of the labyrinth. Te guide must be the great writer such as Shakespeare, olstoy, or Dostoevsky who understands the human soul; the point terminus of the adventure is in the work of art. Tere is a solution, and this is to be found in the domain of the aesthetics. Tese were Shestov’s beliefs at the time he was coping with the aftermath of the events of 1895.
Te Portrait of the Philosopher as a Young Man 25 I mentioned above the labyrinth; we need, however, to follow Shestov a step further in order to understand why I use the metaphor of the labyrinth instead of mentioning a name Shestov uses extensively later in his works, that of Job. Deeply left home beganKarlsbad) crisscrossing Europethat (mostly the German realm hurt, at thishepoint, Berlin,and Vienna, convinced he must find a cure to his (spiritual as well as physical) ills. Tese years were, one should remember, the time of the birth of psychoanalysis and the spirit of the time is visible in the letters sent home by his other brother-in-law, Volodya Mendelberg, a doctor himself, who accompanied Shestov on his voyage. In order to recover, Lev needs, he writes, “legal sexual relations of the kind possible only in marriage”! As he moved from the German speaking countries to Italy (an old friend of his was living there with the hope to recover from tuberculosis), he met in Rome in February 1897 a young Russian woman whom he clandestinely marries (his brothers and sisters knew however about the secret marriage) and who gives birth before the end of the year to his first daughter, atiana. “Ana Eleazarovna Berezovskaya was the daughter of a landowner who belonged to the hereditary gentry. By the time she was sixteen both of her parents were dead. She had five other brothers, among whom one was a surgeon, one an engineer and another, an actor. One brother looked after the family estate and another was later killed in a student duel . . . the family was related to P. A. Kropotkin, the famous anarchist and to S. A. Muromtsev, the chairman of the first Duma,” writes Nathalie (the second daughter, born three years later) the au16
thor“therapeutic” of the often quoted biography. Shestov’s act to wasaccept a radical answermarriage. to both his needs and to his father’s refusal a “mixed” He gave in, though, to his father’s expressed will and kept for the next sixteen years his marriage secret. All the women Shestov was involved with were Christians belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church; why didn’t he try to find a match which would have satisfied his father as well as the social pressure exerted by both his Jewish family and the Christian environment? At that time a mixed marriage was impossible: one of the two participants had to convert to the religion of the other. Such marriages were recognized in Russia only after 1907. Some authors posed the question in order to open the road to speculations hidden affinities Shestov manifested secretly toward faith. about Such an interpretation is suggested by his tendency, in thethe laterChristian writings, to project on the contents of the New estament ideas belonging to the Old one (not in the usual sense of seeing in it the prophetical content announcing Christianity but rather, as we shall see further, in the sense of appropriating and integrating its ideas in a primeval biblical thinking manifested in the Old estament). Regardless the intrinsic value of such a speculation, it seems that Shestov would have rejected it: there was nothing stranger to his spirit than
26 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker the idea that some kind of generalization or an abstract idea can explain the specificity, the singularity manifested in the decision of the individual being. He would have probably replied to any such hypothesis that he just happened theseotherwise, to meetout women and lovenot. withAsthem . Of course, things mightfound have turned butfell theyindid mentioned above, Shestov himself in a situation which he defined as tragic, and all his energies were spent in the effort to try to cope with it. He went to the masters of modern tragedy to learn from them. He also went to Pushkin because, as he wrote in an article of 1899 about him, “in situations in which we can only cry and pull our hair in despair, the poet only remains calm and firm, he never gives up hope because he knows that he who searches shall find and that to his two knocks, the door shall be opened.”17 Te poet is the only one who can overcome “the helplessness following our attempts to solve the riddles of life.” At this turning point, he is still struggling with the problem of the “good” through lectures from Solovyov (An Apology of Good) and follows the authoritative work of Brandes on Shakespeare as guide to the latter’s works. His first published book (in 1898) is entitled Shakespeare and His Critic Brandes. Tis book is the only work by Shestov which has not been translated from Russian. Discussions about its content can be found in French in Shestov’s daughter’s biography and now, in the excellent study of the philosopher’s formative years included in Geneviève Piron’s thesis 18; in English, Andreas Valevicius discussed extensively this early work in his Lev Sestov and His imes. I
will only observe here thatstill before under the of Nietzsche, “shattered man” believed in thefalling exemplarity of spell that what happenedShestov’s to him. Everybody is potentially a tragic hero; there is a fatality of the tragic at work, the good literature and poetry are there to witness it, this mysterious order of the things hidden from us is supposed to transform our lives into something unexpected, something valuable. Te tragic aspect of the human life is not something held against us but rather a source of meaning and of value. One must penetrate the mystery in order to reach the “roots from which the human destiny grows”19; Shestov still talks about “necessity” and “meaning” as positive concepts, even though Valevicius points out, rightly, that this necessity is the (even equivalent of what the Greek “ananke”didbutuncover rather isof forever the concept defined bynot aine though Shakespeare forbidden to the scientifically minded critics of the kind of aine). In Europe Shestov discovered Nietzsche. It would take him a few years to assimilate the ideas of the German philosopher, and subsequently a radical change occurred in his ways of thinking. In the next chapter I will present the unfolding of Shestov’s thinking during these first years of his literary and philosophical activities in Russia; here I would like to sum up this brief but
Te Portrait of the Philosopher as a Young Man 27 essential biographic intermezzo by mentioning a few of the ideas which dominated the thinking of young Shestov at the time of his existential crisis. It is clear that the attempts to explain the secrets and the meaning of the utterly incomprehensible occurrences our lives in through recreation of theserepresented events in terms of aesthetic renderings,in whether prose,adrama, or poetry, an ideal shared by young Shestov with many of his contemporaries. His first book proves this assertion. In the essay about Pushkin written around this moment of crisis, the young author wrote: “the poet is not a preacher. He cannot remain confined to the choice of strong and passionate words which merely move the reader; one makes stronger demands on him. First and foremost, one demands sincerity, one expects him to represent life as it is in its reality.” 20 Yes, but reality is cruel and uncompromising he will add. Indeed, he knew very well what he was talking about as he wrote these essays after his moment of crisis, in 1895. Te individual is crushed and vanquished by powerful external forces. Facing this inexorable law, how can the poet reconcile a cruel reality with his search of the sublime, of the beautiful? Can the aesthetic compensate for the absence of the ethic in everyday life? Can it overcome the injustice, the evil, the suffering? Apparently, writes Shestov, the poet has no choice: he either serves the truth and depicts the life with all its horrors or denies their existence and paints a rosy, unrealistic picture of a beautiful fiction. At least, this is what the Western literature does, he concludes; but not Pushkin, the great Russian poet, who is not only a great poet but also embodies the Russian spirit, that of the Easterthe (European) Te modern Sphinx asked question about possibilityspirituality. of a compatibility between the two ways,him andthe he answered fearlessly his question with an unhesitant yes. After a long excursion through the oeuvre of the poet sustained by incursions in the works of Gogol and Lermontov, Shestov came to the conclusion that atiana’s (moral) victory over Oneghin represented the symbol of the victory of the ideal over the concrete reality. Tere is a secret, which once unveiled allows one to overcome the tragedy; Pushkin did find the way to overcome despair in that he was inspired by situations that paralyzed others. One only needs to learn the technique (or the art) of the exit from the labyrinth. Before Pushkin, Shakespeare too had found his way out. In anWorks,” essay written at about time,that “TeinEthical Problem in Shakespeare’s Shestov beganthe bysame noticing AD 1601 a singular event marked the playwright for his entire life. After this fateful event, Shakespeare wrote Julius Cesar a play in which “none of the characters dare to smile” and Hamlet in which only the main character has the right to do it. 21 Both plays, as different as they were, had a common denominator expressed by Hamlet’s words in Act I, “Te time is out of joint—O cursèd spite, Tat ever I was born to set it right!” Shakespeare had lost the (perhaps subconscious) belief
28 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker we all have that life has finality and meaning. Tat was also Shestov’s belief till 1895; what can be done in this situation? “One must find a new faith; otherwise life will become an endless torment” he writes22 and sets out to seek this newYoung faith inShestov Shakespeare’s plays. observed that the road to the solution was not straight and easy to find; Julius Cesar is still written in the spirit of “old Shakespeare.” Virtue is lauded and applauded; the real tragic hero is not the one killed by the conjurors but Brutus who is pushed by the all powerful moral law to do at all times the “right” thing. He knows that he has to do just that; he tries to be a virtuous man, but his endeavor to do what is right only increases his unhappiness. Shakespeare learnt from Plutarch who, in turn, was Plato’s follower that one can overcome any injustice life brings upon us if we can go on living without committing unjust deeds. In accordance with this ideal, he tried to impose it upon his heroes and upon young Shestov. Ten came Hamlet and refused the stoic solution, thus posing the question: what gives morals or the ethical law this all-encompassing authority? In the old times, the answer was easily obtained: the gods told humans that this is the way things should be. In modern times, wrote ironically the young author, it was Kant who explained why the ethical law was all-powerful: “the greatest good, the absolute good is self-sacrifice and the sacrifice of the other on the altar of the sublime of Ethics.”23 However, when it comes to Hamlet, Shestov points out that “neither Fichte’s eloquent discourse nor Kant’s autonomous ethical law could chase 24
awayoldthetricks phantom which the poor cameand when the did not workhaunted any longer, whenprince.” the timeTe wasmoment out of joint the usual remedies became unacceptable. Te phantoms which haunted Shestov’s life were there to stay and all the learned and subtle solutions proposed by religion and philosophy were equally unacceptable. Nietzsche is not mentioned yet explicitly, but his call to “become who you are” begins to be felt in Shestov’s discourse. It will not be the sublime of ethics he would seek from then on but the authenticity obtained through the conf rontation with the “burning embers” of adversity; dying while fighting for one’s right to deny the constraints of the moral imperative is not capitulation, it is rather the way. Tat was Pushkin’s message andthan at this the poet too, rather thestage sage.in his life Lev Shestov was still inclined to follow
TWO
Beginnings Without Ends The Russian Background
“rue philosophy must begin with the questions of man’s place and destiny in the world.” “We do not even know which is more essential and important, the inevitable or the casual.”
When toward the end of his life Lev Shestov looked back to the period described in the previous chapter, he resumed it more or less in the terms I presented it, but he claimed that from the disappointment with the philosophers and their wisdom and the poets and their search for the “aesthetic solution,” he went directly to the Bible: “My first master in philosophy, and that might seem quite strange to many people, was Shakespeare. From him I learnt this menacing troubling time is of outhuman of joint.’ What unveil can onethemselves do when such aand thing happens,phrase, when ‘the the horrors existence to men (to Shakespeare) who become—as time itself is—out of joint? From Shakespeare I rushed to Kant, who tried in his Critique of Practical Reason and by means of his famous postulates (successfully one must say, for more than one hundred years), to hide the ‘cracks’ in the nature of being uncovered by his own Critique of Pure Reason. But Kant could not provide answers to my questions. At that point, I began looking elsewhere, toward the Scriptures. Te
30 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker question is however, can the Bible withstand the confrontation with the obvious truths (of reason)? I did not ask myself this question at that time, I did not dare yet to do it. . . .”1 Te road to the Bible and its message, though, will turn out to a quitementioned, long and eventful one.first book Shakespeare and His Critic Asbealready Shestov’s Brandes, which he began writing in 1896, was published in St. Petersburg in 1898 (by that time he had already published in Kiev in 1895 an article about Brandes’ Hamlet2). Tis was his first attempt to try to cope with the dramatic events of his own life during the few years that preceded the writing of the book. It is worth mentioning that this first work, in spite of the display of a real literary talent and a great empathy for Shakespeare’s heroes (he began by stating that “my first master was Shakespeare, when I read his line, ‘the time is out of joints,’ I began to understand,” very early,3) was not received with great enthusiasm in the literary circles of the two Russian cultural capitals, Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Te book represented in the eyes of his critics— as Nathalie Baranoff-Chestov put it—“a protest in the name of idealism and ethics against aine’s positivism and Brandes’ skepticism.”4 Te literary critic Ivanov-Razumnik will say that the book represented an apology of the tragedy. Another reader (Lundberg) observed that the feeling left by the lecture of Shestov’s work is one of anxiety while a much later, non-Russian reader will find, perhaps not surprisingly, that all the major themes approached by Shestov during his mature years are already present in this first book.5 At about time he was writing aine, Shakespeare, Shestov beganthe reading Nietzsche. Te about shock Brandes, was as strong as and it was instantaneous; he would tell his disciple Benjamin Fondane many years later that the reading of Te Genealogy of the Morals did stir and upset him to the point that he became sleepless for a while. At first, his instinct was to resist Nietzsche’s cruel ways of thinking and oppose his frontal attack against the morals, but he himself began to realize, based on his own experience that the ethics of good and evil becomes problematic when man feels crushed by external, overwhelming forces. “Te issue of morality could not hold against Nietzsche,”6 he wrote after having read his biography; probably that as soon as he finished reading the Shestov to write Nietzsche. around him werebook, talking aboutwas thistempted philosopher whoabout seemed to cast aPeople particular fascination over East European authors. At the same time, Shestov was still very much under the spell of the classical Russian literature, avidly reading and rereading urgenev, Dostoevsky, olstoy, Gogol, and Chekhov. He felt the need to confront his struggle with the specific circumstances of his own life with the weltanschauung of authors close to and familiar with his historical and cultural surroundings. Tey would, he hoped, resonate better with his attempts to make
Te Russian Background 31 sense of his dilemmas, thoughts and with the strange ideas which began to take shape in his troubled mind. We have to remember that Shestov began writing his first book in 1897, just after the fateful decision to marry in secrecy and thusidea challenge addition, he washecertainly by the that hethewillparental have toauthority. keep his In new life a secret; worked troubled on the text in Rome next to his wife, while waiting to become a father. He returned at the end of the year to Kiev, alone and lonely, leaving behind in Italy his wife and a new-born daughter. While writing about Shakespeare’s tragic heroes, Shestov is unhappy with his own life: but in addition to the troubles described above, he is also exasperated by the contradiction lived day-by-day in his spiritual life (I use, faute de mieux, this somewhat worn-out expression, reluctantly). He wants to be a philosopher, to write books, to muse upon matters of life and death and instead, he has to run a family business. His personal problems stemmed to a large extent from the negative effects of the superposition between a deep respect for the parents—instilled by a moral tradition with roots in the Jewish religion already rejected by most of the members of his generation—and an instinctive refusal to transgress customs imposed by the same obsolete (in his eyes at that moment) and rejected tradition (I remind the reader that the imperative “Honor your father and mother” was carved on the ablets of the Law). Tis “incomplete refusal” instilled in young Shestov a feeling of guilt and made him profoundly unhappy. In addition to that, as soon as he began to publish he found an himself in the ambiguous situation ofworld. belonging and at the same time being outsider to the Russian intellectual Tis permanent oscillation between an identity imposed upon him (on two fronts) from outside and the difficulties generated by his ceaseless attempts to forge himself a new identity, pushed Shestov to frantically seek answers to the steadily increasing number of exceedingly difficult questions which gravitated all around this big “black hole” called morality. Questions such as “why are people who try to do the good, unhappy?” “how should/could one live with the realization of the fact that doing the ethically right thing might still bring someone to Hell rather than to the much heralded Paradise?” or “how open, how honest can one be about these things?” became recurrent andolstoy ceaselessly came to trouble his mind. Among the authors mentioned above, and Dostoevsky confronted in the most direct way many of these questions which tormented Shestov. At a first glance it seemed to him that olstoy was closer to Nietzsche than Dostoevsky and that the first appeared as a symmetrically negative image of the German thinker. Reading the long essay Te Good in the eaching of olstoy and Nietzscheone realizes that Shestov’s argument is much subtler than that; he offers an image of olstoy, which in the end breaks this apparent symmetry.
32 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker Relatively late in his life, Lev olstoy wrote a book entitled What Is Art? which, as Shestov pointed out ironically at the onset of his essay, was not about art as “more serious and more important problems than that of art are raised 7
there.”soul, Tisa work to have “the storm which shook” stoy’s stormseemed so terrible that itsrcinated radicallyinchanged his identity, from olthat of a teller of stories to that of a judge of human life. In the process he also “learnt to speak a language which is bizarre and strange to us.” 8 However, which questions should be considered more serious and more important than those related to art? olstoy’s sharp answer was, “the questions about morality and religion”; to these his critic will add the question concerning the negative attitude olstoy manifested toward Nietzsche in his book. Shestov’s point is that the Russian writer does not really study the German philosopher in order to refute his ideas; he uses against him a few clichés which help “make Nietzsche responsible for all the sins of the younger generation.” Tus, the apparent conclusion Shestov draws is that “it is beyond doubt for anyone: Count olstoy and Nietzsche mutually excluded each other.”9 However, immediately after having made this affirmation he asks a question, which sets the premise and the frame for the entire discussion which follows: “But is it really so?” olstoy the writer is extremely accurate in his forceful descriptions of the inequities of life, but he is acting at the same time as a judge who is “passionately interested in the outcome of the trial.”10 As a result, he will pitilessly lead Anna Karenina for instance, to her terrible death in order to go with Levin “toward the good and Peace and toward salvation” (ibid.). In WarSonia, , the author produces a “harsh judgment”—in Shestov’s words—on while other heroes (Rostov, Pierre Bezukhov, Natasha, and so on) have existences that “seem necessary and credible.” A contradiction at the roots of olstoy’s interpretation of the meaning of the lives of his heroes is pointed out from the very beginning: on the one hand, the great novelist concedes that “it is permitted, it is even necessary to strive ‘to be good.’ to read the Bible, to be moved at the stories of pilgrims and mendicants’ on the other, he tells his reader that it is not worthwhile to stake one’s life on these values as they represent only the poetry of life, not life itself. Te contradiction appears because olstoy, as all great writers, does not simply
describe life,toheunderstand interrogateshimself it as well. is a process through which the writer tries andWriting the world surrounding him. Indeed, what is true for olstoy is true for Shestov as well: therefore, while writing about the idea of good in olstoy and Nietzsche he is inquiring about the meaning of the good, of morals in general, in his life. Nietzsche himself was at some point among those who were ready to renounce life for the sake of the virtues, he too wanted to be in the “service of the good,” explains Shestov. Yet, all of a sudden something occurred and changed
Te Russian Background 33 all these. At first he resisted: “even at the appearance of the first faithful signs of his illness, Nietzsche did not become at all disturbed.”11 Only when life became a burden to him as a result of ceaseless suffering over a period of fifteen years, he feltguilt thatwas he to may question “why didideals?” that happen to somebody whose only beask toothe faithful to the moral and provide his own answers to it. With olstoy things were somewhat different: he had been tortured by doubts in his younger years, but by the time he had the fateful experience of meeting the poverty in his most blunt and naked expression, as described in his article on the Census of Moscow, he was in search for a way out of the labyrinth of doubts. Shestov shows how, without even noticing it, olstoy embraced two of Nietzsche’s pronouncements in his attitude toward the human misery: “one must not wish to be the doctor of an incurable person” and “what is tottering must be pulled further.” Perhaps, when much later olstoy expressed dissatisfaction with Shestov’s conclusions about him, he minded this part of the essay. In 1910, just before olstoy’s death, Shestov visited him at Yasnaia Poliana. olstoy’s encounter with the poor brought him to the conclusion that those who are ready to help these underprivileged creatures often lack the moral qualities to do so; therefore, before trying to help others, one must first heal oneself. Ironically, Shestov points out that in the process of helping the poor, it was Count olstoy and not the miserable and the wretched who became better: “this seems to be the fate of the poor: they have always served and will continue to serve as a means for the rich.” 12 Te “moral approach” to people’sperhaps misfortune is not only inefficient is hypocritical: “in twenty years scores, hundreds, or thousand of but menit have passed through the night shelters, lived there, suffered there, committed crimes and died, while olstoy was perfecting himself morally at Yasnaia Poliana.”13 Preaching to others has no other goal but to aggrandize oneself by acquiring a moral stature. While writing about olstoy, Shestov was most probably thinking about his parents, in particular his father. At this point in his argumentation, through the question “why did olstoy accept a doctrine in which justice and not mercy is the principle of punishment?” he introduces an interesting philosophical bias into the discussion. Te answer was, not surprisingly perhaps, because of Kant and Critique of Practical Reason Shestov’s disappointment with Kant is directly his projected upon olstoy (this .will be an intellectual device often used in his future works): “Kantian duty, in that form which does not allow any room for doubt about what is permitted and forbidden becomes the foundation stone of the doctrine of olstoy.”14 Tis observation is as relevant for Shestov as it is for olstoy; we discover in it the source of one of the main Shestovian themes in his latter works, that of the relationship between a knowledge obtained from rational thinking versus the revealed one. Tis is the first time he poses directly
34 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker the question “What is there in common between the categorical imperative or the principle of retribution proclaimed by Kant and the teaching of the gospel?” (ibid.). Dostoevsky between is mentioned this characters work only ofasthe somebody the connection the twoinmain essay: at who somemakes point Shestov asks himself how is it possible that both Nietzsche and olstoy held in high esteem Dostoevsky? An analysis of Crime and Punishment follows, in which Shestov shows that in spite of the apparently obvious interpretation of the novel as representing a discussion about the deep meaning of evil and its effect on its perpetrator in fact, “for Dostoevsky, the meaning of the crime does not lie in the evil that Raskolnikov has done to his victims but in what he has done to his own soul.”15 Terefore, he turns out to be very much like olstoy, preoccupied rather with the soul of the perpetrator of the crime than with that of the victim. Tis is very different from Shakespeare’s Macbeth who is psychologically much more truthful than Dostoevsky’s hero. Te playwright was interested “in the insubmissive, truly terrible criminal; Dostoevsky chose a submissive, harmless person whom he allowed to become a murderer.Shakespeare sought to justify the man, Dostoevsky to condemn him.”16 Like olstoy, in this work Dostoevsky is on the preacher’s side, he wishes, in Shestov’s words, to teach the reader “that one can either serve the ‘good’ or the ‘evil,’ that he himself serves the good and therefore is a man worthy of great respect” (ibid.) Tis is the moment to point out two other very significant remarks Shestov makes in thisAfter chapter: one has do with the intrinsic meaning of the Christian Scriptures. making the to above mentioned comparison between Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, he asks in a rather dramatic way, “Which of this is the true Christian?” We find here one of the first indications in the direction of “Shestov, religious thinker.” Te second remark has to do with “Shestov, the philosopher” as it hints to the definition Shestov assigns later to the meaning and the purpose of philosophy: what has been brought forth in the comparison between the mentioned writers, “seems to me sufficient to show what a fundamental difference there is between philosophy and preaching and by whom preaching is needed and by whom philosophy.”17 Dostoevsky’s preaching will never uncover reader instills the great truth communicated by“there Shakespeare. On the other hand,the Macbeth in Shestov the feeling that is no power which either can or will destroy the man.” while the gospel says in Matthew 18:14—“it is not the will of your heavenly father that a single one of these little ones shall be lost.” olstoy himselfwas a philosopher before becoming a preacher: of course, not one of those who is talking about space and time or about monism and dualism, idealism or materialism. However, writes Shestov, “it is not this that finally gives one the right to be called a philosopher . . .
Te Russian Background 35 true philosophy must begin with the questions of man’s place and destiny in the world.”18 olstoy the writer-philosopher would have repudiated olstoy the preacher: and precisely for this reason he can be compared, after all, with Nietzsche. Unlike Nietzsche, however, couldenigma not “tear fromtotruth and ended up attempting “to forget the he fateful of life, forgetitsitveil” at 19 all cost.” He will try to abandon the “philosophy of life”—at that time the term existential philosophy did not exist yet—in favor of preaching. In What is Art? olstoy concluded that “the good is the eternal, highest goal of our life. In whatever way we understand the good, our life is still nothing other than striving toward the good, i.e., toward God.”20 At this point in his essay on olstoy and Nietzsche, Shestov returns to the similarities between the two thinkers and declares quite surprisingly that olstoy’s statement “God is the good” and Nietzsche’s “God is dead” are in fact, equivalent. Moreover, in their discussion of the meaning 21of the religious belief, the two “set out from the same point of view,” he writes. From the point of view of my presentation here, it is not too important to discuss Shestov’s “demonstration” of these assertions; much more telling are some of their corollaries. One of them is that following the moment of crisis in their lives, for both “the art which embellishes human sorrow is no longer of any use.” Again, it seems that Shestov is talking about himself as well: at the very moment one realizes that the human tragedy to which one is exposed is not interpretable in aesthetic terms, one finds himself suspended in a void. Te only possibility to overcome such a predicament is offered by religious belief; but onehuman can have faith neithera in a God which turns out to be a mere figment of the imagination, God submitted to the rules of logic, nor in a “moral” God, who only requires doing the good in order to ultimately satisfy the all too human longing for inner peace of mind. Te great liberator of the spirit is the great pain wrote Nietzsche in Te Gay Science, and this faith generating suffering seeks another God and another relationship with Him than that of the religiosity preached by olstoy. Did however Nietzsche really seek God?” asks Shestov. Yes, he did, he “employed all the power of his soul to find a faith,” but he could not find it. People caught in a terrible existential predicament will do everything in order everything even God to evade their they will be itready himself: “suchdire was situation: Nietzsche’s atheism: was to notsacrifice a duty neglected ,but a right 22 lost,” remarks Shestov. His conclusion is that “it does not depend on the will of man to believe or not to believe” (ibid.). Later, when he reflects on the meaning of the encounter between man and God, Shestov realizes that he or she who has faith cannot avoid the concept of grace brought strongly to the fore by this new religion born in the shadow of the Hebrew Bible. Te essay about olstoy and Nietzsche contains many more interesting
36 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker remarks on the nature of the philosophical and religious thinking of the two authors who came to replace Shakespeare as the guide of a (very) perplexed young Shestov. He brings in Heine’s life and work, as well as urgenev, to illustrate andwhich re-enforce of Nietzsche’s ideas,totally—as he discusses of in hissome later works he will reject wellthe as concept that of the amor fati— Nietzsche’s overman (I prefer Walter Kaufman’s somewhat awkward rendering into English of the srcinal “superman,” which had acquired a quite different meaning in the everyday contemporary English language). Even Marx is mentioned. It is not surprising, however, that the reception of the book about olstoy and Nietzsche was far from being a warm one at the time of its publication, in spite of the fact that both its style and the sincerity of the author were recognized and appreciated. He had a hard time with the publishers and was refused at first either because of too much “Nietzscheianism” or for ideas, which seemingly proved a lack of respect for olstoy. Solovyov, perhaps the most important philosopher in Russia at the time, whom Shestov sent through an intermediary the manuscript for a preview, reacted by writing, “my consciousness does not allow me to recommend it for publication . . . let know the author, on my behalf, that I suggest never to have published this work because if he does, he will certainly regret it later.”23 Te book was however published at the beginning of the year 1900. Soon after its publication, Shestov leaves again for Europe to join in Italy (at Nervi) his wife and their little daughter, atiana. Tey will stay together most of the year, first intoItaly in daughter, Switzerland (Bern), where his wife gives birthEuin November theirlater second Nathalie-Natasha. During this long ropean sojourn, Shestov begins thinking about a new book, which, this time, would bring Dostoevsky into confrontation with Nietzsche. He felt now the need to further pursue some of the philosophical ideas he began to develop in the book on olstoy and Nietzsche. In a letter sent to a friend from Bern in May, he wrote: “nothing new with me. I passed the last weeks reading boring theoretical philosophers . . . I had a hard time finishing (these lectures) so that I went back to Nietzsche and Dostoevsky; those I know well. With both one may quarrel, enter in bitter disputes but one never gets bored.”24 Fascinated by this endless with thetotwo the book birth before of his daughter he imaginary leaves againdiscussion for Italy in order tryauthors, to write after the new his mandatory return to Kiev. From Nervi he writes his wife, “I must conquer the glory (of becoming a recognized author) so that you will come to respect me”! (ibid.). A few months later in Switzerland, Shestov finishes the book and immediately after his return to Russia during the fall of 1901, he begins to look for an editor. Tere were difficulties again, but this time he made its content known to the public through installments he published in the review Mir Is-
Te Russian Background 37 skustva during the next year; in January 1903, Te Philosophy of ragedy will finally be published in St. Petersburg. Tis new (third) book was, as we have seen, a continuation of the dis-
cussion openedofbyhisthe previous two workstheabout the question by out the circumstances own life concerning confrontation withposed a “time of joint.” As with olstoy and Nietzsche, the lecture of Dostoevsky’s works reminded him that neither Hamlet nor he himself were “born to set it right.” If we stop for a moment to reflect upon the events of Shestov’s life (as they were described so far), we realize that by the time he published this first book on Dostoevsky, the author carried the weight of a more than five years long process of “regeneration of his own convictions.” Te Philosophy of ragedy begins with the following quote from Dostoevsky’s Diary of a Writer: “It would be exceedingly difficult for me to tell the story of the regeneration of my convictions . . .” to which the author hastens to add the observation that “Dostoevsky knew all too well how crucially important the question of the birth of convictions can be for us.” It is not clear at first why does Shestov consider this question as being “crucially important”; neither is transparent to the reader the purpose of another quote from the Notes from the Underground, “what can a decent man talk about with the greatest pleasure? Answer: himself.” After this somewhat abrupt beginning, the argument is steadily unfolding under the eyes of the reader: Dostoevsky believed in positive values, he belonged to Belinsky’s progressive circle, his literary work between 1845 and 1862 was by the realization deeply hearta huto realize thatdominated the most downtrodden man,that the “it lowest of moves the low,your is also 25 man being and is called your brother.” For the humanistic view promoted by Belinsky, young Dostoevsky was ready to risk his life. He wanted to change for the better a world full of Poor Folk and Humiliated and Insulted. Sentenced to death, he remained strong and stood firm on the ground of his beliefs: “the deed for which we had been condemned, the thoughts, the ideas that had possessed our minds, seemed to us not only something that did not demand repentance, but even something that purified us.” 26 Moreover, Shestov points out that in the first work published after Dostoevsky’s liberation, Te Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants, “the sharpest eye will not find even a hint that its author has been a convict . . . you sense in the author a good-natured, kind, and witty man . . . (who) allows the happiest possible outcome for the involved circumstances.”27 Te author only wants to stay free and to forget the horrors he had suffered, says Shestov and adds, “Dostoevsky, like everyone else, did not want tragedy in his own life, and he avoided it in every possible way; and if he did not escape it, it was through no fault of his, but because of outside circumstances over which he had no control.”28 Te House of Dead, which
Te Russian Background 41 a systematic way about any subject he would find essential, at the core of his tormented soul. Free thinking cannot be limited by the need to worry about form and neatness in argumentation: “the most troublesome thing in a book is the presence general ideas; one way mustofgetwriting rid of is them one becomes their slave.”38ofOne danger in this thatotherwise of the presence in the same text of ideas which might contradict one another—never mind—seems to say the author of this book which constitutes an apology of the groundlessness. Another possible negative aspect of the aphoristic style might be found in the fact that a long string of aphorisms makes it difficult to concentrate on specific ideas and come to conclusions about their value or validity. But why one would be willing to conclude, asks Shestov. “What good does a general conception about the world?”39 Of course, we have identified the roots of these thoughts already in the above discussed first works of the author; in his new book, though, Shestov begins a more thorough and to some extent a more theoretical (most probably he would not have liked this word!) and more indepth analysis of the differences between the needs of a practical knowledge guided by science and one which could help us understand the concrete existence of the individual, a meta-sophia which does not reduce the unknown to the known. It would be difficult to discuss in detail the wealth of the ideas included in Te Apotheosis of Groundlessness. One finds there the starting point of practically all the themes to be developed by Shestov in his later works. In order to attempt anto answer of my of book, I will limit discussion a few to of the question thoughtsposed relatedbytothe thetitle meaning philosophy andthe to the aphorisms that contain hints concerning the srcins of Shestov’s reflections about religion and faith. Clearly, the evolution of his ideas in these areas was not at all linear; one finds many bends and twists on the road but a few ideas, once expressed, remained more or less recognizable as one moves from one period in the life of the author to another. Occasionally, Shestov abandoned some of the ideas of his younger years; in other cases, one clearly senses that Shestov is not yet sure about his own intellectual constructs. However, if we can learn something from surveying these “blind alleys,” it is worthwhile to walk along. It is alsobyinteresting to identify in this book the new thoughts Shestov the two authors, urgenev and Chekhov, who weresuggested supposedtoto be, srcinally, its main object. Above all, it is interesting to observe Shestov’s pattern (if not an obsession) in his works: the eternal return to olstoy, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche. In spite of the fact that in his preface Shestov is ready to pay science its dues, he is quick to point out in aphorism #11 that “from our mind and our own experience we can deduce nothing that would serve us as a ground for set-
42 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker ting even the smallest limit to nature’s own arbitrary behavior.” 40 In the same aphorism, without using a rigorous philosophical terminology (Shestov never used concepts such as immanence, epistemology, or contingence, for instance), he poses a very important when hethe writes “we have never been able to separate the grain ofquestion inevitable from chaffthat of accidental and casual truth. Moreover, we do not even know which is more essential and important, the inevitable or the casual.”41 On this type of considerations—which can, of course, be refuted on various grounds—he reached a conclusion that would remain a constant of Shestov’s philosophical thinking: “philosophy must give up her attempt at finding the veritates aeternae. Te business of philosophy is to teach man to live in uncertainty . . . briefly, the business of philosophy is not to reassure people, but to upset them” (ibid.). Immediately after this in aphorism #21 he adds that “philosophy should have nothing in common with logic; philosophy is an art which aims at breaking the logical continuity of argument and bringing man in contact with the unlimited ocean of imagination.” Destabilizing the accepted wisdom becomes thus the main mission, the aim of a new philosophical thinking, of Shestov’s metasophia, and not an impediment or a limitation: “on every possible occasion, in season and out, the generally accepted truths must be ridiculed to death and paradoxes uttered in their place.” 42 In order to accomplish such desiderata the thinker—be he philosopher, writer, or artist in general, more often than not Shestov did not make the distinction between these three categories of ‘thinkers’—must set himself free Bildung,bywhich of all constrains. Tetime, idea of began who to penetrate Russian cultural realm at the is rejected the author goes eventhefurther to propose, very much in line with later avant-garde movements, the idea that “without freedom in the widest sense, freedom within oneself, freedom from preconceived ideas, freedom with regard to one’s own nation and history, without this the real artist is unthinkable.” One should notice the request to be set free of “one’s own nation and history”; later, in aphorism #100, he is even more explicit: “one needs neither to see, nor to hear or understand what is taking place around oneself; once your mind is made up, you have lost your right to grow. . . .” It is not that philosophers, writers, and artists did not know
all these truths him; trouble was, writes pretended Shestov, that “peopleinwere compelled to tellbefore lies and bethe hypocritical . . . (they) to believe science and morality, only in order to escape the persecution of public opinion” (aphorism #109). I would like to point out the fact that this aphorism begins with a remark that turns out to be extremely relevant for the future evolution of Shestov’s thinking: “After Luther, Christianity degenerated into morality and all the threads connecting man with God were cut.” At this stage, he still used this observation to make a point about the hypocrisy underlying the submis-
Te Russian Background 43 sion to commonly accepted lies but ten years later, he will place this “Luther moment” in the very different context of the meaning of faith. Te Apotheosis of Groundlessness contains also the first Shestovian incursionsgeneral into the of Greek Heasiswell finding of the andworld universally validphilosophy. propositions, as thethere ideathe thatsrcins philosophy must be a healer, must alwaysexplain and through explanation induce the spiritual tranquility needed to overcome the tragic aspects of the human condition. Here we find for the first time statements that would become later commonplace in Shestov’s philosophical writings, such as for instance “Socrates . . . wished that all men should rest, rest through eternity, that they should see their highest fulfillment in this resting” (aphorism # 25). Te founding father of Western philosophy is mentioned in aphorism #33 both in connection with God and the essence of philosophy: “Socrates did not believe in gods, so he wanted to justify virtue through reason” writes Shestov and adds, “but if there is God and all men are the children of God, we should be afraid of nothing and spare nothing.” Tis concept is a central idea to be developed further in the later works. In aphorism #39, Shestov remarks that while the appearance of Socrates at the horizon of philosophy is hailed as a great event few realize that under Pericles, Athens flourished without Socratic wisdom and after his death, in spite of the Platonic succession, Athens steadily declined. Te love of wisdom did not save Athens; “as a rule, wisdom goes one way, society the other”, concluded Shestov. It ispredates also important Shestov’s deep insights in this earlyof work— which the bulktoofretain Freud’s writings—in psychology; some his observations are relevant for the psychoanalytical research developed later and to certain new trends in psychology. It is true that Shestov was influenced by William James, whose works he read very early. Tus, we find in the Apology aphorisms discussing the nature and the effects of creativity, “creative activity is a continual progression from failure to failure and the condition of the creator is usually one of uncertainty, mistrust and shattered nerves” (#42) or more specifically, about the nature of philosophical thinking, “philosophers clearly love to call their utterances ‘truths’ since in that guise they become binding upon But each philosopher invents his truths” (#56).and He reaches wonders about us theall.relation between the individual andown his surroundings the apparently trivial conclusion that “Crusoes can be found not only on desert islands” (aphorism #52); in its context, however, the message conveyed is that the individual who separates himself from society risks to be unable to find a meaning for his life. It is apparent that at this moment in his life the author is hesitant between a tendency toward isolating himself—not only in order to protest against his dire condition but also in an attempt to re-define his
44 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker own truth—and the drive to find a socially acceptable solution to his status of pariah, in his immediate surroundings but also outside them (as mentioned earlier, not only the Jewish parents rejected the “mixed marriage,” the law of themanifest country toward did notthe allow it either). spite the skepticism to moral laws, heInwas stillofstruggling at theShestov time he began wrote his aphorisms with the question of the meaning of the ethical law: “Ought we not to see in absolute egoism an inalienable and great, yes, very great quality of human nature?” (aphorism #2, in the second part of the book) confronts the cry for self-renunciation for the sake of the other, “only he who has nothing to sacrifice, nothing to lose, having lost everything, can hope to approach the people as an equal,”, expressed in aphorism #61. Last but not least, I would like to mention the fact that in this book Shestov stated for the first time some of the major questions about religion and faith he will forcefully pose later.43 Tus, for instance, in aphorism #51, he observes that “nobody has ever been able to understand why God preferred Abel’s sacrifice to that of Cain.” What could be the nature of a God which induces the thought that “there is no justice on earth but there is no justice up above” as well? Progress and civilization did not bring human beings closer to the understanding of this riddle. Around us, the unanswered questions abound: “like our ancestors we stand still with fright and perplexity before ugliness, disease, misery, senility, death.” Are these remarks meant to address the question related to the nature of God or rather that of the meaning of the “good and evil”? I mentioned above anothersubjects quote that relationship between and man; still, the religious are invoked far fromthe being abundant, not toGod say preponderant, at this stage in Shestov’s work. Te nature of righteousness is discussed in a religious context in aphorism # 67, as is that of good and evil. Te conclusion is that while the good is uncertain, the manifestation of the evil in the world is obvious and omnipresent: “A hawk struck a nightingale, flowers withered, a cold wind froze laughing youth—and in terror our question arose. ‘Tat is evil. Te ancients were right. Not in vain is our earth called a vale of tears and sorrow’ . . .” (Aphorism #14, second part). Tis emphasis on the concrete, the real existence of the evil in a world created by a God which is identified with the good,Inwould onea of the major themes of Shestov’s religious thought. a way,also thisbecome represents departure from the Jewish tradition which considers evil a subjective rather than an objective entity. It is not clear, though, to what extent Shestov was aware of that at this stage. It might be that the idea was due to an excess of “Nietzschean thinking.” In any event, such thoughts did motivate Shestov to read the scriptures; from there, he migrated toward the authors of the Middle Ages and from them to Luther and to his reaction to Catholicism (see aphorism #33, second part. Te dispute between Luther
Te Russian Background 45 and the Catholic Church was a much discussed subject in Russia, triggered by the debate between the “Westernizers” and the “Slavophiles”). Regardless though how we interpret this incipient religious thought and independently of the conclusions we might reach, the fact is that findInhim more and more at an alternative to metaphysics based on we faith. onehinting of the last aphorisms of the book (#41, second part) we read that “perhaps there is a God and neither Voltaire nor the metaphysicians have any need to invent Him. Tey, i.e., the metaphysicians, never understood that an avowed disbelief in God does not prove the non-existence of God, but just the opposite.” Te Apotheosis of Groundlessness was the first book written by Lev Shestov which, at the time of its apparition in 1905, had a serious impact on the Russian intellectual milieus. His daughter, Nathalie Baranoff-Chestov, reproduced in her biography a few relevant quotations in this direction.44 While many of the contemporary readers emphasized the philosophical character of the book—a sign of esteem and appreciation, as by comparison with the status of a mere “literary critic,” that of “philosopher” was incomparably higher—some declared themselves puzzled if not upset. Te generation brought up in the spirit of a positivist thinking—the first Russian revolution of the twentieth century would occur a few months later—was unhappy with the severe deconstruction of philosophy and of ethics undertaken by the author. A writer considered very important at the time found the work too “scattered” and told Shestov that he would have expected the order of his works to be just opposite from that of their chronological appearance: logically he should progressed frombooks this confused kind of writing to the more organized onehave encountered in the about olstoy, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche to arrive finally at the well ordered and well thought out piece of work represented by Shakespeare and His Critic Brandes! However, in spite of the confusion occasioned sometimes, by the time his next book Beginnings and Ends appeared in 1908, Shestov was already recognized as one of the most respected Russian thinkers of his generation.
THREE
Penultimate Words
“One should accept unintelligibility as the fundamental predicate of being.” “A moment comes—only we cannot define it exactly—when explanations lose all meaning and are good for nothing anymore”
Leon Shestov, as mentioned above, spent most of his time in Kiev before 1908, when his fifth book Beginnings and Ends appeared in St. Petersburg. His previous book, Te Apotheosis of Groundlessness, gained him recognition far beyond the literary circles: famous names in the Russian world of philosophy wrote about it, among them Berdyaev, Rozanov, Remizov, Bazarov, Zenkowsky, and Aichenwald. In that spitehis of readers this public success, himselfarguments was disappointed and considered either missedShestov the essential or had a difficult time accepting both his questions and the proposed solutions, which were, one must admit, somewhat fuzzy at the time. Te year 1905 was a difficult one in Russia, and the silence of some of his friends, of which Shestov was bitterly complaining in letters written to his relatives and friends abroad, might have been motivated by the negative impact of the revolution rather than by their neglect. o make the message and the meaning of the aphorisms
48 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker more transparent, he wrote a long article on Chekhov; in a letter of April 1905, he recommended to his sister Fanny (Lovtzki) to read this article prior to the reading of the book as the ideas developed in connection with Chekhov’s life and works inwould help her .understand the seemingly elliptic pronouncements contained the Apotheosis Te years following the turbulent 1905 were somewhat easier as the parents moved to Germany before the end of that year; in 1906, following this move, Shestov succeeded to rid himself of the management of the family business. He began spending more time abroad with his wife and daughters, and during the same year they moved in together in a rented house in Freiburg, Germany. In spite of the fact that he could dedicate now more time to writing, he was still forced to spend long periods of time in Kiev since during the years 1907 and 1908 (even though he did no longer manage the family business), he was charged with its transformation into a shareholder company. In fact, till 1910 Lev Shestov still lived a life split between the obligations to the parental family and those due to his wife and children. As public recognition set in, his interactions with the intellectual circles not only in Kiev but also in Moscow and St. Petersburg multiplied and to some extent, this alleviated the pain of the separation from his wife and children (see chapter V in the first volume of Nathalie Baranoff-Chestov’s biography). Te friendship with Remizov and Berdyaev, which would continue during the exile years, began during this period. With most of the material ready, Shestov included in his new book an essay about Creation Void, heforth Chekhov, considered, as we have seen, clarify some of the from pointsthebrought in his aphorisms. Tis timenecessary his proseto is more conventional, the thoughts presented follow a somewhat linear development, and the major ideas are explained clearly and at length. A study on Dostoevsky, Te Gift of Prophecy, occasioned by the twenty-fifth anniversary of the writer’s death, completes some of the ideas already exposed previously, but it insists also on some that were only hinted at before in Te Philosophy of ragedy. However, here older ideas, which were only vaguely mentioned elsewhere, such as for instance that of Dostoevsky’s involvement with politics, are further developed. Penultimate Words, a collection of thoughts, published previously in Ruskaya Mysl) in 1907, was also included as a the review “Russian concluding chapter inTought” the new (volume. An article in which Shestov was commenting Nikolai Berdyaev’s article “ragedy and the Everyday,” present in the Russian srcinal was not included in the English translations which appeared under different titles at different times.1 It is not difficult to see why the writings about Chekhov were supposed to clarify to a large extent some of Shestov’s leading ideas; we learn from the very beginning that this writer who was “a poet of the hopelessness”2 had en-
Penultimate Words 49 countered somewhere on his way—as was the case with olstoy and Dostoevsky (and Nietzsche for that matter)—a traumatic, ground shattering experience which changed him in a fundamental way: following such an existential 3 event, the author, “attracted to problemsman” which are byTe theircircular very essence insoluble,” wouldnow become an “overstrained (ibid.). path of the argumentation is closed through a move back from the circumstances of the author to the character of his heroes; thus, we learn that “the real, the only hero of Chekhov is the hopeless man. He has absolutely no action left for him in life, save to beat his head against the stones.”4 However, the discussion of Chekhov’s philosophy leads Shestov to another idea, which would become central in his later writings: that of the unavoidable need to give in to the inexorable laws of nature: “with all his soul Chekhov felt the awful dependence of a living being upon the invisible but invincible and ostentatiously soulless laws of nature.”5 I will end this very brief review of Chekhov’s presentation in Beginnings and Endings by remarking that for Shestov the only way out of this trap was to disregard the laws of nature in their logical structures and deny their meaning for the existential experience of the individual. Te reader cannot miss the fact that almost everything Shestov wrote about Chekhov during the first decade of the twentieth century would be applicable to Kafka as well some twenty years later. At the same time, a reader familiar with contemporary philosophy might react to Shestov’s ideas in a way similar to that of A. J. Ayer, who in hisMetaphysics and Common Sense—in connection with the
obsessive preoccupation withmost deathofofussome existentialist philosophers—asked ironically, “ . . . granting that do not live sub specie mortis, is it all clear 6 that we should?” In the chapter on Dostoevsky one finds references to his implication with politics and the Slavophil ideas. Tis was an issue left out previously by Shestov in his works on the writer, mainly because of the difficulty it contained: toward the end of his life, Dostoevsky became strongly engaged in the discussion concerning the relationship between the Slavic-Orthodox ethos and the external, foreign Western culture, passionately debated within the Russian intellectual circles. Dostoevsky clearly sided with the most conservative branch of nationalist intelligentsia in ahappen disputewith that began in the of the the Russian Napoleonic wars already. As it will many of the aftermath writers of the next century, Dostoevsky’s political views were very far apart from his deep philosophical insights. Shestov who was aware of this fact had a problem from the very beginning with him, and the difficulty became even more acute when he promoted the author of Te Demons and Karamazov Brothers to the rank of a philosopher of a comparable stature with that of Nietzsche; arrived at that point, Shestov could not avoid any longer the confrontation with the subject
50 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker of Dostoevsky’s political biases. Surprisingly (or not) Shestov would cut this Gordian knot in a way which does not leave any space for doubt: “Dostoevsky understands nothing, absolutely nothing about politics, and moreover, he has nothing all to domade with protests, politics” (my emphasis) and this, inworse spite ofthan the absurdifact that “he sangatpaeans, uttered absurdities—and 7 ties.” As interesting as this statement might seem in the context of the discussion of the political engagements of some of the prominent existential(ist) thinkers and writers of the twentieth century, I will not insist on it here. Te discussion would be too long and would take us too far away. More important is another related idea, which would be developed by Shestov during his postWW I Parisian exile period: that of the deep, irreconcilable rift between logical inferences and rational reflection about religious matters (which for him meant faith and God only) and the knowledge obtained through a direct involvement, an unmediated grasp of revealed messages. Dostoevsky did speak sometimes as a prophet but he knew, says Shestov, that he was no prophet. He uttered statements that seemed connected with events occurring around him, but in fact they were either weak and unfounded or beside the point. He was in good company: neither olstoy nor Goethe seemed to have understood the meaning and the importance of the revolutions that unfolded under their eyes. How can such a thing happen? Te explanation to this strange behavior might be found perhaps in the fact that “they saw something else, something which might be even more necessary and more 8
important.” Dostoevsky to achieve something more necessary far more important than thewanted mere implementation of insignificant (in hisand views) political reforms; he was eager to bring to the people the message of faith, to strengthen their belief in what was revealed to them; he opposed their tendency to rely on concepts understood through their logical reasoning, on ideas and ideals born from their poor inferences from philosophical texts and learned commentaries of the scriptures. Indeed, some of his contemporaries—Solovyov among them—believed that Dostoevsky was a prophet; Shestov, however, did not agree with Solovyov and replaced his pronouncement with a quite different one, which led him to the (quite harsh) conclusion that “Dostoevsky 9 remained (his entire life) on the eve of a great truth.” Hefaith was which engaged with the Eastern Orthodoxy rather than with a true Christian proved to be too demanding, too difficult to really follow and implement. Shestov’s claim, based apparently upon the interpretation of the literary output of the great Russian writer, has in fact its roots in his own, personal experience: “it must be confessed,” he writes, “that one cannot find in the whole literature a single man who is prepared to accept the Gospel as a whole, without interpretation.” By replacing the word Gospel with the Old estament, Dosto-
Penultimate Words 51 evsky’s “truth” becomes that of Shestov. His later interpretations concerning the essence of Judaism would be based to a large extent on this conclusion; my inference is sustained and re-enforced by another statement he made about Dostoevsky: he was, Shestov writes, “afraid accept Gospel the foundation of knowledge, and relied much moreto on (his)the reason andasexperience of life than upon the words of Christ.” Again, ifGospel and Christ in the last quotation are replaced by Scriptures and God, respectively, Shestov’s statement is transformed into a general pronouncement concerning the human condition in the Western, Judeo-Christian civilization. I am going to substantiate this idea of the “transfer of values” based on a deep affective mechanism of projections of existential experienced as essential in the establishment of Shestov’s religious thought and his interpretation of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. Te title of the philosophical section of the book under discussion, De omnibus dubitandum, expresses very well the position Shestov held toward the questions raised by his own doubts. He was seeking answers to questions which he posed in unusual ways, either in the realm of literary criticism or in that of philosophy. He rejected many conventional ideas, but in fact he had few answers. From the dense fog of this deconstruction, some new ideas began to surface, however. It is very interesting to notice who are the philosophers frequented by Shestov at the time of the writing of Beginnings and Ends, besides Nietzsche and the Greeks. Already in the first section we encounter the names of Hegel, Descartes, two English anthropologists, contemporary German professorSpencer, of philosophy, Friedrich Paulsen, whoand dieda the same year the book appeared in Russia. Te Cartesian rule is applied to Hegel’s statement about history representing the unfolding of the spirit in the real world on which the idea of progress is, in fact, based. Shestov takes issue with the idea that modern man must admit the concept of progress; he doubts that the “savages”of ancient times were, from a spiritual point of view,inferior to his own contemporaries (many years later Benjamin Fondane, his disciple, would try to substantiate this idea based on the anthropological works of Levy-Bruhl; see the chapter on the disciple, further down). Following this line of argumentation re-enforced by his reasoning concerning theforcefully works ofargues the mentioned and Russian authors and those of Nietzsche, Shestov that “our morality, based on religion, prevents us from dashing toward eternity.” Here eternity must be understood as being somehow synonymous with faith; only those who believe in God (and not just in a morality guaranteed by Him) will be able to reach spiritual high grounds. Te corollary of this reflection is another very interesting image proposed by Shestov, that of an idea of progress represented as a line perpendicular to the timeline of history: “perhaps, and
52 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker most probably, there is development, but the direction of this development is in a line perpendicular to the line of time” he wrote. An indication of the possibility of a renewal of the act of prophecy in modern times is hinted at when Shestov adds10the remark that “the base of the perpendicular may be any human personality.” In his previous work Te Apotheosis of Groundlessness, we have encountered the idea that “the root of all our philosophies lies, not in our objective observations but in the demands of our own heart, in the subjective” 11; now he reformulates the same idea in a way that leads to another opening, in the direction of a body of philosophical pronouncements that can accept the contradiction and the paradox in the most natural way: “philosophy is the teaching of truths which are binding on none.”12 Spinoza is invoked here, as Shestov struggles to liberate himself from the constraints of a strictly rational approach to philosophy and God. “[Spinoza] . . . kept his passions in subservience, but that was his personal and individual inclination. Consistence was not merely a property of his mind, but of his whole being,”13 writes Shestov (as we have seen in the introductory chapter, in his next book, to be published a few years later, we will discover a changed attitude toward the Dutch philosopher: “Spinoza thought that God himself was bound by necessity.”’14 Among the modern philosophers, Schopenhauer is mentioned in this book several times: Shestov rejects his refutation of the idea of the immortality of the soul and uses this issue to launch a discussion about the meaning of the notion of belief in the context of the dogmatic (yes, thinking. However, thebedogmatism or that the scientists scientists too can dogmatic!)ofisthe notphilosophers to be confused withofthe Dogma of the Church (a thorough discussion of which would be taken up a few years later by Shestov in Sola Fide). Belief, which has to do with the ways in which we achieve and/or manifest faith, is not yet distinguished from faith (as pure interaction with God) at this point. Shestov is ready to grant the dogmatic thinkers the right to remain attached to their ideas and principles if they concede that their convictions “must not be absolutely and universally binding . . . upon the whole of mankind without exception.”15 Temes related to the domains of “what is philosophy?” and “what is truth?” are book,Heinrich in spite Heine, of the repeated works anddominant the worldsinofthe Ibsen, or Gogol.incursions However,into eventheunder the title “What Is philosophy?” one finds more answers addressing the questions of “why philosophy?” and dissertations around the subject of “why one should not have a too great hope in its promises.” Philosophical reflection is always considered with a grain (at least) of irony: “Men used to philosophy, like Schopenhauer, walk boldly and with confidence in a dark room, though they run away from gun shots or even less dangerous things.”16 Te effort to acquire wisdom
Penultimate Words 53 seems to be disproportionately large compared with the worth of the enterprise. “It was as hard for Napoleon to master philosophy as it was for Charlemagne at the end of days to learn to write”; why would one submit himself to such an 17 ordealword.” if by far, “the inacademic not the last, nor even the penultimate Yet, spite ofphilosophy this overallisnegative attitude, Shestov discusses certain ideas, concepts, and philosophical mental constructs belonging to the domain of epistemology and metaphysics in detail and analyzes with great care their implications for the human existence. Surprisingly perhaps, he disagrees with the skeptics who claim that truth does not exist. “ruth exists, but we do not know it in all its volume,” he writes. Tis approach seems to represent an almost Kantian position but to dissipate any confusion Shestov immediately observes, “nor can we formulate that which we do know”18 bringing thus forth an idea that would have certainly been strange to Kant. He adds also that we cannot know “why it happened thus and not otherwise, or whether that which happened had to happen thus” (ibid.). Tis last observation opens the road to the presence of God who is the only one to decide not only that things might happen in various, unpredictable ways, but also that something which has been done can be undone by Him. Tere is another important observation Shestov makes in connection with knowledge and truth in this early work: “we do not disbelieve in miracles (just) because they are impossible.”19 Trough the interpretation of experienced events, by judging facts a posteriori, we may infer the possibility of the miracle;
themoment logical diffi culty fact that that the existence of a miracle a given does notconsists lead to in thethe conclusion another miracle may at happen at a later time. Our rational way of thinking does not preclude the possibility of the miraculous event; it only rejects the necessity of the miracle. Shestov mixes the rational with the affective when in his chain of inferences he introduces a psychological argument: human beings can project in the future with ease that which they do not care too much about, but they do not do the same with regard to something very close and dear to them: “It costs nothing to believe in the final triumph of good upon the earth . . . for after all, men are quite sufficiently indifferent to good . . . ,” but “it is much harder, nay quite impossible, standing thefrom dead heaven body ofand onebring who the is near to believe angel willbefore fly down deadand to dear, life again” (ibid.).that an Te last part of the chapter Penultimate Words is dedicated to the problem of the communication of the truth and to the relationship between “I and Tou” (approached in a completely different manner from that of Buber in his discussion of this “doublet”). Shestov makes the interesting observation that perhaps the need for communication with the neighbor precludes the possibility of knowing the truth since in this act one must trade truth for some sort of
54 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker a conventional lie which makes the communication possible. Te distinction is made therefore between the universal, absolute unchangeable truth and a relative, historical one. However, Shestov adds to this well known distinction made often by philosophers aftertohim, peculiarItidea: onecertain may know in himself a truth and before still beand unable statea very it explicitly. is not that such a truth has to be an absolute or universal truth; it is just that it possesses a property of incommunicable certainty. A corollary of this thought is that a recognized truth does not need to be made explicit: “In yourself, if you have no one to answer, you know well what the truth is.”20 Shestov’s early epistemological theory (if such a thing exists at all) would thus be based on the inferences that since truth is not identical with “empirical truth,” science, which concentrates on the second, cannot be the ultimate word when we come to discuss truth. Te follow-up of this thought is that “for this reason, the tendency to discredit scientific knowledge is by no means as reprehensible as it might appear at first sight to the inexperienced eye” (ibid.). For the same reason, he adds, irony and sarcasm are necessary tools in the investigation of truth. Of course, all these do not preclude the use of logic and the recognition of its usefulness: “Certainly, while logic can be useful, it would be unjustifiable recklessness to refuse its services.” 21 Tose who along the years accused Shestov of irrationalism and refusal of logical thinking did not pay attention to his own position on these matters. Ultimately, at the core of Shestov’s epistemology one finds the need to integrate the affective with the logical, rational approach to things and ideas. theinterpretation last section ofofthe entitled , Shestov makes explicitInhis thebook, concepts of soulI and andTough the context of the spirit in discussion of the mechanism that facilitates the dialogue. When we look into another person’s soul, we only see “a vast, empty, black abyss,” he writes; the soul of the other remains as invisible to us as before, we can only “guess at it.”22 Te frustration generated by the realization that it is hard to penetrate the alterity leads to some sort of a solipsism, “why seek the soul of another person when you have not seen your own?” (ibid.). Psychology does not teach about a soul but only about certain spiritual states (or states of consciousness as we would prefer to call them today). On the other hand, perhaps only when the soul is frightened by the proximity of the other, a quick, directto approach may catch it unprepared, and, ashea becomes result, hevisible; may “not have time disappear.” Ten perhaps, “in the depth of the dark abyss something might be found,” but this something will certainly not be a “universal truth”: never mind, will say Shestov, the important thing is that the contact has been made. Moreover, as if he were surprised by the price at which the dialogue is made possible, he concludes resigned: “We must find a way to escape from the power of every kind of truth.”23
Penultimate Words 55 Bernard Martin, the American editor of Lev Shestov’s works, included at the end of the volume containing Te Apotheosis of Groundlessness (translated as All Tings Are Possible) and Beginnings and Endings (translated as Penultimate Words), from Teyears Teory of Knowledge a collection of Te scattered thoughts entitled tracted the book to appear a few later (this wouldexbe Great Vigils Shestov’s last book published before WW I). Te choice is easily understandable as this essay represents to some extent a summary of Shestov’s early philosophical thinking. In this piece, a more mature, more focused author brings forth new issues while presenting in parallel at the same time new insights on many of the previously discussed subjects. Te pronouncement on both old and new themes remains as bold as ever: philosophy must change in radical ways and the (new) philosopher should not be a teacher—his teaching being necessarily subjective, lacking any universal character. Already in Te Apotheosis of the Groundlessness Shestov asked philosophers to invent their own truths; now, he does not want anymore to be a philosopher at all, with or without “truths” stuffed in his bag. Years later, in Paris he tells his disciple Fondane that neither does he intend to become his teacher nor should Fondane consider himself a disciple because “a philosopher has quite a different task, one which does not in the least resemble teaching.”24 In this later chapter the reader finds names of philosophers and philosophical systems and trends never or only rarely mentioned in previous works (such as Stuart Mill, Fichte, and even Marx). In addition, classical philosoph-
icalreplace concepts as that of metaphysics arephilosophy. carefully re-defined used to the such rejected categories of the “old” New ideasand become prominent, one might even say “dominant”: among them that of ultimate truth, with which we can enter into communication only when the allegiance toward logical thinking had ceased, for “ultimate truths are absolutely unintelligible.”25 More importantly, as a result of the use of such a new and radical method, “we should accept unintelligibility as the fundamental predicate of being.” 26 Tis statement would become one of the main postulates of Shestovian existential thinking. It is not that a Supreme Being decided to hide things from us and made them unintelligible; it is not that after millions of years, the ape brain developed to awemuch larger extent. It is axiomaticexplanations for Shestov lose thatall “a meaning moment comes—only cannot define it exactly—when and are good for nothing anymore” (ibid.). Te concept of awakening together with that of the man of insight are defined clearly for the first time in this chapter: Shestov introduces in this context the notion of the problematic role the tree of knowledge of good and evil played in the biblical story and continues to play to this very day, a theme to become another major construct in his latter works: “the apple of the tree of
56 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker knowledge of good and evil, has become to him (the philosopher) the sole purpose of life, even though the path to it should lie through extreme suffering.”27 However, the man of insight, the new philosopher, the seeker of the metasophia understands that what heexposing valued, that was supposed offer him meaning and happiness is only himwhat to further suffering.toHe is awakening but is not there yet; he begins to sense that the truth is arrived at is a ready made one, and he wants to replace it without having a clear idea about the nature of the substitution or that of the replacement. Tat is the context in which Shestov brings up, somewhat timidly but explicitly, however, the story of the Fall: “Practically, the same story is told in the Bible. What indeed was lacking to Adam? He lived in paradise, in direct proximity to God, from whom he could learn anything he wanted. And yet it did not suit him.”28 Was Adam a man of insight? Not yet, as he still needed the shock brought upon him by the moment of the tasting from the apple of the ree of Knowledge. It is interesting to observe that Shestov’s interpretation of the story and the conclusions he draws from it are based on the Jewish way of telling the story but not on its traditional interpretation: as Adam plucked the apple from the forbidden tree “ . . . the truth, which until the creation of the world and man had been one, split and broke with a great, perhaps an infinitely great, number of most diverse truths, eternally being born and eternally dying.” o this description, he adds the observation that during the seventh day of creation, unrecorded in history, man became God’s collaborator. At first sight, it seems that Shestov implies
a special is conferred uponthat the is, seventh dayinbyhimself. the factTe thatambiguduring itthat man becamestatus a collaborator of God a creator ity Shestov introduces through this interpretation makes it difficult to decide to which tradition, Jewish or Christian, one should assign it. Tis ambiguity would often emerge in his future utterances. Te fact that man is helping God to make the world better is certainly an idea promoted by Judaism (and in the Lurianic Cabbala, it becomes a central issue); on the other hand, by assigning man the quality of “creator,” he introduces an immanence which is strange to the absolute transcendent character of the God described in the Old estament (but not to certain Christian theologians; see for instance Shestov’s opposition to Berdyaev’s be the discussed Te conclusion of theandric the aboveideas, is thattoby end oflater). the first decade of the new century, Lev Shestov was already a thinker with a fairly well defined weltanschauung. Was he an existential philosopher, or in his own terms anawoken one, a “man of insight,” or rather a thinker who lost confidence in his former philosophical beliefs and was thus more and more inclined toward faith and a religious discourse? Te answer to this question is not easy; what seems to be certain is that at this juncture he adopted the view that a traumatic event in the
Penultimate Words 57 life of a thinker can—and in most cases will—change radically his ways and his ability to understand reality. Shestov spent a significant amount of intellectual energy to identify such moments in the lives and the writings of a large number authors from olstoy to Dostoevsky, to Chekhov, Heine to Ibsen.ofNietzsche was also a paradigmatic figureurgenev in this sense and to him he would add later Pascal, Luther, and Kierkegaard. It is important to note that in this unique work of “psycho-archeology,” he was solely guided by his own feelings and his own experience. What he discovered was that philosophy had to be re-defined. First of all, in order to remain relevant, it had to be able to accommodate those troubled souls which were not interested in finding consolation to their predicaments simply because they reached the point at which their souls could not be pacified any longer. What is important to remember is that Shestov did not consider such “lost souls” as mere exceptions or insignificant minorities among the common mortals; moreover, even if that would have been the case, one should always keep in mind that virtually anybody, at anytime, might enter this abyss and get trapped in the underground. How is this trapped human being supposed to cope with his personal tragedy? While Shestov did not deny the right of the “normal” philosophy to exist, he claimed in an already quoted fragment from Beginnings and Endings the right to establish a new way of thinking which “should live by sarcasm, irony, alarm, struggles, despair and which should allow itself contemplation and quietude only from time to time, as a relaxation.” It seems thatquestions ontologyabout was not too much on Shestov’s mind at only the time: he does not ask the nature of Being; he seems to be concerned with the meaning of ruth. His epistemology was also a quite peculiar one not being based on a string of logical inferences, even though it certainly did not reject logic itself. What is denied is the right of rational thinking to define every and all possible truths. Man has to retain the possibility to understand the word in terms of subjective truths and not be limited to a knowledge based exclusively on objective statements that can withstand either experimental or logical proof. It must be acceptable “to speak of eternal hesitation and of temporality of the thought,” he claimed (in aphorism #114 of Te Apotheosis of groundlessness); with this gap closed, it was only a small step to the admission of the possibility of supernatural interference in the course of the events would cause logic to lose its certainty and the inevitability of its conclusions (see aphorism #121). Here we are clearly on a ground different from that of a philosophy built entirely on rational inference; deus ex machina is hinted at, but it is does not represent yet the exclusive grounding of Shestov’s sui generis epistemology. If the interference between the philosophical and the religious thinking
58 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker becomes more and more evident in Shestov’s writings at this time, it is not quite clear in which port of the monotheistic religions will he anchor his religious thoughts. One cannot help asking whether he does create deliberately this ambiguity. Is he just pragmatic straightforward whenhehetrypresents thoughts in a language familiar to theand potential reader? Does to hide his Jewish srcins, or does he want to go a step further even and deny them? As with the questions posed in the philosophical realm, here too, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that up to this point in his evolution the answers to these questions remain uncertain. It is obvious that in his analysis and his interpretations Shestov prefers to use examples taken often from the New estament but as I said already, one might argue that this is mainly because the authors whom he writes about and the public he writes for, are to a large extent, Christians. Te end of the book on olstoy and Nietzsche seems to imply a very strong religious engagement; however, his mentioning of Nietzsche in this context— “Nietzsche has shown us the way”—makes it difficult for the reader to identify the object of the author’s belief; it might be as well Christ or Yahweh or for that matter, Zarathustra. When he continues and writes, “we must seek that which is higher than compassion, higher than the ‘good’; we must seek God,” it is still impossible to decide whether this is the God he would so often invoke later, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. When in thePhilosophy of ragedy he wrote that “all moralists have considered it necessary to make God himself the patron of good, or even, as in the case of count olstoy, to identify God with good,” was taking issue withofthe moralists andfact withthat olstoy rather than statingShestov the absolute transcendence God. View the the Jewish tradition assumes both that God is good and transcendental, the God he refers to at this stage might not be after all He who gave Moses the Law, the God of the Covenant. In the Apotheosis, we have seen that God was invoked rather as a guarantor of the author’s bold philosophical ideas: “if there is God, and all men are children of God, we should be afraid of nothing and spare nothing.” Te idea, which contains intimations of Pagan thinking, that in ancient times men had a different relationship with the Divinity appears in some of Shestov’s early statements; however, the fact was mentioned at that stage not as an important issuewhen in itself but rather tointo criticize the wrong turn Christianity took, in his view, it “degenerated morality” (see the quotation about Luther in aphorism #109). Finally, when Shestov added in a purely aphoristic style that “an avowed disbelief in God does not prove the non-existence of God, but just the opposite,” he did not bother to explain why that would be the case. He simply continued his thought to enounce an even stranger statement: ‘it is the surest sign of faith . . . ’!? (Aphorism #41, part two).
FOUR
Sola Fide
“He who did not know Aristotle, could look for the truth anywhere.” “Reality does not need to be confirmed by reason, that the role of the latter is not to command but to obey, that his power has a limit; what reason might consider to be impossible may be possible.”
Te period between 1910 and 1914 was a very important one in the life of Lev Shestov. At the beginning of the spring of 1910, he left Russia to establish himself with the family in Coppet, a small town on Lake Leman in Switzerland. For the first time since he got married, a father of two daughters 13 and 10 years old by now, Shestov—who still, at the age of 44, had to keep the marriage secret from both his parents—had the occasion to move in and live with his own family on a more or less permanent basis. Te parents lived now in Germany, and the family business was taken care of in Kiev by one of Shestov’s brothers and a brother-in-law. Just before he left Russia, he worked intensively on Ibsen: he wrote an article on the Scandinavian playwright entitled “Victories and Defeats: Te Life and the Work of Henrik Ibsen,” published in Moscow in April the same year, and within a month he would deliver
60 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker three lectures on him in Kiev, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. Why did Shestov get interested in Ibsen now that he distanced himself from the belief that the stories told by writers can provide the key to the way out of the labyrinth? Te answer perhaps in an observation by a friend himRussian a year later in lies Coppet. Evghenia Herzyg a made long-time friend who fromvisited the old years, remembers Shestov telling her that Ibsen was constantly obsessed by the thought that the worst thing that might happen to a man was to abandon the beloved woman for a cause or for an abstract idea. o give up one’s love means to give up life; more than that, it means to give up something that is more profound than the meaning of one’s life.1 Tis observation might explain also why Shestov felt that he must come and establish himself in Coppet with his wife and daughters. However, not only Ibsen was on Shestov’s mind before he left Russia; he felt that he had to accomplish another very important task before leaving to go and visit olstoy at Iasnaïa Poliana. Visiting olstoy had been a dream of his since the times he published the book on olstoy and Nietzsche. His wish was granted when on March 2 the old master received him. Te meeting did not go too well however: olstoy was not impressed, and the note jolted down in his journal is not a flattering one for Shestov.2 Neither was Shestov very happy with the way things worked out; still, when the old master died six months later, Shestov was very depressed by the news. Life in Coppet promised to be good, and Shestov was working hard: before leaving, a publisher in Russia offered to print in a series of six volumes his complete owritten the article Ibsenthe he same addedyear; one“Te on William (who died alsoworks. in 1910) lateronduring Logic ofJames Religious Creation: o the Memory of William James” and a few other articles and aphorisms written during the previous years to be included all in the first volume of the series entitled Great Vigils.3 By now Shestov was an accomplished and recognized author: in May 1911 a book in which Shestov’s philosophy is analyzed together with the works of Rozanov and Merejkovski was published in Moscow. People, relatives, friends were coming to visit him often in Coppet; his wife obtained her MD license in Paris, and it seems that his personal life, his social life, and his family reached a state of serene equilibrium at this point. Still, Herzyg notes in in 1911. her diaries thatpreoccupied she never saw Shestov as sad 4 as during herE.visit to Coppet He was by the uncertainty of his own situation, as if a menace were looming at the horizon—beyond the tranquil appearances. Indeed, during the winter of 1912 he had to go again to Kiev to take care of the family and of some business matters. More than anything else, though, his thoughts troubled him. Te same Ms. Herzyg met him again in Switzerland in April 1912 and this time Shestov told her that for the last two years he had been reading with an avid interest the medieval mystics
Sola Fide 61 and in particular young Luther, who appears not just to have been a religious reformer but a tragic spirit, reminding him very much of Nietzsche and of. . . himself! He confessed also to the passionate reading of the Bible and added at someofpoint during theofconversation thatVoltaire’s he considered his newthinking. mission Apto consist the unveiling the wrongs of mischievous parently, he was ready to sum up these ideas by the time he began writing Sola Fide at the end of 1913. In a letter to Hermann Lovtzky written in December 1913, “I am progressing gently-slowly; I already finished the part about Plato. When I return from Paris, I will move to Aristotle . . . I did well not to hurry and to have worked thoroughly on the Greeks and the medieval thinkers.”5 In Paris he met an old acquaintance, Gustav Shpet, whom he knew from Kiev. Shpet, born in 1879, studied philosophy first in Kiev and then, in 1907, followed his teacher George Shelpanov to Moscow where he continued his studies and worked in the psychology institute established there by the professor. Very active and always open to new ideas, Shpet went to visit various Western European universities, among them Göttingen, where he met Edmund Husserl. He spent the academic year 1912–13 in Germany studying with Husserl and that is how the meeting in Paris in December 1913 was made possible. We know, however, that already in 1911 they began a correspondence, which continued later on, in Russia.6 Meanwhile, in Paris the two are “philosophizing a bit” as Shestov puts it in a letter to the same Lovtzky. One must imagine that the philosophical exchange between thetotwo had tothat dothese quite discussions a bit with Husserl’s phenomenology. It is interesting observe about phenomenology and the achievements of a philosophy which was to be anchored in the strictest rigors of rationality was held in parallel with the above mentioned preoccupation with the religious thinking of the medieval mystics and Luther. Shestov, however, is much more preoccupied with the ideas left in suspension before he left for Paris than with Husserl’s phenomenology; he writes to Joseph Pohle, professor in Breslau and the author of a treatise entitled Lehrbuch der Dogmatik, to inquire about recent uses by the Catholic Church of the concept of potestas clavium. A month later, back in Coppet, he asks Lovtzky to Commentaries to the Letters of St. Paul to the Romans send him Luther’s and wrote incessantly; by the time Shestov decided, after the death of. He theread father, to return to Russia in July 1914, a large volume of written documents had already been assembled. Sola Fide was to comprise not only the essay on Luther and the Church (as it appeared in 1957 in the first French translation) but also a section on Dostoevsky and olstoy (to appear later separately under the title Te Revelations of Death).7 Sola Fide is on the surface a book about Luther and faith, but in fact it
62 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker is much more than that: the text is summing up the results of an interference process between Shestov’s efforts toward the deconstruction of the basic principles of a philosophy built upon the absolute rights of rational reasoning and his search for a meta-sophia basedweonhave faithseen—in in an absolute ranscendental (granted, not clearly defined yet—as his own mind). Even though chronologically Sola Fide was written before the essay on Husserl’s phenomenology, entitled Memento Mori, the two works should not be separated not only because the thoughts included in them took shape probably and evolved simultaneously in their author’s mind but also because the arguments used in them are sometimes intertwined. When in the last chapter of Sola Fide Shestov writes that for somebody in search of the ruth, universal truths are irrelevant (“pour celui qui cherche la Vérité la reconnaissance générale est sans valeur”8), he not only uses a statement which belongs to religious thought but takes issue as well with concepts belonging clearly to the realm of philosophy. What is really new in Sola Fide when compared with Shestov’s previous works? Is this finally a book about religion, about God? Te title seems to contain already an allusion: faith, as a possible alternative to a total identification with the ways of rational thinking, was already hinted at in books written prior to 1914. In this new work however (interestingly enough never published during the author’s life), Shestov moves closer to according faith a central role in his thought while at the same time he tries to define the specifics of a certain kind of faith. He proposes an idealized, pristine, srcinal Christianity, untainted by philosophy and anot too of faran remote from biblical Judaism, figment of Greek his own imagination, result unconscious, perhaps wishfula thinking. In spite of the hint implied in the title of the book, it is hard to see why Shestov chose Luther, who was, after all, a reformer rather than an innovator in religious matters, to play this central role. Aware probably of the astonishment of the prospective reader, the author of Sola Fide hurried to explain in the first two chapters of the book his reasoning: a deep, subterranean link between Dostoevsky’s and olstoy’s religious thinking and that of the reformer of the Church was discovered by him during the lecture of the works of young Luther! Indeed, writes Shestov, inTe Legend of the Grand Inquisitor one finds all the turmoil thetransparent storms invading Luther’s soul; as for olstoy, the things are evenand more since young in all his works—as it will be shown in the chapter on the Revelations of the Death (transformed as said previously into an independent book)—one finds the same exact ideas as in Luther ( nous trouvons les mêmes idées que chez Luther).9 From the onset Shestov approached in the most direct way the idea which would become his main argument in the book: “mankind can be saved by faith and by faith only, this was the message Luther extracted from the Catholic
Sola Fide 63 Church” (“L’homme est sauvé par la foi et par la foi seule, voila la bonne nouvelle que Luther arracha à l’eglise catholique”).10 By modifying the srcinal version of St. Paul’s message in Romans 3:28, “For our argument is that man is justifiedtobythe faith quite apart from success inhim: keeping law,”were Luther the answer questions which tormented what the if there notfound be a Last Judgment? What would happen to him? Would his soul be saved? By faith only man is saved; the ambiguity of the statement disappears when Shestov reminds the reader that Luther, in order to make clear his point, went as far as to declare the apocryphal St. James Letter, which claimed that a faith not applied to proper action, is worthless. Te emphasis on the idea that man can be saved by faith alone is strange. However, we remember that Shestov was in search of a solution valid for the trapped individual, not for man in general or for mankind; besides, at a first consideration the statement quoted above sounds somewhat dogmatic, out of line with Shestov’s thinking as manifested in his previous works (although not in disagreement with what one would expect from a religious reformer such as Luther). In order to clarify his ideas, after submitting his postulate, Shestov set out for a comprehensive analysis of the history of Christianity, from its srcins and the controversies which haunted it during the pre-Nicaean period till modern times. A critical analysis of the Christian faith based on ideas born from his original interpretations of olstoy, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche is applied in the context of the disputes between the Founding fathers of the Catholic Church and their followers. From this dialectical through a subtle maieutic process, distilled his new ideas oscillations, about the link between the individual trapped Shestov in the underground and a new vision of faith that has the potential—if not to redeem him—at least to offer some hope. I will briefly and somewhat selectively illustrate this process, as not only the “beginning and the ends” of the argumentation are of interest; the dynamics of the unfolding of one theme from another, apparently unrelated at the onset, is very interesting in itself and teaches quite a bit about the development of Shestov’s religious ideas. Trough the discussion of the rift between St. Augustine and the Pelagian movement, the author will illustrate the weakness of the rational approach in the of theology. out that St. Augustine andGod Pelagius andrealm his followers read Shestov the samepoints Scriptures andboth believed in the same and still they arrived at radically opposite views when they came to decide about the basic tenets of their faith. Te issue under discussion was that of sin, sinfulness, and the role of this concept in the struggle to achieve faith: St. Augustine held the opinion that the road to faith passed through sin (and Shestov was careful to point out several times that this statement was based on Augustine’s personal experiences before he became a Christian) while his opponent was
64 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker of the opinion that sin can be avoided and faith can be reached through a dedicated, ascetical life guided by the meaning of the Scriptures as uncovered by our rational thinking (here again Shestov takes care to remind the reader 11
that followers Harnack of wasPelagius”). explicitly Tis talking in his bookshadabout thean“rationalism of the contradiction in turn effect on the meaning of another key concept—that of grace—and its role in the process of salvation. When Pelagius says that the good and the evil do not come into being with us but are brought forth by human beings, he speaks the language of Socrates, writes Shestov (and he could have added as well that of the Jewish sages too). Te doctrine of the Pelagians, he writes, is based on two basic tenets, “the first having been elaborated by Socrates and adopted by all his disciples, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics and retained after-all even by the Neoplatonics, and this is the rule which posits the principles of the good (les norms du bien) above God and not vice versa.”12 Tis is one of the first insinuations concerning the influence of the Greek philosophy with its heavy bent toward rational thinking on the development of the early Christian theology. However, at this point Shestov is still undecided: taking issue with Harnack’s position toward the excessive rationality of the Pelagian “heresy” he writes, surprisingly, that “rationalism does not exclude a religious attitude. One may believe in God, one might love God and think that one can accede to the revealed truths by means of rational thinking” (again, one may wonder if he gave a thought to the rationalist bent of the Jewish Mishna and almud). In addition, he observes 13 that “faith knows more that reason, it is statements above-reason nota against-reason (anti-rationelle).” Tese are(supra-rationelle) very important for proper understanding of the evolution of Lev Shestov’s philosophical and religious thinking. However, while his mind was open, his heart was already on St. Augustine’s side; he ended the chapter which discussed the mentioned dispute, by writing “the thief on the Cross was closer to the true belief than the virtuous monk Pelagius or the honest professor Harnack.” Next, Shestov brought into discussion the role of the contradiction and the paradox in the establishment of the Christian dogma. Catholic theology was very much influenced by the Greek thought which during his long history
learned live withhad thetocontradiction in problem his philosophical thinking.theCertainly, Catholictothinking cope with the of transgressing boundaries of logic and from the fusion between the Scriptures and the principles of the Greek philosophy it created a dogma stronger even than the Hellenic thinking. However, observes Shestov, “Catholicism proved to be more coherent and more logical than those from whom it inherited logic and coherence.”14 During the next step, the transfer of the dogma to the Church, the latter became an absolute ruler that conferred to its elites, the Pope and those around
Sola Fide 65 him, the “power of the keys” (potestas clavium). Tat is how Shestov introduced this idea that would become very important in his later thinking. Te power of the keys is the power held by those who not only have convinced everybody that there is athe waygate to betofollowed also this thatmoment they haveonthewithin roadmap and the keys to open this road.but From the Church of Christ “authority is placed above the Scriptures”; the power of the keys becomes absolute power in religious matters. God even is limited by this power. After this digression, Shestov returns to St. Augustine. He postulates that Augustine had always been and remained even after his conversion a faithful disciple of Plotinus, the thinker who transmitted to the western Christian theology his neo-platonic ideas. However, Plotinus could not soothe the troubled spirit of Augustine because in spite of the thorough cleaning work of Aristotle, residual traces of unstable and troublesome ways of thinking inherited from Plato were all too prominent in the neo-platonic philosopher’s works. Unlike Plato, Plotinus did not sanction the eternity of the ideas and did not believe that the well organized ways of logical thinking could help find a communication with the transcendental realm. Still, he did not go as far as to recognize that “the truth revealed in the process of communication with the Divine cannot be in any ways accommodated by a system of thought governed by logic, that is that it cannot be explained in terms of sentences having a universal value which cannot accept internal contradiction.” Tis is how Shestov interprets Plotinus, and it is certain that one can find quotations from Plotinus’s writings which in writings agreement withPlotinus, this interpretation; still, it seems that here, as wellwould in the be later about there are frequent statements that resonate with Shestovian postulates rather than resemble conclusions drawn from the words of the philosopher who claimed to have had established occasional contacts with the One and the Irreducible. In the collection of fourteen aphorisms published in 1909 and included in the Great Vigils; Shestov wrote that “ultimate truths are absolutely unintelligible . . . unintelligible, I repeat but not inaccessible” and that one should accept the unintelligibility as the fundamental predicate of being. At the same time, “there is a universal knowledge . . . which by its very essence cannot be communicated to allwonders . . . cannot be turnedainto verified demonstrable truths.”15 One if following careful and and dedicated study ofuniversal the ancient and medieval philosophers during his years in Coppet, Shestov has found a confirmation of his own intuitions expressed above or he did rather impose his ideas upon these philosophers? Berdyaev used to say that his friend often does just that,16 but even if we disregard this remark, the question about the boundaries of the Shestovian hermeneutic remains always present. I will dwell more on this point, later.
66 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker Let us return again to Shestov’s reading of St. Augustine. It interesting to observe the mechanism of what one might call the “Shestovian reduction” at work: even in the extreme and adverse attitude Augustine manifests toward the pagan world expressed theallstatement “uneducated people over .by. .” force the heavens and we, in with our heartless knowledge, justtake wallow (the quote is from De civitate Dei, written long after his conversion), Shestov finds a hidden message. He identifies here a deep longing toward a freedom lost with the advent of Greek philosophical thinking: “he who did not know Aristotle, could look for the truth anywhere” (“Celui qui ne connaissait pas Aristote pouvait chercher la vérité partout”).17 Conclusion: St. Augustine was still deep inside himself indebted to his neo-platonic srcins, but he had to accept the authority of the Church in order to make sense of his new Christian experience. In parallel, though, he wholeheartedly accepted the authority of those who command (in the best pagan tradition!), rather than that of those who teach. Te insinuation is that, even though the Church had been influenced by Greek thinking, Augustine did not take this intellectual component upon himself but rather the authoritarian one, an attitude easily justifiable since any attempt to approach God requires total submission. Tat is how things can be interpreted within the immediate context of the Shestovian text; at a deeper level, one may think that the idea was instilled in Shestov’s subconscious by the well known distinction made in the Russian intellectual milieu between the intellectual, reflexive, ever hesitant character of the Jew as opposed to the faberAugustine active, decisive of the Christian . One finds attitude in the chapters dedicatedhomo to St. another very important insight Shestov had in connection with the great theologian. Greek philosophers invented the concept of virtue: in their view, regardless of what happens in his real life, man can retain a deep, inner happiness if he accomplishes his duty, if he behaves as he should. Te pagan philosophers were very conscious of the precarious situation to which human beings could be exposed in an adverse world—whether this meant nature or the social-political environment—and that is why they elevated virtue to the rank of the highest moral value. Virtue was equivalent with doing the right thing regardless of
the the ancientfrom Greek fromwho Homer to theinauthors of the consequences: great classical tragedies, theliterature philosophers followed Socrates’ path to the Stoics, is permeated by this thought. Augustine denied in a radical way this assumption and put virtue on equal footing with all the other terrestrial, human “values.” In his view, the problem was elsewhere, certainly not in our deliberate decision to do or not to do certain things; we are not free to do what we want to do because a sickness nested in our own selves induces in us an illness that consumes us from within. Moreover, if we cannot be healthy,
Sola Fide 67 writes St. Augustine, how can we be happy? Shestov introduces again a lengthy quote from De Civitate Dei which illustrates the Stoic view concerning suicide; suicide, though, was totally rejected by St. Augustine. It is meant to prove that any existential at through methods by the wisdom is void.solution It is notarrived through a virtuous life andintroduced not by doing theGreek good and abstaining from evil that human beings achieve the state of happiness (and that was the ultimate goal of the human being according to the same philosophers, wasn’t it?). However, it is not the state of happiness described by the pagan philosophers that mankind should seek: man can be redeemed and elevated to a superior state through his efforts to reach God, but this can occur only through His grace, claimed St. Augustine. At this point in the discussion, Shestov interrupts suddenly his musings about St. Augustine and jumps across lands and centuries directly to olstoy who, in his opinion intends to make a somewhat similar statement but does not dare to do it. Moreover, he introduces into the discussion Nietzsche through the observation that his challenge to modern philosophy is identical to that posed by St. Augustine to the ancient world and reminds his readers that in a previous work of his, in which he discussed the two mentioned authors (that is Nietzsche and olstoy), he already pointed out these facts.18 Again, one cannot help but wonder if it is St. Augustine’s idea which is used to confirm the interpretation proposed by Shestov or rather it is his biased reading which transfers a certain meaning to the Augustinian thought in order to confirm another (perhaps also) arrivedbrings at byusShestov readingabout contemporary authors.biased Indeed, thisidea dynamic back towhile the question the Shestovian hermeneutics. Shestov was aware of the problem and that was one of the reasons for his interest in the newly developed phenomenological method (I will discuss later, in more detail, some other reasons). He badly needed a method—even if he would not have recognized it—which would allow him, on the one hand, to follow the unfolding of his own ideas in time, and, on the other, to enable him to distinguish between ideas that belonged to himself from those inferred from philosophers he “resonated” with (I do not use the concept of “elective affinities,” because of its too strong affective connotation; in spite ofI everything, sometimes as rational one can be in his analysis). have pointedShestov out thatwas Shestov was aware of theasproblem; indeed he himself alludes to this issue quite clearly when, in the chapter from which I quoted before, he writes about St. Augustine something which would bring this thinker very (or perhaps too) close to the realm of his own existential philosophy elaborated in later years: Augustine, he writes, “sensed that a reality which cannot be explained does not lose its status of ‘reality’ . . . and from that conclusion there is only one step to the next one, which is that reality does not
68 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker need to be confirmed by reason, that the role of the latter is not to command but to obey, that his power has a limit; what reason might consider to be impossible may be possible.” As if taken aback but his far fetched conclusion he addsI that conclusionShestov’s St. Augustine did not spellneed out to explicitly. . . .”behave“these also mentioned awareness to the distinguish tween the old and the new ideas and to the fact that he felt the need to be able to ascertain the novelty of some of his new insights. One can find examples to illustrate the overlaps and sometimes the repetitious character of many ideas brought forth in Sola Fide. Tus, in a later chapter of the book, Shestov explicitly states that in his fight with the Pelagian heresy, Augustine used the Greek philosophical approach when he asked “on which side is the truth?” as if the truth must be on one side or on another. Here, too, one recognizes an idea expressed already by Shestov. Another example could be the statement, “people while interpreting their affective experiences in the light of logical thinking19 come up with judgment which they will proclaim universal and necessary.” Have we not read something similar in Te Apotheosis of Groundlessness and/or in All Tings Are Possible? One has a distinct feeling that many of the “truths” Shestov himself was seeking in St. Augustine or Luther were constructs of his own mind. In a piece entitled “What Does the History of Philosophy each Us?” included in the above mentioned collection of aphorisms of 1909, he pointed out that not one single philosophical system, not even those elaborated by philosophers who “gave their life to the truth not in words, but in deed . . . (were) from internal that time Shestov worried mainlyfree by the problem of contradictions.” consistency; the At problem related to thewas limits of the interpretation would become apparent a few years later: it seems plausible therefore that during the “philosophizing” session with Gustav Shpet in 1913, while thinking about the content of Sola Fide and discussing phenomenology, he came to the conclusion that one must seek the answer to one’s worries about method in Husserl’s works. He had confidence in a thinker who was “unafraid of the contradiction contained in thought and has a different way of seeing things,” as he wrote several years later in Memento Mori. Acknowledged or not, it is very probable that the study of phenomenology allowed Shestov to find ifthe notcontradiction a method forishis hermeneutical efforts, at least way to integrate hisown metasophia and distill the new ideasa to be developed in his future works. Te main result of Shestov’s encounter with Luther was not the affirmation of sola fide as the fundamental principle of what he would later call “the second dimension of thought”; it is rather the exposition of a wealth of ideas, some already expressed in the past works, some rephrased and made thus more focused, more visible other, entirely new. He needed, though, to submit them to a thorough criticism in order to evaluate
Sola Fide 69 the new and rethink the older ideas; he hoped to find the tools for that critical (re-)evaluation in Husserl’s phenomenology. One observes later a consistency in the content of Shestov’s major ideas; the continuity between thoughts brought Sola Fide forth in and those developed later become more obvious those between Shestov’s previously developed ideas. much Te friendship with than Edmund Husserl, to which we will refer later, is a witness to the new equilibrium reached by Shestov at this stage in his life. At the end of this discussion dominated by faith, it is appropriate to remind again the reader that in fact Shestov never subscribed or gave in to irrationality. Even when he annoyed his listeners by saying that it cannot be proven that Socrates’ death cannot be reversed (by an almighty God), he recognized the value of the rational thinking and the need to practice it. In a conversation with Fondane, about a year before his death, he illustrates very well the paradoxical nature of his philosophical approach: “I know very well that Necessity rules at this point in time, as it did a thousand, two thousand years ago,” he said. “But who can prove that it ruled always? Tat before these times, there wasn’t something else? And after, there will not be something else also?”20 Beyond the paradox, there was something else also, deeper than philosophy; in another conversation with his disciple he said, somewhat bitterly, “one reminds me always that two times two equals four. Tey think I ignore this fact. Unfortunately I know it and I know it very well! My entire life I fought against myself when I was thinking that after all, two times two equals four. . . .”21
FIVE
Before the Emigration All Things Are (Still) Possible
mysterious books the ignored principle. .of. contradiction, first condition of“In anythese statement, is completely one can say thattheGreek philosophy,forbythe itstruth very nature, excluded the possibility of the revelation of the Old and New estaments.” “Te accursed serpent deceived Eve, deceived Adam, deceived Anaximander, and blinds all of us to this day.”
In 1914 Shestov returned with his immediate family—wife and two daughters—to Russia with the intent to establish themselves there. Neither the war nor the Bolshevik revolution a few years later was part of their planning. Both events would be lived by the philosopher in Russia. ill the October revolution the family stayed in Moscow, and after the new communist regime was installed there they moved to Kiev. Since the biographical details are very well described in Nathalie Baranoff-Chestov’s book, I am mentioning them only marginally. However, the connection between the historical events and the writings of the author has to be made when one talks about the existential thinker par excellence Lev Shestov was. While the manuscript of the last work finished in Europe, Sola Fide, was left behind, at first in Switzerland then in Germany, the ideas discussed there
72 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker remained constantly on the mind of the philosopher. Once settled in Moscow, he began to rewrite some and expand others and publish collections of notes taken for the abandoned manuscript in literary and philosophical journals in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Veryentitled soon after his arrival in Paris a few years later, he collected them in a book first published in Potestas Clavium 1 Germany and later in France. Tis book included in addition to the above mentioned articles a few pieces written during the brief period of time spent in Kiev before the emigration in 1919. Te first eighteen aphorisms to appear in the book were published in 1916 in Russkaya Mysl under the title Potestas Clavium, while another twenty-one were published later (in 1917). As we have seen already, Memento Mori also dates to this period; the chapter entitled On the Roots of Tings and what would become the introduction to the book published in France later, A Tousand and One Nights, were written in Kiev in 1918–19). In the preceding chapter, I proposed the idea that Memento Mori was written in an attempt to establish a critical dialogue with himself and test some of the main ideas contained in Sola Fide. Shestov the philosopher looked at what Shestov the future religious thinker had to say. One can reach the same conclusion from the comparison of the aphorisms published at about the same time as the article about Husserl’s phenomenology was written. In the process of such a comparison, one may expect to identify some of the new directions his thought began to take; another by-product of this process might be a better understanding of thewas ways in which ideas were being by thewritnew realities the author living while older writing these texts. Tealtered aphorisms ten during the years 1916 and 17 can also be compared with those dated 1918 and 19, and finally with fragments written perhaps in Russia but reviewed and published in Paris after Potestas Clavium (I refer to the aphorisms collected under the title Revolt and Submission, included in Job’s Balances). Tat way, one obtains also information about the unfolding of the ideas to be addressed by Shestov in his last works, especially the book on Kierkegaard and Athens and Jerusalem. Should one be surprised to find—at the time of such a critical and “archeological” inquiry—that the major themes in identified the previous collections of aphorisms and all articles are present PotestasinClavium ? Perhaps not. However, in the process of revisiting his beloved Russian authors, from Pushkin to Dostoevsky, and re-thinking his philosophical mentor, Nietzsche, Shestov finds ways to add new insights and to re-formulate some of his older thoughts. He observes that his heroes remained often ambiguous insofar as the rules of the moral law were concerned: “Even men like olstoy, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky were incapable of renouncing the right of correcting and reproving
All Tings Are (Still) Possible 73 their neighbors they arrogated to themselves.” However, one can exonerate at least some of them for that grave error since “Nietzsche and olstoy felt especially how important moral perfection is for man and how unimportant it is 2
in the eyesbut of God.” Asnot expected, thefounders Greek philosophers arewho alsofollowed extensively discussed this time only the but also those in the footsteps of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, in particular the Stoics and the Cynics, as well as some of the pre-Socratics. Tis development is not surprising since, as we have seen already, Shestov spent long hours in Europe before the war, studying them. We are told that Socrates was the first to claim the human capacity for omniscience, while Plato wanted philosophy to be “an apprenticeship for and anticipation of death” and claimed that “for the non-initiate this is a secret.”3 Socrates is credited also with the priority over the Christianity and the Catholic Church later, insofar as the idea of the “power of the keys” was concerned: “It will be a mistake to believe that the idea of potestas clavium was born at the beginning of our era” he writes and explains that according to Plato “Socrates was the first to discover that man has at his disposal this immense and terrible power, the keys to the kingdom of heaven.”4 Te implicit thought, often brought up by Shestov, being thus that rational knowledge represents, for the classical philosophers, the supreme good. Finally, the idea that the three founders of philosophy are the “culprits” when it comes to assign responsibilities for a philosophy that excludes the individual, the particular, is again mentioned in the aphorism entitled Te Philosophy of History: “Socrates, Plato, Aristotle—all best representatives thenot ancient that the truth mustthe be sought in the generalofand in thewisdom—declared particular.” 5 Following a somewhat lacking argumentation, Shestov concluded that this tendency of denying the particular in favor of the general “is made only because we are unwilling to admit the free action of God, only because we have faith in ourselves alone and are afraid to put our faith in the Creator.”6 Te fact that the logical link between the two ideas was not well established (Shestov never succeeded in this attempt) is however much less important than the fact that this represented one of the first moments when the problem of faith was clearly spelled out. is time to understand onlythrough”—this that philosophythought which dares to in be 1916 arbitrary“Itwill succeed in breakingthat its way uttered echoes similar observations read in the writings of a decade earlier. However, here Shestov moves one step further and declares in the fragment Magna Charta Libertatum that “to pass from empirical philosophy to metaphysics one must be prepared to renounce the principles of identity and contradiction.” 7 When he approached this issue in aphorism #121 in the Apotheosis of Groundlessness, Shestov was, as we have seen, much more modest; he only hinted to
74 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker the fact that supernatural intervention might perturb the principle of identity. Another example of an idea reconsidered and modified in the process is to be found in the aphorism about Reason; as in the fragment What Is ruth? and Ends published earlier in Beginnings , the question aboutTe theconclusion way affectivity relates to philosophical reasoning is brought forth again. in the older work was that the way we chose to believe in something is strongly influenced by our psychological make-up and our affective implication with the evidence under consideration. Now, Shestov narrows the focus and shows that the affective reaction implied in the judgment does not really decide the outcome between two modes of reasoning. Te choice Epictetus made, he tells us, was from the beginning one driven by his a priori valuation of the “supreme goal of the Stoic philosophy,” theataraxia, that is the choice of the “complete independence of man vis-à-vis external circumstances.”8 Te fragment entitled Rules and Exceptions is also significant and important in that it gives an older and somewhat fuzzy idea a new, much better defined shape: we read often that a new way of thinking is needed in order to understand truths that are revealed by a transcendental entity. Ideas that are understandable to all, as strange as it might sound, are useless when it comes to understand the man-God relationship (they become poor, flat, and empty writes Shestov in the aphorism Eros and the Ideas and may serve only statistics or positive science). Te truth he seeks is one which is understandable to the individual only or as he puts it in this fragment, “as soon as we pass beyond the 9
limits of the so-called sciences, everyinman goes histoown way.” Afterunreminding his reader thatexact it was Philo who his attempt make the Bible derstandable to the Greco-Roman world insisted “on the rationality of biblical doctrine,” Shestov points out that this effort ended in the submission of the revealed truth to logical thinking or “revelation must not contradict the reason of the Greeks, the logos” in Shestov’s words.10 Te reality was, though, that the Bible, i.e., both the Old and the New estaments, “did not at all comply with the demands reason imposes on truth”; it seems that here Shestov states for the first time in a clear and explicit way one of his major pronouncements insofar as the relationship between philosophical and religious thought is concerned: “In these mysterious books theisprinciple of ignored contradiction, for the truth of any statement, completely . . . onethe canfirst say condition that Greek philosophy, by its very nature, excluded the possibility of the revelation of the Old and New estaments.”11 Since the Scriptures have been mentioned, this is perhaps the moment to observe that Shestov was more careful in preserving an equilibrium between the references to the Old and the New estament with only a slight preference given to the second. It is true, though, that his tone, his interpretations,
All Tings Are (Still) Possible 75 his examples do not allow the reader to identify the writer as being of Jewish srcin; if anything, based on his writings only, he could have been very well considered to be a Russian orthodox thinker endowed with a good knowledge of the Jewish Bible. He in apeople very impersonal way, estament recounts the writes historyforofinstance the Jewish and explains its“Te fate” Old and adds immediately that “all the events of this history had a deep significance that (the) Scripture illuminated.” o make his intention clearer, he supplements the quoted phrase with the observation that “it was precisely this that led St. Augustine astray.”12 Was Lev Shestov trying to hide his Jewish identity? It is difficult, if not impossible, to give an unambiguous answer to this question. Te return to Russia with his wife and their two daughters was a bold move meant to open a new page. He was much less stressed now, after the death of his father in 1914, and he had acquired a solid enough reputation in the literary and philosophical circles to be entitled to free himself from a material point of view from the dependency on the family business (his wife was a medical doctor already and that significantly improved the odds of becoming financially independent). Shestov had a fairly good knowledge of the Jewish traditions; he knew about the issues that preoccupied large Jewish populations on the way to emancipation in the Eastern and Central European realm. During his youth years in Kiev, he met in his father’s house Shalom Aleichem and other local Jewish writers and intellectuals; toward the end of the 1890s, at his father’s request, Shestov travelled to Basel to participate in one of the early Zionist congresses. He wasduring sensitive the effects thecentury outbursts of violentand anti-Semitic manifestations thetoearly years ofofthe (1904–05) those oc13 casioned by the Beilis trial in 1912 in Kiev. However, if one looks at his early writings, one can hardly find any trace of “Jewish interferences” or inferences in his works. On the contrary, as mentioned, Shestov preferred to use Christian symbols and rhetoric even when he could have substituted it with Jewish ones (in spite of the fact that in the Philosophy of ragedy he stated explicitly that “a person lives and learns from [his own] life”). Moreover, Shestov learnt a lot from his own life; apparently, however, he had chosen to dress his conclusions in a garb tailored by others and that to the point that even when he wrote about he managed to avoid the issue his Jewish In the Heinrich ApotheosisHeine of Groundlessness , the Pharisees were of presented, in srcins. the best Christian tradition, as righteous hypocrites (see aphorism #67); the prophets were sometimes considered “barren and useless,” “kings without an army”14 or denied at times even the right to exist.15 At times the Jews are mentioned in a matter-of-fact, neutral style which apparently was meant to indicate objectivity: “Te Greeks dreamed of itans and heroes. Te Jews consider themselves to be the chosen people and await the Messiah. As for the Gospel, it is hard
76 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker to say to which method of struggle it gives preference.” 16 When he criticized the negative effects of the Enlightenment, which led to a situation in which “people, on the whole, were compelled to tell lies and play the hypocrite . . . [and] pretended to public believe opinion,” in science17 and morality only out in order persecution of the Shestov pointed that to theescape beliefthe in the causal law attached with this situation would lead ultimately to chaos and madness and as a result to the . . . abolition of the law itself. o illustrate the situation he returned to Luther. Of course, he could not have illustrated this particular point using examples taken from the Jewish tradition as this never gave up the Law. It would not be easy, therefore, to settle the issue of the relationship Shestov had during these years to his Jewishness and his intentions toward the Christian faith. Te blurred character of his pronouncements in this area meets his lack of concern toward consistency; it might very well be that at this time Shestov himself was not sure where he should position himself. He was struggling to free himself from the constraints of a limiting thinking and find ways to address God, regardless whether it was the God of the Old or the New estament. Perhaps there was only one God, and Jews and Christians were just confused by external events which prevented them from realizing that they belonged to one and the same belief. Te differences could turn out to be inessential if one could focus only on God without being sidetracked by circumstantial interpretations. It might very well be that this was the road Shestovto was without knowing it yet. At thewas verya end, he of would come the embarked conclusiononthat indeed, early Christianity branch the same tree, if one may turn around St. Paul’s famous metaphor. Disregarding historical evidence of the contrary, Shestov wanted to believe that the Jews of the first century CE were indifferent to this new branch in a positive way. Tey could have accepted its strange story if some of the members of this splinter group which were the early Christians, would not have had the misfortune to discover Greek philosophy. Shestov did not explain his insights in a coherent and explicit way, but all the individual elements of such an explanation, like the pieces of a puzzle were laid on the table. Later on, he would begin to put the pieces together, but he always remained hesitant and somewhat muddled in this regard. I anticipated somewhat and went too far and perhaps too fast with the description of this unfolding story. Let us return therefore to the last quotations I commented above. In the same fragment, Te Philosophy of History we read: “It is said in the Bible that God chose the Jewish people in order to realize his great purpose. And He made this known to the world through the mouth of his prophets. But does this give us the right to say that God assigns to each of
All Tings Are (Still) Possible 77 the peoples a certain mission and informs the philosophers and historians, the successors of ancient prophets, of His designs?” Of course not: to answer in the affirmative would require one to generalize in inadmissible ways. One might argue thinking that in both cases quoted above,rather Shestov diddomain infer from the field of also, religious something belonging to the of philosophy; in these specific examples there is no preference given to one or another part of the scriptures. It seems that depending on the context, Shestov would sometimes use an example taken from the Old estament while at other times, he found it suitable to use the Christian scriptures. All in all, one cannot miss the ubiquity of the Christian scriptures versus the scarcity of the Jewish sources in the writings of “early’” Shestov. In everything he wrote before his emigration, when it came to discuss religious concepts he preferred Christian symbols and lore to the Jewish ones. It might very well be that this entire discussion about where does Shestov stand with respect to Judaism and Christianity, is—at this stage in his development—non-essential. Indeed, in Moscow he seems to be much more concerned with the question about the relationship between philosophy and religious thought in general and anxious to position himself with respect to this “dipole.” From his very first essays he had the tendency to mix philosophy with religious thought; after the return to Russia, philosophy was redefined in his writings in terms of religious concepts. From now on he would concentrate his efforts on reflection upon the individual existence understood in terms of its relationship with a God fully involved with the existence of the Magicthe Cap individual. An entitled , begins final with questions: the observation: “Philosophy hasaphorism often raised and Te resolved so-called Does God exist? Is there a soul, and if there is, is it immortal or not?” However, by merely posing this question one prevents any possible answer to it and that because there are truths which cannot be uttered, or more exactly, “there are truths that one can see but one cannot show.” It is not that one cannot discuss these questions, one can and one does it quite often in reality, but their nature is such that the answers, if they ever present themselves to our consciousness, come uninvited. Furthermore, by the time we want to talk about them, they are gone. Perhaps the best illustration of this awkward situation is offered by On the Absolutely Perfect Being seems Shestov himself the aphorism rying to get lost in his who own in argumentation. to define the predicates of the “absolute perfect being” he establishes them to be omniscience and omnipotence. However, the first cannot be the case because omniscience paralyzes the will: if one knows everything one is not curious to know any longer, therefore one becomes totally static. Terefore, the absolute perfect being should not be omniscient: “o know much—that is very good, but to know everything is dreadful.”18 Is the writer talking about man or about God? It seems that he is not
78 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker referring to the Almighty God of the Bible who must obviously be omniscient; man on the other hand, should not be considered under any circumstance an absolutely perfect being. Shestov seems thus entangled in a circular argument; or the is there subtle hint hiding under the surface? One he reads furtherabout that “it is sameawith omnipotence.” Tis time, it must God is talking as clearly no man can be omnipotent. Being able to do anything, the omnipotent being does not need anything outside him. However, precisely because of that, he would become utterly bored, the ennui would prevail, and in the end it would take over; an utterly bored being needs some external being or thing to alleviate this pitiful state, but if so, he is not omnipotent! (the idea of anxiety as srcinating in the impotence of rationality will be discussed by Benjamin Fondane in his work on Baudelaire, published posthumously in 194719). A third predicate of the perfect being—that of its static nature, a being eternally at rest—condemns it to an even more dreadful fate, and so on. In the end it turns out that Shestov refers all the time to God but uses his argumentation to show that any statement about Him represents ultimately merely a botched attempt of a severely limited being to understand the Absolute. Tis is a very limited “truth,” which can be understood and explained as well: through such a truth we contrive an absolute perfect being in order to ingratiate ourselves with Him. Did Shestov know that long before him Maimonides emphatically rejected any attempt to find attributes to the Almighty God he believed in? Whether he did it or not, there is no explicit mentioning of the famous Jewish religious philosopher in Shestov’softext is hard tothinkers believe, manifest after the impressive display of knowledge the(although ChristianitMedieval in the writings which preceded this work, that he did not come across Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, at least. My suspicion is that he neglected him because he did disagree with his attempt to reconcile philosophy and religion as he will later, reject Herman Cohen’s efforts in this domain). Instead, we find in the discussed text a Latin quotation and a another reference to Catholic theologians; regardless however the nature of his references, the conclusion Shestov arrived at in Te Magic Cap is very important for the future evolution of his thought: the absolute perfect being must be “powerful enough to be what he wishes to be and not suchinto as human could transform themselves deeds.”20wisdom would make him if its words In a longer piece entitled Te Labyrinth (included later in Potestas Clavium), we find for the first time an in-depth treatment of another theme which begins to take central place in the Shestovian narrative: that of the biblical story of the fall of Adam and Eve. It is in the writings belonging to this period that Shestov would argue in a forceful way that this story has a different meaning from that conferred upon it by the theologians educated in the realm of
All Tings Are (Still) Possible 79 the Greek thought. After reminding the reader of the literal meaning of the biblical text which talks about the specific interdiction to touch the fruit of the tree of knowledge, Shestov points out the different (and faulty, in his view) interpretation of the (Christian).theologians beginning classic argument of Anselm of Canterbury . .”. From Anselm he with passes“the to Gregory the Great and refutes, by invoking ertullian, his bent toward hailing a knowledge based exclusively on rationality. Te core of his argument consists in the affirmation that “the accursed serpent deceived Eve, deceived Adam, deceived Anaximander, and blinds all of us to this day.”21 When many years later Martin Buber told him about the terrible things that were happening in Germany and the problems that loomed at Europe’s horizon, Shestov replied, according to his disciple’s recollection, that the real issue mankind faced was not Hitler but the temptation of the serpent! Buber could not understand, but at that time, this belief was already well established in Shestov’s mind (see the next two chapters on Shestov in Paris). In the aphorism entitled Sursum Corda, the dwellers of the Garden of Eden are mentioned again, this time in connection with a long discussion around the meaning of life versus the srcins of the inquiry into the subject of the “meaning of meaning.” Life is contrasted with knowledge, and the role the two concepts play in philosophical/metaphysical thinking is critically evaluated. Shestov poses the question “If Adam asked Eve—before the sin, naturally— what the meaning of life is, would not this question appear absurd to her?” and points out that Hamlet’sGod famous “tonot beask or himself not to be” have why also been meaningless in paradise. would suchwould a question, should then man do it? Still, man does it because his “presumptuous reason fell this time, as it had already done hundreds and thousands of times before, into a trap” by transforming an illusion of senses into an idea. Tis rather long aphorism, which clearly has a didactic character—the title itself witnesses it, the Latin expression meaning “lift up your hearts” is taken from a prayer included in the Christian liturgy—is very instructive as it presents a few central ideas developing in Shestov’s mind during the war years and sheds also light on the wanderings of his thought processes and the mechanisms of its development. Tus, he observes that of Hamlet questionofonly as a resultforofinstance, the traumatic experience havingposes to livethethefamous consequences a terrible crime in which his mother was involved: “had the crime of his uncle and mother not taken place . . . the fatal question would perhaps not even arisen in his mind.”22 Except that in this case “the fatal question” did not transform the hero into an underground man who rejected the reason and the logic that gave it meaning. As with olstoy, the traumatic experience pushed him rather to a re-thinking of the premises on which his world-views were based. Not-to-be
80 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker means to die; death is an empirical evidence for Hamlet as it is for all human beings; therefore, the idea of non-being is extracted from the empirical evidence death represents. Te gods of the Olympus could not have arrived at this notion non-being. Is this argument prove the immortality of the soul?ofNot at all would have replied introduced immediatelytoShestov, who at this point was not interested in great ontological questions limiting himself to the meaning of the things one thinks about in concrete situations and to the ways one obtains and grants these meanings. If anything, he confirms in this aphorism an inclination toward axiology and epistemology rather than ontology. (Tis issue became later the source of his “quarrel” with Jaspers and Heidegger.) ‘It is . . . important to me at this moment to show in what nets modern thought struggles and how easily it accepts as indubitable truth the first absurdity that is offered to it. . . .”23 However, all these aphorisms do not imply that Shestov did seek shortcuts or that he tried to avoid serious confrontations. Te reading of Husserl, his attempts to understand and face the difficulties encountered in validating his ways of thinking were all part of a process of self-reflection and self-judgment. “Memento Mori,” the long article Shestov wrote about Husserl’s philosophy was published for the first time in Moscow in 1917 and was later included in the volume Potestas Clavium.24 Even though it was ver y important, the role this essay had in making phenomenology known to the Russian and later to the French public is less interesting for us here. For reasons discussed in the chapter Sola , it is of important to after try tothe findreturn out also theShestov date of family the writing: was the text Fide (or parts it) written of the to Russia in 1914 or before? Was it started at the time Shestov was writing Sola Fide, just before his return? Te questions about the srcins of those two works and their temporal relationship correlate strongly with the question related to the “moment of conversion,” if I may use this expression, the moment at which Shestov took a sharp turn toward the religious approach to life. (I use this cautious way to describe the nature of Shestov’s turn, not being sure that belief would be the appropriate term.) Of course, one remembers the sentence at the end of the essay on olstoy and Nietzsche (written in 1898 and in 1899 already and published in 1900isinhigher St. Petersburg), “Nietzsche hasthan shown the way. that 25 which than compassion, higher theus‘good,’ we We mustmust seekseek God.” At this early stage, the accent was on transgressing the boundaries imposed by a suffocating morality, on the search for a new way rather than a call for a religious modus vivendi. Shestov’s disciple, Benjamin Fondane, spoke of three distinct periods in his master’s intellectual evolution 26; during the first one, which, according to him, included the period of the writing of the above quoted book on olstoy and Nietzsche (as well as that about Nietzsche and Dostoevsky),
All Tings Are (Still) Possible 81 the philosopher seemed to say that if nature and/or society were merciless towards us we should not try to imitate them but rather overcome their cruelty by seeking God. Viewed under this perspective, the transcendental represents the means overcome a state of tension externally imposed upon us. Tis period was to followed, writes Fondane, by one during which Shestov acted as a cynical banterer like a “Voltaire of [pure] negativity” ( un Voltaire du négatif), an author who challenged any danger, who wanted to proclaim his quality of a schwindelfree27 thinker. Potestas Clavium in its entirety and the Memento Mori essay included in it would thus be a work written in this spirit of revolt. In the following, I will propose a somewhat different view. As we have seen already, in Sola Fide one finds fragments that witness a state of tension between the acknowledgment of the truth of “two times two equals four” and the need to fight against such a powerful evidence. In an attempt to discuss and understand the nature of this tension and its practical meaning in real life, Shestov applied himself to the study of Husserl whom he considered to have been his “teacher” in philosophy (for reasons alluded at before) and perhaps, because up to a certain point their opposition to “wisdom and virtue” represented a common fight. Shestov hinted to that when he cautioned that he is “not disposed to take on the role of defender of oppressed virtues—for reasons, however quite different from Husserl’s.”28 He too was in search of a philosophical method that would facilitate the understanding of phenomena that, seemingly, exceeded our capacities of reception. In a different Fide context but in the even same the veingenius, he wrote in Solato : “Te human spirit, even the most remarkable, is unable understand simultaneously multiple aspects embedded in the Scriptures. Everybody believes that only one perpendicular can be drawn to a straight line at any given point. It turns out, however, that one can draw not only two, but many, a fact most people would consider absurd. We live in a given plane; it is very difficult to us to accept the reality of other planes and let our fellow creatures move freely in space.” 29 One may add to all that has been already said on this matter so far that Shestov came to study Husserl’s phenomenology in order to find out if such a “multiplanar” approach could be implemented within the borders of a new modality
of thinking. He realized that when he claimed thatSt.theAugustine prophets andphilosophical the apostles—still untainted by Greek philosophy—taught to trust his affective experiences, he was already moving along one perpendicular in this given plane; when he discussed Luther’s rejection of rationality’s pretension to the role of absolute guide and went along with him on the path defined by the idea that “reason cannot understand, cannot bring us the truth” with the corollary hominem sola fide justificari (the human existence can be justified by faith only), Shestov saw himself moving now along another perpen-
82 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker dicular in the same plane. Te question is whether moving along different lines of thought, all of them orthogonal to one and the same line and all inscribed into one plane would ensure the reconciliation between ideas which taken individually to oppose each other. wasany a clever construct, but beyond itsseem usefulness in suggesting anTis ideametaphor can one find “reality” in it? Can affectivity be integrated into rational thinking? Is it worth trying even? Tose were probably a few among the many questions Shestov would have liked to ask Husserl while he was working on Sola Fide (and I imagine, after that, as well); in any event, I believe that Memento Mori was born from Shestov’s “dialogue” with the phenomenological method occasioned by the thoughts developed in Sola Fide. Te lecture of the essay on Husserl shows indeed that Shestov’s critique of phenomenology—based at the time mainly on his lecture of Logical Investigations—was guided by the ideas developed in Sola Fide. He read Husserl in srcinal but the first volume of this work, Prolegomena to Pure Logic, was already available to the Russian public since 1909, and Shestov could have been familiar with Simeon Frank’s foreword to this translation. Also, the article which initially inspired the writing of the essay, Philosophy as Rigorous Science (published by Husserl in Logos in 1911) was translated the same year into Russian. By the time the conversations with Shpet occurred in Coppet, all these materials were available to Shestov. At the time of their meeting, Shpet, himself deeply involved in the study of phenomenology, almost finished writing his book a generalwho description Husserl’s ogy, basedAppearance on Ideas I and andSense II.30 ,Shestov, strongly of opposed thephenomenolneo-Kantian philosophy, influenced probably Shpet in his choice of phenomenology as an alternative to the all powerful neo-Kantian trends at the time. When they met in Switzerland, Shestov was very eager to find out how could a philosophy introduced by its author as a representing “descriptive psychology” help him clarify his own ideas concerning the relationship between rational thinking and affectivity. Not surprisingly, very early in his analysis Shestov took issue with Husserl’s attempts to give philosophy a scientific status: “to the question, what is philosophy? replies, science true principles, of sources, of the roots ofHusserl all things’. . . .”31‘a He wroteofoften on this subject prior toofthesrcins writing of Memento Mori. Te conclusion he arrived at already in the second section of the essay is that the critical review of classical philosophy performed in the article published in Logos, “contain(s) briefly the entire genealogy of Husserl’s thought: from Socrates and Plato through Descartes to Kant and Fichte.”32 However, he assures his readers that he is not going to give up; on the contrary he promises to go to the “big book” of the German philosopher to find out, in
All Tings Are (Still) Possible 83 spite of this first deception how Husserl was going to integrate psychology in a rigorous theory of knowledge. Very quickly however, he finds out that this is not what the author of the Logical Investigation was doing: on the contrary, he looked wayssimple, to eliminate psychology the thought process. Te reason for this for is fairly explains Shestov: iffrom our thought-processes depended on the psychological make-up of each individual, there would be no way to have a unified, general, and universally valid theory of knowledge. Relativism would set in and destroy the premise on which the new approach proposed by Husserl stands, which is that an absolute knowledge of the truth can be obtained. He points out that “Husserl does not agree to admit relativism, either implicitly or explicitly, under any form whatsoever”33 and challenges the Husserlian reasoning in very strong terms: “either reason can express absolute truths that angels and gods as well as men must accept, or we must renounce the philosophic heritage of the Greeks and re-establish the rights of Protagoras of which he was robbed by history” (ibid.). Te way out of this quandary is to reject the need for “genealogic information,” that is to deny the need to establish the srcins of our knowledge. Tat rejection is repeatedly stated by Husserl (fact which annoys Shestov), who puts the emphasis rather on the structure and the internal relationship between the laws that govern thinking. In turn, these laws being anchored in a logic that has an absolute validity are free of any interference by the contingency. At this point, Shestov refuses to follow the details and intricacies of the Husserlian constructs. Later, during the years of his exile in Paris, a very between close relationship withatHusserl developed, andalready these issues were re-discussed the two, but that time Shestov was fascinated by the writings of Kierkegaard and did not feel any longer the need to discuss in depth phenomenology (here I should point out the interesting fact that it was Husserl who strongly encouraged Shestov to read Kierkegaard after their meeting in 1929). All in all, Shestov rejected phenomenology on the ground that it represents in fact just a new version of neo-Kantianism: “Tey try to base philosophy exclusively on the lumen naturale; hence they are obliged to endow the lumen naturale with absolute rights. Te negative method that Husserl employs in this task is the same as that of the neo-Kantians.”34 Husserl’s phenomenology, its cannot attemptbetocontested provide access absolute knowledge that leads to a truthinthat eithertobyanman or by his gods was rejected by Shestov, if notin toto, at least in its essentials. Ironically, he observed toward the end of his essay that “Husserl, to our great regret, has still not written a phenomenology of religion. I daresay he will never write it.”35 He was not able to find in the “science of phenomenology” the light which he hoped would help clarify his ideas concerning the relationship between the sorrowful situation of the individual and the possibility of overcoming it
84 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker through faith. Memento Mori, this long excursion in a domain which seemed to offer a promise only to turn out to have been rather a deception, left the author of Sola Fide at the same place he found himself before this “phenomenological adventure.” Te reading Husserl reinforced in him the belief that “there is a certain limit beyondofwhich it isonly necessary to guide oneself not according to the general rules of logic but according to something else which still does not, and probably never will, have any name in the language of men.”36 While thus suspended between Sola Fide and Memento Mori all of a sudden, time seemed to get out of joint once again for Lev Shestov. Only that this time it was not an experience reserved to the individual thinker; a revolution broke out in Russia. At first, it seemed that the revolution would succeed in changing the existing order and install a democratic government through a non-violent process. During the last days of the month of February 1917, Kerensky, the leader of Russian Socialist Party asked sar Nicolas II to resign. After his resignation on March 13, a new government was formed, and things seemed to evolve in a steady and fairly quiet way in Moscow. In a letter sent to one of his sisters living in Switzerland, Shestov reports on March 19 that “presently, the order reigns here: the trams are in circulation again, the workers are back at their workplaces. Besides, the post-offices, the telegraph services and the rail-road worked undisturbed throughout these eventful days.”37 In Kiev, things were calm, too; St. Petersburg witnessed some skirmishes, but they did not seem to matter very much. Normalcy was re-instating itself as new forms of life and becameareevident: entire in agreement: those whoadministration held extreme views pushed“the aside andsociety slowly isdisappear. Te government has the confidence of practically everybody,” he wrote in a letter sent at the end of March to his mother in Germany. However, things were not going well on the front: the new government was in favor of the continuation of the war, and this decision had very little public support. After the abolishment of the death penalty under Kerensky’s tenure as the minister of Justice, the soldiers began deserting the army in large numbers; the lack of success on the Galician front further aggravated the situation. Not only the number of the deserters reached very large proportions (according to some historians, moresoldiers than 2 began millionreturning soldiers deserted), but larger and the larger numbers of peasant to their villages to claim property from the wealthy land owners. Te redistribution of rural property created a state of instability behind the lines of a front which was already on the way to collapse. Matters went from bad to worse and came to a point of crisis during the summer months. Berdyaev, Shestov’s good friend was less convinced of the possibility of a peaceful revolution in Russia. He knew too well the actors to be fooled by the
All Tings Are (Still) Possible 85 peaceful appearances of the process in its first phases. Many of Shestov’s friends and literary acquaintances began sharing his views. Te feeling that something of apocalyptic dimensions might happen began to slowly penetrate the quiet countryside whereGermany the Shestov familyabout spentthe thestate summer. to his motherrefuge who from inquired of theWriting family again business during these troubled times, he let her know that “things are under control at home and the business is stable,” but at the same time warned that “these days the business is of lesser interest; these days there is only one business which interests us all and that is the business called Russia.”38 Soon after that, the harsh reality interrupted the day-dreaming; the waking call arrived when the workers of the family enterprise in Kiev went on strike. As time passed, the situation of the newly formed Kerensky government worsened also to the point that at the beginning of the fall general Kornilov asked for the resignation of the government, and Kerensky had to call in the Bolsheviks to save the situation (Lenin would say later that they helped the government—allied at that time with the Menshevik fraction of the communist party—only in order to fight a reactionary military inclined to continue the war). At the beginning of November, Shestov wrote his brother-in-law that “insofar as the situation is Russia is concerned, better not to speak about it. We hope that things will work out but we are sad, very sad.” In November the Bolsheviks took over by violent means Moscow and the winter will turn out to be very difficult under revolutionary rule. “Many hope that from the present chaos a new better world will 39
be born. Tey are present willingive birth to1918 a vilehereaction,” wrote Shestov in wrong. a letterTe to his sister.chaos Finally, February noted, “I live from one day to the other. I try not to think about war and politics and to work” (ibid.). He remained in Moscow a few more months, and then, in July, the family moved to Kiev. Tere, received temporarily in the house of one of the sisters of the philosopher (Sophia, married with the rich Daniel Balachowsky), the Shestovs tried to re-start their lives. A certain degree of normalcy set in when during the fall the daughters enrolled in school. Te situation in Kiev was different from that in Moscow, as at the time the city still belonged to an independent Ukrainian entity under German control. However, once themonths, Germans left in November 1918, everything collapsed. During the coming alternative nationalist and communist occupations of the city followed one another. When the Balachowsky family left for France before the end of the year, the Shestov family installed itself comfortably in the large apartment (Scriabin’s widow and her brother, Boris de Schloezer, who later became Shestov’s translator into French, lived with them for a while). Again, for a brief moment it seemed that matters would settle down: indeed, till the month of October of 1919 Shestov
86 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker taught at one of the newly opened universities. First, he taught a course on “Te historical interpretation of fundamental philosophical issues, from Plato to Descartes,” to be followed by a second one about the history of Greek philosophywritten (from and Tales to the Epicureans). During this in period he collected his works published after his return to Russia preparation of a new book. However, this project was not to be implemented in Russia (the volume appeared later in exile under the title Te Power of the Keys). Happiness in Kiev did not last long: on the one hand, the new communist regime did not accept an independent mind as that of Lev Shestov and, on the other, the armies of the nationalist forces did not like the Jew Leib Schwartzman. It became soon clear that his days in Kiev were numbered. When in August 1919 the White Russian forces re-conquered for a short while the city, the decision was made. On November 22 the family left for Yalta hoping that the proximity to the seashore would facilitate a transfer to urkey and from there to Western Europe. Not being certain that he would be able to leave soon, Shestov inquired about the possibility to teach at the local university; he obtained a faculty appointment, but he left Russia before giving his first lecture at the Crimean University (these appointments helped him to obtain later teaching positions at the Sorbonne). In January 1920, they were in Constantinople, the urkish capital, and in February they arrived to Geneva, Switzerland.
SIX
In Job’s Balances Shestov in Paris
“Intothe ‘ego’ and in theof‘ego’ and in its irrationality, liesphilosophers, the hope thatmislead it may be dissipate theonly hypnosis mathematical truth which the bypossible its immateriality and eternity, have put in the place of God.” “Submission to the law is the beginning of all impiety”
Once arrived in France, Shestov did not waste a moment: he immediately established contacts with some of the Russian intellectuals who had arrived earlier in Paris. He approached those, with whom he had collaborated in Kiev, Moscow, and St. Petersburg and inquired about the possibility of publishing some of the articles written before his departure. People were interested in obtaining firsthand information about events in Russia, and Shestov was eager to provide it: before the end of March, he sent, while still in Germany, a long article, entitled “What Is Bolshevism?” which was published a few months later in the prestigious Mercure de France. Very soon after that, Shestov began publishing in the Russian review Sovremmenye Zapisky1 articles he wrote just before he went into exile. As the other center of the Russian emigration was Berlin, Shestov contemplated also the possibility of establishing himself there.
88 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker A newpublishing house, Skify (Te Scythes), founded by representatives of the emigration there began publishing his works. In the end, Paris with its many institutions for higher learning with a focus on Russian was more attractive. Indeed, Shestov obtained of professor at theUniversity, Institute ofSorbonne. Slavic Studies, which functioned as a position part of the famous Paris He would teach philosophy there for the next sixteen years. Te French solution turned out to be a very good one for the rest of the family as well; his wife had great hopes to be able to practice medicine in France, and their daughters enrolled at the University of Grenoble first and then, later, they continued their studies at the Sorbonne. Between 1921 and 1930, Shestov often visited Germany where he established contacts not only with the representatives of the Russian emigration but also with German institutions (such as for instance, the Nietzsche Gesellschaft) and personalities belonging to various cultural and academic circles, among them Husserl and his former student Heidegger, Max Scheler, and Dr. Max Eitingon, a former student of Sigmund Freud’s and a famous psychiatrist at the time. After brief stays in Grenoble and Clamart, near Paris (were his good friend Berdyaev settled down after his arrival in France), Shestov established himself in the city and pursued during the year 1921 a very active involvement with the Russian intellectual milieu.2 At first, he missed completely the contacts with the French intelligentsia. Luckily, just about the time of his arrival in Paris, the most prestigious literary journal in France at the time, La Nouvelle Revue Française , was on the way to prepare a specialwho issue Dostoevsky. By the intermediation of Boris de Schloezer, wasdedicated asked by to Jacques Rivière and André Gide to find a Russian author able to collaborate with them on this project, Shestov was offered the occasion to make himself known to the French public. His article, a shortened version of a paper published previously in the Russian literary press, appeared in February 1922 and was very well received by the critics and created quite a stir among the readers; from that moment on, the door to the French cultural circles was open. In June 1923 Shestov published again in another prestigious review,Mercure de France, an article about Spinoza to be later included in the volume In Job’s Balances under the title Children and Stepchildren of ime. During the fall of the same year, fifty-two aphorisms written mainly before his departure from Russia and during the brief sojourn in Geneva in 1920, which were also included in the same volume under the title Revolts and Submissions, were published in two Russian reviews, the already mentioned Sovremenye Zapisky and Okno (Te Window). In December 1922, he began writing an article about Pascal, occasioned by the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of the French philosopher and intended for publication in the same Mercure de France. Te article, finished in April 1923,
Shestov in Paris 89 turned out to be too long, however, for the journal; but by now Shestov was a well-known author, much appreciated by the French cultural milieu. Charles Du Bos talked to Daniel Halévy, the coordinator of the Cahiers Verts a prestigious collection, published by one the largest printing ashouses of France, and as a result, the work on of Pascal was published an independent Grasset book entitled Gethsemane Night (to be included later in the volume In Job’s Balances). Within just a few years, Shestov thus became a well known and much appreciated author in Paris: Masson-Oursel and Albert Tibaudet wrote about him, and he corresponded with L. Brunschvicg, Bergson, and Lévy-Bruhl, the pillars of the French philosophical establishment in France. As a result of this newly acquired notoriety, he was invited in 1923 by Paul Desjardins and André Gide to the prestigious gathering at Pontigny where Rilke, Unamuno, and Ortega y Gasset were also invited next to the French Maurois, Gide, Martin du Gard, and others (Shestov continued to be a guest at the Pontigny gatherings during the coming years). In 1924 Nicolai Berdyaev arrived in France (from Berlin, he was among the Russian intellectuals expulsed by the Soviet government in 1922) and established himself in Clamart, near Paris, where he lived until the end of his life in 1948. Te two remained in contact, and their friendship established many years before in Kiev remained steady and unaffected by the endless disputes and the controversial discussions on philosophical and religious subjects the two friends would have during the next decade. Te year 1924 turned out to be also important because ofintheEditions meetingdethat the philosopher de Gaultier who published thewith French translation ofJules his Siècleyear book on olstoy and Nietzsche. Moreover, in the house of the French philosopher, Shestov met the newly arrived (from Romania) Benjamin Fondane, who became if not a follower, certainly his main disciple who will act during the following years as an excellent interpreter and proponent of his existential philosophy. At the same time, Shestov began writing a study on Plotinus which was published two years later in the Russian journal Versty (this study was also included in Te Job’s Balances. Shestov had many notes and had written apparently other fragments for a more extensive work on Plotinus (for details see 3 Geneviève Piron’s thesis and the volume edited by Valentina Parisi, in Italian At Pontigny he met that year Max Scheler and Ernst Robert Curtius. He vis-). ited) Germany where his books on olstoy and Nietzsche and Dostoevsky and Nietzsche were published in 1923 and 1924, respectively.In 1925 Te Apotheosis of Groundlessness was also published in German translation. Te beginning of 1925 was marked by the deaths of Jacques Rivière, whom Shestov befriended in Paris and of his life-long friend Mikhail Gershenson in Russia; the same year, his sister Elisabeth, together with her husband departed for Palestine. In
90 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker August that year, Shestov wrote them a letter in which he speculated about the possibility of visiting them in the Holy Land and wondered whether the local Jewish leaders would invite him to lecture there as “those who are at the head of the Zionist and movement understand cultural and philosophy is inJewish particular strangedotonot them. But whothe knows. . . .”4activities Surprisingly (for Shestov), it seemed for a moment that this voyage would take place and in preparation, he planned even a series of lectures on “Biblical influences on the Russian and European philosophy.” (It would have been extremely interesting to have them today.) It did not work out in 1925 and Shestov had to wait more than ten years before he would visit the Holy Land in 1936. Te year 1925 remains however a memorable one also because following the meeting with Lucien Lévy-Bruhl,5 the latter accepted for publication, in his very prestigious Revue Philosophique, the article Memento Mori. In the aftermath of this meeting the two developed a friendship based on mutual respect and the agreement to disagree on philosophical matters6: the French anthropologist never accepted Shestov’s claim that Lévy-Bruhl was a philosopher (“I told Lévy-Bruhl years ago that he is a metaphysician but he never agreed with this statement”7). When it appeared in January 1926, Shestov’s long essay was one of the first serious studies about phenomenology published in France up to that time. Te everyday life in Paris was difficult in spite of the fact that all the members of the family worked by now; as a result, the Shestovs had to leave their quarters would and move in againfor with thethan better off years, Balachowsky family (the two families live together more three from 1926 to the beginning of 1929). Nathalie Chestov-Baranoff writes in her biography that “these three years can be considered as representing the most interesting period of Shestov’s life during the emigration years.” 8 In the large quarters of his in-laws’ apartment, he could receive friends, guests, and organize literary and philosophical debates and even musical evenings; indeed, as soon as they moved in, he received Max Scheler and Tomas Mann who were visiting Paris. A few months later, he received count Keyserling, a quite well known and influential philosopher during the years immediately following WW I. During this period he prepared series of“What lectures “Solovyov and Religous Tought” and finished an articleaentitled Is on ruth?” in response to the rebuttal professor Herrig published following the publication of “Memento Mori” in France (the English translation of this article is included in Potestas Clavium). When at the beginning of the year 1927, Shestov organized a birthday party, fortyfive persons participated, among them Lévy-Bruhl; André Gide told Boris de Schloezer that since his encounter with Nietzsche he had not meet anybody as impressive as Lev Shestov. André Malraux was determined to help him publish
Shestov in Paris 91 his collected works in French. Paris proved to be indeed the right choice for Shestov, but he worked very hard all these years in order to establish a reputation for himself and to gain the appreciation of the French intellectual public. Duringencounter a sojourn he in Berlin in 1927, Shestovoccurred met Einstein; still, the most significant ever had in Germany a year later when he met Edmund Husserl. In fact, their first meeting took place in April that year at a philosophical gathering in Amsterdam; in November 1928, Shestov visited him in Freiburg. Teir intellectual encounter occurred several years earlier while Shestov was trying to understand how to overcome the limitations of a philosophy that competed with science for the truth and simultaneously build another one, a way of thinking grounded in the subjectivity of the individual thinker. He was looking at the time for the “roots of things.” In the essay “Te Root of Tings,” written still in Russia but published in Paris a few years later, Husserl was mentioned: “In recent9 times, Husserl has defined philosophy as the science of the roots of things.” As in “Memento Mori,” Shestov claimed anew that Husserl intended to expel wisdom and virtue from the domain of philosophy as did Kant, in fact, when he concluded upon the impossibility of metaphysics. However, Husserl ended up in a blind alley, observed Shestov, because “if you obey reason, you will obtain ‘rigorous science,’ but you will find yourself infinitely removed from the ‘roots of the things’; if however, you aspire to them (Shestov uses in his text the expression rizomatha panton in its srcinal Greek), in other words, if you admit that the most important is . . . found where these deepthe roots are hidden, you you mustconsider renounce reason the hope ever obtaining certitude that what as the rootsand of things are of indeed 10 roots.” In spite of this strong opposition to the Husserlian attempt to make philosophy into a science, an attitude totally opposed to Shestov’s position, he would tell Benjamin Fondane in one of their conversations: “I was luckier than Dostoevsky because I had the chance to meet Husserl, my second (philosophical) guide after Dostoevsky, who was my real master.”11 Regardless, their total divergence insofar as the philosophical opinions were concerned, the two very much liked each other (they would meet several times during the coming years, and the last essay written by Shestov, almost on his death bed, was an in memoriam dedicated to Edmund Husserl). Te personal encounter between the two had another unintended but very important consequence: listening to Shestov’s arguments, Husserl immediately realized their closeness, in many respects, to those brought forth by Kierkegaard when it came to matters of faith and the rejection of a philosophy, which prized, above all, objectivity. In the above mentioned article dedicated to Husserl, Shestov remembered that “as I was telling him in Freiburg that I do not know Kierkegaard, he insisted upon the fact that I should read the works of the
92 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker Danish philosopher; more than that, he ordered me to do so.”12 As soon as he left Husserl, Shestov began reading Kierkegaard. In a letter sent in December to his brother-in-law Herman Lovtzki, he wrote a bit disappointed at first: “I read Kierkegaard—indeed, theresoarefar,some things which to both of us. But from what I read it seems to me thatmay therebyis common no philoso13 phy here.” A few months later (in April 1929), in another letter to Lovtzki he writes now that “unlike Buber, I believe that Nietzsche is much more important than Kierkegaard.”14 Te year 1930 will be almost entirely dedicated to the intensive study of the works of the Danish philosopher; in 1931 he wrote to Boris de Schloezer that the year of his confrontation with the ideas of Kierkegaard was a very difficult one. By the end of the year, in December 1931, Shestov began a course on Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard at the Sorbonne, and at about the same time he completed the several chapters on Kierkegaard to be included in the study Te Bull of Phalaris, which was published later as a chapter in Athens and Jerusalem. After the conference in Amsterdam in April 1928, Shestov travelled to Frankfurt to meet Martin Buber. (I will discuss in more detail their relationship in a later chapter.) Te same year, he met Heidegger, whom he read already (“the lecture [of Sein und Zeit] is difficult but it is worth to undertake the effort,”, he wrote to his sister Fany and with whom he would exchange a few letters later). At the beginning of 1929, he hosted Husserl who came to Paris to give a series of presentations at the Sorbonne. In general, this year too prove to of interesting meetings events; among other things, awould translation ofbethefullbook wasand published in Germany and in In Job’s Balances Paris the book appeared in Russian. A long article on Solovyov (written a bit earlier) was published now, a lecture about “Te sources of the metaphysical truths” was delivered during the same year to a Russian audience (it would be published later as “Parmenides in Chains” in Revue Philosophique), the correspondence with Husserl and Buber continued, and one finds also traces of many exchanges of letters with French, German, and Russian writers and philosophers following the publication of the books mentioned above.15 Even though Shestov always wrote in Russian, ten years after his arrival in France, he was probably the thirties, best known Russian to emigrant in the Parisian intellectual circles. During the in addition the names mentioned already, writers such as Jean Paulhan, or philosophers among whom one can mention Henri Corbin (busy at the time translating Heidegger into French, to become later one of the great European specialists in Sufism) and Jean Wahl (who introduced during the thirties Kierkegaard to the French philosophical world), were writing about him or wanted to help translating and publishing his works in French. Partly, this success was due to the fact that he was perma-
Shestov in Paris 93 nently acting (in the Bergsonian sense he would say ; Shestov explicitly used the verb agir which he interpreted to mean “denying mental immobility”) but also to the fact that his writings were very much in tune with a world traumatized by theapocalyptic experienceclash of WW I andthe already by the gloomy perspective of a new between newlyscared instated totalitarian ideologies and the weak democracies of old Europe. Under the appearances of a renewed vitality, seemingly illustrated by the avant-garde movements and intense political activities, people were unhappy and uncertain, and the horizon was full of bad premonitions. Te dreams about a world ruled by logic and reason seemed to fade away, and the ideal of equilibrium and peace of mind built upon a philosophy based on eternal truths became less and less credible. Shestov did not believe in equilibrium, in the ability of the human society to steadily improve, in individual happiness based on knowledge, or in a collective salvation through the right application of universal laws to be found at work in nature and in society. Even people who were not ready to follow Shestov’s ideas did listen to him. Husserl wrote him in one of his letters, “you know that I take very seriously your attempts to uncover, for yourself and for us all, a world of God in which one will be able to live and die.”16 A philosophical discourse dominated by an anti-rationalist bent and strong hints to faith and the need to accept God’s presence in the concrete world of the human existence was not strange to the philosophical/intellectual Paris during the years between the two world wars. One should remember that next to Marxist, existentialist, personalist, or bergsonian philosophies, the neothomist thought, rationalist, and a brandneopositivist, of religious existentialism of the kind proposed by Gabriel Marcel were also very active during this period.17 Shestov’s discourse was too radical both for those who tried to move away from the positivist, phenomenological, neo-Kantian and/or neo-Hegelian trends in philosophy and the forms of religious existentialism with roots in the Catholic faith. Even though the contours of the philosophical map where poorly defined in France at the time: Henri Corbin was translating Heidegger and at the same time he studied the Sufi mystics of Persia and Alexandre Koyré, also of Jewish-Russian srcins but much younger than Shestov who studied in Germanya with Husserl and David Hilbert and in France with Bergson, was considered phenomenologist, a philosopher of science or by some, a thinker with . . . theosophical inclinations. o a much larger extent than Germany, France had a number of active and influential thinkers, who were not affiliated with either universities or academic institutions; some were foreigners brought by racial persecution or social revolutions, but the number of French authors who served as “interface” between the literary and philosophical “avant-gardes” was quite significant. Authors as different as Jules de Gaultier, George Bataille,
94 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker Gabriel Marcel, and Rachel Bespaloff gravitated in Shestov’s orbit for longer or shorter periods of time; Jean Wahl who often found himself at the borderline between the rigorous academic philosophy and the non-conventional, quasi-existential approach manifested at some degreeemof openness towardphilosophical his weltanschauung . Perhaps Shestov couldpoint havea been braced by thinkers who would later be considered the main representatives of the “existentialist” philosophy, if he had not rejected so categorically any attempt to consider ”solutions” to the epistemological and ontological queries of the generation. Gabriel Marcel, for instance, said he did look in Shestov’s works for doors he thought would open toward new perspectives only to find out that there were no doors at all in Shestov’s constructions.18 Jean Wahl, very much in search for ways to include the “concrete” into metaphysical thinking, explained also, in a conversation with Fondane (in an indirect way rather) why he could not in the end find in Shestov anything acceptable from his point of view.19 Only Camus, an existential thinker who refused also to seek an ontology (his refusal was based on other grounds than Shestov’s though; he did not need it as he had an alternative way of expression in his literary works), will refer to Shestov in a significant way in his Myth of Sisyphus. As we have seen, Shestov reworked some of the materials elaborated during his “late Russian period” and later in Paris and published them in periodicals, as well as in the first two books Potestas Clavium and In Job Balances to appear during the first decade of his French exile. While the very first articles published were still period, very much influenced by the style those towritten during there his “pre-exilic” inRevolts oneofbegins see and Submissions emerging new themes and novel angles of approach as well. As we have seen, Shestov often talked about the need to “restate” philosophy, to rebuilt it outside of the confines of a reason destined (only) to guide man in his empiric existence; in the essays published in exile, he becomes more sharp, more focused, more imperative: “the whole art of philosophy should be directed towards freeing us from the ‘good and evil’ of cooks and carpenters, to finding that frontier beyond which the might of general ideas ceases,” he writes.20 In the country of Descartes, such a radical critique of a philosophy based upon reason, logic, and causalityhow might seemed indeedseek to many, if not nonsensical, hardly acceptable; can have one philosophize, wisdom, if reason, causality, and the principle of non-contradiction were excluded from the process? What is left to be said once one discards the very pillars upon which wisdom lies? Only somebody in great despair or a very cynical person could make such a statement; Jean Wahl, in a letter to Benjamin Fondane wrote, “Unfortunately, I cannot read Shestov . . . It is perhaps because I myself know only too well from years of experience, the meaning of both irony and despair. . . .” However,
Shestov in Paris 95 we know that in fact Shestov never attacked rational thinking per se: he only denied it the right to impose itself in a total, tyrannical way to the mind of the reflecting human being. We do not think only when we want to solve a practical problem a challengeecological in mathematics or We the best way problem, to producewhether enoughthis food withoutis producing damage. also reflect upon our happiness when we are happy and over the causes of our unhappiness in moments we feel miserable. We engage our knowledge when we want to develop or build something but try to be wise also when we encounter evil or we face the fear of death. What Shestov did, in fact, was merely to claim that one cannot indiscriminately apply the same kind of knowledge, to judge by the same wisdom in all these cases. In the exile writings, this idea comes to the fore in a clearer way than in the previous works. Still, he doggedly repeated that philosophy—following in the footsteps of a tradition srcinating with the ancient Greeks and continued to our very days—does exactly that. It postulates that the only tool we have to reflect upon things, immanent and/or transcendental, from this world or from the realm of the everlasting, is reason. Te corollary of this belief is that a law of causality must be at work (in spite of Hume’s critique) and a logic of non-contradiction to which everything, near and far, men, stones, and gods must obey (in agreement with Aristotle and his followers). Only thus do we stand a chance to understand. In order to refute this way of thinking Shestov refined his previous analysis of the nature of the “evidences” that came to support the basic axioms of philosophy. He tried hard to invent another way of ofthinking phy, that of a handmaid science.that refused the status of modern philosoIt is interesting to see how Shestov’s attitude toward Spinoza evolved under these new circumstances. As we have seen, Shestov’s position toward the philosopher from Amsterdam was somewhat ambivalent during the years before World War I and began to change after the work on young Luther. If Luther wanted to replace the Law and the reason with sola fide, Spinoza almost necessarily became his opposite (after all, he was Jewish and recognized the centrality of the Law in Judaism). In Sola Fide already, an entire chapter (VII) was dedicated to a relatively extended discussion of Spinoza’s philosophicaltheological views.Kant, VerySpinoza perceptively observed the very beginning that more than was Shestov responsible for thefrom implantation into our minds of certain thoughts upon which the modern philosophy and science would build its ways of understanding Heaven and Earth, man and God, chaos and cosmos. Spinoza was the thinker who stated in his Ethics that the order and connections we establish between our ideas (ordo et connexio idearum) represents a one-to-one correspondence with those existing in the objective reality (ordo et connexio rerum).21 Tis, together with the postulates of the eternity of
96 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker the natural laws and that which limits God’s creation to the actually created world, represents the basis upon which modernity built its ways of thinking. Spinoza needed logic as St. Augustine, before him, needed the dogma elaborated by the Church to ensure stability to guarantee thehow validity of his thoughts. Tat because he toothehad doubts:and if God was perfect, was to be explained the imperfection introduced in the world? Moreover, Spinoza himself had existential experiences similar to those of Pascal, which induced in him that strange feeling of the presence of an abyss, “painful and movingd” experiences, in Shestov’s words. In his own description of the ways in which his inner, personal drama interfered with the origins of his philosophical outlook, Spinoza recognized that fear and hope shaped it. However, why did not such a permanent oscillation between despair and hope make Spinoza into a man of the subterranean world, resembling Dostoevsky’s heroes? Why did he remain faithful to the principle of more geometrico and, like St. Augustine and other philosophers, went out to seek beatitude as the supreme goal of the philosophical thought? o all these questions posed already at the time he wrote Sola Fide, Shestov returned to Paris ten years later, while writing his essay on “Spinoza in History.” Tis time, however, he wrote about Spinoza with Pascal in his mind, and this changed everything. Back now to Revolt and Submission: in one of its sections Shestov presents in a masterly way, in a few pages only, the genesis of a reasoning based on the principle of causality.22 Te “apparently ‘objective’ question of causality”—as the author puts it—is in our “struggle forOn existence,” a struggle that imposes practical needs:rooted “Our interest is twofold. the one hand, the outer world must be divided into parts for us to be able to overcome them; on the other hand, those parts must be connected as closely as possible in order to leave nothing, or as little as possible, of the unforeseen, which nips in the bud the possibility of any systematic progress.” Here Shestov introduced a very meaningful and subtle observation: if one reflects a moment upon the essence of the Newtonian-Galilean revolution in natural sciences, one notices that what he said in the above quoted statement was equivalent to a description in nuce of the essence of this same revolution. In its frame—space, time, velocity, acceleration, force—have linked togetherfor in an a coherent way through momentum mathematicaland constructs, and been thus the foundation unprecedented scientific and technological “explosion” was set. As a result, mankind was indeed granted the “gifts of the earth.” Shestov was not at all against that, “there is no need to renounce the gifts of the earth,” he wrote, “but we must not forget heaven for their sakes.” 23 Tat, he argues, because “ . . . were not we preoccupied only with the utilitarian ends, we should not interest ourselves in what look like relationships existing between what looks like parts’ (ibid., my em-
Shestov in Paris 97 phasis). In order to work, science must make all things unremarkable, explained Shestov, and by that he meant that science transforms the parts it operates upon, into operational concepts, that is, things that have the appearance of parts of something whichTe sustainable relationships can be Anything elseand mustbetween be excluded. single, the uncontrollable, theestablished. incomprehensible, the irreproducible (the “fortuitous,”, as he called it), have no place in rigorous, scientific, or philosophical thinking. Tus, “science would make unremarkable everything (which is) remarkable.” Tat is why, according to Shestov, science cannot satisfy man’s quest for truth. “Despite science, the unremarkable refuses to lose all its meaning”; the “unremarkable,” the particulier existentiel as Fondane would call it in his philosophical writings, which refuses to be conceptualized, “strains all its forces to become as remarkable as possible.”24 “Can there be a philosophy of the ‘unremarkable’?” will ask Shestov in the end. In another section of the same essay entitled “What Are Questions Made Of?” Shestov, following Plato, concluded that “the reasonable creature’s desire for knowledge is born out of his limitations.”25 Trough a somewhat sophistic argument, he adds: “consequently reasonableness is itself limitation.” As we have seen, it is not rare to find in Shestov’s writings such somersaults. However, they should not lead one to the conclusion that his critique of the “tyranny of reason,”, as he terms it, and his efforts to establish a new way of thinking, his metasophia meant to transcend the conventional philosophy, srcinated in sophistic arguments. From the very first aphorisms published in the Apotheosis of Groundlessness, could thatinShestov’s point of departure in his argumentations wasone sound andsee solid: his “deconstruction” of the supremacy of the rational thinking, he always followed two parallel paths: one was that of the analysis of the ways and methods which led us to the acceptance of some sort of a generalized concept of logos understood as a synthesis of the external, objective law which governs everything including the human ability to uncover it. Tis happens, as we have seen above, through a fragmentation, a de-composition into parts which can be re-united according to logic and causality. Implicit in this process, there is also an acceptance of the continuity of imperceptible changes, which fits our mental constructs: the unremarkable
becomes theIbuilding of our theories.from o better understand these(Shestov abstract arguments, will use block concepts borrowed the natural sciences himself did that sometimes; I am sure he would not have minded it): if one reflects upon the periodic movement of a frictionless pendulum or the movement of small ball-like atoms or electrons, one quickly realizes that none of the above exists as such. We cannot eliminate friction, and the movement of a pendulum is not strictly periodic, and electrons are not tiny, perfect spheres turning around a nucleus, but we still can build theories based on these as-
98 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker sumptions, and surprisingly enough they work very well. (In the case of atoms and electrons, the classical mechanics had to be amended in order to take into account the coarseness of the simplifications involved in the models.) One uses in these scientific explanations idealized interact through smooth changes that accommodate causality andconcepts eliminatethat contradictions. Te result is a “cult of the imperceptible” as Shestov called it. By that he meant that an absolute submission to the concepts that can be manipulated using reproducible and testable laws is always at work in our mental constructs. Te corollary of all these is that in such a realm, the question is conditioned by the answer and if the answers are complete and certain, “man will cease to ask; he will himself be as God.” “But—adds Shestov—‘this is just where the fatal self-deception is hidden.” Tat is why the “official, recognized philosophy, which aims at being science, does not go beyond the intelligere, and is, moreover, quite genuinely convinced that it alone is seeking the truth.”26 Te second deconstructive path followed by Shestov was that of the struggle for the legitimacy of the affective in philosophical thinking. As we know by now, this is not a new issue in his writings, but now, in his writings published following the exile, he became much more insistent insofar as this matter was concerned. In another section of Revolt and Submission, he reproduced an allegedly overheard confession and commented upon it. Tese “confessions” sound like a fragment from Kafka’s diaries, but in the comment under discussion, it is again olstoy who is invoked: the author renders the famous conversion olstoy underwent: all of a sudden and unfounded fears” were insidiously creeping into the“intolerable, writer’s soul.torturing, “He felt that something imperious, hard, merciless, was rending him away from all that was dear, homely, near—from wife, child, artistic creation, from his property at Yasnaia Polyana, from life itself.”27 For a long while it was clear to olstoy that he had to flee the evil of these torturing fears and return to his earlier world. However, then, “ . . . ten, twenty years went by; looking back on his past, he sees just as clearly and distinctly that the unfounded fears were a good, and that his wife, his children, his books and his property were the greatest of evils.” 28 Shestov did not describe the “experience of the abyss” olstoy underwent to arrive at this point did it, inthough, in his early book on olstoy dantly (he discussed a previous chapter). He went on withand hisNietzsche argument abunand concluded: “Tere you have experience pitted against experience, self-evidence against self-evidence. Which is one to believe? Is it necessary to believe finally in anything? Is it possible to believe? (ibid., my emphasis). Te reader recognizes the pattern of this statement; I quoted a similar one from an earlier collection of aphorisms, and I spoke about the feeling of déjà vu which takes hold of us while reading Shestov. However, this is not the essential point; what is impor-
Shestov in Paris 99 tant is to realize that this second path of deconstruction would lead Shestov to the same conclusion he reached at the end of the first one, described above: rational thinking does not unveil any truth since a really significant truth cannot be unveiled either by “scientific research” or by as it was from Socrates to Hegel, and beyond, to his veryphilosophy days. At best, thesepracticed illusory truths might offer comfort: “If you want to be released from torture, submit yourself to ideas, become yourself ideas. Herein, and herein alone lies your salvation,” wrote Shestov in the book In Job’s Balances.29 Te disquietude remains a fact though, and “with this ceaseless and ever growing disquietude every man must deal for himself.”30 Te conclusion one arrives at reading Shestov of the beginning of his “exilic period” is that religion or at least some sort of a religious based thinking must become the philosophy of the individual as this is the only thought appropriate to cope with the concrete, unique experience of the individual. We hear him telling his reader more and more often that this is what one learns from the story of Abraham, this is what Job’s story teaches. Shestov had extensively discussed the process through which even the religions inferred from the biblical mythology (in this respect I do not believe that he made a distinction between Judaism and Christianity) have been transformed to teach that God himself is a prisoner of the ratio. In a way, therefore, Jacques Maritain was right to write that the “existentialism” of Shestov (and Fondane) was “an essentially religious irruption and claim, an agony of faith, the cry of subjectivity towards its God.”31 would like to sum description themesbetween developedI during the first partupof this his Parisian exileofbyShestov’s observingmajor a division the first ones (elaborated during the very first years of this period, 1922 to 1925) which are still reflecting the preoccupations of a thinker torn between Sola Fide and “Memento Mori,” and the others, written during the late twenties and early thirties, which present an author who has overcome already this dilemma. Te lecture of Kierkegaard represents to some extent a dividing line between the two periods. Shestov’s ideas about the Danish religious thinker will be discussed in one of the next chapters; here, I only point out that the thoughts included in Revolts and Submission and discussed above represent the moment following immediately the turning point of this transformation, while the very subject matters of the essays on Spinoza, Pascal, and Plotinus further define and characterize the thinker who would write at the end of the second stage of this development that Athens and Jerusalem and religious philosophy are expressions with identical meanings.
SEVEN
Shestov in Paris II “Out of the Bull of Phalaris”
“He who loved the Lord his God with all his heart and with all by hisGod soulhimself . . . wastocondemned slay God” “We must awake out of something, overcome some self-evident truths”
Te essay about Spinoza mentioned in the previous chapter was written more or less at the same time as that on Pascal (1922–23). Te French thinker did appear occasionally in Shestov’s earlier writings but only as vaguely representing the revolt against the rigors imposed by rational thinking. In the essay dedicated to Pascal, “Gethsemane Night,” the French philosopher comes to the foreinbut not somewhat only (and mainly) this context. interpreted Pascal terms detachedinfrom those of Shestov his own often historical-philosophical context (as, for instance, when he disregards the fact that quotations taken from Pascal’s works such as “I do not expect a thing from the world, I do not need anything, I do not want anything; thank God I do not need either the protection or the favors of whoever it might be,” relate directly to his interactions with the Jansenists1). However, as in other cases mentioned above, the personal interpretation he gives to Pascal’s works and to his thoughts about
102 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker man and God and the essence of faith is more interesting—from our point of view in this work—than the accuracy of the description of Pascal’s interactions with Port Royal and the established religious trends and authorities representing them.moreover, From thehisvery Shestov that to Pascal was never a Cartesian; realbeginning, absolute judge whenstates it comes our pronouncements about knowledge and truth “is not man but He who is above all men.”2 Pascal’s ad tuum, Domine Jesu, tribunal appello might be misinterpreted by neglecting the historical context in which he wrote this pathetic appeal, but in the Shestovian context this choice is very significant. Since Christ “will agonize till the end of the days, one must not fall asleep at any time,” but Pascal, as Macbeth, will not withstand the temptation; one remembers that even Christ’s vicar on earth, St. Peter, falls sound asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane at a fateful moment. Tis idea of the denial of the supreme authority in order to better exercise human liberty and to come closer to it appeared already in earlier works, where the issue of Nietzsche’s belief was discussed; the thought would evolve in Shestov’s mind and be expressed forcefully in the essay on Plotinus written three years later. Meanwhile, St. Augustine is invoked again, in order to remind the reader that for him the “theoretical and the practical significance of the idea of the Church and of that of reason were essentially the same”3; Shestov reminds us also that “Pascal mentions from time to time the sovereign right of reason” but takes care to add that “in the depths of his soul, (he) despises and hates this autocrat.”4 Furthermore, even if one might have doubtsbefore concerning the statement that Pascaltext called notnoonly Rome butthe reason itself the tribunal of God, Shestov’s leaves doubt about fact that he builds his analysis and understanding of Pascal’s thought upon this premise. In the frame of this interpretation, Shestov sees what would become his “logic,” confirmed in Pascal’s writings. “Rome and reason ordain it; therefore it must not be done; such is Pascal’s ‘logic,’” he writes.5 Te corollary of this logic is that one must seek the truth while crying (the Pascalian quote to which Shestov alludes is “je n’approuve que ceux qui cherchent en gémissant”) and “you must not pause, you must not rest, you must march on, march without ceasing” (ibid.). Pascal refuses to grant the searching man any security. While this idea is not newinwith Shestov—we have seen himaffi write against a philosophy consolation his early writings already—the rmation is made here in of a much closer proximity to the idea of God. According to Shestov, Pascal did overcome Stoicism in philosophy; that represented a first “resonance” between the two. He often criticized the Stoic philosophy because, as he repeats here, “what was true for antiquity is true for us, the thoughts on which we live are the thoughts of Stoicism,”6 and he would discuss these ideas again and in more detail in a future essay on Plotinus. How-
“Out of the Bull of Phalaris” 103 ever, in his essay on Pascal, he singled out the opposition between the French philosopher and the Stoics in order to introduce the rights of the affectivity, of the individual, of the “ego” facing the absolute rights of reason and the general, as required by allhim. major as those who came after “Inphilosophies, the ‘ego’ and which only inpreceded the ‘ego’Pascal and in asitswell irrationality, lies the hope that it may be possible to dissipate the hypnosis of mathematical truth which the philosophers, misled by its immateriality and eternity, have put in the place of God,” writes Shestov.7 Te search for this truth drew Pascal to St. Augustine and “past St. Augustine to St. Paul, past St. Paul to what Paul found in certain passages of Isaiah and in the Biblical story of the Fall” (ibid.). Tis last quotation is important because it establishes a trajectory, from the existential philosophy of the troubled self to God, a movement that would be perfectly reversible in Shestov’s later philosophical and religious thought, making it difficult to separate between the two. Moreover, Shestov established also a connection between Pascal and Luther, which was not emphasized in Sola Fide: “the same question which had confronted Luther a century earlier, presents itself to Paul: Whence does salvation come to man?” (ibid.). In the opposite direction, he establishes a link with Spinoza also when he recalls the negative attitude he had toward affectivity expressed by the famous (and very often quoted by Shestov) non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere (laugh not, weep not, be not wroth, but understand). Of course, as the religiously biased discourse becomes more pronounced and questions such “how Shestov can one has justify a God whose very principle arbitrary caprice?” areasposed, to confront principles and ideasisthat are very differently defined in the two books of the scriptures, the Old and the New estament. In his writings in exile, Shestov begins a long journey into the unchartered territory of an ill-defined mixture of Jewish and Christian religious symbols and interpretations. We will discuss this issue in more detail later on; here, I want to mention another instance in which Shestov’s ambiguous attitude toward the law was brought to the fore. Once Luther came to realize that a strict observance of the law does not save the believer, he became terrorized by the fear that this thought opened the road to perdition. Experiencing such a “truth” extraordinary, andidea the normal should be an attempt cile theisnew, extraordinary with thereaction established wisdom induced to byrecontradition, culture, and religion. However, Shestov, in agreement with Luther, wrote that “we have no right to reject an unusual experience, even though it does not agree with our a priori notions”8 and added in a quite categorical manner that “submission to the law is the beginning of all impiety. And the highest point of impiety is the deification of the laws, of those ‘eternal and immaterial truths dependent on a single truth,’ of which Pascal had spoken to us later.” 9
104 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker It is surprising for a thinker with Shestov’s background to deny in such a radical way the value of the Law that in the Jewish tradition is considered to be transcendental, external to history since it was established before the creation (the orah, to to thebeJewish tradition, served as a blueprint to God). However, he according seems either unaware of this idea or ready to give it up; and to make sure that his position on this matter is clear and unambiguous, after conceding that “in the Bible there where also laws—‘Moses brought the tables down from Sinai’—Shestov added that ‘Luther will tell us what Pascal heard at the supreme tribunal . . .” etc. (follows a long quote from Luther), thus implying that Moses and the Bible represent only a first stage in a story that began with the Creation, Moses, and the exit from Egypt and later, in a continuous way led to Golgotha and the Evangels. Moreover, quoting immediately after that, St. Paul, Shestov pointed out, that God himself “violates the supreme law of justice: He manifests himself to those10 who do not inquire after Him, He is found by those who do not seek Him.” As mentioned above, these ideas are hardly acceptable within the frame of reference of the traditional Jewish theology, but the author of the above quotes does not seem bothered by this issue. On the contrary, he seems to feel quite comfortable with an immediate and straightforward interpretation of a discourse that positions him in the tradition of the Christian interpretations of the scriptures. Again, we return to the question “does this make Shestov a Christian religious philosopher?” Te answer is, “doubtful”; his disciple Benjamin Fondane would dwell at length on these matters in his discussions Maritain and Berdyaev, after endlesswith num-a ber of discussions on thesewith themes with Shestov, answered theanquestion categorical, “no.” Perhaps the best explanation is to be found in Shestov’s own words, in his letter sent to Serge Bulgakov, written shortly before his death. Another idea encountered in Shestov’s earlier writings resurfaces in the essay about Pascal; it is the story of the Fall, re-considered now in light of Shestov’s new ideas insofar as the balance between philosophy and religion is concerned. Even though in this respect, Shestov was somewhat closer to a traditional Jewish approach in opposition to the Christian one (“even Pascal’s companions at Port Royal refused to accept the biblical story of the Fall in all 11 its mysterious fullness” he still preferred beginsohisthat argumentation with quotes from St. Paul and ),ertullian. “Te law to entered the offence might abound” said the former while the latter stated that only after having broken the law, Adam and Eve could really begin to believe, since only the knowledge acquired as a result of the transgression of the law clearly separated the reasonable from the absurd. For the “companions at Port Royal” eating from the fruit of the tree of knowledge was not a sin, an unfortunate occurrence and that simply because for them knowledge was the summum bonum; the sin consisted
“Out of the Bull of Phalaris” 105 in Adam’s disobedience. Te consummation of any fruit, be it an apple or a plum, would have had the same consequences, that is illness, suffering, and death, writes Shestov and adds, “this is the usual interpretation of the Fall, since the Bible follows got in the hands of manwith educated in the Hellenic tradition” (ibid.). Shestov up immediately the statement, “thus, the Bible is interpreted to this day, in spite of Isaiah’s flaming words and St. Paul’s inspired epistles” which becomes very significant in connection with the observations made above concerning the position Shestov took toward the traditional Jewish religious thinking. Tis last remark could be seen as the pronouncement of a Christian thinker who includes the Old estament in the Scriptures and in a way consistent with Christian theology sees in the Bible merely a document foretelling the upcoming story of Jesus the Messiah. Alternatively, Shestov’s pronouncement could be seen as coming from a religious thinker who decided not to make any longer the distinction between the prophet and the apostle, between the Old and the New estament considering both to be equally representatives of one and the same faith, a primeval Judaism or an all encompassing Judaism. Shestov implies that Judaism was changed in its very essence, first by the contact with the Greek philosophy, which introduced a rigid rationality and replaced the prophet with the interpreter of the scripture and a second time, by the traumatic experience of the loss of the emple in Jerusalem, the exile and as a result, the need to re-define and codify the message contained in the Bible for a people who, while remaining loyal to the Covenant, lost the possibility to implement its laws in the Under the Rabbi. newly created conditions, both the prophet andtraditional the scribe manner. are replaced by the Christianity, which in Shestov’s view was at its very beginning just another way in which human beings created by God in his image interacted with the Creator after His decision to become involved once again with Adam and his descendants, was also deeply modified by the Greek spirit. From this moment on, in all his writings Shestov would aim principally to make clear these ideas; if he did not always succeed, one cannot blame him as he often quoted Pascal’s dictum, ‘do not reproach us with the lack of clarity for we make it our profession.” Whatever the conclusion the reader or the interpreter of Shestov’s works will reach, thing believed seems toinbethe beyond doubt and controversy: to theand extent he had faith,one Shestov God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob not the in the God of philosophers and the wise men. At the very beginning of his essay on Spinoza, Shestov revisits St. Paul’s ambiguous statement about the law, “the law came that offence might abound,” but with a different intent than in the case of the work on Pascal. Here, since he spoke about a philosopher who not only did not reject reason but wanted to demonstrate everything more geometrico, the author began by asking why would
106 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker one need—after St. Paul—to introduce a new law, “the first commandment of modern philosophy” Shestov called it, which required the total emancipation of philosophy from all postulates. It is not only that modern philosophy refuses to admitconsidering postulates; them it excludes from itsFurthermore, practice anythe references to being mythsconand legends, illegitimate. Scriptures sidered to belong to these last categories, are no exception. However, Shestov remarked that the Greek philosophy had a myth about the srcin of man, as the Bible had one, and he presented and discussed the formulation Anaximander gave to it. Te Greek and the biblical myths are opposed to each other, and the question is where the truth lies. In the economy of his text, this digression had the task to remind us again the deeply engrained opposition between Athens and Jerusalem but also that between Descartes’ clear and distinct ideas and Pascal’s “fuzzy” thinking. In addition, this discussion served to introduce Spinoza as the arbiter between the two, the judge who would set the things straight. Shestov wrote explicitly: “Spinoza probably did not know Pascal, but the kind of thought which Pascal held . . . was, of course, only too familiar to Spinoza, and he held his historic mission to be to combat precisely this kind of thought.”12 Following a relatively long detour across some of the older Shestovian remarks about the role of the general ideas in the newly established philosophy of the Greeks and the re-reading of the religious texts of the Bible by Philo of Alexandria, “the first Apostle of the Gentiles” using Greek tools, the author 13 concluded that “for fifteen hundred reason European humanity endeavored to quench the light whichyears camethefrom the of East.” However, who will do the work of slaying a God who disturbs the philosophers? Using the logic at work earlier in the case of Nietzsche, Shestov pointed out that the task fell upon he “who loved the Lord his God with all his heart and with all his soul—how often and how emphatically he speaks of these in his earlier works and in the Ethics—was condemned by God himself to slay God.”14 Tat is how (and why) Spinoza arrived at his non ridere, based on the axiomatic exclusion of the affectivity from the philosophical exercise, since “the emotions of fear and hope cannot in themselves be good.” Shestov recognized that there was
alaws timeofwhen still freereason; of thebut constraints imposed by the gravitySpinoza of the was all mighty by the time he wrote themental Ethics he was already enslaved to the more geometrico: “beauty, ugliness, good, evil, joy and sorrow, fear and hope, order and disorder, all these are human matters, all this is transitory and has not connection with truth. Ye imagine that God cares for the needs of man? Tat He created the world for man? . . . o comprehend God one must strive to emancipate oneself from cares and joys, from fears and hopes. . . .”15 Tis is Shestov’s Spinoza now, and that is why he would become
“Out of the Bull of Phalaris” 107 for him the embodiment of a view of man, God, and their relationship that has to be rejected. Te observation that thinkers who undergo a traumatic experience respond by attempting to cancel and/or overcome its effects, is explained by Shestov in a quite strange “Godshould sent outhold his prophets to blind andseeing. bind men, that they, fettered andway: blinded, themselves free and Why was that necessary? Did Spinoza know that? Do we know it, who read Isaiah and Spinoza?”16 Tese, too, are new questions on which Shestov would dwell in subsequent essays published later in Paris. Before discussing them, however, we must cast a brief glance upon an another essay written more or less during the same period Shestov wrote about Spinoza and Pascal. Tis particular essay focuses on Plotinus and is entitled “Worlds Tat Are Swallowed Up: Plotinus’ Ecstasies.” Here, the starting point is a quote from the last great pagan philosopher, who claimed that as long as the soul remains in the body, he stays sound asleep. Shestov asked “what is the relationship between the truths found by a soul freed from the body and those found by souls still unfreed?”17 defining thus the question in the realm of philosophy. In a way, this is a return to the statement made in an early aphorism (#17 in the second part of “Te Apotheosis of Groundlessness”) about a metaphysics that cannot exist side-by-side with reason. Plotinus was mentioned in Sola Fide also, but there Shestov claimed that he did not dare go as far as to recognize the essential fact that revealed truth cannot be discussed within the confines of a logical system, “that is, that it cannot be expressed through judg18
mentsheofwants universal value and statement whichas will not admit Now to re-consider this statement it seems to himcontradiction.” that a more attentive lecture of the ancient philosopher would lead to a different conclusion. In this article, Shestov sets off to show that perhaps Plotinus did go as far as to arrive at this crucial observation. First, he observed that “when Plotinus had to decide between ‘revealed’ and ‘natural’ truths, he unhesitatingly took the side of the former.”19 Second, one finds in the Ennead (IX, 3,4) the statement “that the comprehension of the One is not given us through knowledge (epistheme) and also not through thinking (noesis) like the cognition of the ideal things but through a communion (parousia) which is something higher than knowledge.”20 Tis “theory”knowledge poses a problem, however: If we assume that was Plotinus reached any valuable through a state in which his soul able tohasfree itself from his body and through a penetration into the deep self he acquired a hint about the knowledge of the One, how are we going to unfold from his text this piece of knowledge? In Shestov’s words, we face the dilemma: “to understand Plotinus means to kill him and not to study him means to renounce him.” 21 I mention this point not only to emphasize the paradoxical nature of the esoteric knowledge but also the fact that Shestov was fully aware of it. How to proceed
108 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker therefore? Porphyry, his faithful disciple, wrote that Plotinus never re-read his works and his explanation had to do with the master’s poor sight at old age (he began writing down his works at the age of fifty). Shestov finds the excuse a lameifand one. Te reason did notthat re-read himself was that he probably had doneuntrue it, “he would have had Plotinus to tell himself he had lost truth in reason” (ibid.). Overreading cancels the deeply hidden meaning of the reading. Te teacher had to write in a way the students would understand, but deep inside, beyond the surface, a truth which has the ability to compel, the only one which, writes Shestov, represents “the fundamental mark of true genuineness of thought,”, unveils itself.22 Te “Pascal connection” in this essay appears by the intermediary of Epictetus, “the philosopher Pascal loved best.”23 Tere was, however, something harsh in this Stoic philosopher, something that repelled Pascal, some sort of a superbe diabolique was manifest in his Discourses. If Pascal had known Plotinus, he would have found in him the same repelling property, hubris perhaps, which pushed both to attempt to create, like God, something out of nothing. At this point, Shestov poses a key question to which he would offer a quite surprising answer: “How could so mad a thought occur to man, and above all, to men like Epictetus and Plotinus? Is it not clear that a supernatural force is at work here?”24 Tis is the first time that Shestov introduced the need to believe in such a simple, casual, straightforward way. Te reasoning is philosophical, even though the material to which it is applied is of a mixed nature, philosophical and theological.that However, the main theme proposed by Shestov in Socrates the essayand on Plotinus is of the “awakening”: Plotinus, as Epictetus (and Plato as well) “felt that we must awake out of something, overcome some self-evident truths.”25 Tis theme would recur often especially in Athens and Jerusalem. Another central idea in Shestov’s later years revolves around the concept that an awakening from the slumber of traditional philosophy as well as from that of traditional theology, be it Jewish or Christian, must occur. Again, what he had in mind was a Jewish-Christian religious continuum that started with Abraham in Ur-Kasdim and continued on Mount Sinai, in Babylon, in Nazareth, in Bethlehem, and Jerusalem through the exile and the crucifixion and the destruction of theand emple and ended the in rewriting this history by Philo of Alexandria the fathers of thewith Church terms ofofGreek wisdom. Parmenides in Chains is a study srcinally prepared as a collection of talks to be delivered in Germany around 1930; in a letter to Lovtzki, Shestov explained that in writing about Plato and his teachings in which he stated that philosophy represented a discourse about death, he wanted to show that as long as the thought was dependent on the constraint (ananke), one could not penetrate the domain of a metaphysics that existed and was validated in the
“Out of the Bull of Phalaris” 109 divine realm.26 Tis was not a new idea of Shestov’s, and the essay in its entirety is largely a repetition of former ideas but now presented perhaps in a more learned and more elegant style. Kant and Hegel are discussed extensively, as they shouldpublic. be, considering thatupthe material prepared for a Necessity German: philosophical Shestov took again the oldwas argument against “whatever field of philosophical thought we approach, we always run up against this blind, deaf and dumb Necessity,” he writes.27 Te discussion is interesting insofar as it brings some light concerning the srcins of Shestov’s thoughts about existential philosophy. Parmenides stated that “being and thought are one and the same”; but “being, despite what Parmenides says, is not the same as thought.”28 Te trouble is, remarks Shestov, that being cannot express itself outside the thought, and even when it refuses to submit itself to Necessity, it is paralyzed by thought. When in a previous conversation with Husserl, Shestov tried to convince him that philosophy should support being instead of thought, the latter replied sharply that philosophy is Besinnung, that is reflection. Now, Shestov picks up on this remark and states that “philosophy has always meant and wished to mean reflection” (ibid.), which means looking back, always looking back. However this retrospection, as it happens to Lot’s wife transforms the philosopher into a block of salt. Terefore, when one follows this lead, one arrives at a dead end. “In the Bull of Phalaris,” written approximately a year later with a different purpose in mind and in parallel with the aphorisms to be published Dimension the Tought underofthe title Te Second , Shestov revisited different the subjects knowledge and freedom underof different angles and following approaches. Philosophy, in spite of Hegel’s requirement not to be instructive, edifying, is just that; moreover, writes Shestov, philosophy had invaded the domain of religion and tried to explain revelation. At this point, he believed that Kierkegaard illustrated this situation when he presented God as submissive to the objective order of things. Human freedom is lost in this process while the philosophers continue to claim, from within the belly of the incandescent bull, smilingly and in spite of all evidence, their absolute freedom. In a nutshell, this is Shestov’s argument in his essay, but, as he pointed out in the letter to
Boris Schloezer, he 29was afraid that too briefremain and schematic woulddemiss the point. However, thethe questions whetherpresentation Shestov was right about Kierkegaard and whether he succeeded in making clear his intent in this essay. In view of this intensive preoccupation with Kierkegaard at this stage of his life, the reader cannot avoid the question concerning Shestov’s interest in the philosophy of the Danish thinker: was he motivated by a need to better understand Heidegger—he recognized as soon as he began reading his works
110 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker to what extent he influenced Heidegger—or was it just a natural response to a kindred spirit insofar as the axiomatic values of philosophy and the criticism of the fundaments of metaphysical speculation were concerned? Alternatively, perhaps the elective affinities felt toward Kierkegaard were on his perception that they sharedShestov a common existential experience? In based the first chapter on Kierkegaard, in the Bull of Phalaris, Shestov points out that the breaking off with Regine Olsen occurred, as it occurred in the case of his sentimental involvements prior to the crisis of 1895—“not of his own volition but because he was obliged to do so, obliged not ‘internally by some higher consideration but externally . . . ’”30 by circumstances offensive to him, even banal when viewed retrospectively and ultimately shameful, repugnant. “Kierkegaard had not sacrificed Regine; Regine had been taken away from him by force,” he concluded, as were his first loves in Russia. It is interesting to observe that what Shestov never explicitly dared to say in relation with his own life-experience, he did when it came to Kierkegaard: he traced the road from this decisive personal existential crisis to his philosophical and religious thinking. Here is the schema of this enterprise in a few words: as Orpheus, Kierkegaard lost what he prized most in the world, but not only his Eurydice—Regine was taken away, “everything that God gives to man was taken away from him.” Unlike Orpheus, however, he could not talk to stones and animals but only to men, and these would only laugh at somebody who found himself deprived of everything. “One can tell stones the truth, but for men itinisboth preferable hide it,” writesname. ironically at the time Shestov, his andtoKierkegaard’s Tereand aresadly perhaps twosame observations to be made here: one is that the existence of alternative “truths” or the rejection of the truth of philosophers based on the postulate of the absolute power of reason is arrived at by means of a very “non-philosophical” reasoning. Second, one notices that in spite of the very subjective considerations involved, there seems to be some sort of a common ground in the existential experiences of this two very different individuals, Lev Shestov and Sören Kierkegaard. It seems that the subjective, the very singular suffering of the individual, the concrete (as opposed to the objective, the general, and the universal) can become afterHow all thewill starting point of afrom philosophical Shestov arrive Orpheus’ endeavor. story to philosophy? As we have noticed, suffering for reasons that are not perceived as acceptable, as normal, cannot be shared: “in general, it is useless to speak of sufferings.” Tey will be brushed off; people will laugh at them. Philosophers may perhaps withhold their laugh, but they, too, reject the topic as illegitimate because it troubles “the order and the connection” of things. Tus, we arrive again at Spinoza and his famous non ridere, non lugere, neque detestare sed inteligere (do not laugh, do
“Out of the Bull of Phalaris” 111 not lament, do not curse, only (strive to) understand), which Shestov so much liked to quote. Many philosophers who suffered—Spinoza himself and Nietzsche among them—resigned themselves to amor fati. At this point Shestov introducesand theitnotion of shamefulness: is a that shame to claim vindication to suffering, is shameful to accept theitidea a human being’s “torments will pass without leaving any traces and will change nothing in the general economy of the universe.”31 However, whether we go to the Symposium or to the Bible to extract the philosophical meaning of the concept of shame, we shall arrive at the same conclusion: in both cases, it will turn out that the notion of shame is related to the concept of knowledge, a “knowledge of universal and necessary truth,” according to Shestov. Te subjective, personal experience of suffering brings the reflecting human being to philosophy (and to religious thinking as well). Once arrived at this point, man discovers however, that in most cases both philosophy and religious reflection are reduced to Erbauung, edification only. Among Kierkegaard’s books, two—Fear and rembling and Te Concept of Dread—are “particularly revelatory in this respect,” wrote Shestov. Both dealt with religious matters, the story of Abraham and his readiness for sacrifice and with the issue of the srcinal sin. Both deal with faith but in different ways, as Kierkegaard’s understanding of faith evolved between the two works. Again, Shestov would point out a very personal event in the life of the author, which—while discussing the issue of faith in the two mentioned books would escape many commentators: the interval theIntwo that Kierkegaard is between 1843 and 1844 RegineinOlsen becamebetween engaged. the books, first book, discusses the implication of Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his son on Mount Moriah. It is clear that he is on the way to commit a terrible crime, a transgression of an ethical absolute. How is it possible to do that in the name of faith? Kierkegaard explains the unfolding events in very simple terms: Abraham believed that God is all-powerful, and he would be able to return to him his son after this proof of unbound faith was made. It was an absurd thought but, as he put it, “all human calculations had long ceased to exist for him” at this moment. Already in the introduction to Fear and rembling, the author pointed out that the story of truth: the potential on Mount Moriah is a metaphorical image of a terrible faith is asacrifice monstrous paradox, a “paradox that transforms murder into a holy action . . . a paradox that no thought can master for faith begins precisely where thought ends”32 (my emphasis). Tat is the srcin of the idea of the “suspension of the ethical”: the ethical is an essential value for human beings living within the realm of the universal and to abandon the ethical requires a leap, a radical discontinuity. Tus, in 1843, after the traumatic experience of the severance of the relationship with Regine Olson and before the engagement of
112 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker the latter to Johan Schlegel, Kierkegaard “resolved to seek salvation in the Absurd,” writes Shestov. By virtue of the Absurd, he tells us, God could decide for the “suspension of the ethical.”33 However, after this singular, exceptional moment, he relapsed he “could bring himself to renounce the idea into that his our“Socratic life must complex”; be determined by ournever thoughts.” We think in categories of eternal truths who are immutable, “virtue, like faith consists in living in the categories in which we think,” and “God himself must be immutable” for Kierkegaard, as it was for Socrates and Spinoza. Te Concept of Dread exposed the abandonment by Kierkegaard of the daring ideas brought forth in his previous book. Innocence is ignorance, and the knowledge gained from the primordial sin has brought the ability to distinguish between good and evil and thus the ethical judgment. Why would then this represent a fall, why would it be a sin? Shestov observed that Kierkegaard “wishes unconditionally to ‘understand,’ to ‘explain’ the fall, and yet he never stops repeating that it is inexplicable, that it does not admit any explanation. Accordingly, he tries in every way to discover some lack, some defect in the state of innocence.”34 Tese oscillations between the ideas expressed in Fear and rembling and Te Concept of Dread would remain the constant (or the paradox?) of Kierkegaard’s thought and Shestov would become very aware of that; he points out that a few years later, in Te Sickness unto Death, the Danish philosopher would again write that “to believe means to lose reason in order to find God.” Repetition is also discussed in the brief essays on Kierkegaard included and Jerusalem in Shestov’s book Athens . Itthese is interesting overpubthe reasons whichlastbrought the author to include fragmentstoinmuse a book lished two years after his volume entirely dedicated to Kierkegaard. Tis work was lengthy and repetitious; perhaps Shestov thought that the essence of Kierkegaard’s thought got diluted by repetition and lack of focus. Most probably, though, he needed to review the basic tenets of Nietzsche’s and Kierkegaard’s thought as background to this final review of his own religious thinking. Indeed, the French version was entitled,Athènes et Jérusalem: un essai de philosophie religieuse. A brief discussion of Job, representing another exemplary hero who illustrates the refusal to compromise with the “false consolations” of rea-
sonable thinking, waslose necessary in thehecontext. waswith in ahis wayunlimited very muchbelief like Abraham; posed to everything, was leftJob only in his almighty God. “Why does Kierkegaard want to join the private thinker Job instead of the professor publicus ordinarius, Hegel?” asked Shestov and left the answer to Kierkegaard: “the importance of Job consists in the fact that he fights through the boundary disputes to faith . . . the meaning of Job consists precisely in the fact that he does not diminish the passion of freedom with false consolations.”35 However, Kierkegaard did not ask himself what would
“Out of the Bull of Phalaris” 113 have Job answered Socrates or Spinoza if they had come to offer him wisdom while he was facing his dire predicament observed Shestov; perhaps because he felt that they could not do anything different from his friends Eliphaz, Zophar, andthe Bildad. Likeand them, Kierkegaard was himself the from rules of universal necessary truths,not butonly neither could heenslaved free histoGod them (“For Kierkegaard, as for Socrates and Spinoza, de servo arbitrio extends likewise to God,” wrote Shestov 36). Shestov arrived at the conclusion that “Kierkegaard appeals to the absurd, but in vain: he appeals to it but he is incapable of realizing it. He speaks to us constantly of the existential philosophy; he rails at speculation and the speculators with their “objective” truth but, like Socrates and Spinoza, he himself aspires to live and oblige others to live in the categories in which they think.” Tat is why one will have to modify the categories in which we think if we want to live differently.
EIGHT
Encounters with Judaism
“Tose old times when not men determined truth but truth became revealed to them” “I would have liked to ask Hermann Cohen ‘where is Bore Olam dwelling?” Lev Shestov in a letter to Martin Buber “If one asked me who is the true successor of Friedrich Nietzsche I would answer without hesitation, Lev Shestov” —Hillel Zeitlin in 1907
Benjamin Fondane remembers in his Shestov journals the meeting with Martin Buber in Paris. Edmond Fleg, Boris de Schloezer, the hosts, Herman Lovtzky and his wife Fany (Shestov’s sister), Dr. Fritz Lieb, a German theologian, friend of Berdyaev, among others, were present at this encounter. It was April 1934, a year after Hitler’s coming to power in Berlin, and Buber was trying to convey his audience the difficult situation Jews faced in Germany: “our aloofness based on the belief that we represent the spirit is not justified; as long as we do not know how to handle the situation there is no justification to such a feeling of superiority.”1 He added that the situation was desperate because nobody could see any way out. Still, one must find one, said Buber, since out of despair
116 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker men tend to try unreasonable solutions, seek absurd avenues, a state which is in itself dangerous; it seems, he added, that “at present time people try to kill the Biblical serpent.” At this point Shestov interjected and said: “And this is exactlyiswhat onebymust do. For years fight, day and night, against2 o thisBuber’s serpent. What Hitler comparison with Ithe serpent of knowledge?” answer that the serpent was merely an accident, that things were different at times preceding the incident which involved him, even if we do not know in which way, Shestov answered, “precisely, we came after the serpent, that is why we should kill it” (ibid.). Speechless in front of this apparently non-sensical conversation, Buber muttered something like “I do not understand, we should not go that far back, it is worthless to try to kill the serpent,” only to be again strongly rebuked by Shestov: “It is the serpent who speaks inside you, who prevents you from understanding” (ibid.). Tis conversation, coming six years after their first encounter tells much about the relationship between the two and casts light also on the worldviews of the two thinkers and on their interpretation of history, Judaism, and the meaning of the religious sentiment as well. In a conversation after the fact with Fondane, Shestov explained their differences: Buber thinks like Spinoza when he claims that for the Hassidic Jews the prayer is merely a way to achieve some state of communion with God and not the means to reach God himself. Moreover, he was in total disagreement with Buber insofar as the meaning of the srcinal sin was concerned. For Buber sin was not born in the act committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden but through murder. “For me,”3 explained “thiswhich is non-sense. Te sin is theCain’s striving for knowledge.” He added Shestov, a statement, would alter to some extent his previous conclusion concerning the role Dostoevsky played as philosopher: “I would say . . . that it was not Dostoevsky who did in fact the real Critique of pure reason but God Himself when he decreed ‘thou shall die if you will have the knowledge’ . . .” (ibid.). Te last phrase Fondane wrote down in his notes captured very well Shestov’s philosophical outlook, and it is worthwhile to have it quoted in its entirety: “Te very moment man ate from the forbidden fruit he gained Knowledge and lost his freedom. Man does need to know. o ask, to beg questions, to require proofs, answers, means know means to know necessity. Knowledge and Freedom are that one is opposites” not free. o irreducible (ibid., my emphasis). Here again, Shestov willingly or not, found himself wandering away from one of Judaism’s basic tenets: the ability to distinguish between good and evil, the knowledge of good and that of evil is in fact the only guarantor of human freedom. It is explained in many texts that have become part of the canon that the possibility of evil itself was induced by the need to offer human beings the freedom to distinguish it from the good and choose the latter.
Encounters with Judaism 117 o the best of my knowledge, Shestov first met Buber when after a reunion of philosophers in Amsterdam in April 1928, he travelled to Frankfurt to meet him in person. It seems that in Buber’s circle he heard for the first time about Kierkegaard well. Following meeting, the two(an began to collaborate, Buber helpingasShestov publish inthis in Germany inter-confessional Kreatur journal representing Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic views), while Shestov, in turn, facilitated for him contacts in France, among them, publication in Parisian reviews and the participation to the Pontigny annual meetings4 (but also in Germany within the Russian circles; for instance, he contacted Simeon Frank, by that time a recognized figure among philosophers and religious thinkers of the day; Shestov had known him since the Russian years). Te first theological “confrontation” between the two occurred around the accuracy of the interpretation of Isaiah 6: 8–10 used by Shestov as motto5 for his article on Spinoza, “Children and Stepchildren of ime.” It is clear from the letters exchanged by the two that Shestov was influenced by the quite abundant Christian interpretations to Isaiah 6 to 9 found in the literature. Buber does not enter into a real confrontation on this theme; he restrains his remarks to pointing out politely to Shestov his erroneous interpretation of the srcinal text, and thus a deeper discussion was (unfortunately for us, today) avoided when Shestov recognized that indeed, he had some difficulty in understanding the exact meaning of the quoted fragment. However, he wrote in his reply that even if Buber were right, his interpretation remained valid in the context of hissubstantiate statement about Spinoza. I mentionconcerning this detailthe only repeat and further my previous observation facttothat Shestov did sometimes show a bias toward the Septuagint and its Christian interpretations while referring to the biblical text. In 1929, as soon as In Job’s Balances was published in Germany, Shestov sent a copy to Buber accompanied by his thanks: “without you, the book would have had a difficult time to find a publisher,” he wrote.6 Buber answered by restating the close proximity of his ways of thinking to those of Shestov, which was certainly of the nature to please the latter and to encourage him. Most of the letters of that and the following year contain information about the logistics relatedhistocorrespondent reciprocal visits the two and publications; thanking for aofrecent book of various his (probably Kingshipinof1932, God), Shestov expresses his satisfaction about the reading of a work that concerns the “biblical faith” and remarked Buber’s emphasis of the “totalitarian,” all encompassing character of the Jewish faith. His observation about “your understanding of the crisis which gave birth to the Yahweh’s Messiah, Christos Kurion”7 is somewhat confused, and in the absence of Buber’s reply it is hard to know what Shestov really meant. In the mentioned book, Buber discussed
118 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker the meaning of the concept of the Kingdom of God in Judaism and pointed out that the relationship between God and His people was one in which the political and the theological were at all times mixed up. Te presence of God in the concrete world andis His involvement withwho the events which Chosen People is involved, permanent. Shestov, read atinthe samethetime the recently published book by Bergson on the wo Sources of Morale and Religion (and recommended it to Buber), was upset by the French philosopher’s claim that the Jewish religion, in opposition with the Catholic branch of Christianity, was not a truly mystical one. (In fact, there were many Jewish thinkers, both among those who belonged to the “orthodoxy” and those who tried to reform Judaism, who made the same claim). He was eager to hear Buber’s opinion about the srcinal sin; the next letter, written a few months later, reminded his correspondent in Germany that he still awaited a clarification concerning this matter apparently following Buber’s statement in a letter, which was not conserved, that their views on this issue were quite different. Shestov had the intuition that Buber understood the role of the biblical serpent as being the catalyst of the I-It relationship. In his letter he wrote that whenever the “serious” is present in the writing of an author, one identifies the Serpent behind it: “Does not the It in your work represent the Serpent?” he overtly asked.8 As we have seen at the very beginning of this chapter, Buber was far from Shestov’s interpretation of the srcinal sin, and this issue would remain a contentious point between the two till the very end. At about the time thisBerdyaev’s dialogue house with Buber wastheologian taking place, met Berdyaev in his friend Nikolai the Swiss FritzShestov Lieb; both and Lieb became interested in Buber’s theological writings and decided to make him known within the Russian emigration circles (by publishing reviews of his books in Put). Moreover, as the two were involved in an activity that tried to promote an orthodox-protestant dialogue, they decided to make Buber known also to the group united around the Orient and Occident, their publication. Te discussion concerning the need to know the views of the Jewish authors on matters of relevance to Christian theologians’ interests, was brought up earlier in a letter written by Berdyaev to Lieb, in connection with Shestov himself. In this letter of January 1929, Berdyaev, after confessing for and him ofthe pre-Christian religion described in the Old estament was onethat of fear anxiety, added that “long discussions with Shestov have convinced me that the belief in Christ is completely strange to him, (that) he defends himself against it and does not acknowledge the incarnation of God.”9 If he did not agree with Buber concerning the meaning of the srcinal sin, Shestov certainly agreed with him on this last point. Soon after the last mentioned letter to Buber, Shestov wrote again and
Encounters with Judaism 119 asked to bring back the conversation to the “old serpent’s story,” this time following Buber’s recommendation to read certain pages from his Hassidic ales. Probably Buber still tried to convey Shestov the idea that his interpretation of sinone, is not validthat one:certain in the souls Cabbalistic as well as latersoul in the srcinal Hassidic thea idea escapedliterature the all encompassing of Adam (according to the tradition all souls born after the first created man were already contained in this “primordial” one) before he committed the sin— and thus they remained untainted by it—is often encountered. Unperturbed by the implications of such a possibility, Shestov, faithful to his idea, wrote stubbornly: “nothing would confirm such a presupposition but all these would only prove that we all sinned through the first man” 10. Realizing however his own inconsistency, he concluded resigned that ultimately one thing only is certain, and this is the fact that the story told in the Bible is exceedingly hard (if not impossible) to understand: “As I grow older I am more and more convinced that the Biblical story tells us something extremely important and deeply mysterious. Te power of the serpent is overwhelming however to the point that we cannot accept this truth to ourselves” (ibid.). Tis idea, which explains also Shestov’s persistence in his fight against an overwhelming rationality, is an often recurring one in his discourse. Te thought concerning the mystery hidden in the text of the Bible will become central in the religious thought of his follower and disciple Benjamin Fondane, who in a letter to Jacques Maritain would mention it explicitly. Sestov’s withother Martin Buber which continued, withunderinterruptions, tillcorrespondence 1937 allows a few important insights in Shestov’s standing of Judaism and his knowledge (or lack of) the debates carried on by his contemporaries, concerning the attempts to rethink some of the major themes of the Jewish religious thinking. Indeed, in another letter (of November 12, 1932) Shestov recognized in his correspondence with Buber that he could never study Hermann Cohen whom he found to be just a modern Philo of Alexandria; neither was he aware of Franz Rosenzweig’s works. Tis letter contains also a fragment which, through a very strange coincidence, sheds light on a potential hidden resonance between Shestov and Rosenzweig: in order to emphasize to Judaism what extent—in his view—Cohen waswrites removed from the spirit of true (as he perceived it), Shestov to Buber thatliving if he knew Hebrew he would have asked Cohen “where is Bore Olam dwelling?” What is really strange here is not the fact that he would have asked such a question (or the fact that he honestly recognized the fact that he did not know what exactly Bore Olam meant, which is in itself surprising and casts doubts about his real knowledge of “living” and “true” Judaism), but the incredible coincidence between this remark and a story told by Franz Rosenzweig himself
120 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker about Hermann Cohen, in a somewhat similar context.11 While in Marburg, Hermann Cohen met an old religious Jew to whom he was trying to explain his ideas about God and ethics. After listening for a fairly long while very attentively and the respectfully to him, as the“and philosopher ended his long of explanations, old Jew asked simply, where is (in all these) Borestring Olam?” Rosenzweig writes that an utterly confused and speechless Cohen burst into tears. Of course, Rosenzweig understood better than the old philosopher the reason for the question: for this religious Jew, Bore Olam was not an abstract and remote concept (etwas Fernes), the Creator of the Universe was, on the contrary, something near, someone to whom he could relate through an affective process rather than through a rational one. Beyond the anecdotic aspect of this story, its importance consists in the fact that it shows that Shestov’s instinct was correct; if he would have been better read in classical Jewish authors he could have substantiated his point perhaps by making reference to Judah Ha-Levy who wrote ten centuries earlier that the same God who is dwelling far above the world we live in is also to be found in the broken hearts of all suffering men. Hugo Bergman (who will be later a colleague of Martin Buber at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem) explicitly pointed out in his book on the dialogical philosophy that “one must be aware of the fact that Cohen talks about the concept of God, not about God.” 12 In addition, in a very Shestovian way (another “resonance”?!), he added that “the concept of God is a gratuitous assumption made by the philosopher in order to harmonize science and ethics” (ibid.). In a letter dating from 1935, we find Shestov expressing again a few of his guiding thoughts insofar reason, faith and the belief in the God of the scriptures are concerned. Tese statements are significant because they represent the last stage in Shestov’s philosophical and religious thinking. Teir common denominator is to be found in the idea that Greek philosophy is always seeking peace with reality while the Bible is permanently fighting it. “From this point of view, there is no difference between the Old and the New estament,”13 he wrote to Buber and added, “Tat is why the source of the truth uncovered by the Bible is not reason but faith” (ibid.). Tere is another important observation about the faith as the“spatial secondmodels” dimension of thought, he madeencountered in that letter. We remember Shestov’s of thought and thinking in the earlier writings, perhaps a mark of his early studies in mathematics; in 1932 he published a collection of aphorisms which would be included in his last work Athens and Jerusalem entitled “On the second dimension of thought.” Fondane, the disciple, would dwell quite at length on this topic and will later, through a thorough analysis of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl’s anthropological works, try to substantiate Shestov’s idea that a “pensée de participation,” a “participatory”
Encounters with Judaism 121 thinking opposed to one based exclusively on abstract reflection, is possible for the man guided by faith. In the article on Martin Buber published first in the Russian review Put in June 1933, Shestov himself mentioned “the old times when notduring men determined them”with and this because those times truth “menbut weretruth stillbecame able to revealed establishtocontact the 14 mysterious.” Tis subject matter is further discussed in the chapter about “Benjamin Fondane, the Disciple”. In 1936 Shestov published in Paris his book entitled Kierkegaard and Existential Philosophy and soon after its apparition Emanuel Levinas, a young and little known philosopher at the time, very interested in phenomenology and the new existential trends issued from it, wrote for Revue des Etudes Juives a review article on Shestov’s book.15 Young Levinas observed that “one could not recommend his book too strongly to those who wish to rethink their Judaism as a religion, (those) who cannot be content with philological research on the past of Israel and who are tired of the sterile ecstasies about the beauty of the Decalogue and the Morality of the prophets.” 16 Te observation was ambiguous as Shestov did not intend at all to “rethink Judaism as a religion”; if anything, he was making the distinction (even if not explicitly) Buber made between religiosity and religion. Levinas added in his review that the author was indeed a Jewish philosopher “but certainly not a philosopher of Judaism.” Tis opinion stood in stark opposition, however, to Benjamin Fondane’s view about Shestov as expressed in his discussions held at about the same time with Jacques Maritain, neo-Tomist Shortly inbefore second trip to Argentina in 1936,theFondane wrotethinker. and published RevuehisJuive de Geneve a brief article occasioned by Shestov’s seventieth birthday, entitled “Léon Chestov, à la recherche du judaisme perdu,” in which he tried to state in a concise way Shestov’s definition of the “essence of Judaism.” On the way back from Argentina (late autumn, the same year), he spent long hours discussing the subject with Maritain who was sailing back also from South America. In a letter addressed to Maritain more than a year later (February 1938), the subject of the “Jewish thought” was at the core of a heated debate between the two: “En ce qui concerne Chestov, vous faites erreur. Sa conception n’est pas spécifique au juif—mais à la pensée juive,” he wrote.17 Fondane referred to an allusion to Shestov’s way of understanding “faith” contained in a text published by Maritain in the collective volume edited by Daniel Rops, Les Juifs18 (Again, I shall discuss in more detail these points in the chapter about Fondane). Another possible way to approach the question about Shestov’s “interferences” with Judaism and to evaluate its consequences could be that of trying to identify the impact his thought might have had on Jewish authors who were themselves at the threshold of assimilation or struggling even with it. Many
122 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker such intellectuals very well aware of the surrounding culture, familiar with the values of the Western Enlightenment but still hesitant or unwilling to embrace them at the price of abandoning the values of their ancient tradition. Tere was an entire Eastern European Jewish intellectuals (mostly Russian and Polishgeneration authors), ofcontemporary with Shestov, who oscillated between assimilation and the search for a renewed Judaism, who did not want to abandon their roots but could not continue in the footsteps of their forefathers. Martin Buber could serve as a representative of this group in the Central European realm but the names of Ahad Haam, Berdichevsky or Hillel Zeitlin would be much more relevant for the Jewish intellectuals with Eastern European and Russian roots. Te last one happened to be very familiar with Shestov’s early works (although, view the interest the other two had for Nietzsche and the fact that, like Hillel Zeitlin, they too grew up intellectually within the Russian realm, I would not be surprised if an attentive lecture of their works did uncover explicit or hidden references to early Shestov). Zeitlin, in any event, wrote two articles in Hebrew about him very early, the first being published in Yosef Haim Brenner’s review Ha-Meorer in 1907 and the second in Ha-ekufa, in 1923.19 Even though at the turn of the century, Hillel Zeitlin was known, among the new generation of Jewish writers and thinkers who wrote in Hebrew, to be a follower of Nietzsche (he was among the first authors to write a monograph in Hebrew about the German philosopher); it is surprising to discover in him a great admirer of an author who was still far away from great notoriety. As we before 1907 Shestov olstoy, publishedandonly four books:the the first three dealthave withseen, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky; fourth one was, for the most part, a collection of aphorisms. However, Zeitlin’s intuition was very accurate as he identified Shestov’s progression from an esthetic view of the world to the recognition of the fallacy represented by this approach.20 Another resonance was thus established. Hillel Zeitlin’s reading of the early Shestov turns out to be extremely accurate: he pointed out that the experience of the Inferno might induce the poets to write beautiful poems (and mentioned in this context both Dante and Baudelaire) while that of a life stuck in the mud of the underground leads to aobserves quite different horizon. In a style Hassidic tale, Zeitlin that “when you descend intoreminiscent the Infernoofyouthefind many stories to tell 21 (but) if you crawl in the mud, what can you tell?” Crossing muddy territories does not constitute an adventure; it is rather an experience prone to take apart one’s life and that is why Shestov could identify in the works of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche hidden signals sent by heroes with broken lives, wrote Zeitlin. Not only could he identify these signs of distress, but he knew also how to interpret messages not apparent to the eyes of the previous readers and commen-
Encounters with Judaism 123 tators. Zeitlin pointed out that “the importance of Shestov’s writings consists in the fact that he revealed things many teachers and luminaries did not know or did not suspect even to exist.” 22 Tat is why he wrote in 1907 already that “if 23 someonewithout asked me who wasL.theShestov.” true successor of Friedrich Nietzsche, I would answer hesitation, Of course, Nietzsche was a genius, and those moved exclusively by the genial character might not be willing to read Shestov: Nietzsche was a master of the style and Shestov was not (this is a somewhat surprising observation from such a receptive critic; almost in unanimity, those who read Shestov in Russian agreed that he had an exquisite style). Nietzsche was a philosopher, a poet, a composer, and a prophet, and Shestov was perhaps none of these, added Zeitlin. However, Shestov “knows the terrible truth and what is beyond it” and that is why “all his books represent an endless and frightening cry.” 24 Man abandoned in a state of despair will search for a way out. He cannot accept what reason tells him because reason says that there is no point to cry: the world is ruled by objective laws who do not relate to his despair. In spite of it, he feels miserable; therefore, there must be at least one unexplained mystery in this world without beginning and without end: that of man’s predicament in the world. Who controls it? Zeitlin pointed out that Shestov did not mention God but rarely (which is quite true, as we have seen, when it comes to his early works); one would infer, therefore, that he had not yet arrived at that notion of faith that would be so manifest in his later works. Nevertheless, Zeitlin’s
instinct aislack surprising theofreader: Shestov doesfornot talkthe about Godcomnot because of faithagain but out his infinite respect Him; biblical mandment “Tou shall not take the name of God thy Lord in vain” is always present in his mind. Shestov, the Jewish author, writes Zeitlin, “stands in awe in front of his God who is not that of the mob, of the philosophers or of the poets.”25 He rejects this sentiment, though those persons who believe merely because they have been taught to do so, exist; he despises those infatuated with the abstract God of chants, rituals, and apologetic literature, the God of dogmas and of dogmatic thinking. oward the end of his article, Hillel Zeitlin hinted to something which would become extremely significant for the understanding theasreligious of Shestov later. ending statements of the articleofread follows:thought “And thus, the (man) left Te without a thing in this world, who lost everything, while reflecting upon his forthcoming acts, cannot refrain from thinking about that miraculous hidden voice and cries: My God, My God why have you forsaken me’”! Tis ending line is strange and surprising at the same time: strange because Hillel Zeitlin, even though he made a long and deep excursion into the Western culture and civilization, returned in the end to his Hassidic srcins.
124 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker Mentioning this cry of despair common to King David and to Jesus Christ 26 in a Jewish context triggers the thought that its invocation may hint to meanings that extend beyond Jewish boundaries. King David himself had moments when he felt that Christ onhethealready way tolostGolgotha or on the Cross knew thatheinlost hiseverything; human embodiment everything: to which of the two did Zeitlin hint? o both, perhaps? I wrote above surprising, because through this ambiguity Zeitlin might have alluded to Shestov’s inclination—which as we saw already, will become apparent after WW I in his writings—to incorporate the early ideas and forms of the Christian belief into an encompassing primordial Judaism. In his second article, much more extensive, written more than fifteen years later, at a time when Zeitlin was already on his way back to the Orthodox practice of Judaism, Shestov is still described as a thinker in search of God. In his analysis, extended now to the lecture of the books and articles published in this interval by Shestov, among them Potestas Clavium, Hillel Zeitlin begins to use more often hermeneutic tools borrowed from the Jewish Hassidic and Cabbalistic traditions. As in the case of the first article, his understanding is very sharp and accurate: he senses in the writings of Shestov a movement from the mere intuition of a remote God, distanced from the reality of the harsh human predicament to the belief in the presence of a God who can be, if not approached, at least invoked by man during moments of deep distress. Te times have changed quite a bit since 1907 and the dangers looming at the horizon infinitely Zeitlin, Shestov, thebefeeling that the new were worldnow on the way to greater. emerge from theasGreat War had would very different from the old one: before the recent cataclysmic event, the ax was menacing the branches of the tree, but now the roots themselves were in danger (in his text, Zeitlin had the premonition of the catastrophe to follow the First World War in Europe; in 1942 he would be deported from Warsaw and killed in reblinka). He understood another thing also, which probably determined him to move away from the ideas of the Emancipation and return to Judaism: the old pagan beliefs and modes of behavior of the Western world remained very much alive under the veneer of a Christian surface. He understood also, as did, that thevery Greek philosophy scope out of the nalShestov Christianity; at the beginning of hischanged article hethepointed thatsrci“one should not forget the Greek mythology and philosophy’s contribution to the new faith.”27 A Christianity that denied its Jewish roots through the intervention of the Greek thought in its theology and dogma permeated by a strong residual paganism appeared too menacing to Zeitlin, who, in the end, decided to abandon his attempts to integrate himself into the surrounding culture. For a while he continued, however, to use its intellectual tools.
Encounters with Judaism 125 If in his first article he considered still Nietzsche to be the master and Shestov his follower, in the second one, the two are set—if not at the same level—on a more leveled ground. First, because Zeitlin came now to the conclusion than that Shestov’s “deconstruction” of the philosophical thought radical Nietzsche’s, a quite surprising statement considering thatwas themore latter unambiguously stated that “to enable a sanctuary to be set up, a sanctuary has got to be destroyed: that is a law, show me an instance where it has not been fulfilled!”28 Nietzsche himself did just that in order to be able to propose the idea of the Overman (superman). Shestov, however, did more than that: by destroying the basic principles of traditional philosophy, by denying reason the right to decide and preside over the destiny of man and God alike, he built a new sanctuary, that of the suffering, miserable man, the man who lost everything but hope. “I hear him often,” wrote Zeitlin about Shestov, “alluding quite forcefully to a far remote hope (in my words I would call it celestial or godly) which appears just when man had lost everything he has, including his spiritual values.”29 Zeitlin extracted from Shestov’s writings the essence of his thought and explained it in a very concise and precise way. While reading this article by Zeitlin, one has at times the distinct impression that an experience known in Zen Buddhism as satori is explained to the reader: first, man gets entangled in a hopeless situation, somewhat similar to that of Job (interestingly, Job is not mentioned at all by Zeitlin, even when he describes the state of the Shestovian man left to bewithout in manyany ways to that Jobbroken. on his dung-heap): less, willsimilar to fight, his of heart Tere is no almost help invoicesight on Earth or above it; the broken man does not dare to call God, but his soul wants to cry, to bring his predicament to His attention. In this awful silence, in this void, something happens: “man discovers somewhere far away a strange but beautiful horizon . . . a spring which was sealed in the depths comes forth to water the desert of this resigned soul,”30 writes Zeitlin and adds: “it is not clear at all that what has been revealed to one person has an objective, absolute existence so that what occurred in one case will happen again and again in all cases” (ibid.). Moreover, he singles out the important fact that Shestov is emphasizing the described who experience; unlike most of the thinkerstheofsubjective older timescharacter and his of contemporaries try to link a similar experience of “enlightenment” with some sort of rational explanation based on logic and on the validity of the absolute, universal concepts, Shestov believed that “only the most extreme subjectivity will bring us close to the eternal, to God.” At this point Zeitlin, takes care to explain that the described process has nothing to do with Bergson’s intuitionism; it is not serendipity that makes us stumble upon a truth we did not expect; on the contrary, this miracle is the
126 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker result of a state of grace obtained only by the human being who cries from the depth of his or her despair. Pascal is not mentioned, but the need for (his)cry is clearly audible. reading of the he writes writes was basedShestov’s on the assumption thatphilosophers a true message can beabout, brought forthZeitlin, only when its author is searching his soul and writes a confession. “A great writer is one who can tell in a convincing manner the story of the most hidden events of his life . . . often an artist refuses the confession but if he is a real great artist he will end up in doing just that . . . and there is no greater master in the art of uncovering hidden riddles than Shestov” writes Zeitlin. 31 He also pointed out the fact that Shestov does not shy away in his writings from the contradiction, from the paradox. In a realm that is beyond the everyday life and the usual ways of thinking, contradictions and paradoxes do not pose a problem. Shestov said often and in many ways that philosophy should not be about finding consolation. Tose writing about him always remember his quotation from Pascal who says that one should never rest, one should seek and search what is boundless and beyond any imaginable boundary till the end of the days. Zeitlin extended these desiderata and reminded his reader that the Hassidic tradition affirmed that “the Just men (zadikkim) do not rest, neither in this nor in the Nether world.”32 After mentioning that Shestov did rediscover the great secret of the Bible, the discovery of God, Zeiltlin surprises again when he writes that “Shestov’s ways of thinking reminded those of one Nachman of the greatest thinkers, Rabbi Nathan Sternhartz the pupil of Rabbi fromJewish Breslau. Not that he shared with Rabbi Nathan the same enthusiastic and mysterious religious feeling or that the Rabbi could have shared with Shestov his deep skepticism and total detachment from the surrounding world (allusion to his “apotheosis of the groundlessness,” perhaps). “Te two would have been most probably unable to understand each other” (my emphasis); “maybe Shestov could understand some of the teachings of Rabbi Nathan, but I am not sure. I say that because I feel in Shestov a lack of understanding, or should I say a lack of interest in anything which relates to the Jewish world today (if he ever mentions Israel he speaks only about Ancient Israel, of that of the Bible . . .(again, my italics).”33 Tis statement is different from previous ones: : on the one hand, Zeitlin finds it important to introduce parallels between the philosopher and one of the most important representatives of a major Hassidic sect, perhaps the closest to an existential thinking of the kind developed by Shestov, on the other, he points out already in 1923, something which many of Shestov’s commentators will discover only during the years to come (Levinas among them, in the mentioned review of Shestov’s book on Kierkegaard). In spite of the fact that he was speaking often,
Encounters with Judaism 127 in particular in his later writings, about Jerusalem and a very specific Jewish approach to God, and about the meaning of His absolutely ranscendental nature, Shestov could hardly be considered “from inside” a Jewish thinker in the sense his contemporaries Buber,explained and laterit,Levinas, were. He was rather, as his discipleRosenzweig Benjamin and Fondane a thinker of Jewish srcin who imagined a sui generis Judaism, which could have accommodated ertullian, Pascal and Luther, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Perhaps for the same reasons, but with other ends in mind, Gershon Sholem kept sending Walter Benjamin to visit Shestov in Paris during the early thirties. Nevertheless, continued Zeitlin his argument, “there is perhaps a strange bond which in mysterious and invisible ways may link the two (that is Rabbi Nathan and Shestov), and this concept might have to be related to (their agreement upon) the strangeness of the human ways of thinking, which enable the enormous leap, the ability to look far up in the sky and at the same time to see the depths of the abyss at our feet; they also shared an ability to attack their (intellectual, spiritual) enemies or opponents directly by attacking the fundaments of their constructs, not from hidden positions or by using clever and tricky devices.”34 Te Hassidic Rabbi manifested also his opposition to the Medieval and modern philosophers of Judaism: like Shestov, he believed that philosophers missed the point while trying to explain the world in terms of human rationality. Rabbi Nathan was against those who tried to extract only meaning from texts which were meant first and foremost to bring man closerused to hisbyCreator. believed to be close to God (avodatasha-Bore , the term Zeitlin He in his text is that a concept difficult to translate it includes simultaneously study, prayer, and the scrupulous respect of the law) means to help Him at least at the same extent as is meant to help oneself by seeking His proximity. Te Holy Book is not an object of abstract hermeneutics; according to Rabbi Nathan from Breslau, its message is simple, one simply must do one’s best and help make the world better. Te great Maimonides and all the commentators who weighted every ounce of holy wisdom and measured every inch of meaning will not change this simple truth. Shestov and Rabbi Nathan were both daring “deconstructionists” (the use of this concept is not too strong; in connection withname Rabbi Nathan’sand critique of deed the religious philosophers, mentioned the of Samson his last against the Philistines,Zeitlin which went far beyond “deconstruction”!) who showed that “there are no essential differences between idealism and realism, between idealism and materialism between metaphysics and positivism and science. What distinguishes them is the language they use, the preferences in choosing their concepts, their ideas, their colors; human whims and natural propensities might play a role, but when it comes to judge the deep meaning of all these, one finds that the they will only
128 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker explain the simple and common occurrences of a profoundly material world.” 35 All these fancy “interpreters” are blinded by their own wisdom; they seem to look afar but they see only their immediate surroundings. As we have seen, Plato andboth, Plotinus were toways some exempted of these shortcomings by Shestov; in different didextent get a glimpse of those things which cannot be appropriated by senses or understood by human intelligence but can only be perceived in their divine quality in ways which transgress mind and body. In the final part of his article, before giving extensive quotes from Shestov’s most recent writings, Hillel Zeitlin considered the problem of the human inertia, which seems to be built in us. It is an interesting point that has always preoccupied the Jewish interpreters of the Book. Man was created in the image of God, but this statement refers only to his potential. Te difficulty consists in finding the way to realize this potential, to overcome the state of suspension between two worlds, to arrive at the point where one can see something through the thick fog of our earthly existence, even if we cannot ever make the next decisive step. Te danger of falling back into a world of illusions we ourselves built is overwhelming: it happened to Dostoevsky when he abandoned the visions of his heroes and came close to the Pan-Slavic tendencies of contemporary Russia. Te same was the case with Nietzsche when he attempted to build a new brave world for his Overman instead of going on and embrace that which is indeed over and beyond anything else. olstoy, the other great hero of Shestov, fell into the same trap when instead of following his intuition concerning deepinmeaning of Abraham’s experience, went the essence the of faith the constructs of his own mind. Inhethis finalback parttoofseek the essay, one comes again across a description of the man who is seeing through, the being in search of the above mentioned experience of satori; Zeitlin makes a passionate plea against inertia, toward a “fight which never ends,” which reminds Pascal’s call never to rest.
NINE
The Last Writings Between Athens and Jerusalem
“It is not reason which brings forth truth but faith” “Te freedom created by God, which does not accept the constraint, has a completely different srcin from that of our knowledge: it defies it, it aspires not only at what is in our power to achieve but also to something which is beyond it” “God Almighty is the only God—both estaments bring this message which is the only one capable of helping us withstand the horrors we face in life. Tis is the subject of my book Athens and Jerusalem”
In 1938 Lev Shestov published his last book, Athens and Jerusalem. As mentioned thepublished introductory mostprinting of its content consisted of materials writteninand longchapter, before the of the book. During the last year of his life, Shestov wrote, however, several articles that contain a few of his final pronouncements about existential philosophy and religious thinking, some occasioned by anniversaries/obituariesand others by recent publications of the authors reviewed. In chronological order, these are “Sine Effusione Sanguinis” on Jaspers (1937), “Nicolai Berdyaev: Gnosis and Existential Philosophy” and “o the Memory of a Great Philosopher, Edmund Husserl,” both
130 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker written in 1938. Tese three articles contain statements that allow a fairly complete presentation of Shestov’s “deconstructive” attitude toward philosophy and give a measure of his efforts attempt to replace speculative metaphysics new based in onthe faith. ogether with certain chapters included with in thea metasophia book Athens and Jerusalem, they establish the continuity of a number of major ideas and unveil the emergence of new themes at this late stage in the evolution of Shestov’s thinking. o the mentioned essays, one should add the article about the evolution of Dostoevsky’s convictions, based on five talks delivered by Shestov at Radio Paris in 1937,1 which treated in a direct way the question concerning the “transformations of the convictions” of an author. Tis later article contains a very important hint insofar as the srcin or the “trigger” of the Shestovian existential philosophy is concerned: Dostoevsky was a writer of cruel, merciless stories about human beings and their destinies, as were both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. Te reader remarks immediately two ideas at work in Shestov’s argumentation: first, writers of fiction, philosophers, and religious thinkers, united by a common interest and by a strong fascination with specific aspects of the human condition, might become equally relevant for the establishment of a metasophia that transcends the classical metaphysics of the philosophers. Second, the grounding of the new existential thinking is found in sorrow and in the cruel nature of a destiny determined by an omnipresent evil ready to interfere destructively at all times with our lives. Tis does not transformMichel Shestov into a follower thetwentieth-century Marquis de Sade thinkers or a prophet announcing Foucault or other oflate who would re-interpret Nietzsche in ways biased by “realistic” and/or ideologically oriented views; it is interesting to point out though (I shall come back later to this point) that in the article on Husserl, Shestov observed that “the ideal of cruelty proclaimed by Nietzsche, is not such an absolute novelty in philosophy, as many people would want to believe.”2 In addition to the hint to the srcins of Shestov’s metasophia, the mentioned article on Dostoevsky provides also the grounds for a discussion concerning the dynamics and the evolution of the ideas professed by the thinker (any thinker): “isofthere history moreofinteresting moving thanrhetorically. that of the 3 ‘transformation the aconvictions’ an author?”more asked Shestov Most probably that, with small corrections, what he wrote about Dostoevsky could have been applicable to himself as well: “as he grew older and got more and more dedicated to the ultimate and most important mysteries of existence, Dostoevsky became more and more involved with and dedicated to the poor and wretched souls, with the most miserable among human beings.” A correction should be applied in Shestov’s case: for him, the “most miserable human
Between Athens and Jerusalem 131 being” was the man who strived to communicate with God but did not realize that unless he gave up his own will, his own ways to see, understand, and reconstruct the world and put his trust in God, he did not stand a chance. Man mustconcerned, replace rational withShestov faith insofar as matters related to his soul are will saythinking unhesitant at the end of his life. In the mentioned article on Jaspers, Shestov went back again as far as to ertullian to state that based on the biblical thinking (that is on Jerusalem) the latter concluded that “the impossibilia, all our ‘impossibilities’ srcinate in reason, solely in reason; or, it is not reason which brings forth truth but faith.”4 Trough a long somersault in time, he stated in the same article that the existential philosophy is not that elaborated by Jaspers, that of an existierende Mensch resigned to the rulings of almighty reason, but that of a thinking which overcomes Dostoevsky’s stone wall of impossibilities, very much like the philosophy Kierkegaard attempted to build. For Shestov, Jaspers was only a modern rendering of Kant when it came to existential philosophy; when he wrote in his book Reason and Existence5 that “existence can understand itself only by means of a reason which in turn, has its content defined by existence itself,” he followed in fact Kant who in his Critique of Pure Reason wrote also that “the ideas without a content are empty and the intuitions unsupported by reason are blind.”6 Shestov recognized the influence of both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard on Jaspers, who pointed out that through their daring critique of the accepted fundamentals of epistemology, ontology and ethics, the two “went beyond limits considered definitive their predecessors.” However,“beyond he stopped from embracing some of the by evidence of this new thinking theshort frontiers” should have imposed upon him: “both jump into the real of a transcendental being where nobody can follow them.”7 Jaspers refused to grant even a meaning to the concept of existential philosophy considered by him “a mere illusion.” Philosophy is one: from its very beginning, it was a search for truth accomplished by the human intellect acting within the confines of rational thinking. Man must seek truth without a fanatic bent toward exclusivity; this philosophia perennis wrote Jaspers—in Shestov’s interpretation—was ready to admit its inability to comprehend faith (or its total absence). Moreover, claimed the German philosopher, must be ready to accept the inright of both attitudes to a deepphilosophy and thorough interpretation of reality, accord withthose their own terms and within the borders of their (rational) rules. Jaspers would have never agreed with Shestov that true freedom consists in transgressing the ethical, in going beyond the distinction between good and evil or to the claim that in order to obtain truth, man has to give up his willingness to use reason. It is interesting to observe that in accord with his old habit, in writing an article about Jaspers, Shestov was in fact writing about subjects who preoccu-
132 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker pied him with or without Jaspers, before and after having become even familiar with his philosophy. Not that he was impervious to his arguments or that he was not interested in them: he could not detach himself from the “ultimate truths”hethat obsessed for instance, at thethevery beginningtooffollow the article, quoted Jasper’shim. mainTus, argument concerning impossibility Nietzsche and Kierkegaard on the way to uncovering new truths about the meaning of human existence: “they abandoned us without offering a purpose, a definite task. Te question is to find out how to live our ordinary lives in view of the extraordinary, how the exceptions can guide us in finding the meaning of our inner lives.”8 However, this is the wrong argument, would reply Shestov since the question is how to communicate with the negative content of Nietzsche’s and Kierkegaard’s lives and beyond that, to find out in which ways their traumatic experiences should affect us: “should not we attempt to somehow incorporate their ‘splinter in the flesh’ rather than gloss upon it in abstract ways?” wondered Shestov. Nevertheless, this is exactly what he himself did in his article on Dostoevsky mentioned above: after describing the ethical bent of the young author and his confrontation with Belinsky’s question concerning the moral responsibility insofar as the misfortunes of the Other was concerned—and not only that which we personally witnessed but that of the many generations of persecuted and excluded back in time—Shestov pointed out that Dostoevsky evolved toward a state of an “organically assimilated unhappiness.” Unlike Jaspers, however, from the very moment Dostoevsky understood that our ways of thinking accepted idea that theonsuffering of the justifyexistence. somehowTat, our happiness, he beganthe concentrating the horrors of other the human in order to try to understand in the process how to save himself from becoming the prisoner of a situation in which the “impotent love for the other human beings is necessarily transformed into hate.”9 Te article about Jaspers ended with the same negative conclusion about the eternal philosophy embraced by him very much like that found in the essay about Dostoevsky and would find later in the article about Berdyaev: “the critical and pre-critical philosophies of Socrates, Kant and Mendelssohn agree that only ethics has the monopoly of that absolute truth which finds itself to be judex et princeps omnium [the judge and the God principle everything] and answer this leaves Abraham,ofNietzsche ... and the of theofBible who cannot the Job, supplications his crucified Son, condemned and lost for ever.”10 Te essay about his good old friend Nicolai Berdyaev was occasioned by his recently published book, Spirit and Reality. As we have already seen, the history of their relationship was a very old one, starting back in Kiev at the beginning of the century11; each wrote about the other’s works in Russia already during the years preceding WW I (Berdyaev wrote about Shestov’s Apotheosis
Between Athens and Jerusalem 133 of Groundlessness as early as 1905 and Shestov wrote about Berdyaev’s book Sub Specie Aeternitatis in 1907–0812). “We never agreed with each other’ told Shestov to Fondane, “as he always accused me of reading my own ideas in the
works of Doestoevsky, olstoy andafter later, Kierkegaard.” the article written immediately Shestov’s death, Indeed, Berdyaevinpointed out in memoriam that by embracing the ideal of a thinking guided by revelation rather than one anchored in rational inference, Shestov could not (and did not) approach the problem of the communication between the human beings. Te two would find a common ground and will be in agreement insofar as the value of the creative thinking was concerned but they strongly diverged when they came to discuss the possibility of its communication. “Reason exhibits various degrees, might present different qualities and depends on the human will” wrote Berdyaev.13 In their private conversations he seems to have often protested against Shestov’s tendency to deny him the right to be “free to know,” to which his friend would stubbornly repeat that “knowing, means knowing that necessity exists and that knowledge and freedom are incompatible.”14 During a visit at the Shestov’s house in 1935, the philosopher’s wife apparently told Fondane that “each time Berdyaev is coming, the two have terrible disputes; both become red and this goes on for thirty years now.”15 Red or not, Shestov was very sober in his analysis of Berdyaev’s philosophy and followed a fairly clear line of argumentation: in spite of the progressive trajectory Berdyaev’s thought followed, from a grounding of his philosophy in a form ofoeuvre, a gnosis the acknowledgment existential and Kierkegaard’s hetoremained the prisoner ofofthe thinkingphilosophy of the German mystics Master Eckhart, auler, Angelus Silesius, Boehme, and of the modern German philosophical idealism (this later argument upset very much Berdyaev who in a letter following the publication of his article wrote him that “Dostoevsky and Nietzsche played a much more important role in my life than Schelling and German idealism”; in the same letter he tried to explain Shestov—how many times must have he done it before?—that the way he understood the concept of freedom was very different from that of Jacob Boehme16). In essence, wrote Shestov, for Berdyaev the mystery to be uncovered in the surrounding reality is something attached the object of our study, but it consists in thenot reflection about the acttothrough which a truth is obtained. Whatrather appears to be a conclusion is in reality rather an axiom related to the “theandric idea,” which always dominated Berdyaev’s thinking: the Godlike qualities inculcated in man are the only guarantors of his liberty and worth of being understood. “Berdyaev’s philosophical evolution consists in a more and more accentuated emphasis on the human factor in his theandric philosophy to the detriment of the divine moment. o the point that as man’s stature becomes more promi-
134 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker nent and gains independence, God’s position is continuously diminished.”17 As mentioned, another issue on which Shestov and Berdyaev were deeply split was that of the human freedom; for the latter, as for Boehme and the German idealists, Shestov, freedom precedes the world,above is uncreated, independent of the argued will of God. (Berdyaev in the letter mentioned stated clearly that Boehme, unlike himself, did anchor liberty in God). In agreement with Schelling, who wrote in his Ideas on a Philosophy of Nature (in a somewhat different context though) that “if freedom is a capability for evil, than it must have a root independent of God,”18 Berdyaev stated that freedom is sustained by the all powerful capacity of the human being to make the distinction between good and evil. However, that cannot represent a “phenomenology of the revelation,” as its author pretended since there is no place for such an interpretation in the Holy Scriptures, wrote Shestov. However, neither Berdyaev nor his “allies,” the German mystics, and the idealist philosophers, would have accepted to remain confined to these documents only, while discussing the philosophy of revelation: they extended the debate to a discussion based on Gnostic interpretations. Tus, the freedom of men turned out to be the factor that enabled them to escape the potential status of robots in a world in which God would instate the good only and control or eliminate altogether the evil. Te sine qua non condition for human freedom required that human kind’s freedom should be kept separated from the will of God, be uncreated and as such, be part of the primordial nothingness rather than of God’s plenitude. “God is all 19 powerfulfreedom within the realm of the insisted being, but not in that of the nothingness, not insofar is concerned,”, Berdyaev.” However, a nothingness thus understood limits the extent of the powerfulness of the absolute God. Moreover, in such a situation redemption becomes some sort of a “dynamic process” since the good that vanquishes evil is superior to that which existed before its coming into the world. Shestov quoted Berdyaev who concluded that “redemption does not represent a return to a Paradise which preceded the srcinal sin but a passage to a superior state, one in which the superior nature of humane spirituality reveals itself” (ibid.). Obviously, Shestov could not agree with these views—Berdyaev was right
when he wrote him that he hashim thewrong feelingeither that they belonginconsistencies to two worlds far apart—and he tried to prove by finding in his ways of reasoning or by presenting, as convincingly as he could, his opposite point of view. Tis book is not the place to describe in detail neither of the two lines of argumentation; the first one was based on the assumption that even if Berdyaev was self-consistent in his reasoning, in the end one conclusion rooted in experience should confront another one, based also on experience: one must choose one of the two, and at this point the phenomenological approach breaks
Between Athens and Jerusalem 135 down. En passant, Shestov observed that like Buber, Berdyaev too believed that the human consciousness had acquired its moral character with God’s interrogation addressed to Cain. Tat man can do something outside God’s will, impliesifindeed a God-like quality in men (the theandric ideawould mentioned above); but God himself cannot overcome human liberty how we know that the Man-God could overcome an uncreated liberty? According to Berdyaev, a man who is in the possession of such a precious gift finds himself under the constraining moral obligation to always move on, in an endless ascendant movement toward a superior state warranted by his condition; in the process, he is illuminated by reason and the horrors of existence he might witness occasionally and that will serve merely as a buoyancy force that keeps him on his ever ascending path. In Job, Berdyaev saw something very different from what Shestov saw; this observation might have served as starting point for Shestov’s “positive argumentation” against Berdyaev’s philosophy. Job rejected the edifying qualities of reasonable argumentation; the main message of his story was not that encoded in the dispute with his friends but in his refusal to accept God’s verdict. In the end, God recognized that Job was right and returned him all his former possessions. Why did Kant as well as Berdyaev, neglect this detail? asked Shestov. In opposition with their attitude, Kierkegaard believed that Job’s stubborn, “maximalist” attitude was the only reasonable one in his direct confrontation with God. Moreover, Kierkegaard, as interpreted by Shestov, was totally opposed to a submission of always the human being tobetween the constraints the Te reason and itssolution compulsive drive to distinguish good andofevil. proposed based on the dialectical synthesis between opposite tendencies or that of the perpetual move upwards as a result of the “judicious choice,” both srcinating in the Greek (that is rational) ways of thinking, should be replaced—in Shestov’s view—by an existential philosophy which srcinates in the human despair. Te true existential philosophy is that of Kierkegaard and not that proposed by Berdyaev and by the friends of Job. Te end of the article contains a brief list of the main tenets of Shestov’s existential philosophy, of his metasophia: this new philosophy beyond philosophy is to be born within the confines of a new dimension the be human thought, orthogonal dominated by reason. Its truth shouldofnot a constraining (only) one, to itsthat freedom must not find itself outside and/or beyond the reach of God: “the freedom created by God, which does not accept the constraint, has a completely different srcin from that of our knowledge: it defies it, it aspires not only at what is in our power to achieve but also at something positioned beyond it . . .Te source of wisdom is in the fear of God not in that of the Nothingness. And freedom srcinates in faith and not in knowledge, in the faith which liberates us from our nightmares.”20
136 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker Edmund Husserl died at the age of almost eighty, during the spring of 1938. Te journal of the Russian intellectual community in exile, Ruskie Zapisky, asked Shestov to write about the deceased philosopher. A weak and ailing Shestov the effort and sent out same the article than a month before his death. It is made puzzling but moving at the time less to observe these strange “elective affinities” between these two thinkers who found themselves—apparently—at two opposite poles insofar their attitude toward the meaning of philosophy and its functions were concerned. Somebody wrote that Husserl was anchored in the nineteenth-century philosophical bent toward the absolute character of human knowledge. Even if he was not recognized as a major figure in the post-WW I movement toward the establishment of a new theological thinking built upon revelation, as were for instance the Protestant Karl Barth or the Jewish thinker Franz Rosenzweig, Shestov belonged, however, to the group of theological reformers rather than to that of the anti-Neokantian rebels or to that of the exponents of various Lebensphilosophien. In the end, regardless the place we assign them in the context of the modern European philosophy, the fact is that a very strong “resonance” was at work between the two. In the context of Memento Mori, this late article only strengthens my previous observations. On the other hand, Shestov did not keep secret his fierce opposition to many of Husserl’s ideas; the in memoriam article begins with him mentioning the question posed to him by Max Scheler, “why do you so strongly oppose Husserl?” In spite of a long detour, in the characteristic Shestovian style,end thetoanswer, given as in Kierkegaard, terms of a psychological turned out in the be: Husserl, was a thinkerinterpretation, of the either-or alternative. He could not content himself with approximate answers and even less with the perspective of an uncertain knowledge. Te Danish thinker has chosen certainty in God; Husserl sought the answer in the human intellect. Te all-mighty God, who could change his mind and cancel even an event that historically had taken place, such as Socrates’ death, for instance, the Absolute ranscendental proposed by Shestov as the ultimate solution, was unacceptable to him. However, after having exposed clearly their differences, Shestov explained also in no ambiguous terms why he held in such high esteem Husserl: “with a rare courage the most and the most diffiin culthim anda mirror painfulimage ques21 tion, thatheofposed the meaning of significant our knowledge.” He found of Kierkegaard; both could—and did—induce in the contemporary minds a sense of urgency toward the need to re-consider our ways of thinking. Beyond this however, he saw, I believe, both these thinkers as potential apostles of his own cause: that of causing men (I should write mankind but I try to avoid its abstract connotation) to awaken from their existential slumber. One finds in this last piece of Shestovian writing yet another subtle observation: in connec-
Between Athens and Jerusalem 137 tion with the question “why did he want me to study Kierkegaard?” Shestov remarked (about Husserl) that “by making truth absolute he found himself in the position of relativizing being, that is human life.”22 In this he resembled Nietzsche, thus the conclusion: thinking and that of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard there lies “Between a profoundHusserl’s and intimate link” (ibid.). I return now to Athens and Jerusalem, the last book published by Lev Shestov. In a letter sent a few days before his death to the orthodox priest and theologian Sergei Bulgakov, whom he knew well from the early Russian years, Shestov wrote: “For me, the contradictions between the Old and the New estament seemed always something imaginary. When Jesus was asked (in Mark 12:29) what is to be the first commandment, he answered: ‘Hear, O Israel’, etc. and in the Apocalypse (2:7): ‘o the vanquished I shall give to eat from Te ree of Life.’ ‘Knowledge’ is thus overcome, truth is revealed, God Almighty is the only God—both estaments bring this message, which is the only one capable of helping us withstand the horrors we face in life. Tis is the subject of my book Athens and Jerusalem, which I would very much like to discuss with you. . . .”23 Moreover, to the question related to Shestov’s belief, we find in the same letter another significant phrase: “ . . . in my view, we must make huge spiritual efforts to get rid of the atheistic nightmare and the lack of faith which dominates humanity.” Tis statement quoted above, was preceded by a remark concerning the chapter on the philosophical thought of the Middle Ages included in the book. Athens andtexts Jerusalem, Its 1935 presence in of as the makes fact that the textofwritten in is one the last writtenasbywell Shestov, it worthy closer consideration in the context of our concluding remarks. Te essay is based on the observation that Etienne Gilson’s work L’ésprit de la philosophy médiévale posed the question concerning the meaning of the Judeo-Christian philosophy and its novelty in the larger realm of the human thought. Moreover, the book of the neo-Tomist thinker seemed to overcome the apparently inherent contradiction between a thinking based on biblical revelation and the requirement to ground any philosophy “worthy of its name” in a rational approach, that is, built on demonstrable, indisputable truths. Tat can in principle occur
because, as Lessing the revealed truthsame becomes rational in theby mind of the believer.pointed Gilson’sout, formulation of the idea was expressed Shestov as follows: “the revealed truth is founded on nothing, proves, nothing, is justified before nothing and, despite this, is transformed in our mind into a justified, demonstrated, self-evident truth.” Tis idea was a very important one of course, and Benjamin Fondane, the disciple, fully realized it: in his works, even before but more intensely after the death of the master, he would try hard to find a way to explain this subtle mechanism in terms acceptable to an
138 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker existential philosophy (this represents perhaps the starting point of Fondane’s srcinality insofar as his existential philosophy is concerned; see also the next chapter “Benjamin Fondane, the Disciple”). Trough this subtle—and so far unexplained truth; if one adds to athis idea the postulate thatprocess—revelation “metaphysics wishesbecomes to possess the revealed truth,” “leitmotif of 24 Gilson’s beautiful book,” we see how the connection between medieval philosophy on the one hand, and ancient and modern philosophy on the other, has been established in the work of the French philosopher. Shestov found no flaw in this line of argumentation until he reached the point at which Gilson stated that God, besides somehow creating himself and the universe, created also the eternal truths. Tat statement, reinforced by Clement of Alexandria’s assertion that “Christian thought in its beginnings . . . admitted two ‘Old estaments,’ the Bible and the Greek philosophy”25 brought Gilson to the observation that “one could legitimately ask if there would26ever have been a Christian philosophy if Greek philosophy had not existed.” In so me sense, he was in agreement with Shestov (Christian philosophy means an interpretation of the Christian theology in terms of the Greek philosophy); but in another domain, he held a position totally unacceptable to Shestov. Indeed, Shestov would not have found quarrel with this statement if for him Christian, as well as Jewish philosophy, had not meant a philosophy that necessarily included a religious dimension. More specifically, philosophy had to be anchored in a “reality,” in which only God and his will are eternal and boundless andideas as a operated result, reason itsofconceptual framethinking, based oncannot abstract and universal in thewith realm strictly logical be the main (and the only) tool of investigation, as was the case with the Greek and with the contemporary philosophy. Tat not only because “the God of Scripture is above the truth as well as the good”—on that point Shestov and Gilson could agree—but also (and mainly) because God cannot be constrained by any law, his truths not having to comply with any rule of (self) consistency; the epistemology of the Greeks (or anybody else’s for that matter) could not constrain the truths of the Book of Exodus.27 Gilson and his contemporaries seem to have completely “forgotten the passages of the Book of Genesis which relate to first the problem. amfruit thinking,” wrote “about ofthegood story of the directly fall of the man and Ithe of the tree of Shestov, the knowledge and evil.”28 We have seen all along the importance of the motive of the fall in Shestov’s philosophy; I shall not return to it here. Rather, I would follow him a bit further in his observations related to Gilson’s book and his interpretation of the Middle Age philosophy, in order to understand an important methodological/ hermeneutical issue: the difficulty to grasp the messages encrypted in the old
Between Athens and Jerusalem 139 texts in general and the Old estament in particular. Shestov agreed that “we have inherited from the Greeks both the fundamental philosophical problems and the rational principles for their solution, as well as the entire technique of our thought.” However, we succeed in reading and understanding scripturethe notquestion accordingis to“how the shall teaching of the great Greek 29 masters”? Te question concerning the interpretation of documents srcinating under radically different cultural and historical conditions is, of course, a well known (and much discussed) issue in contemporary hermeneutics, but Shestov was not preoccupied with its epistemological—and to an even lesser extent with its sociological or anthropological implications. He made the very simple and obvious observation, that “as long as the Bible was only in the hands of the ‘chosen people,’ this question did not arise” and asked: “is a man educated by the Greeks capable of preserving that freedom which is the condition of the right understanding of what the Bible says?”30 We find here another Shestovian attempt to express in a concise manner the essence of his message, which I summarize here as follows: “my philosophy is based on truths brought forth through the Bible, all of which let (induce) me to believe in an Almighty God. Tis last statement means that for Him all things are possible, including the modification at any time, following His will, of whatever we humans would consider ‘eternal truths.’ Any predicament in my life is therefore temporary and potentially negotiable; I only need to find out how to enter the dialog with Him, as Job did. Faith is indispensable for the attainment of that possibility.” Te story the of srcinal not properly understood by those followed in theofpath Philosin andwas Clement of Alexandria because of thewho bias introduced by the Greek interpretation given to the Bible. God’s words “From every tree of the Paradise you may eat; however, from the tree of Knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat” do not mean that man would be punished for having disobeyed, but rather that knowledge hides in itself death, wrote Shestov. Tat was something the followers of Athenian wisdom could not accept. Indeed, there was another very important point Shestov made at the same time: he observed that in the Bible the metaphysics of knowledge was related to that of being. God has told Adam and Eve that if they transgressed his orders, that is, to know, they would also begin die at theforsame (and thatif isthey whybegan Shestov was never preoccupied withtoontology; himtime ontology and epistemology were mixed ab initio). Of course, the fall can be interpreted in a different way, for instance, as liberation: the serpent told the truth; knowledge does not kill. On the contrary, it opens a completely new view, presents to Adam and Eve a new dimension of life even. Ten, if that is the case, how could they have chosen to reject knowledge? asked Shestov. Tere are, therefore, two different ways to interpret the story of Adam, Eve, and the serpent: one which
140 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker leads to the rationalist, philosophical approach to life and existence, and the other, which Shestov considered to represent a mixture of a primordial Jewish thinking and an, “untainted,” srcinal Christianity, which he lumped together Judeo-Christian thought mentioned in that the letter to Sergei Bulgakov. A careful reading uncovers yet anotherinepistemological subtlety discussed by Shestov in this context: the fact that Adam and Eve possessed a certain kind of knowledge is clearly suggested by the Book of Genesis. Tis knowledge was one of the that, a knowledge relevant in the created world, in which man was asked to give names to all animals on Earth, but not one of the why, a different kind of knowledge, needed to find out abstract truths related to God and his intentions. Man’s mind was guided by the serpent into a new direction; as soon as he abandoned the belief in the revealed truths of God he began to seek another kind of truth, that of the universal and the necessary, a truth “that certainly 31deprives him of his freedom but protects him against the arbitrariness of God.” Here we encounter another essential tenet of Shestov’s philosophy: the real choice made by man was not between an easy life in Paradise and the bitter fate of a fallen being but that between a true freedom lived under the permanent menace of the arbitrariness of an omnipotent Being and a fake, unauthentic freedom lived in the shadow of the eternal, self-evident truths. o this very day, the reflecting man/woman finds him/herself in the same position Adam and Eve found themselves facing the tree of knowledge: he or she needs to transform the truths received from God, “without the shadow of a proof” into proven
truths, concluded Shestov. If for the medieval philosophers following in the footsteps of St. Tomas32 (and not only for them), it was true that “their intellectual longing will be satisfied only when the word of God brought by the prophet will have obtained the blessing of the principle of contradiction,”33 it is not obvious that things should be the same in modern times, in particular for those of Shestov’s contemporaries who can be associated with the religious existential thinking of the twentieth century. However, even those religious thinkers who were inclined toward an existential philosophy much like that proposed by Shestov, were tempted to preserve the medieval interpretation of the notion of sin and failed to see the meaning of failed the experience the fall the way Shestov Man punished because he to obey; of acting against God’s will isdid. under anywas circumstance a sinful act since, as St. Augustine wrote, “the creature was so made that it is useful for it to be subjected to God but injurious for it to do its own will and not the will of Him by Whom he was created.”34 Not so for Shestov, for whom God is not “immutable”; that is why Abraham, “the father of faith” did at times argue with God. He “argued with God about Sodom and Gomorrah, and God forgot that he is immutable (my emphasis) and gave in to his ‘servant,’” pointed
Between Athens and Jerusalem 141 out Shestov and added without hesitation: “it is obvious that biblical “faith” has nothing in common with obedience.”35 Shestov does not tire of repeating that the religious thinkers of the Middle Ages were blinded reading ofdignity the Bible by Greek philosophy; as this considered the supreme of man, the ability to distinguish gnosis toinbetheir between good and evil could not represent in itself a sin. On the contrary, it was to become a virtue. Shestov remarked that following a hint from St. Paul (“all that does not come of faith is sin,”, Romans, 14:23), Kierkegaard wrote that “the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith.” 36 Tus, he established a sharp distinction between Greek philosophy and the srcinal Jewish-Christian thought (I use this expression to distinguish it from a Judeo-Christian tradition transformed in the process of interference with the Greek philosophy). Clearly, the Greek did not have the same concept of the nature of the divinity, of the transcendental, the Jewish-Christian tradition had at its very beginning. How and why should they be therefore compared? Because whether we call this supra-human entity, a Platonic idea or eternal and immutable truth, it shares with the JudeoChristian thought the absolute and totally transcendental character ascribed by it to the divinity. Tey are not identical, certainly. Shestov points out that Gilson, in his book, recognizes “all the vicissitudes of the intense struggle which developed” between the two during the Middle Ages. However, Shestov is very blunt in pointing out that already from St. Augustine on, it became accepted that “faith is under the control of reason.” How else can one understand the 37
ut credas,became crede utlater inteligas famous intellige Te corollary of the firsta part the Augustinian statement in St.?Tomas’s transcription, very of sharp and uncompromising, “that which contains a contradiction does not fall under God’s omnipotence.”38 Against this idea, Shestov posed the question: “From where does the Judeo-Christian philosophies draw this unshakable conviction that the principle of contradiction cannot be overcome?”39 His answer came in quickly and was not less sharp and unambiguous: “not from the Bible, surely” since this “takes no account of the principle of contradiction, just as it takes no account of any principle, of any law, for it is the source, the sole source, and master of all laws.”40
Tewere conclusion seems topoint, be clear: Shestov, the Old the Newthe estaments up to a certain one.for Both represented andand described will of an Almighty God deeply involved in what happens in the world He created. He had chosen a people of priests who were supposed to observe his Law, but at some point He changed his mind and wanted all people on earth to follow his commandments. Te absolute Law man was made for, has been thus transformed in a normative law made for man. He sent another prophet, this time one from Nazareth and asked all peoples to listed and follow his message.
142 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker How this has been interpreted later by the multitude of peoples involved, is a different story. For the learned, it was the Greek influence which made the difference. For others, the specific local ethos was responsible for the new interpretations, new laws for theasreviewed of God’s words. did not make any the difference toand Shestov, long as itversions was understood that inItboth Books, in the Old as well as in the New estament, the message was the same: God is Almighty and for reasons impossible to understand, he might change his mind. Te difference between primeval Christianity and Judaism as he was expressed in and by the Bible was not, in his mind, an essential one.
TEN
Benjamin Fondane, the Disciple
“Schloezer m’a dit que votre étude était la meilleur introduction philosophie existentielle que l ’onà alafait jusqu’à présent.” —Shestov to Fondane, December 4, 1937 “Chestov est le philosophe qui veut délaisser le problème du savoir pour aborder franchement le Savoir en tant que problème.” —Benjamin Fondane
One of the most important encounters Shestov had in Paris was that with the poet Benjamin Fondane. It is still debatable whether it is appropriate or not to call Fondane a disciple or a follower. He was both and none of these. Certainly, he was formed philosophically by Shestov, but an exceptional “intellectual mobility” as well as his literary endeavors pushed Fondane into directions that tended to diverge at times from those of the master. Te two met very soon after Fondane’s arrival to France (in 1923) in the house of the philosopher Jules de Gaultier (who wrote at the turn of the century one of the first books on Nietzsche in France), and a close relationship developed between them with deep consequences for both. Between 1929 and 1938 Fondane wrote many articles about Shestov and his philosophical and religious thought, and pub-
144 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker lished them in various journals or as chapters in his book La Conscience malheureuse (1936); in fact, practically all his works written after 1930 contained references to the man who introduced him to philosophy. Although the subject of this chapter is “Fondane, disciple,” it would be interesting to find out also to what extent Fondane the might have influenced Shestov (besides the fact that it certainly helped to keep up his morale through his dedicated work as a promoter of his ideas). Benjamin Fondane was not born to be a philosopher; his encounter with Lev Shestov determined him to approach philosophy—reluctantly at first—in order to clarify some of the queries left unanswered by questions he posed so far only in the poetical realm. In fact, Benjamin Fondane was and remained his entire life, fundamentally, a poet. Te reasons and the circumstances of his drift toward philosophy have been accurately described by the poet in the introductory chapter (Sur les rives de l’Ilissus) to the book Rencontres avec Leon Chestov, in which he presented their fifteen-year intellectual relationship. Tis work is probably one of the best introductions to the Shestovian philosophy ever written and it contains, at the same time, a history of Fondane’s evolution toward an srcinal existential philosophical outlook. In the very narrow frame of this chapter, I will limit the discussion to a brief rendering of the main steps in this evolution, as described by Fondane himself. Te first meeting between the young poet (Fondane was born in 1898) recently arrived in Paris and the famous Russian-Jewish philosopher occurred in 1924. Atboth the time, Benjamin Fondane wasside struggling to insofar forge forhishimself a new identity on the individual/personal as well as poetical/literary activities were concerned. His previous involvement with philosophy was limited to a few authors only, among them Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Jules de Gaultier, “who provided my youthful years with the intoxicating idea of the esthetic justification of the univers”1 (note how similar this situation was to that of young Shestov before the turn of the century). Te years spent in searching for this new identity were painful and a long period of crisis ensued. Te period of Fondane’s philosophical apprenticeship covers roughly the years 1926–29, during which Shestov taught Fondane not his own thought and philosophy but “he Husserl, forced meHeidegger. to read the. . philosophers was mainly talking that aboutofatothers: the time, .”2 In parallel,everybody Fondane would begin reading his mentor’s works as well (he had a brief encounter with Shestov’s works while still in Romania, mainly through the book Revelations of the Death translated to Romanian after WW I), and these lectures helped him to identify a Nietzschean strain in his own personality. Reading Shestov he realized that this “taste for the concrete, the living, the individual hero and his dramatic existence”3 was something he had in common with his (recently en-
Benjamin Fondane, the Disciple 145 countered) teacher. Once this “resonance” established, Shestov taught Fondane “the meaning of his ways of expressing himself . . . as well as the meaning of this strange resistance existence put up against theoretical speculation” (ibid.). Tisthinking last pointcommon is essential since explainsbut notalso onlywhy theFondane essence of existen-, tial to the twoitthinkers thethe philosopher continued to remain at the same time “Fondane the poet,” too. Benjamin Fondane began publishing his first philosophical articles in 1929; the very first one was an essay on Shestov entitled, “Un philosophe tragique: Léon Chestov.” It appeared in the literary-philosophical review Europe, followed, in the same journal, by an article on Husserl. Te same year, during his first visit to Argentina (a second will follow in 1936), he presented in Buenos Aires a talk entitled “Un nouveau visage du Dieu: Léon Chestov mystique russe.” In a letter to Herman Lovtzki, Shestov mentioned his young “student”; “the article for Europe is wr itten in a somewhat impressionistic style,” he writes, “Fondane is not a philosopher, he states explicitly that he writes for ‘artists’ but one finds in it, all in all, quite a bit of ‘energy.’”4 A year later, Fondane would have ready for publication a first version of a book (to be published only in 1933) on the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, which would turn out to be rather a philosophical work than one of literary criticism. Tis “blending” was clearly a result of Shestov’s influence on Fondane; in a letter addressed to the master in 1927, he already explicitly recognized his influence when he wrote, “you make me understand not only Nietzsche, olstoy etc., but also authors you never con5
sidered such Rimbaud, Baudelaire” (the remark was only accurate as Shestov did inasfact meditate quite a bit about Baudelaire in hisparty younger years). Indeed, Rimbaud le Voyou is at least as much a book of existential philosophy as it is one about a great modern poet. As a short illustration, I quote two introductory statements from the book: “if a Rimbaud did not appear from time to time to subvert the idea the spirit has of itself, men would fall asleep for ever.”6 Why would such a thing happen? Because, wrote Fondane, men are born in a world where “the received and the preconceived ideas have an ascendance over any and all experience of the real.”7 Benjamin Fondane’s first major philosophical work La conscience malheureuse (1936), contains chapters that discuss in detail the philosophies of such philosophers of existence as Shestov, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger, but the works and the ideas of Husserl, Freud, Bergson, and Gide were also considered. An extensive preface and the introductory chapter, entitled also Te Unhappy Consciousness, did set the background for a discussion, in the best Shestovian tradition, about the need to find new ways toward a philosophy liberated from the old patterns and the idiosyncrasies of classical metaphysics. Fondane began by observing that while we are simultaneously “citizens of the
146 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker social order and its misfortunes” and as such, political beings, we remain always also “citizens of the human misfortunes ( citoyens du malheur humain).”8 Fondane, as Shestov for that matter (I did not insist in the previous chapters on the social and/orsimply historical thought ofon Shestov that not because it did notwork, exist; my analysis concentrated what but I considered essential in his the “deconstruction” of philosophical thinking on the road toward a religious thought), recognized the role of the social life and its effects on the existence of the individual, but he refused again—as Sestov always did—to accord it a preponderant specific weight. Te human unhappy consciousness (la conscience malheureuse) must face the hostile forces of the “contradiction, weakness and the necessity of death, that is of this fatum through which the total alienation of the human forces is realized.”9 Repeating some of the major motives of Shestov’s philosophy, Fondane arrived at the conclusion that the task of the “real” philosophy must not be therefore that of building systems of thought based on abstract categories and general laws governed by logic, destined to calm us down and perpetuate a state of intellectual beatitude. Instead, philosophy must seek the means that enable living individuals to cope with their actual circumstances, their real existence. In a way, the entire book seemed to be dedicated to the discussion concerning the distinction to be made between those philosophical solutions that try to impose the laws of a so-called “objective reality” upon a man left without recourse to freedom and those that can be useful to men embarked on a search for genuinewho freedom. Tis both freedom definedGod it—that of Job and Abraham, dared defy the is—as will of Shestov the Almighty and the impositions of the ethical laws (be them of divine or Kantian srcin), which bound mankind. In one of the chapters dedicated to Shestov in La Conscience malheureuse, Fondane emphasized, perhaps stronger even than the master did, the need to live one’s own philosophy, even if that implied the renounciation of ethics and the need for logical proofs. Understanding our ways of reasoning must go beyond mere logical inferences. However, Fondane not only followed in the domain of epistemology the ways of Shestov; in the domain of ontology, that is in the realm of the questions related to the explanation of the nature and meaning of being itself, Fondane askedEducated for a different approachintellectual from that of the academic, traditional philosophy. in a different frame, belonging to a different time, and having his own, different sensitivities, Fondane would be much more aware of the distinction between these two philosophical domains than his master. Human existence eludes us; it is unpredictable and often arbitrary; facing such an “ontological reality,” reason reacts negatively: “reason does not like to recognize the irreducible opposition between the real and the reasonable.”10 While at the first reading it might have
Benjamin Fondane, the Disciple 147 seemed that such statements represented simple renditions of the Shestovian ideas, a more careful lecture uncovers the attempts Fondane made to overcome the merely “deconstructive” aspect of his master’s thinking. Without going into details here, I,only want toinpoint thatasininhishislater writings,book suchon as published 1938,out as well unfinished Faux traité d’esthétique Baudelaire (Baudelaire et l’expérience du gouffre), both written by Fondane after Shestov’s death (the second was published posthumously in 1947), the author follows his own path insofar as the content of existential philosophy and its consequences for the individual life are concerned. He very much strives to overcome the feeling of despair and powerlessness induced by Shestov’s works; being a poet, Fondane concentrated on the examination of the nature of the poetical act, its meaning and its impact on our lived, real, lives. Te issue was not only the poetry or the poet, he writes in his False reatise of Esthetics—the fate of poetry and of the poets should be of utter concern to all human beings since the poetical act, incorporated in the deepest folds of our existence, acts as a radioactive substance emanating a quality intimately linked to our real existence. In Fondane’s view, the real essence of the individual existence, that which one lives of and reflects upon, was that which was seized and lived simultaneously in an act of participation-creation, or in his words, “la réalité ne doit ainsi être nommée que dans le bref instant où elle est vécue et saisie dans l’acte de participation-inspiration.”11 When in 1938 Shestov died, Benjamin Fondane found himself alone and lonely. Bythethat time, however, he was set already on a philosophical roadforof himself: thorough performed by Shestov was necessary deconstruction the creation of a new existential philosophy, but it was not sufficient. Fondane tried to find inspiration and resonances in different quarters for the continuation of the debate related to the relationship between being and knowledge. In fact, in his literary testament he was mentioning a planned book with this title (“Being and Knowledge,”L’Être et la connaissance) which was supposed to continue, beyond Shestov, this discussion. He looked for new outlets in Stephane Lupasco’s ideas about thinking reality without submitting oneself to the rigors of a logic embodied in the all powerful “law of the excluded middle” (that is, A non-A always and under any circumstance must always be identical to A and radically different and distinct from A); heis was probing the possibility of living and acting within a reality that could be understood and experienced in terms of the contradiction and paradox (Fondane insists on Kafka quite a bit in his book on Baudelaire). In addition, he tried to find in the works of Lévy-Bruhl confirmation of his ideas concerning the possibility to revitalize a “participatory thinking” (pensée de participation); a chapter on this author, based on two extensive papers published just before the outbreak of WW II was to be part of
148 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker the above mentioned book, L’être et la connaissance (together with one chapter on Lupasco and another on Shestov). During the war years, Fondane was also very actively following Gaston Bachelard’s ideas and he wrote about him and du Sud his books a fewFondane’s articles, published in Cahiers . was a text written at Benjamin philosophical “swan’s song” the request of Jean Grenier, Albert Camus’s philosophical mentor, just a few months before his arrest, in March 1944. Te article, entitled “Le lundi existentiel et le dimanche de l’histoire” (Existential Monday and the Sunday of History) was to be part of anthology on existential thinking (entitled L’existence; it was published in 1945 by Grenier). In this last work of his (the title was inspired by an entry in Kafka’s Journals), Fondane tried to outline the basic principles of a new philosophy of existence. After considering the existential philosophers and philosophies of the day, from Karl Jaspers to Gabriel Marcel, the author observed that one should decide whether philosophers need to know what consciousness thinks about the existent being or rather the opposite, that is, what does the real existent thinks of consciousness (“il faudrait se decider sur la marche à suivre: voulons nous réelment savoir ce que la Connaissance pense de 12 l’existant, ou bien, pour une fois, ce que l’existant pense de la Connaissance?” Te existentialist philosophies which came into fashion after WW II, inspired mainly by Sartre and Heidegger, avoided the question Fondane posed. Tese post-war philosophers, perhaps traumatized by the encounter with a problematic existence (Sartre) and by the short-falls of a number of not less problem-
atic ways of reflecting uponthe existence (Heidegger), to avoid this (too) blunt question concerning relationship betweendecided existence and knowledge (as the problem was posed rather in terms of existence and being). Fondane’s question, “est-ce l’existence, comme toujours, ou est-ce la connaissance, enfin, qu’il s’agit de rendre problématique?”’ (ibid.)., which clearly echoed Shestov, will become of interest later, but this will happen in a frame different from that of existential philosophy (from Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations to postmodernists such as Deleuze or Derrida, the problem of the relationship between existence and knowledge was reformulated and extensively discussed after WW II). Benjamin philosopher, Fondane, who begantherefore his philosophical as a disciple of an existential became himself a career philosopher in search of new ways and means to counteract the “tyranny of the reason.” One of the ways he explored was that of a “poetical thinking” in guise of philosophy: in his already mentioned False reatise of Esthetics, Fondane dwelled upon the deep meaning of the poetical act and its implication for a possibly new philosophy of the existence (something equivalent to what I referred to as Shestov’s metasophia, in the previous chapters). As he saw it, this was not to be a rational
Benjamin Fondane, the Disciple 149 discussion about an “existence” represented by an abstract concept, but rather a way of reflecting upon the life of the concrete individual as it unfolded within the confines of the actual circumstances of his existence. wo years before pubTe reatise Unhappy Consciousness lishingwhich the been preface to his Fondane wrote: “Tat should, inhave kept, above all, silent—the terrifying secret of homo philosophus—we have slowly but with much passion, spelled out deep inside ourselves! Is it possible that this pure wisdom, this learning accumulated since ancient times we call knowledge, was a lie? A lie brought forth in order to forget precisely its own primeval question, the very first question of all: ‘What is knowledge good for? What is the meaning of the deep, absolute truths? Why do we need these unshakable pillars upon which the knowledge is built? And what should we do with those postulates which are supposed to sustain the building but who turn out not to be able to perform the task? What good does a knowledge based on sacrifice? Does life need it in order to survive? Is this knowledge really necessary or rather, just the opposite, it represents a denial of life, a suicide, a way out from a situation life refuses to accept?”13 Our unhappy consciousness has to find a way out of this tension between Hegel’s rational (and reasonable) knowledge and Job’s total refuse of it. Poetry, Fondane believed, is one option. His reasoning can be summarized as follows: once upon a time, there was no split in human consciousness between the world in which one lived and acted and this other, parallel world created by the mind in its act of reflection upon the external world. At that time our thinking was a thinking of participation . Aswas theborn rational, (thatthinking is philosophy in the traditional sense) and Socratic began tothinking evolve, this of participation, this existential thinking (not existentialist!) began to retreat and diminish. At the point of intersection of the two, the thinking of participation and the philosophical reflection, poetry was born. Poetry is thus the refuge of the unhappy consciousness, the refuge offered to a being engaged in a confrontation with an all pervading rationality. However, poetry cannot be practiced in a world in which the literal dominates; a world in which there is a perfect match between the signified and the signifier, a world deprived of metaphors. Unfortunately, Fondane did not have the opportunity to explain further this,
so promising, idea.above Fondane’s “literary testament”: in a note sent from I mentioned Drancy to his wife just before he was transferred to Auschwitz, he explained that the study “Levy-Bruhl ou le métaphysicien malgré lui” was meant to become part, in a revised version,14 of a book entitled L’Etre et la Connaissance. In addition to this, the planned work was to include his most comprehensive article on Shestov published just before the death of the master in 1938 and a study of Stephane Lupasco’s ideas concerning his new logic, which proposed
150 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker to incorporate the contradiction.15 Te planned book was probably supposed to contain the exposition of Fondane’s philosophical ideas as they evolved after the death of Lev Shestov. Between 1938 and 1944, Fondane wrote a few arCahiers du ticles) and about Gastonpractically Bachelardwithout and Stephane Lupasco (published worked interruption on his book oninBaudelaire. Sud Moreover, we have indirect information about the fact that during the years of the German occupation of Paris, he often audited at the Sorbonne Gaston Bachelard’s courses. It is quite clear that Fondane was in search of his own brand of meta-sophia, a philosophy designed by his master to be a thought which does not seek knowledge ( n’est pas du domaine du “je sais”) and replaces intelligere with the cry (le cri) as tool, as method of inquiry.16 I presented above very succinctly some of the convergences and the divergences between Fondane and his master in the domain of existential philosophy; the next question in the context posed by the title of this book is that concerning the relationship between their approaches to religion in general and to Judaism in particular. One can begin the discussion with the analysis of two already mentioned documents: the article Léon Chestov à la recherche du Judaïsme perdu published in 1936 in Revue Juive de Genève and the letter sent in 1938 by Fondane to the French philosopher and Catholic thinker, Jacques Maritain.17 Until the mid-1930s, one could find only scattered hints to preoccupations with Jewish themes in Fondane’s work; he wrote on Jewish subjects while still in Romania, and in France he touched upon subjects related to the
presence of(such Jewish in was modernity in general and (1930); in the avant-garde in particular for artists instance the article on Chagall one also finds 18 numerous citations from Jewish authors in Rimbaud le voyou (1934). However, until that point, Fondane did not seem interested in discussing religious themes in general and questions related to the issue of “Jewish thinking” in particular, in any coherent or substantial way. In the first article mentioned above, Fondane explained for the first time what “Jewish” meant for him. In his definitions, he distinguished between the notions of “being specifically Jewish” and “(being) essentially Jewish.” Shestov was Jewish by birth, but this circumstance was irrelevant, wrote Fondane; there were many other important thinkers Jewish but et hadencore nothing specifically or essentially ish (“n’ontwho rienwere de born spécifiquement moins d’essentiellement juifJew”19). Specific is for Fondane some spiritual entity emerging from a historical, psychological and/or biological evolution, which has been consciously integrated and which, in time, seeks a way of making itself explicit, of expressing itself. Essential relates to those a-temporal characteristics of a thinker who remains outside time and history and rejects any limiting boundary, be it geographical, historical, or national. Such a thinker expresses willingly or sometimes even
Benjamin Fondane, the Disciple 151 against his explicit intent, a revealed message, which, even though it was addressed to one specific people is of utmost relevance to the destiny of the entire humanity.20 o illustrate the last definition, Fondane brought Bergson, Freud, and Einstein surprise comes when he mentions Pascal who wanted to prayastoexamples. the God Te of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and Kierkegaard rejected Hegel in favor of the “private thinkers,” Job and Abraham. Jews cannot be Jews as Germans are Germans or Guatemalans are the indigenous people of Guatemala: one cannot pretend to be the chosen people without consequences. Tat was an idea Shestov shared with some prominent Jewish thinkers associated with the “revival movement,” represented in both camps, the Zionist one as well as in that which opposed it. I will discuss this issue elsewhere, as it is a too demanding and extensive subject to be included in such a narrow frame. Tis is the background for the discussion of Shestov’s search for a “lost Judaism.” Up to the date of the writing his article, Benjamin Fondane presented his teacher under various guises and with different purposes. In the previous articles, however, the accent was on the nature of Shestov’s philosophical thinking and on the discussion of its departure from the accepted, main-stream approaches of the time.21 Here, at the occasion of the seventieth birthday of the master, Fondane took the opportunity to address a different and somewhat special issue, rarely considered in his” previous works: Lev Shestov’s relevance in the context of the contemporary debate concerning the essence of Judaism and its modern embodiments. One finds some traces of discussions between theRencontres master andavec his Léon pupilChestov. concerning thesetime topics in Fondane’s notes gathered in At the Fondane began recording their conversations (1934), Shestov was already an author considered to be more of a religious thinker than a philosopher. His writings on Plotinus, St. Augustine, and the medieval philosophers, his essays on Pascal, Luther, and Kierkegaard were already published by now. Shestov, who had a long lasting friendship with Russian religious thinkers such as Semen Frank, Sergei Bulgakov, and Nikolai Berdyaev and with Martin Buber, did—as already mentioned in the previous chapters—discuss religious matters and often alluded at the Scriptures and their main heroes, in his works. Scattered references to such subjects can be found in Fondane’s however, what wastopic. newPerhaps in his case willingness to engagewriting directlyalso; the discussion on this evenwas morehis significant is the fact that once engaged on this path, Fondane did not abandon it till the very end of his life. He learnt from his master that the individual human being, with his poorly understood whims and impulses, his endless suffering stemming from the confrontation with adversities imposed (mostly) externally, and more often than not, arbitrarily, could not content himself only with the possibility of a rational understanding of his fate. He needed a way
152 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker to muddle through; he had to transgress the poor consolation wisdom offered him by a faith in an independent, absolute, transcendental God. When applied to the specific issue of the fate of the Jewish individual in a world in which time seemed to have, again, out of joint, general and somewhat vague observation ledonce to the needgotten to reconsider the this essence of Judaism. After Kant’s attempt to create an autonomous ethic based on human rationality, the emancipated Jew, who knew that his essence was defined through a certain moral attitude, had become a prisoner of this self-definition, which was anchored in the ethics of good and evil: “on a fait croire aux Juifs qu’ils étaient grands par leur morale,” wrote Fondane.22 o this he added the surprising observation that it was not Maimonides, with his (too) high esteem for the rational understanding and interpretation of the Holly Writ, who pointed out to Jews that ethics must be based on other premises than those of the “savantes et philosophes,” but the Christian thinker Blaise Pascal. Te tradition of a Judaism based on the moral imperative has been diverted into something else (aliénée, was the concept used by Fondane); the “autonomous” ethics of the Jewish people had become the sin of pride, of arrogance, carried by them across history. Shestov came to re-establish the things and return them to their right place; he became a modern “guide of the perplexed”—if not even the new “founding father” of a new, authentic Judaism. Fondane pointed out that the God who was “assassinated” by Nietzsche was, according to Shestov, theGod of the Good as defined by the moral law introduced by the Greek philosophers and not the (Gooddes ) God of the Bible: “Leetdieu assassinéle de Nietzsche, n’etaitestaautre que le dieu philosophes grecs, nullement Dieu de L’Ancien ment.” Te metaphysical interpretation of the Jewish tradition of the Almighty, ranscendental God of the ancient Judaism was replaced in modern times—by Spinoza and Moses Mendelssohn—with a new one based on ethics; there was only one way left to the contemporary Jew and that was that of the return to the primeval Judaism of the Fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. However, this return cannot be implemented by following a way, which already led the Jewish people to catastrophe in the past: “the sin of knowledge that sent us into exile cannot bring us back to paradise” (ce n’est pas le péché de savoir qui, nous ayant chassé du paradis, nous y ramènera), concluded Fondane. Considering all these, it is not surprising that Fondane would write two years later to Jacques Maritain: “En ce qui concerne Chestov, vous faites erreur. Sa conception n’est pas spécifique au juif—mais à la pensée juive—puisque Kierkegaard, Luther, voire un ertullien pensent souvent exactement comme lui.”23 Te secular Jew, argued Fondane (referring to a conference on the theme of the status of the Jews in Europe, Les Juifs parmi les nations, recently delivered by Maritain), immersed already in the western culture or the rabbi toiling
Benjamin Fondane, the Disciple 153 night and day over almudic texts, may share a way of thinking that reflects their Jewishness. However, this way of thinking has fallen under the spell of the all powerful rationality. It is the thinking that brought to mankind, after the fall, athe knowledge of divine srcin. Trough it, man demonstration has discovered law, the supposed purpose, to thebe“truth” obtained through logical or scientific reasoning. Soon after, even God became the prisoner of the law brought in the world by man. Tis way of thinking led, as we have already seen, to an autonomous ethic adopted not only by the Christian theology but also by Maimonides and Spinoza (before Kant). Shestov fought, as we know, a life-long battle against the tyranny of these “necessary truths”: “Il fait,” writes Fondane in the above discussed article of 1936 “une analyse meurtrière de notre progrès, de notre savoir, de notre morale,” Before the Fall man had knowledge, but he knew only God and through his knowledge of Him, he knew the world. Tis is the essence of Jewish thinking, this position metaphysique du Judaisme as Fondane defined it in his article; this was the knowledge that guided Abraham and Job in their reasoning and their deeds in the world. God Almighty is neither just nor perfect; human beings forced him to become such by setting up an ethic to which God himself had to complain. Shestov made this point clear and that is why he should be considered le philosophe juif par excellence. Shestov, though, accomplished much more than that: he showed the way and called for the return of Judaism to its point of departure, to a primeval, pure state, uncontaminated by the Greek philosophical thinking. Fondane believed that” the corollary of his master’s general “deconstruction,” applied not only to philosophy but also to religious thought, resulted in the rejection of Nietzsche’s claim that God was dead. o this assessment, Fondane added a great insight that went beyond the master’s thought: genuine Jewish thinking is represented by a permanent wrestling with the idea of the absence of God. In his memorable words: “Si le Juif, seul dans l’antiquité, a temoigné de la présence effective de Dieu, du moins pourrait-il, dans le monde moderne, et contre le monde moderne, être seul à témoigner, avec la même angoisse, de l’absence de Dieu!”24 One should not be surprised, therefore, to read in Maritain’s essay on existentialism published immediately the endreligious of the war (1946),and thatclaim, Fondane’s existential thinking was “an after essentially irruption an agony of faith, the cry of the subjectivity towards its God.”25 However, the philosophizing neo-Tomist theologian was too preoccupied to understand the phenomenon of the “religious protest in the guise of a philosophy” (Maritain’s emphasis); he completely missed the point Fondane and his master tried to make. In a way, one may say that the argument between Fondane and Maritain goes back to Pascal’s protest against Descartes’ attempt to exclude the revealed
154 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker truth from philosophy. Benjamin Fondane was not in search of “a religious protest in the guise of a philosophy” as Maritain put it but rather in search of a sublimated form of faith able to guide him in a world dominated by the confrontation veryheconcrete a painful of God. Werewith could find thismanifestations kind of faith?ofIneviltheandBook, wouldabsence answer Fondane without hesitation and in that he followed his master. In his letter to Maritain, Fondane wrote: “Rien n’est clair en tout cela, toute est embrouillé, confus et cependant, certes, la seule chose claire c’est que la clef de l’énigme est dans l’Ecriture.” Tese words sounded like an echo to Shestov’s words in his letter to Buber: “An infinitely profound and important truth has been revealed to us through the Bible. But the power of the serpent is such, that we are unable to recognize this truth.” 26 Te truth must be looked for in the Bible, but only a mind purified from the residuals of a thinking governed by the allpowerful necessity can hope to find the way. Shestov set again the goal; one has to re-think the Bible in the light of a new philosophy freed of the ballast of Athens and of the (biblical) serpent. However, the master pointed out also that once Adam, still holding on to his half-eaten apple, found his way to Athens, it became impossible to separate anymore the two, religion and philosophy. Athens and Jerusalem, the last work of Shestov and his magnum opus, presented the history of this development. Religion had to be separated by a certain kind of philosophy; if the philosophy which transgressed philosophy, a philosophy anchored in a new dimension of the thinking, the metasophia could be defined, religion beby reformulated in thisinnew frame last of reference. With thisset mandate andcould guided the code hidden Shestov’s writings, Fondane out to find this new philosophy. Te first station on his road was his own poetry born at the borderline between the thinking of participation and philosophy. Unfortunately, Fondane did not have the time to go too far on this road; would he have been able to convince Maritain if their dialogue continued after the war? Philosophy represents a process of reflection upon “meaning,” whether it is the meaning of a simple human act in everyday life or the meaning of the relationship between man and God (or the transcendental, or of the lack of it, if one prefers). Human existence remains an event if not reflected upon concept as soon as it is put under scrutiny. Is there but becomes a philosophical anything in-between these two possibilities? A concept has an essence that defines it (as concept), otherwise it would be a mere object, the concrete; thus, the concept of existence implies an essence. Our intellect makes essences intelligible to us. “If you abolish essence, or that which esse posits, by that very act you abolish existence, or esse,” wrote Maritain in the mentioned book.27 Terefore, true existential thinking (existentialism) was represented for Maritain, by a philosophy that claimed “the primacy of existence, but as implying and pre-
Benjamin Fondane, the Disciple 155 serving essences . . . and as manifesting the supreme victory of the intellect and intelligibility” (ibid). Fondane, on the contrary, was seeking a reflection upon the concrete, the individual or, as he called it, “le particulier existentiel” and the possibility to simultaneously in the process thisindividual, reflected upon Shestov and Fondane were in search live of philosophy of the of thelife. accidental and the “non-essential”. Te apparent arbitrariness of such a philosophy of the contingent seems to need to find a correspondence, to be somehow in agreement with the arbitrary nature of an Almighty, absolutely ranscendental God of the Old estament. A man frozen in the molds imposed by the omnipotent rationality cannot follow an unbound, living God; he has, therefore, two choices: either to freeze God by submitting Him to the rigors of the laws of logic or to free himself from their bondage, finding thus his way back to the Garden of Eden and the ability to talk again to the free God of the Bible. Can man “think” Paradise, though? According to Fondane, and this idea represents another serious departure from Shestov, primeval Judaism consisted in a certain way of living in the world rather than in a special way of interacting with God. Indeed, Micha, the prophet expressed this concept as follows: (Judaism means) “ . . . to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.” However, the way one acts in the world is very strongly related to the way one interacts with the ranscendental. From what was said above follows that Fondane’s homo judaicus’ ways to act and behave in concrete circumstances (as illustrated by Abraham and Job, for instance), his ways to think and judge the meaning of his acts and thetoevents he responded to, would have been unusual and diffi cultown to understand the modern, post-Enlightenment man. Shestov, the master, annoyed many with his refusal to yield to evidences, with his often quoted (Dostoyevsky’s) underground man and his recurring sentence about Socrates’ revival if God only wanted it. Fondane was talking about “a second dimension of thinking” (he went further than Shestov in his attempts to give a philosophical meaning to this Shestovian idea) and about the need to replace a philosophy based on the problem of the knowledge with one in which “knowledge becomes the problem,” a philosophy in which “le cri est la methode.’ All these may not mean very much to the “traditional” philosopher; but for a man to “walk with such his God,” to someone who feels lost worldstick and is whotrying in search of Him, an approach might become bothinathe walking and a compass. After all these, the question “was Benjamin Fondane a Jewish thinker according to his own definitions?” seems unavoidable. He was certainly a poet and under Shestov’s influence and guidance had become a philosopher, too. We have seen that until the master’s death in 1938, he acted if not as a disciple at least as a follower. Shestov established a link between his existential philosophy
156 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker and a certain kind of Judaism he proposed and illustrated abundantly in his last two works, Kierkegaard and existential philosophy and Athens and Jerusalem. In his last philosophical essay Existential Monday and the Sunday of History’s Sunday posthumously, Fondane thatbut existential philosophy was notpublished an outcome of the classical Greekobserved philosophy “a daughter of the thinking of the book of Genesis” (“ . . . elle n’est pas d’avantage d’Athènes, mais fille de la pensée de la Genèse . . .”). Tis was, briefly expressed, a statement of allegiance to the master, several years after his death. However, as we have seen already, Fondane went on and evolved along a path set by himself. Te poet explored directions the philosopher either did not dare or did not know how to approach. After Shestov’s death, in his poetry and in his writings about Baudelaire and Kafka, among others, Fondane pursued his own search insofar as his Judaism and the nature of Jewish thinking were concerned, as well as his—by now—imaginary dialogues with Shestov and Maritain. If the crop of Fondane’s “theoretical” writings on Judaism is meager, his poetry abounds in Jewish motives (I refer to the French poetry written after 1930, during his “Shestovian years”). After the “moment of crisis,” which occurred during the last years of the twenties, Fondane published in Romania his first volume of poetry entitled Privelisti (Landscapes). In 1933, Ulysses was published (in Brussels) to be followed by itanic in 1936 (in France). In between, Fondane began writing a long poem entitled L’Exode, which would be reworked many times and in the 28
definitive collection French poetry would appear after itanic. o follow the evolution of of hishis poems in time is particularly important in the context discussed here. Besides the fact that, as poets always do, Fondane too, used to rework several times practically everything he wrote, he also introduced during the years new motives in agreement with the trends and movements of his philosophical thought. As the latter evolved dramatically after the meeting with Shestov, in particular insofar as the existential and religious implications of his thinking were concerned, one can follow clearly the patterns of interference between the poetical and the philosophical thinking of the author.29 Te Jewish motives will be strongly enhanced during the years of the war and the German occupation but they present in hisdepoetry fromFondane, the very first version of Ulysses.of30Paris, As André Spirewere wrote, “l’Ulysse Benjamin c’est le Juif artiste, religieux, metaphysicien, poète.”31 As I pointed out above, the study of Fondane’s poetry is equivalent with the study of his search for a new philosophical and religious thought. I will return to this topic in a forthcoming book on Fondane.
ELEVEN
Instead of Conclusion Scattered Thoughts about Lev Shestov
Shestov related to theoncontradiction inherent in von a philosophy on faith: its never grounding is based revelation, but as Franz Baader hasbased pointed out, this is possible only because man’s intelligence is able to understand the concept of the absolute. Tis insight leads to Gnosticism and to the thought that human logic is guaranteed (only) by the ranscendental. *
I should mention the role Emil Lask should play in any discussion about the existence of the hiatus irrationalis. Was Shestov aware of Lask’s works? His friend Aaron Steinberg might have told him about this former student of Ricketts whomthehepoet, met while studying in Ossip Mandelstam, was influenced byGermany. Lask whenHehemaintained audited histhat course on Hegel in 1910 in Heidelberg (see the book Inscription and Modernity by John Kenneth MacKay). *
Karl Barth was mentioned once by Shestov in his article “Job and Hegel ,” but one cannot write about him without thinking of the Swiss theologian. He was
158 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker as adamant as Shestov when it came to the rejection of philosophy and the proclamation of faith as the only real option for the human being. He was also a master of the paradox in his reading of St. Paul’s Roman Epistle but became dogmatic later. Shestov was persistent and persevering but not dogmatic. *
“Reason is always required to control the excess of faith,” writes Milton Steinberg in his Anatomy of Faith. *
In his article on “Solovyev and Shestov,” V. N. Porus emphasized their unity in tragedy. Indeed, their conflict can be seen as representing a moment of the Russian cultural tragedy and their two different approaches as “different paths 1 As the Russian philosophical thought and tookRussian to understand causes consequences of the crisis of European culture.”the this isanda subject in itself, I avoided in this work a detailed discussion and analysis of the confrontation between the two. Te interested reader will find a good comparative analysis of the religious thought of the two authors in the chapter entitled “God Beyond the Whole” in William Desmond’s book Is Tere a Sabbath for Tought? (Desmond considers Shestov “a Russian religious thinker who bitterly excoriated dubious collusions between religion and philosophy”).
*
It willMilosz, not beGeorge quite true to sayYves thatBonnefoy, Shestov was after WW II; Czeslaw Steiner, andforgotten Paul Celan remembered him. Most of those who referred to him later were poets, but Deleuze and Steiner, who can be poetical at times, also mention him. In a recentCahiers Leon Shestov an interesting article on Blanchot and Shestov has appeared, and a large part of Europe’s April 2009 issue in France as well as an entire issue of Humanitas in Italy (vol. 64, 3/2009) were dedicated to him this very year. Research on the Internet reveals that in Russia he has been often mentioned in recent years, too.2 *
Another discussion I left out in the book is that about the relationship between Shestov and his French translator, Boris de Schloezer (1881–1969). Tey met in 1919 in Kiev where—as we have seen—the Shestov family moved from the turbulent post-revolutionary Moscow. For a while they all lived in the huge mansion of Daniel Balachovsly, where Scriabin’s widow and her family came to find refuge in January 1919. Balachovsky was a good friend of the Russian composer, and Boris de Schloezer was the brother of atiana, Scriabin’s wife.3
Scattered Toughts about Lev Shestov 159 In France, de Schloezer would be known as a translator of olstoy and Dostoevsky (and Shestov, of course) and as a philosopher and theorist of music. He was very active in promoting Russian authors, from the very beginning of his life inémigré exile: in he translated with André GideJacques and another Russian to 1923 become well knowntogether in the editorial world, Schiffrin, Pushkin’s Queen of Spades, and in 1926 he became at the prestigious NRF, the editor of the new collection of “Young Russian” writers. He also published the biographies of the two most important contemporary Russian composers, Scriabin and Stravinsky. In 1966, he helped organize in Paris the festivities occasioned by the Shestov centennial and was the keynote speaker at this event. At this occasion, de Schloezer made two statements I have kept in mind all the time while writing this book; one had to do with Shestov’s attitude toward Kierkegaard. It took two years to get his book on the Danish philosopher published in Paris despite the interest in his work at the time; the delay, as de Schloezer would tell Shestov, was caused by the general opinion that the book was not about Kierkegaard but rather about . . . Shestov. o this observation, the old philosopher replied calmly that “when one writes about thinkers like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky or olstoy, the author must take sides and unveil his own thinking as it was re-shaped by theirs. I wanted to write a book about Kierkegaard I experienced while reading him.”4 Te second memorable quote from de Schloezer’s speech was contained in its concluding paragraph: “At the end of my talk I have a sentiment of dissatisfaction: Shestov knew to express himself vividly in such a lively and srcinal stylehis thatwork any one commentary seems to besosuperfluous. Briefly, in order to present should simply choose a number of fragments from his writings, present them to the reader, and then leave him alone to reflect upon them.” Tat is why I so often referred to Shestov himself rather than commenting on him in some of the previous chapters. *
In a letter sent to Shestov in 1906, Hillel Zeitlin pointed out to him that he made a mistake in not observing that the main “revolutionary” trends of Nietzsche’s thought were present already in period of regarding his activity.5 For some reason, that reminds methe thatworks quiteofathe fewfirst misreadings Nietzsche and Shestov might be found in Rachel Bespaloff’s essay on Shestov published in Cheminements et Carrefours. *
I mentioned several times in the book the Russian émigré revue in Paris, where Shestov often published his articles, Put (Te Road). A PhD thesis by Antoine
160 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker Arjakovsky regarding the activity of this focal point of Russian cultural life in Paris between 1925 and 1940 was recently published. It is an excellent source of information for those who want to understand better the Russian intellectual context of Shestov’s activities during the twenties and the thirties of the previous century. *
I do not know where I found this quote from olstoy about the Jews. I mention it because it is relevant to the observation he made after his meeting with Shestov in 1910 when he said that Shestov must be a believer since all Jews are: “Te Jew is that sacred being who has brought down from heaven the everlasting fire and has illumined with it the entire world. He is the religious source, spring, and fountain out of which all the rest of the peoples have drawn their beliefs and their religions.” *
Te quote above reminds one of Prometheus and recalls the notion of hubris. In his last article on Husserl, discussed in a chapter of the book, Shestov wrote that the horrors of our existence are due to the fact that reason only is left to determine the limits of the possible. Is not that another way of understanding hubris? *
While wasGustav writingShpet aboutwas Gilson andfor Medieval in Paris in 1935, inShestov Moscow arrested the firstPhilosophy time for “anti-Soviet activities.” Exiled to Siberia, it seems that he was still able to continue his activities as he was working in omsk on a translation of Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit. I wonder if during Shestov’s visit to the Holy Land in 1936, he discussed the fate of Shpet with friends and acquaintances they had in common. oward the end of 1937, as the ailing Shestov was preparing his conferences about Kierkegaard for Paris Radio, Gustav Shpet, charged with conspiracy for the re-instatement of the monarchy in Soviet Russia, was arrested again and executed later that year. *
Another very good source for the understanding of the Shestovian background is the work of Georges Nivat.6 I have not mentioned the role played by the prince rubetskoy in the Russian cultural life at the beginning of the twentieth century (and in particular the activities around his review Moscow Weekly which was published between 1906 and 1910, a critical period following the aborted 1905 revolution). I have not focused on other important names for the Russian
Scattered Toughts about Lev Shestov 161 cultural history of the pre-communist years her, but those interested will find many details relevant for the evolution of Shestov’s thinking during these years in the thesis of Genevieve Piron. *
Nivat pointed out that immediately after the Revolution of October 1917, many important intellectuals and writers (among others, Blok, Biely, IvanonRazumnik) considered the political events as an opening toward a “spiritual revolution,” which, they thought, would take over not only Russia but the entire world. *
While some of the Russian intellectuals believed in the political revolution as a precursor and trigger of a Sergei quite different revolution, among them Nikolai Berdyaev, Bulgakov,spiritual and Semen Frank (Iothers— mention only a few better known names among the nine authors who contributed in 1909 to the collective volume entitled Landmarks)—were opposed to this idea. Shestov’s friend Gershenzon, who initiated the volume and Peter Struve were somewhat hesitant.7 It is interesting to note Gershenzon’s ambiguous position in this discussion; Shestov would reproach his friend for the same wobbling attitude later (see his article dedicated to Gershenzon after his death, in Speculation and Revelation). It is interesting to observe that Shestov, who at the time was perceived as being a stranger to either of the two groups, did not participate in the debate. *
I did not discuss explicitly in the book Lev Shestov’s political attitude. It is not that he never assumed any; the truth is that he always tried to stay away from any formal involvement with politics and ideology. In his youth, he did have a penchant toward socialist ideas. Later, in particular after the Kerensky phase of the revolution, he was not unsympathetic to social changes in a country that has seen too many and too deep injustices, but he could not accept the tyranny of a minority who imposed its rules on the basis of something he rejected entirely: the legitimacy of a knowledge (in this case social/political) based on abstract logical inferences. Conclusions reached on Hegelian grounds would have been inacceptable to him with or without Marx. I mentioned in a previous chapter of the book Shestov’s pamphlet about the Russian bolshevism published immediately after he left Soviet Russia. Lesser known is a strange article published in 1934 entitled Menacing Barbarians of the Day. In this article, after a long analysis of the European political landscape, Shestov pointed out that the new barbarians at the gate were not at all disturbed by science
162 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker or by a sophisticated technology built upon modern scientific knowledge. On the contrary, they knew very well how to take advantage of it. What the new barbarians hated was “that which has been revealed to man in the Scriptures, thatliberty.” who has been bestowed on us by religion: the understanding and the love of *
Shestov was loved by the poets. I have already mentioned already Celan, Milosz, and Bonnefoy, and I should add Marina svetaeva. What brought her close to Shestov in Paris in 1926 and 1927? Perhaps the resonances with his works expressed in entries like this in fragments of a diary published a few years earlier in Prague: “the most valuable thing in poems and in life—is what didn’t work out . . .” *
Gershon Sholem, who probably met Shestov during his visit to the Holy Land in 1936, tried to convince his friend Walter Benjamin to read his works. Benjamin was hesitant, busy always with other things; in a letter sent to Sholem from Paris on February 4, 1939, he mentionedAthens and Jerusalem (“I decided that I will read [it] someday”) and immediately added that “one can only take off one’s hat to the commentator in him and I think that his stile is superb.” However, when he came to his philosophy, Benjamin concluded that it was “I believe, rather admirable but useless”! When one reads his correspondence—of the same years—with Adorno, one understands why he came to this conclusion. *
At the occasion of the centennial anniversary mentioned above, Boris de Schloezer observed that those who understood Shestov, regardless of their philosophical view, were deeply transformed by this encounter; he told the story of a young fellow he met in Cerisy, the son of a rabbi who confessed to him that after being for years one of Shestov’s followers, he left him to become a philosopher of science. However, he added, “je suis rationaliste autrement depuis que je suis passé par Chestov” (I am a different kind of a rationalist since I encountered Shestov). *
Did Shestov, the philosopher of faith, have faith? Boris de Schloezer, who was very close to him, had his doubts. He certainly had a longing for faith, which was an expression of a strong want of hope—believed de Schloezer—but in his everyday life, he was rather a stoic. Pushed harder, during the conversation
Scattered Toughts about Lev Shestov 163 with Brice Parrain (who was of the opinion that unless Shestov had faith, he could not have written his terrible books without falling prey to utter and catastrophic despair), de Schloezer repeated that Shestov strived always to achieve but hedewas not a real believer “‘Il avait l’espérance de la foi, pas la foi, mais l’faith, espérance la foi”). *
It is not easy to understand Shestov’s evolution from the statement about a world in which time was out of its joint to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is difficult perhaps to accept that the same Shestov who believed that the God who revealed His law to Moses believed that He sent later His son to redeem mankind from the srcinal sin; still, he said it in his letter to Bulgakov. *
Questions such as, “why did not Shestov become cynical following his thorough ‘deconstruction’ of contemporary philosophy, so strongly stated in his ‘apotheosis of the groundlessness?’” represent also a difficult challenge. Living dangerously was not his choice; in fact, the problem was not that at all; Shestov’s existential nightmare was related to the condition of the man trapped in a situation that does not allow an acceptable outcome. Tis is not a one-time occurrence, it is not a situation similar to the one in which the hero of the Greek tragedy finds himself as his situation accepts always the heroic outcome. Te Shestovian hero, if one may generalize beyond the personality of Shestov himself, is in a state of permanent tension and he has to live with it for ever. Te option of dying in a spectacular way is not acceptable to him. Catharsis was not a concept that had rights in Leon Shestov’s house. *
What kind of a Jew was Shestov? Tis is another difficult question to which almost any answer will be necessarily partial if not simply erroneous. Of course he was born Jewish, but according to cultural, external criteria he was an “assimilated Jew.” He wrote in ways that induced some critics to consider him a Russian orthodox thinker; others thought about him as a mystic lacking a clear religious affiliation. He clearly transgressed certain basic Judaic traditions while remaining faithful stubbornly to others. *
In this book I have revealed and interpreted the trajectory of a life and how this trajectory was established, and I have also pointed out its meanings and its consequences. Shestov had to live from the very beginning with an all present
164 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker lie which became an all present constraint. Te general ideas, the well argued theories, strong moral principles, or beautiful artistic constructs—be they poems, Shakespearian tragedies or deep metaphysics—could not help him overthat others come his predicament. have been affl How icted, could fromheNietzsche believe intothem? Dostoevsky, Moreover, fromheKierkegnoticed aard to olstoy by a similar curse. What was to be done? Prove the fallacy of the rational thinking and find a replacement. Indeed, that is what he did during the first part of his life; he kept pounding on the philosophy of the philosophers, on science, and in the end, on ethics of the good and evil. Te only way out was God. However, there he had a problem, and his God was part of the problem he had. He wanted to get rid of his Jewishness, but he could not. He wanted to become a Russian, and he could not. In 1914, though, he was on the way to find a solution. He could become a Russian and remain a Jew if he could show thatcorrupted the earlybyChristianity of Jesus and his a new of Judaism Greek rational thinking. Teapostles essence was of the new form religion was the same in that it relied on the idea of an Almighty God who could, if He so wished, change his mind and hint about those things Jesus was talking about. Shestov tried to overcome his predicament by creating a new religious frame in which he could assume a new identity without having to abandon the old one. Te same was the case with Benjamin Fondane and with Yonathan Ratosh (who wanted to create a Canaanite civilization based on a primordial Judaism, but which could include other cultures as well); was it true for David Vogel though? I think it was because his “change of the frame” was related to the Hebrew language.8 *
In his lecture delivered at the Harmony Club in NY in 2001 (May 15), Michael Walzer talked about “Universalism and Jewish Values” (see www.carnegiecouncil.org). For emancipated Jews, he said, such “Jewish ideas” as “the creation of men and women in God’s image, the liberation from Egyptian bondage, the prophetic critique of injustice, the vision of a general redemption” were “more likely to derive from Kant or Marx rather than from the Bible or the almud.” Walzer pointed out that the supporters of the universalist values “simply picked the nicest passages and ignored everything else”; one might wonder if that was not the case with Shestov. *
What is Jewish in Shestov? I am afraid very little. I realize now that he speaks always of the Judeo-Christian philosophy/thought (see also the mentioned letter to Bulgakov). For him, Jerusalem was not the city of David only but also that of the crucifixion, of Christ (in spite of the fact that Jesus was named “‘the
Scattered Toughts about Lev Shestov 165 Nazarene”). Fondane tried to make him Jewish (see his letter to Maritain), but he himself was not sure . . . *
Husserl, following St. Augustine, wrote in hisCartesian Meditations, “do not wish to go out; go back into you. ruth dwells in the inner man.”9 He wanted to be in total control: if we start from ourselves and censor everything which is not evident to us in the strictest sense, the probability of going astray in our speculations is significantly reduced. Te transcendental is thus eliminated, being totally external to us, to our mind. Te belief in God becomes impossible since God is barred from the “science of phenomenology.” What about faith? *
Young Levinas became strongly with as phenomenology as soonsaw as he learnt about it. Atheists and the infatuated agnostics, such Sartre or Heidegger, in it the perfect method the only way to rid themselves of the Kantian and Hegelian residuals in an idealism they were eager to reject. For Shestov, it was obvious that embracing Husserl meant renouncing the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. However, is this conclusion as obvious as one might think it is? Could transcendental phenomenology, which in the mind of its proponent, was supposed to overcome the “naturalistic objectivism,” include Shestov’s God? *
Levinas wrote in his ofreview of Shestov’s on Kirkegaard “the only modern philosopher Judaism worthy ofbook the name” was Franzthat Rosenzweig. It is very tempting to write a book about the four, Shestov, Buber, Rosenzweig and Levinas. All of them tried to redefine Judaism for modern times. Te trouble is that each of them begins with a very different starting point; each had in view a different Judaism as the subject of change or reform. Moreover, each of them had a very different philosophical outlook on which they based the analysis of the past, the present, and the future. Te temptation to write about the four thinkers as proponents of “Judaism for the future times” is tempered by the disappointment produced by the faint echo their work has today beyond the confines of the academic world and a few limited intellectual circles. *
I have, however, prepared materials about the three thinkers in view of such a comparative study and will present here a few scattered ideas about Levinas. At the time Shestov was writing Athens and Jerusalem, Levinas was working on his first philosophical essay, De l’évasion (published in 1935 in Recherches philosophiques, a review directed by Koyré, Spaier, Wahl, and Gaston Bachelard). In
166 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker a letter to Jacques Rolland—who reprinted the old text (in 1982) with an extensive commentary and an attempt to position the thinking of early Levinas in the a contemporary context—the author pointed out the aim of the essay: “mon vieux peut-être situation intellectuelle de la fin du senstexte où l’etait existence tenueà à. .l’.êtémoigner tre oubliait,d’une à la veille de grands massacres, 10 jusqu’au problème de sa justification.” What could have Shestov commented on such a text? Existence, in his mind was not attached to being as being is an abstract concept while existence is suggests being alive and is experienced by the individual human being Emmanuel Levinas . . . *
As a good student of Husserl and an enthusiastic follower (at that time) of Heidegger, Levinas observed at the beginning of his essay that traditional philosophy notinterferes accept easily conceptfreedom. of being; wouldbeing thatisbe? It is becausedid being withthe (human) Tewhy human at odds with a world that is external to it, not within itself: “ . . . les luttes qui le déchirent . . . ne brisent pas l’unité du moi. . . .”11 Te author takes issue with the self-sufficient “moi” (self ) and defines it as a typical feature of the bourgeois spirit. Such an attitude implies an understanding of the being ( être) in terms of its definition based on external influences.12 Tus, being exists without any need for further qualification. Te Western philosophy never went beyond this” point, claimed young Levinas. Te peace of mind of the philosopher was achieved through the postulation of this simple definition of the being. Any difficulty concerning the human condition was assumed to be due to this bounded, finite dimension of the being. Te meaning of this finite character was not scrutinized; only an effort toward transcendence could help overcome this situation: “la transcendence de ces limites, la communion avec l’être infini demeurait sa seule préoccupation.”13 Te modern temper (sensibility), on the other hand, seemed to depart from this attitude, according to Levinas. Te idea of limit, of boundary, was not applicable to theexistence of that which exists but to its nature only. Being had another, deeper, problem than that of being finite. Tat is why we tend to run away from being, to avoid it; it is at this juncture that Levinas introduced the concept of évasion. At this same moment, Shestov would have said probably, “stop, abandon this hopeless track and go read the Scriptures. . . .” *
Levinas too discovered the concept of “suffering” but in a very different way from Shestov. For him, a certain unsatisfied metaphysicalneed (besoin in the French srcinal), something similar to what troubles Sartre’s character in La Nausée, a deficiency in the essence of the being transferred upon the being it-
Scattered Toughts about Lev Shestov 167 self, engenders suffering. Moreover, for Levinas the specific suffering induced by this unsatisfied want represents the (state of ) sickness. Sickness is not, however, a passive state but on the contrary, a dynamic one. Te sufferer tries to overcome this situation, to overcome it byturns defining purpose, but are he would abandon his attempt if this target out toa certain be attainable. Tere wants, and there is a consciousness of the want and the relationship between the latter and the qualities of the various wants, and they are problematic. However, the suffering associated with the want does not mean necessarily that we are finite beings. Satisfying a need, a want, does not cure the suffering: the need may re-occur, or we might be very disappointed post factum. We are left with the lingering feeling of suffering and that is exactly what defines our specificity: “ce qui donne au cas de l’homme toute son importance c’est précisément cette inadéquation de la satisfaction au besoin”!14 At this point, in order to substantiate the claim thatconcept: need enhances being (rather than weakening it, Levinas introduces another that ofthe pleasure ), which in turn, le plaisir leads to that of shame ( la honte), and so forth. Maybe one day I will come back to ponder about the impossible dialogue between Shestov and Levinas . . . *
In an article about Buber, Levinas made the distinction between Jewish thought and Jewish philosophy: “I speak of thought and not of philosophy, because the intellectual life of Judaism which has retained its Jewishness does not present itself in terms of principles, nor should it be judged on that basis.” Would Rosenzweig have agreed with this statement? *
I want to reiterate here a point I have made earlier, but I am afraid it has not benn emphasized enough (that is one of the reasons for writing these condensed statements here, at the end of the book: they might be retained easier than long and elaborated arguments would be). For Shestov the interaction with God was the only essential, meaningful human interaction. He/she who attempts this ultimate communication knows how to communicate with his/ her fellow human beings. Buber seems to be preoccupied mainly with the involvement of the I with the other; but Levinas observes that for Buber the dialog is built in the essence of the I which by reuniting the sacred and the profane in itself is from the very beginning not a substance but a relationship. *
After trying to explain the essence of Buber’s understanding of the Judaism in terms of the “I-Tou” relationship, the concept of the Meeting, and so forth, Levinas abruptly stops and writes “I will never go beyond this statement, be-
168 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker cause I do not know how to summarize Judaism. Because I cannot—one cannot—summarize Judaism.”15 Tis assessment is true: Judaism does not have a dogma on which one can rely; the Mishna and the almud are part of that body thatthe constitutes butHaLevi so are and the Maimonides, Bible and the the Midrashim, the Cabbala, writings Judaism of Yehuda Hassidic tales, and many other documents. *
If it is not easy to position Shestov within Judaism because of the difficulty to position Judaism itself, it is not easy to define Shestov’s attitude toward Christianity either, even if in this case, the “target” at least is better defined as formal theologies have been developed in all its main branches. In her thesis, Michaela Willeke concluded that Shestov viewed both the Old and the New estament bearing the biblical God but while accepting outstandingasrole of Jesuswitness . . . [he]toaccused Christianity of having abandoned“the its 16 biblical tradition in favor of the Greek philosophy.” o some extent, I agree with this conclusion, even though I find it somewhat biased; but is not the bias due to Shestov’s own ambiguous position? *
Shestov’s insistent references to Abraham and Job in his later writings brings up the issue of the distinction between the role of faith in Judaism versus Christianity: Judaism requires a faith defined by Abraham’s “lech lecha” or “akkidat Itzhak” Christianity Jesus’ story oftocrucifixion. Shestov talks episodes. all the time about faithrequires and thea belief Jewishincommitment give precedence to the do vis-à-vis to the listen, hear, and understand when it comes to God’s revelations (the famous “Naase ve nishma” in Hebrew; based on faith,it is not identical with the Greek pistis). He would have agreed that one should first consider and then think over the meaning of the things before acting, but that should be the case when it comes to matters between human beings and/ or the relationship of man with his surroundings. Here laws and constants of behavior can be found, and it is reasonable to act only after reflecting upon them. Not when it comes to God’s commandments. *
Te problem of the law in Judaism: God’s law is absolute and has to be followed based on the absolute faith in Him. Te story of the Rabbi (Rabbi Akher, one of the major rabbinical figures of the Mishnaic period) who abandoned Judaism as a result of witnessing a personal tragedy induced by the submission to one of the laws required by the Jewish ritual (“mitzvat shiluach ha ken”), is perhaps the paradigmatic example. Not so with Aquinas and the entire medieval
Scattered Toughts about Lev Shestov 169 Christian religious thinking. Te idea that “the Law was made for the man and not the man for the Law” was instilled by Saint Paul but Judaism remained impermeable to it. Man must do his best to obey the Law even though everybody inconsistency/inconstancy knows that he cannot always do it. At out times he does timesbyheShestov does not. Tis is pointed again and atagain in his writings. *
Te issue of the ‘depth of history’: in Judaism, the past has meaning since at every stage the behavior of men affects the possibility of Redemption. If past could be annulled, the fact that the Law was transgressed during this period becomes irrelevant and the game can start anew. In this case Redemption, as a concept which implies the collectivity, loses its meaning. Tat is why, from a Jewish point of view, Shestov’s annoying metaphor aboutnot God whosense. may at any time, according to His will, annul Socrates’ death does make *
Te second part of Paul Rostenne’s book, Léon Chestov—Philosophie et Liberté (Bordeaux: Editions Biere, 1994) is entitled, “From Irrational to rans-Rational.” Te intent of the author was to explain that Shestov sought an experience, which cannot be translated in rational terms, but which is still possible for the man who succeeds in communicating with the Absolute. Like the Zen satori, it would consist in an experience that cannot be rendered in rational terms. *
Speaking of satori: I planned to introduce in this book a chapter entitled “Shestov and Zen” as I worked on this idea for many years, not only because I have discovered that before WW II Shestov was very fashionable in Japan; I believe his search for a dialogue with the absolute resonates in many ways with the metaphysical approaches of some of the representatives of the Kyoto school and in particular its master and founder Nishida Kitaro. However, when I re-read the text I wrote, I came to the conclusion that in order to make it transparent to the reader, I will need to explain too many details belonging to domains far remote from the realm in which Shestov’s story unfolds. Te danger was that instead of adding knowledge to my text, I would add confusion. For now I have given up on this project but may return to it in a future work on Shestov. *
I have found it also difficult to introduce Benjamin Fondane in this book; at first, its title was supposed to be Lev Shestov and Benjamin Fondane, existential
170 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker thinkers or religious philosophers? However, I soon realized that it would have taken quite a bit of explaining to make clear why Fondane, the poet, should be considered a religious thinker. Te real difficulty, though, would have consisted
in the volume. need to Even introduce another biography and another one single though the two were strongly bound entire in the oeuvre realm ofinphilosophy by their existential thinking, there are points where they depart from each other, even in this domain. I hinted in my text to the interest Fondane had in Bachelard’s and Lupasco’s philosophies and to explain this affinity, for instance, would have required too much of a departure from Shestov’s works. *
I will introduce, however, a few observations about their common interest in Lévy-Bruhl: in 1936 Shestov wrote (in Russian) an article about Lévy-Bruhl entitled “Mythe et Vérité,” occasioned thebook publication by the French an-17 thropologist during the previous year ofbythe La mythologie primitive. Tey had known each other for almost four years, and from the review under discussion we learn that Shestov was well acquainted with Lévy-Bruhl’s work. As mentioned above, the two first met in 1925 18 and developed a friendship based on mutual respect rather than on philosophical agreements.19 Shestov claimed that Lévy-Bruhl was a philosopher (“j’ai dit à Lévy-Bruhl, il y a des années de cela: vous êtes un metaphysician. Il me repondait que non” 20) rather than an anthropologist or sociologist. In his article, Shestov does not mention la pensée de participation. Fondane, who at that time was only vaguely acquainted with the anthropologist’s works, was emboldened by the master to read Mythologie primitive, “the book is extremely interesting, and I “would suggest you to write a review in Cahiers du Sud.” 21 When Fondane agreed (the article would be entitled “Lévy-Bruhl ou le metaphysicien malgré lui”22), Shestov was very appreciative: “(your article) on Lévy-Bruhl is from all points of view excellent. You pointed out, so convincingly his qualities as philosopher and metaphysic (metaphysicien) that he himself, after having read your article, will be persuaded.”23 *
Benjamin Fondane wrote another short article about Lévy-Bruhl in Cahiers du Sud in 1939 and published a more extensive one in Revue philosophique in 1940. In fact, as mentioned in the chapter dedicated to Fondane, it was his intention to write a book on this author; in the obituary written immediately following the death of Lévy-Bruhl in 1939, Fondane wrote that he will not insist on the contribution the great anthropologist brought to the metaphysics of consciousness (an idea triggered by Shestov in his article mentioned above),
Scattered Toughts about Lev Shestov 171 as this would be part of a discussion included in his upcoming book. *
Interestingly enough, I found some ideas relevant to this “‘pensée de participation,” in Buber’s “Report on wo alks,” a piece written in 1932, before the meeting with Shestov in Paris. Buber did not mention Lévy-Bruhl, it is doubtful that he had read his work (at the time at least), but he referred to the fact the modern man who had introduced an utterly conceptualized discourse in talking about God was totally missing the point. In other times, however, when the sacred and the profane were in direct communication, man could talk to God, indeed.24 *
Te following aremetasophia,” observations I made in an article entitled “Shestov andpages Fondane’s search for mentioned somewhere in the previous of my book; I reproduce them here again in order to emphasize the point about Shestov’s search for a radically new meta-sophia, a thought of the transrational that describes the adventures of the man in this heroic space of the communication with the total otherness. *
Was Shestov the only proponent of this need to break through the confines of philosophy and construct a new way of thinking, a metasophia, appropriate guidewell us known in this heroic A now Italian Giovanni philosopher who wastoquite duringspace the? first halfforgotten of the century, Papini, thought about it, too. In his posthumously published diaries,Pagine di Diario e di Appunti, I found the following two entries; one is dated in 1944, and the other one in 1946: “Gli parlo della Metasofia—sapienza superiore, al di là del gergo dialettico dei filosofi, che dev’esser tratta dalle rivelazioni dei poeti e degli artisti’ and, ‘Bisogna trovare una nuova via di conoscenza al di là della ragione—e questa si può trovare attraverso la poesia, l’arte, l’estro (whim) del genio, l’entusiasmo, il furore, la pazzia. Mutare il cuore e la mente. . . .”25 Both quotes sound like fragments of Shestovian aphorisms; or perhaps, rather like sentences written by his disciple Benjamin Fondane, who was, more often than the master, talking about the “second dimension of the thinking” (Papini’s “sapienza superiore”). He also wrote often about a philosophy in which “le cri est la methode,” about poetry which is being an inner need rather than an act of aesthetic satisfaction, an act and not an idle comfort (“un act et non un delaissement”) and about a poetry which had an existential function because it represented the act of living reality (“une affirmation de la réalité”). He wanted,
Scattered Toughts about Lev Shestov 173 signs of consolation while sitting on its banks . . . Many were influenced by Shestov, but they limited themselves to mere quotations or specific arguments extracted from their context (Camus in the Myth of Sisyphus is an example). Tere was a he need for further thisfor very well. Inin the process, prepared also clarifications, the ground forand theFondane next step.didTus instance, the past—explained Fondane—religion oriented itself toward knowledge and power; it identified adversaries in those who menaced to limit its power rather than in those who attacked its essence. Tat while a few, among them, St. Paul, ertullian, Pierre Damien, Pascal and Luther—Bible in hands—tried to bring the theological consciousness (la conscience théologique) to its srcinal question, “celle du péché srcinel en tant que Savoir, Necessité et Mort.” Tat was pure Shestov; however, at this point, Fondane surprises us with a comment that was never made explicitly by Shestov. Religious thinking must be specific to the religious experience: “Le besoin religieux ne peut pas subsiter27 sans une pensée à lui . . . (il) doit s’exprimer en une pensée, en un langage.” Fondane made, therefore, the point that religious thinking was not against knowledge in itself but rather against autonomous knowledge. It is here that he talks about an open monade, “il (l’esprit religieux, that is) veut d’un savoir, d’une morale, qui aient des portes et des fenestres, qui puissent recevoir ces ‘espèces messagères’ que Leibnitz rejetait de sa monade” (ibid.). Religion meets philosophy, because the absurdities born from the exclusion of anything but autonomous reason, the individual, the color, the affective, have been captured in the gravitation field former: surprenant”—asks Fondane—“que àoflathe longue, se “Est-il sententdonc solidaires et, à la recherche d’une penséecesqui‘absurdités,’ les puisse réunir et défendre et exprimer, gravitent autour du centre d’attraction le plus puissant de leur cosmos—cette pensée même que balbutie le besoin religieux?” (ibid.). Chapter XXVII in the book about Baudelaire is very important for the understanding of the new directions in Fondane’s existential thinking. *
Shestov and Fondane were both in serch of a metasophia. o reach it, one had to overcome heart and mind, mutare il cuore e la mente. Going beyond the particulier existentiel , as retracing Fondane Job’ tolds great Lupasco, meant following the realm of the sea, voyage in quest for theUlysses hiddenbeyond face of God. Is that possible? Shestov died an unhappy Sisyphus but about Fondane we might think that Camus’ words, “il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux,” hold true.
176 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker 6. 7.
Lev Shestov, In Job’s Balances, p. 175. Benjamin Fondane, Rencontres avec Léon Chestov (Paris: Editions Plasma, 1982), p. 144 : “Schloezer told me that your essay was the best introduction to existential philosophy written so far,” my translation.
8.
Ibid., p. 184: “remettent cause,etavec et .insistance, les problèmes fondamentaux de la connaissance, de la en religion de fermeté l’existence . . son œuvre est la critique la plus radicale que ait jamais été faite de la ‘théorie de la connaissance’ et de la connaissance elle— même.” “Nier la possibilité même de l’évidence, la possibilité même de la connaissance, attaquer le principe de contradiction, foncer sur la nécessité, prétendre que là où il y a connaissance il n’y a pas de liberté, que la liberté ne commence que là où finit la connaissance . . .” (ibid.). Ibid., p. 185: “Seule donc la pensée crée la liberté ou la nécessité, l’ordre ou l’arbitraire. . . .” Shestov,Athens and Jerusalem (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1966) p. 48. Ibid., p. 51. Ibid., p. 75.
9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
14. 15. Ibid., Ibid., p. p. 411. 408. 16. Fondane,Rencontres, p. 205: “chacun de nous doit décider par lui-même et pour lui-même, s’il acceptera le général . . . si obéissant à l’éthique il fera de Dieu une ‘pensée sans force’ ou si, par contre, il se mettra dans un rapport absolu avec l’absolu et entrera en ‘contestation’ avec Dieu.”. 17. Shestov,Athens and Jerusalem, p. 376. 18. “Correspondence Benjamin Fondane—Jean Wahl,” Europe, no. 827 (Mars 1998) (p. 141): “je crois que c’est parce que je connais par trop, et depuis de trop longues années, l’ironie et aussi le désespoir.” 19. Shestov,Athens and Jerusalem, pp. 70–71. Existence and the Existent (New York: Image Books, 1956), p. 131. I will 20. discuss Jacques inMaritain, a later chapter in more detail the “Maritain connection.”. 21. Bernard Martin, Great 20th Century Jewish Philosophers (New York: Te Macmillan Company, 1970), p. X. 22. Bergman, Faith and Reason, see bibliography. 23. Léon Chestov, Spéculation et Révélation (Paris: L’age d’Homme, 1981), p. 7. Te article written by Nicolai Berdyaev appears as preface to this posthumous collection of articles written by Shestov after WWI. 24. Frank Bowman, “Irredentist Existentialism: Fondane and Shestov,” Yale French Studies, no. 16 (Winter 1955–56): 111–117. 25. John Bayley, “Idealism and Its Critic,” Te New York Review of Books, 14, no. 12, June 18,
emphasis. 26. 1970; Leon my Shestov, Chekhov and Other Essays (Ann Arbor: Te University of Michigan Press, 1966), p. XXIII. 27. Shestov appeared independently in the third volume of the collective work of Edie, Scanlan, Zeldin; and Kline on Russian Philosophy; more recently he is mentioned in two books addressed to a general public authored by Leslie Chamberlain, Motherland: A Philosophical History of Russia (New York: Overlook Press, 2007) andLenin’s Private War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006).See also,A History of Russian Philosophy, edited by A. Kuvakin (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1991).
178 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker
4. 5. 6.
7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.
His imes: Encounters with Brandes, olstoy, Dostoevsky, Checkhov, Ibsen, Nietzsche and Husserl (New York: Peter Lang, 1993). Baranoff-Chestov,Vie I, p. 15. Ibid., p. 24.
Hermann wrote brief biographical Shestov in Russian, whichearly has never beenLovtzky translated intoa English. Another sketch source about for details related to Shestov’s life is found in the memoirs of Aaron (Aron) Steinberg, but this text, too, is available only in Russian. Tese sources are often quoted in the books by Baranoff-Chestov, Valevicius, Geneviève Piron, “La Genèse de l’oeuvre de Lev Chestov: L’eau vive et l’eau morte de Chestov,” PhD diss. (University of Geneva, 2008); Piron’s dissertation is forthcoming in book form by L’Age d’Homme in Paris. Kent Hill, “On the reshold of Faith: An Intellectual Biography of Lev Shestov from 1901–1920” PhD diss. University of Washington, 1980; his work remains a very important contribution to the study of Shestov’s life and philosophical work. Lev Shestov, Journal de mes pensées, vol. 1 (Québéc: Le Beffroi, c 1986), p. 30; my translation from the French.events In spite of this the memorable in his life. remark, in all his writings Shestov emphasized the role of Baranoff-Chestov, Vie I, p. 24. Ibid., p. 27. For details, see Baranoff-Chestov, Vie I, pp. 30–31. Again, letters in Russian are conserved in Shestov’s archives in Paris, but information can be obtained from both the biography of Baranoff-Chestov and the thesis of Kent Hill. Baranoff-Chestov, Vie I, p. 32 and p. 72. Hill, “On the Treshold of Faith,”p. 39. I could have adopted the politically correct feminine form or other devices commonly used in the postmodern discourse, but I ended up staying with Shestov’s rhetoric. Obviously,
I write “man” 16. whenever Baranoff-Chestov, Vie I,orp.“men,”, 42. I mean human beings, regardless their gender. 17. Te article about Pushkin was published posthumously in Léon Chestov, Spéculation et Révélation; as elsewhere, my translation from the French. 18. “La Genèse de l’oeuvre de Lev Chestov,” see reference 6 above. 19. Valevicius, p. 22. 20. Spéculation et Révélation, p. 224, my emphasis. 21. I use the text published as an Appendix to the French edition of Lev Shestov, Apotheosis of Groundlessness entitled Sur les confins de la vie (Paris: Éditions de la Pléiade, 1927). 22. Shestov,Sur les confins, p. 226. 23. Ibid., p. 231. 24. Ibid., p. 237.
Chapter Two 1. 2. 3.
From his last article on Edmund Husserl, published after his death in 1938 and reproduced in Spéculation et Révélation (Paris: L’Age de l’Homme, 1981), p. 206. See the chronological bibliography contained in G. Piron’s doctoral thesis, p. 442. Benjamin Fondane, Rencontres avec Léon Chestov (Paris: Editions Plasma, 1982), p. 148.
180 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker 42. Ibid., p. 13. 43. It is not that in the previous books Shestov did not mention such questions; we have seen and discussed such instances already. However, such ideas were so far scattered and the accent was on the need for a different way of thinking rather than on the content of the themselves. Vie I, pp. 86–94. 44. thoughts See Baranoff-Chestov,
Chapter Three 1.
First published in 1916, the English translation had an introduction by D. H. Lawrence; a new version of this edition was published in 1966 under the title Chekhov and Other Essays at Te University of Michigan Press. In 1977, Ohio University Press included the book under the title Penultimate Words and Other Essays, in a volume together with his previous book, Te Apotheosis of Groundlessness, with the title changed to All Tings Are Possible. Tese
7.
mixes changes of titles between different editions andAvarious translations pose sometimes aand problem in the identifications of Shestov’s works. very good biblio-chronological list that clarifies many of the puzzles related to the Shestovian bibliography can be found in G. Piron’s doctoral thesis. Shestov,Penultimate Words, p. 118. Ibid., p. 126. Ibid., p. 134. Ibid., p. 140. A. J. Ayer,Metaphysics and Common Sense (San Francisco: Freeman, Cooper and Company, 1969), p. 211. Ibid., pp. 155–156.
8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.
157. Ibid., p. 158. Shestov,Penultimate Words, p. 167. Shestov,All Tings Are Possible, p. 60. Shestov,Penultimate Words, p. 167. Ibid., p. 179. Ibid., p. 209. Ibid., p. 175. Ibid., p. 182. Ibid., p. 183. Ibid., p. 191. Ibid., p. 190. Ibid., p. 193. Ibid., p. 195. Ibid., p. 197. Ibid., p. 198. Ibid., p. 204. Ibid., p. 208. Ibid., p. 209. Ibid., p. 214. Ibid., p. 218.
2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Notes 181 Chapter Four 1. 2. 3.
4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.
19. 20. 21.
Baranoff–Chestov,Vie de Léon Chestov, vol. I, p. 142. Tis idea remained strongly impressed upon Shestov’s mind; almost thirty years later, he would tell Fondane, “I remember John Gabriel Borkman . . .” see Fondane,Rencontres, p. 99. Te reader can find a good rendering of the event in Baranoff–Chestov, Vie I, pp. 126– 131. Great Vigils has not yet been translated into English; I mentioned in the previous chapter that in a volume that includes the two previous works of Shestov, edited by Bernard Martin and published under the title All Tings Are Possible and Penultimate Words and Other Essays, the editor included a chapter about Te Teory of Knowledge extracted from the Great Vigils. Baranoff-Chestov, Vie I, p. 140. Ibid., p. 143. Baranoff-Shestov mentions that at the Lenin library in Moscow she uncovered 8 letters Shestov wrote to Shpet between 1911 and 1919, see Vie I, p. 112. For a clear explanation of the genesis of the text and its future fortunes see,G. Piron’s thesis. Lev Shestov, Sola Fide (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957), p. 152. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 8. Shestov indicates two of Adolf Harnack’s books among his references, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (Outlines of the History of Dogma, Boston: Beacon Press, 1959) andDas Wesen des Christentums (translated in English under the title What Is Christianity? and published by Punam ‘s Sons, in New York in 1901). Shestov,Sola Fide., p. 17. Ibid., p. 18. Ibid., p. 23. Shestove, All Tings Are Possible, pp. 208–210; partly quoted in the previous chapter. See Fondane, Rencontres, p. 87. Shestov,All Tings Are Possible, p. 33. Tere are slight differences between the way this quote appears in the French translation of Sola Fide as compared with that of the English translation of the book on olstoy and Nietzsche: “Le bien n’est pas Dieu, il faut chercher ce qui est au-dessus du bien, il faut chercher Dieu.” In any case, if there is something “problematic” in this statement, it has to do with the strong affirmation of the search for God in the case of Nietzsche and not in the small semantic differences between the two versions of the quote. Ibid., p. 57. Fondane,Rencontres, pp. 143–144. Ibid., p. 98.
Chapter Five 1.
A thorough discussion concerning Shestov’s publications in Russia during the WW I years is to be found in G. Piron’s dissertation.
Notes 183 34. 35. 36. 37.
Ibid., p. 312. Ibid., p. 349. Ibid., p. 328. Baranoff-Chestov,Vie I, p. 175.
38. 39. Ibid., Ibid., p. p. 179. 182.
Chapter Six 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.
Lev Shestov, “What Is Bolshevism?” Mercure de France (# 533, Paris, September 1st, 1920). ,A very good description of this Russian milieu in Paris can be found in Baranoff-Chestov, Vie I, pp. 209–215. See Baranoff-Chestov, Vie I, pp. 230 et passim. Lev Shestov, L’eredità fatale (orino: Ananke, 2005). Baranoff-Chestov,Vie I, p. 363. Shestov asked Jules de Gaultier to help him publish in Revue Philosophique his article on Husserl, “Memento Mori.” In May 1925, Gaultier wrote him: “I spoke to M. Lévy-Bruhl about your work on Husserl. He seems quite interested in publishing it. You will only need to discuss with him the issue of the translation when you go to see him . . . He knows your work and will be very pleased to see you” (My translation from Nathalie Baranoff-Chestov, La vie de Léon Chestov, vol. I (Paris: Editions de la Différence, 1993), p. 375. Lévy-Bruhl read immediately after publication the French translation of Shestov’s essay on Pascal, “Nuit de Gethsémani,” and was quite impressed (see again, Baranoff-Chestov,Vie I, p. 289). “Lévy-Bruhl a dit à Mme Bespaloff : ‘Je suis en complet désaccord avec Chestov ; mais c’est un homme de talent et il a le droit d’exprimer sa pensée.’” Quoted from Benjamin Fondane, Rencontres, p. 82. Ibid., p. 92. Baranoff-Chestov,Vie I, p. 371. Shestov,Potestas Clavium, p. 275. Ibid., p. 281. Fondane,Rencontres, p. 80. Shestov,Spéculation et Révélation, p. 207 (my emphasis). Baranoff-Chestov,Vie II, p. 28. Ibid., p. 36.
Viep.II,39.pp. 40–44. 15. Baranoff-Chestov, 16. See Baranoff-Chestov, Vie II, 17. Obviously, most of the references to this topic exist in French: a book such as that of Michel Winock, Le siècle des intellectuels (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1999) presents a good “panoramic” view, written for the general public. In English, there is an extensive literature that addresses specific authors of the period, but each book contains also a fairly thorough description of the “background”: for instance, Bruce Baugh, French Hegel, from Surrealism to Postmodernism by Bruce Baugh (London: Routledge, 2003) or Richard Wolin,Te Seduction of Unreason (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); both represent a good illustra-
184 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker tion of this statement and contain many useful references. Moreover, many of the works of the representative authors of the mentioned trends in the inter-war French philosophy, from Sartre to Maritain and from Mounier to Gabriel Marcel, have been translated into English. 18. Tis might not be entirely true: Gabriel Marcel embraced Shestov’s critique of the causality and when he argued that there were various kinds of causality in a later work, he was still echoing Shestov: see Gabriel Marcel, “Dieu et la causalité,” Présence de Gabriel Marcel, no. 18, (2008): pp. 9–17. 19. See Michael Finkenthal, “Le dialogue manqué,”Europe, no. 827 (Mars 1998) : 128–142. 20. Shestov, “Revolt and Submission,” in In Job’s Balances, p. 175. 21. Shestov,Sola Fide, p. 46 ; Spinoza, Ethics, vol. II 7 (Te Latin text translated by R.H. M.Elwes in 1883 can be found online at http://frank.mtsu.edu (MSU Philosophy WebWorks Hypertext Edition, 1997). 22. Ibid., pp. 186 to 194. 23. Ibid., p. 193. 24. Ibid., claimed p. 194. that the gods do not philosophize because they do not need to become wise; 25. Plato ibid., p. 156. 26. Ibid., p. 160. 27. Ibid., p. 144. 28. Ibid., p. 145. 29. Ibid., p. 188. 30. Ibid., p. 191. 31. Jacques Maritain, Existence and the Existent (New York: Pantheon Books, 1947), p. 131.
Chapter Seven 1.
2. 3. 4.
Shestov, “Gethsemane Night.” However, one finds in this essay many statements that attest to the fact that Shestov had a very good understanding of Pascal’s writings and a good grasp of their context. He explicitly mentions, after talking quite a bit about the role of the concept of abyss in Pascal’s works, that in theProvinciales, there is no word about the abyss: “Pascal’s sole object was to get reason and morality on to his side, the side of his friends at Port Royal” In Job’s Balances, p. 294. Shestov,In Job’s Balances, p. 277. Ibid., p. 280. Ibid., p. 283.
5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
Ibid., Ibid., p. p. 287. 299. Ibid., p. 305. Ibid., p. 307. Ibid., p. 308. Ibid., p. 310. Ibid., p. 313. Ibid., p. 256 (srcinal emphasis). Ibid., p. 261.
188 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker 31. Ibid., p. 281. 32. Not only Christian philosophers were trying to make faith into something which can be understood; this trend was strong in the Jewish medieval philosophy, and Maimonides himself had given in to this temptation in large parts of his Guide of the Perplexed. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.
Ibid., p. 282. Quoted by Shestov from “De Civitatate Dei,” in Athens and Jerusalem, p. 283. Ibid., p. 253. From “Sickness unto Death,” quoted by Shestov in Athens and Jerusalem, p. 254. Understand in order to believe, believe in order to understand. Even if the first part of the sentence did not start as it does, the mere connection between the two is problematic in the biblical context. 38. From Summa Teologica, quoted by Shestov on p. 302. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid.
Chapter Ten 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.
17. 18.
Fondane,Rencontres, p. 18. Ibid., p. 22. Ibid., p. 24. Baranoff-Chestov,Vie II, p. 29. Fondane,Rencontres, p. 176. Benjamin Fondane, Rimbaud le Voyou (Paris: Denoël et Steele, 1933), p. 19. Ibid., p. 34. Benjamin Fondane, La conscience malheureuse (Paris: Denoël et Steele, 1936), p. X. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., p. 267. Benjamin Fondane, Faux raité d’esthhétique(Paris: Editions Paris–Méditerranée, 1998), p. 108. Benjamine Fondane, Le lundi existentiel (Paris: Editions du Rocher, 1990), p. 23. Fondane,La conscience malheureuse, p. XIX. My translation from the French. “J’espérais pouvoir refaire le texte au point de vue des problèmes posés par les nouvelles logique,” quoted in BSEBF, no.2 (Automne 1994), p. 9. Tis work has appeared under the title L’Etre et la connaissance; for a brief review of Lupasco’s ideas, see my introductory notes to this book (Paris: Paris-Mediterranée, 1998). Te article “Leon Shestov and His Fight against the Evidence,” published in Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, no.7–8 (Juil/Août 1938) was included in Benjamin Fondane, Rencontres avec Léon Chestov (Paris: Editions Plasma, 1982). Te quote above is from p. 249. Michel Carassou et René Mougel, eds. Fondane-Maritain Correspondance,(Paris: Editions Paris-Mediterranée, 1997). Te recently published book by Monique Jutrin, Ecrits sur le Judaïsme (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2009) contains all the texts written Fondane in Romania as well as in France, on Jewish themes.
Notes 189 19. Benjamin Fondane, “Léon Chestov à la recherche du Judaïsme perdu,” Revue Juive de Genève, IV (1936): 326–328. 20. “J’appelle ‘essentiels’ les traits d’une figure qui se situe hors du temps, hors de l’histoire, hors des bornes d’une structure définie: geographique, historique, nationale, et qui s’attache à exprimer, ou exprime malgré soi , la densité d’une révélation qui, bien que confié à un seul peuple, intéresse au plus haut degré le salut de l’humanité en général” (ibid.). 21. See the conference on Chestov, Un nouveau visage de Dieu: Léon Chestov mystique russe, given during his first visit in Argentina in 1929 (published in Europe, Mars 1998), the article “Un philosophe tragique: Leon Chestov” Europe XIX (1929): 142, and the two chapters on Shestov, included in La conscience malheureuse, book published by Fondane in 1936, one of which, Chestov, Kierkegaard et le serpent, was already published in Cahiers du Sud in 1934. o these, one should add two more articles written later, included in Rencontres avec Léon Chestov. 22. “Jews began to believe that they have a high moral standing due to their ethics.” 23. “Insofar as Shestov is concerned, you are wrong. His way of thinking is not specific to the
24. 25. 26. 27. 28.
Jew but to Letter the Jewish thinking; Luther, Correspondence, even ertullian p. would like him.” of February 28,Often, 1938,Kierkegaard, inFondane-Maritain 38 ; think italics belong to Fondane, my translation from the French. “If during antiquity the Jew was God’s only witness, in the modern world—and against his will—the Jew, as anxiously as ever, will be the only one who will be the witness of God’s absence,” my translation, ibid. Jacques Maritain, Existence and the Existent (New York: Image Books, 1946), p. 131. Baranoff-Chestov,Vie II, p. 126. Maritain, Existence and the Existent, p. 13. Tis is not the only oddity in the set-up of the volume, which would have the final title of Le mal de fantômes. Te poem with this title, written mostly during the war years (1942–43),
Ulysses and itanic, see the Fonwas introduced followingintheBulletin will of dethelapoet in d’Etudes between Benjamin dane’s literary testament Société Fondane , 2 (1994) and Monique Jutrin’s articles in Cahiers Benjamin Fondane 11 (2008) and 12 (2009). 29. I will not follow up on this idea; I only want to mention that such interferences were observed already by early critics of the author; thus in a review of Ulysses written immediately after its publication, Léon-Gabriel Gros pointed out the influence of Pascal on the poet. Tis came most probably following the lecture of Shestov’s “Gethsemane Night,” Cahiers du Sud, 157 (1933, September). 30. For details see the above quoted article by Monique Jutrin in Cahiers Benjamin Fondane, 11 (2008): pp. 117–129. 31. André Spire was a French-Jewish poet, who held Fondane in high esteem.Te quote reads,
“Fondane’s Ulysses is the Jewish artist, religious, metaphysician and poet” (my translation).
Chapter Eleven 1. 2.
See V. N. Porus, “Solovyev and Shestov,”Russian Studies in Philosophy, 44, no. 4 (2006): 59–74. See for instance in Russian Tought after Communism, ed. James P. Scanlan (Armonk: M.E.
190 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker
3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Sharpe, 1994) the article of aras D. Zakudalsky on Shestov, and the revival of religious thought in Russia. For the relationship between the two see the article by Peter G. Christensen, published in the collective volume Te ragic Discourse, edited by Ramona Fotiade (Bern: Peter Lang, 2006). Te information about the details of life in Kiev in 1919 comes from Baranoff-Chestov, Vie I; there exists a typed copy of Boris de Schloezer’s talk, which I received from Monique Jutrin the publisher of Cahiers Fondane. Tree letters of their (probably more extensive) correspondence were uncovered by Genevièeve Piron (private communication). Georges Michel Nivat, Russie—Europe, la fin du schisme; accessible on the Internet in French at http://classiques.uqac.ca/ Te conflict between the two, occasioned by the publication of this volume, is thoroughly discussed in an article by Brian Horowitz, “Unity and Disunity in Landmarks: Te Rivalry between Petr Struve and Mikhail Gershenzon,” Studies in East European Tought, 51, no. 1,
(1999): All these61–78. may sound strange to the reader. I am working on a study that discusses the different approaches taken by the three poets mentioned, Fondane, Vogel, and Ratosh, on the way toward a redefinition of their identity; the three, without knowing of one another, lived in Paris in 1939. 9. Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations (Te Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, , 1969), p. 157. 10. Emmanuel Levinas, De l’évasion (Paris: Fata Morgana, 1982), p. 7. Te English translation , On Escape, was published in 2003 by Stanford University Press. “‘My old text was perhaps in a position to bear witness to an intellectual situation of meaning’s end, wherein the existence attached to being forgot, on the eve of great massacres, even the problem of its own justification” (translation by Bettina Bergo). 8.
De l’Evasion 11. “Tese notl’image break up thenous I.”. l’offre les 12. “Levinas, . . . cette catégorie de, p.la67; suffi sance struggles est conçuedosur de the l’êtreunity telle ofque choses, ”, ibid. p. 68. 13. Ibid., p. 69; “Te transcendence of these limits, communication with the infinite being, remained philosophy’s sole preoccupation.” 14. Ibid., p. 79; “What gives the human condition all its importance is precisely this inadequacy of satisfaction to need.”. 15. Emmanuel Levinas, Outside the Subject (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 17. 16. Private Communication; Michaela Willeke’s doctoral thesis at Münster University, entitled Lev Sestov: Unterwegs vom Nichts durch das Sein zur Fülle was published by Lit Verlag in Berlin in 2006 in book form (thanks to ill Kuhnle for this information). Rencontres, p. 84. 17. Fondane,asked 18. Shestov Jules de Gaultier to help him publish in Revue Philosophique his article on Husserl, “Memento Mori.” In May 1925, Gaultier wrote him: “I spoke to M. Lévy-Bruhl about your work on Husserl. He seems quite interested in publishing it. You will only need to discuss with him the issue of the translation when you go to see him . . . He knows your work and will be very pleased to see you” Quoted in Nathalie Baranoff-Chestov, Vie I, p. 375). Lévy-Bruhl read immediately after publication the French translation of Shestov’s essay on Pascal, “Nuit deGethsémani,” and was quite impressed;see again Baranoff-Chestov, Vie de Chestov I, p. 289.
Notes 191 19. “Lévy-Bruhl a dit à Mme Bespaloff : ’Je suis en complet désaccord avec Chestov ; mais c’est un homme de talent et il a le droit d’exprimer sa pensée.’” Rencontres, p. 82. 20. Ibid., p. 92 ; “For years I told Lévy-Bruhl that he is a philosopher ; he replied, no.” 21. Fondane,Rencontres, p. 83. Le Rouge et le Noir, 21 22. September Benjam Fondane, 1937. “Lévy-Bruhl ou le metaphysicien malgré lui,” 23. Fondane,Rencontres., p. 141. 24. In Martin Buber, Eclipse of God (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, 1988). 25. Giovanni Papaini, Scritti Postumi (Roma: Mondadori, 1966), p. 273 and p. 396: “I speak of Metasophia, a superior knowledge, beyond the dialectical jargon of the philosophers, fed by revelations made by poets and artists” and “one must find a new modality of knowledge, beyond reason, which is generated by poetry, arts, the whim of the genius, enthusiasm, fury, and foolishness” (my translation). 27. His poetry was a different issue; what he wrote after itanic was part of an exercise in faute de mieux, “practical existentialism.” Tis, though, is an entirely something I might different subject notcall, to be discussed here (see also, the end of the chapter about Fondane, the disciple).
Bibliography
Bibliographical Note Shestov wrote all his books in Russian, but the translations did not follow the chronology of their appearance. Furthermore, the srcinal titles were not retained in many cases. In fact, entire books or fragments taken from various works have been lumped together at times, and these rearrangments of the different parts of books make their identifications somewhat difficult. Subsequently, I will list under Primary Sources the books I used in various languages, in the order of their apparition in Russian, regardless the dates of the various Western translations. Very useful chronological lists of Shestov’s works can be found in Nathalie Baranoff-Chestov,Vie de Léon Chestov (Paris: Éditions de la Différence, 1993) and in the Appendix II to the book Potestas Clavium, translated by Bernard Martin into English (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1968); the most complete up-to-date bibliography is contained, to the best of my knowledge, in Geneviève Piron’s doctoral thesis entitled La genese de l’oeuvre de Lev Shestov (Genève 2009) to be published soon at L’Age d’Homme in Lausanne.
194 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker Primary Sources, Annotated Books Shestov, Lev. Dostoevsky olstoy and Nietzsche. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1978. Tis collective volume contains Te Good in the eaching of olstoy and Nietzsche: Philosophy and Preaching (first published in Russian in 1900) and Te Philosophy of ragedy (first Russian edition in 1903) Shestov, Lev. All Tings Are Possible. Ed. and rans. Bernard Martin. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1977. Tis volume contains Te Apotheosis of Groundlessness published for the first time in 1905 and in English in 1920, with a foreword by D. H. Lawrence; it was translated into French as Sur les confins de la vie (Paris: Éditions de la Pléiade, 1927).All Tings Are Possible includes also Beginnings and Endings published srcinally in 1908 and translated in English as Penultimate Words and Other Essays. Tis second work, including an article extracted from Te Great Vigils (1911)—a still un-translated work by Shestov—was published also under the title, Chekhov and Other Essays by Te University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor) in 1966. Shestov, Lev.Potestas Clavium. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1968. It was first published in Russian in Berlin in 1923 at Skythen Verlag, then in French translation in 1928. Shestov, Lev.In Job’s Balances. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975 (the first French translation was published in 1929. Te book includes also a chapter often quoted separately under the title Revelations of the Death as well as the translation of La Nuit de Gethsémani: Essai sur la philosophie du Pascal, published for the first time in French by Grasset in Paris in 1923. Kierkegaard Existential Philosophy Shestov, Athens: Ohio 1969. Vox TisLev. volume was firstand published in France as .Kierkegaard et laUniversity philosophiePress, existentielle: clamantis in deserto. Paris: Vrin, 1936. Shestov, Lev.Athens and Jerusalem.Athens: Ohio University Press, 1966. It first appeared in France in 1936 at Vrin in Paris. Shestov, Lev.Sola Fide (Luther et l’Eglise). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957. Shestov, Lev.Spéculation et Révélation. Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1981. Shestov, Lev.Shakespeare and His Critic Brandes. St. Petersburg: Mendeleev Ed., 1898. Tis book, the first written by Shestov, has never been translated from the Russian. Šestov, Lev.L’eredità fatale: Etica e ontologia in Plotino.orino: Ananke, 2005.
Articles published in France Shestov, Lev.What Is Boshevism. Mercure de France (#533, September 1st, 1920). Shestov, Lev.Descartes and Spinoza. Mercure de France (#600, June 15th, 1923). Shestov, Lev. Martin Buber. Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger (#11–12, November–December 1933). Shestov, Lev.Job ou Hegel ? La Nouvelle Revue Francaise (#240, May 1935).
Bibliography 197 Zeitlin, Hillel. In On the Border between wo Worlds.el Aviv: Yavneh Publishing House, 2003. Zimmerman E. Michael.Heidegger’s Confruntation with Modernity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.
Articles Arjakovsky, Antoine. “Léon Chestov et Nicolas Berdiaev: une amitié orageuse.”Léon Chestov: un philosophe pas comme les autres? Cahiers de l’émigration russe 3 (1966). Bayley, John. “Idealism and Its Critic.”Te New York Review of Books, 14, no. 12, June 18, 1970. Bentz, Keri. “Te Wastelands of Reason : Blanchot and Shestov.”Cahiers Lev Shestov, no. 3 (2002): 31–54. Bowman, Frank. “Irredentist Existentialism: Fondane and Shestov.”Yale French Studies, no. 16 (Winter 1955 –56): 111–117. Christensen, Peter G. “Lev Shestov’s Existentialism and Artistic Creativity in Boris de Schloezer’s Peter Lang, Mon 2006.nomme est persone.” In Te ragic Discourse, ed. Ramona Fotiade. Bern: Di Stefano, Anna Escher. “Chestov, lettore di Nietzsche.” Il Contributo, 4, no. 3. (Luglio-Settembre 1982): 3–43. Finkenthal, Michael. “Le dialogue manqué.”Europe, no. 827 (Mars 1998): 128–142. Finkenthal, Michael. “Shestov and Fondane’s Search forMetasophia.” In Te ragic Discourse, ed. Ramona Fotiade. Bern: Peter Lang, 2006. Finkenthal, Michael. “Costrizione e persuasione in Šestov..Humanitas, 64, no. 3 (2009). Fondane, Benjamin. “Léon Chestov, à la recherché du judaisme perdu.”Revue Juive de Geneve, no. IV (1936): 32–34. Fondane, Benjamin. “Lévy-Bruhl ou le metaphysicien malgré lui.”Le Rouge et le Noir, 21 September 1937. Fondane, Benjamin. “Un philosophe tragique: Leon Chestov.”Europe, XIX (1929): 142. Fotiade, Ramona, ed. “Correspondence Benjamin Fondane—Jean Wahl.” Europe, no. 827 (Mars 1998): 141. Franck, Joseph. “Nihilism and Notes from Underground.” Te Sewanee Review, 59, no. 1 (1961): 1–33. Gros, Léon-Gabriel. Sur l’Ulysse de Benjamin Fondane. Cahiers du Sud, no. 154 (1933) : 172– 175. Hatem, Nicole. “Kierkegaard et Chestov, philosophes du tragique.” InTe ragic Discourse: Shestov and Fondane’s Existential Tought,ed. Ramona Fotiade. Bern: Peter Lang, 2006. Horowitz, Brian. “Unity and Disunity in Landmarks: Te Rivalry between Petr Struve and Mikhail Gershenzon.” Studies in East European Tought, 51, no. 1, (1999): 61–78. Lawrence, D. H. Foreword to Leo Shestov,All Tings Are Possible. New York: Robert M. Bride & Co., 1920. Levinas, Emmanuel. Review of Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle, by Leon Chestov. Révue des Etudes Juives, 101, no. 1–2 (1937): 139–141. Marcel, Gabriel. “Dieu et la causalité.”Présence de Gabriel Marcel. No. 18 (2008): 9–17. McLachlan, James M. “Shestov’s Reading and Misreading of Kierkegaard.”Canadian Slavonic Papers, 28, no. 2 (1986): 174–186. Rosenthal, Bernice Glatzer. “Shestov’s Interpretation of Nietzsche.” InTe ragic Discourse, ed. Ramona Fotiade. Bern: Peter Lang, 2006.
Index
A A Tousand and One Nights, 72 Abraham (biblical figure), 7, 99, 108, 111– 112, 128, 132, 140, 146, 151–153, 168 Adam (biblical figure), 56, 71, 78–79, 104–105, 116, 119, 139–140, 154, 158 Aleichem, Shalom, 75 All Tings Are Possible, See: Apotheosis of Groundlessness, Te ananke, 26, 108
Anselm of Canterbury, Anton Chekhov and Other79Essays, 3 Apotheosis of Groundlessness, Te, 3, 13, 40–41, 43–45, 47, 52, 57, 68, 73, 75, 89, 97, 107 Aristotle, 59, 61, 64–66, 73, 95 Athens and Jerusalem, vii, 4–7, 72, 92, 99, 112, 129–142, 154, 156, 162, 165 Athens, 43, 99, 106, 154 Augustine, Saint, 14, 63–68, 75, 81, 96,
102–103,vii140–141, 151, 165 Averroism, Ayer, A. J., 49
B Baranoff-Chestov, Nathalie, x, 19, 21–22, 30, 45, 48, 71, 90 Baudelaire, Charles, 2, 78, 122, 145, 147, 150, 156, 172–173 Bayley, John, Beginnings and11Ends, 45, 47, 51, 74 Belinsky, Vissarion, 22, 37–38, 132 Berdyaev, Nikolai, viii, 10–11, 47–48, 56, 65, 84, 88–89, 104, 115, 118, 129, 132–135, 151, 161 Bergman, Hugo, 10, 120 Boehme, Jacob, 133–134 Boitani, Piero, xi
202 Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Tinker Mill, John Stuart, 13, 55 Milosz, Czeslaw, viii, x, 158, 162 Monas, Sidney, 11 Moses (Biblical figure), 58, 104, 163
N Neo-Kantianism, 82–83, 93 Neo-Platonism, 65–66 Nietzsche, Friedrich, viii, 3, 11–13, 15–16, 26, 28, 30–37, 39–41, 44–45, 49, 51, 57–58, 60–61, 63, 67, 72–73, 80, 89–90, 92, 98, 102, 106, 111–112, 115, 122–123, 125, 127–128, 130–133, 137, 143–145, 152, ,159, nihilism viii, 164 11 Nirenberg, Ricardo, xi Nivat, Georges, 160–161 Notes from the Underground,37–38
O Olsen, Regine, 110–111 ontology, ix, 9, 16, 57, 80, 94, 131, 139, 146 Orpheus, 110 overman (Nietzschean concept), 15, 36, 125, 128
P Parmenides in Chains, 5, 108 Pascal, Blaise, viii, 3, 7, 12, 15–16, 57, 88–89, 96, 101–108, 126–128, 151–153, 173 Paul, Saint, 61, 63, 76, 103–106, 141, 158,
169, 17363–64, 68 Pelagians, Penultimate Words, 11, 40, 47–58 Pharisees, 75 Philistines, 127 Philo of Alexandria, 106, 108, 119 Philonenko, Alexis, x Philosophy of ragedy, Te, 13, 37, 47–48, 58, 75
Piron, Geneviève, viii, x, 26, 89, 161 Plato, 6, 13, 15, 28, 43, 61, 64–65, 73, 82, 86, 97, 108, 127, 141 Plekhanov, Georgi, 20 Plotinus, Porus, V.65, N.,89, 15899, 102, 107–108, 128, 151 potestas clavium (“power of the keys,” concept), 61, 65, 73 Potestas Clavium (work), 4, 5, 72, 78, 80–81, 90, 94, 124 psychoanalysis, 25, 43 psychology, x, 39, 43, 53–54, 57, 61, 82–83, 150 Pushkin, Aleksandr, 19, 22, 26–28, 72, 159
R reason, ix, 2, 4–5, 7–10, 14, 16, 29–30, 38–39, 43, 50–51, 59, 64, 68, 74, 79–81, 83, 91, 93–97, 102–112, 116, 120–127, 129, 131–135, 138, 141, 146, 148, 153, 158, 160, 173 “tyranny of,” ix, 2, 97 religiosity, 16–17, 35, 121 Remizov, 21, 47–48 Revolt and Submission, 72, 96–98 Rivière, Jacques, 88–89 Rosanov, Vasily, 10, 47, 60 Rosenzweig, Franz, viii, 17–18, 119–120, 127, 136, 165, 167 Rules and Exceptions, 74
S Sartre, Jean-Paul, viii-ix, 9, 148, 165–166 Scheler, Max, 88–90, 136 Schloezer, Boris de, 4, 85, 88, 90, 92, 109, 115, 143, 158–159, 162–163 Schopenhauer, 52, 144 Schwartzmann, Isaac Moiseievich (father), 20–21, 24–25 Second Dimension of the Tought, Te, 68, 109, 120, 155, 171 Shakespeare and His Critic Brandes, vii, 26, 30, 45
