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Post by pieter on Nov 22, 2005 11:27:43 GMT -7
Hello Pieter, thank you for so much ineresting reading. I'll try to write what I think about Hegel, in the light of Shestov's basic disagreement with some of his ideas, leaving Polish philosophy tradition for some other time, ok? I wouldn’t say that I am the follower of Shestov, or to be more precise, I wouldn’t dare to say so. Please note, that I am in a much better position than Shestov – I live 100 years later and enjoy my chance to see the mankind’s failures and achievement during that time. Nonetheless, yes, I think that some of Shestov work is still very up to date even today. But most of all, I think that digesting Shestov is an important step to understand the whole idea of philosophical quest.
And now to Hegel. I hope you don't mind that my opinion/answer here will be a liitle bit perverse, that is in order to make my point clearer. As we know Hegel is an extremely difult author to understand. I think very few fully understand his work. Perhaps it is this difficulty, and often misunderstanding, that contributes to the occasional biased un-entitled and simplified comprehension of his work. I am afraid that my reception of part of Hegel’s work is just like that – it is overly simplified and under the surfaces it is negatievely biased by my growing up in the country under the totalitarian rule. In other words – I have had an occasion to try in practice, and with my own life, how did work out the theoretical assumptions of Hegel, put into practice by his leftist followers. I am sure you already know what I am heading at. Yes, the famous Hegelian methaphysics, according to which state is a manifestation of Geist and as such is more real than people which constitute the state. Of course, Hegel is not responsible for the way the generations of ‘philosophers’ and politicians, from both far right and far left – Marxist, Leninist, Stalinist, Maoist, fascist and nazi– used his ideas. No-one in 19 th century could have imagined German and Russian totalitarian people-killing machines of the 20 th century. I am afraid that I can’t help ascribing the praising of growth of Prussian nationalism to Hegel, either. And to my mind it is the Prussian nationalism that turned Germany - the homeland of humanism, marvellous art and music, outstanding literature, philosophy and science, a gentle, people-friendly part of the world, the core of all the best conotatton a word ‘Europe’ used to have –- into the monster. And with this latter etiquette Germany of today, the excellent exemplar of democracy it learned from the USA, has to deal even today, some 60 years after the monster was killed.
I find it striking and saddening that even today, after the century of totalitarianisms, after the Holocaust, after the Gulag, the philosophical trends that grew from Hegel are still so popular. Derrida, Foucault, Habermas are well-know and read widely. Almost nobody reads ( or even have heard of), say, Thomas Molnar or Mortimer Adler. In communist Poland, and even right now, outstanding Polish philosophers such as Henryk Elzenberg, marvellous poets such as Cyprian Kamil Norwid or Zbigniew Herbert are usually less know than a myriad of mediocre ones praising the ‘progresivness’ the reign of ‘mankind’, ‘society’, ‘community’ over a single soul of a MAN.
Do you know the term ‘Hegelian bite’. It is very popular in Poland, or at least in Polish intelligentsia, and relates to many Polish intellectuals who were charmed by the ideas of communism shortly after WWII. I undestand them so well, because the utopia proposed by communism (and Hegel – beforehand) is really entailing, if that’s the proper word, for all sensitive souls. The termed ‘Hegelian bite’ was forged by one of Polish giants – Czes³aw Mi³osz. In one of his esseys he writes about his sensitivr student, who after Mi³osz’s lecture about „Biesy” of Dostoyevski has suddenly ‘understood’ that the evolution of doctines ending up in the paradise on Earth is a real fact, and joined the communists. Well, that happened long ago before another outstanding thinker of our time, Leszek Ko³akowski, got biten by Hegel, too. But Ko³akowski has recovered. And wrote his „Main Currents of Marxism”. The book totally banned in Poland and other countries of the Soviet-Russian communist block and the most hated by the communist administration. The book so wise, intelligent and insightful, which exposes every secret of one of the biggest lies of human history – the marxism, offering ‘paradise on Earth’. I am a man of faith, Pieter, just as Shestov used to be, I don’t need a paradise on Earth, I don’t think it is possible to make one here. Finally, to end up this Hegel-orineted post, I wish you all the best, hope to hear from you and I’d like to bring you a
Report from Paradise by Zbigniew Herbert
(Sprawozdanie z raju)
in paradise the work week is fixed at thirty hours salaries are higher prices steadily go down manual labour is not tiring (because of reduced gravity) chopping wood is no harder than typing the social system is stable and the rulers are wise really in paradise one is better off than in whatever country at first is was to have been different luminous circles choirs and degrees of abstraction but they were not able to separate exactly the soul from the flesh and so it would come here with a drop of fat a thread of muscle it was necessary to face the consequences to mix a grain of the absolute with a grain of clay one more departure from doctrine the last departure only John foresaw it: you will be resurrected in the flesh not many behold God he is only for those 100 per cent pneuma the rest listen to communiqués about miracles and floods some day God will be seen by all when it will happen nobody knows as it is now every Saturday at noon sirens sweetly bellow and from the factories go the heavenly proletarians awkwardly under their arms they carry their wings like violins
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Post by pieter on Nov 22, 2005 11:28:28 GMT -7
Dear Adam,
I enjoyed reading your answer, because -believe it or not- this was one of the purposes for me to post the texts about Hegel. I am not an Hegel expert and surely no Hegel fan or adebt, because in fact I love Arthur Schopenhauer's remarks on Hegel. As I sad earlier I posted it a little bit out of provocation to be able to feed the antothesis, which in my opinion is necasery for a philosophical and every political debate. I liked your answer so much, because you gave both a subjective and objective, personal and historical explenation on your position towards Shestov and Hegel. In my understanding Hegel had a great influence on the early Marx, Engels and on Feuerbach and Stirner. Objectively speaking for me Hegel is important to understand the influence from totalitarian rule in Europe, from Prussian militarism (uniting Germany in the 19th century and so laying the path for the first and second world wars), orthodox Marxism (early communism) and the German and European Social-democracy and Unions (Eduard Bernstein, who stressed the "idealist" side of the Hegelian dialectic, the leftwing-Social-democrat Karl Kautsky), and after that in the European Marxism-Leninism of the Western (Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknechtt) and Eastern Bolsjewist Communism (Lenin, Trotski, Bakunin, Feliks Dzjerzinsk and Stalin). Your answer is for that matter in my opinion not perverse at all, but merely realistic, pragmatic and personal. For me as a cultural and historical person with an interest in Duch, European and international politics I can understand and even empathise with your standpoint. What is difficult about me is that i have tried or wanted to be so neutral and objective that I have tried to fathom ideas, theories, concepts and the philosophy of thinkers, people, politicians and also philosophers which are the opposite of me, which I could consider my enemies or oponents. This experemint(s) started when I started my study history (teacher) in 1990 in Amsterdam, when I got lectures on the Feudal ism in the Middle ages, the ancient Greeks and pre-history. My teachers aksed me to think as a Middle age person, to understand the mentality of that time. He sad forget your critical standpoint, scepticism, irony, cynisism and secular opinion for a moment and think like someone who has an absolute faith, a godfearing person, a person who sees nature as a threat and a mystery. Also to understand the antiquity I had to forget todays moralitly, in which values of the French revoltion had influenced our democratic thought, "liberté, fraternité et égalité" (freedom, equality and brotherhood), and think in a sort of animal (social) darwinistic way, survival of the fittest, clan thinking, war is natural, and life is a constant struggle for survival, and unequality is a fact given by the Gods of the Mythology or by the grace of the Church, knighthood and nobility system. In that way I have tried to understand pure Nationalism, Nazism and Communism. Be absolutely ruthless, think only about your family, clan, tribe, people and nation. The others stand in your way, occupy your land, onlu because they live in your territory, steel or plunder their possesions, kill their men and take their wives and children, so that your tribe becomes stronger. In German context the right Hegelian influence on Prussian militarism and Nazism, the holyness of the statesystem (Nazi-aparatus), the ground (Blut und Bodem), the purity of the own race and people (Aryan glorification and the "Lebensborn" programm, trying to Germanise Polish children with blond hair and blue eyes), the romantic immage of farm life (Social-realistic art; Germanische Kunst), the formation of the elite structure and forces in the system (The SS aparatus in the), brainwashing the youth and women (Hitlerjügend and Bund Deutscher Mädel), creating a Military Industrial Complex and total employement (warindustry and expanding the army, navy and airforce), state bureaucracy (Nazi-aprty systemThird reich of Gauleiters, Gestapo and SD), Propaganda (Goebbels, Riefenstahl and UFA), schoolsystem (in which the racist social-Darwinism was taught) and the extermination programm (Reichsicherheitshauptambt, Wansee conferenz, Herman Göring, Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann). I have an absolute disgust for despotism, totalitarism, anti-semitism, racism and xenophobia, and regret that even I have traces of that, in my troubles with Germanies and Russian past ( always this habit to analyse a German in the beginning, is he good or wrong, cheking out, something I inherited from my parents. With Russians and Poles that is more difficult, because you can't check the expression on their face and their behaviour because you have no Slavic experiance - was he a communist or collaborator or not -in that I am a sort of second generation Second world war and cold war "expert" in a non-professional way). I tried to get into the skin of a blue eyed and blond Aryan German who profitted from the war, a Nazi. That searching and fighting for "Lebensraum" was good, that the Poles stood in the way, that jews are my biggest enemy (believing in the biological anti-semitism of the anti-semitist ideologes which inspired the Nazi's, Arthur de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Eugen Karl Dühring, W. Scherer, W. Marr -"Anti-semitische Hefte", Bossuet, Luther "Von Juden und ihren Lügen", Richard Wagner, and the actually not-anti-semite Friedrich Nietsche, which philosophy was abused by the Nazi's), that America was a degenerated multi-cultural Entartete state, in which a Jewish-negro culture could find it's roots, and England the allie of this Plutocratic enemy. Russia was ofcourse the biggest threat to our German existance and the Aryan Europe we stand for, due to it's Slavian, barbaric asian and most of all Jewish Bolsjewism, which had to be rooted out in the Blizkrieg we had to undertake. How deeper I got into this third reich madness, and experianced it psychopatic, ambivallent and Negative ideology the more I wanted to liberate myself from it and come back in my own autonomous space. The same experiance I had when I as a young idealist in my youth shocked my father's family tradition (which was a Conservative-liberal -Duch FDP- background, the entrepreneursclass), by voting for the red bastards in 1988, the Duch labourparty, and in the early ninetees experiancing all kind of left and radical left organisations, movements and parties in Amsterdam. I lived in Amsterdam next to the headquarters of the Duch Communist party (just before the party ceased to exsist), and met Anarchists, socialists, Marxists, Communists, radical left liberals, Trotskyists and Social-democrats there in a time that the left and radical left were stil very active. In that time I got Marxist lessons of a sort of Red Jehova witness, a Lenin lookalike, who teached me the basis, and in sicussions we always disagreed(ofcourse). he considered me a petit bourgeous, because I defended free market principles, freedom and democracy, while he believed in orthodox-marxist plan-economy and democratic centralism, while I believed in a liberal kind of Democratic socialism and supported the parlaimentary democracy and the multi-party system. Hegel was not far away ofcourse, and in that time I was not a Hegel supporter, because for a young man he was not understandable, and because I read Schopenhauer, who mocked Hegel. Besides that I was as a progressive young student deliberately a member of the youth organisation of the Duch FDP or Civic Platform, VVD's JOVD (Youth Organisation for Freedom and Democracy), the party of my father. I learned a lot in the two years that I lived and studied in Amsterdam and The Hague in the period 1990-1992. This story was my honest experiance with the Totalitarian side of Hegelianism you mentioned in your text. Thank you.
Pieter
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Post by pieter on Nov 22, 2005 11:29:06 GMT -7
Adam,
Here my second reply on your reaction on Hegel.
I think that you succeeded in your attempt to write what you think about Hegel. For me it is very interesting to know Shestov's basic disagreement with some of Hegels ideas, because in knowing that it makes me more aware and clear where Shestov and other existentialists stand. Polish philosophy tradition for me is an important element of Polish cultural tradition, to know more about the polish intelligentsia of the past (in my view the word Intelligentsia comes from Poland), Polish theoretical and Logical thinking, the role of Metaphysics in that, and what influence other philosophy had on the Polish philosophy and what influence the Polish philosophy had on the Western philosophy. Shestov plays a role in your thinking of today, and in the same time you enjoy your chance to see the mankind’s failures and achievement during Shestovs, Nietsches, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky's time, his time and all the years that came after that until now. Some ideas and concepts are timeless. Shakespeares plays are stil played today, and so does Bach, and the Opera's of Verdi and Motzart. Shestov is such a person in philosophy, like for me also Levinas.
Is it not true that many philosophers are misunderstood or wrongly used. Like the bible people use elements or episodes (parts of the thinkers ideas which suit them) and then construct a limited version of the original version in their own subjective reality. Agian I think it takes a lifetime (a long autodidact study) to understand the meaning of philosophy or Logos. One philosopher you can only understand by reading the books of Philophers he read and discussed in his own work, so I think that in knowing Shestov, you must have also read Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Luther, Pascal and the Bible (his biblical heroes were Abraham, Job and Isaiah). Do you know if Shestov writes in his books about Hegel? Your negatievely biased opinion about Hegel is understandable for someone who was growing up in a communist country, where Hegel -as part of Marx and Engels philosophical luggage- was considered one of the philosophers of the Satesystem. I think a philosopher is responsible for the way the generations of ‘philosophers’ and politicians after him uses his ideas, because a constructor of a set of ideas or systematic thought, must analyse his own ideas and understand that his ideas can used in this or that direction. Maybe philophers are egocentric, solopsist and maniacal like artists? I don't know, because I am not a philosopher nor a great expert in philosophy. I am only very interested in the history of thought and the thoughts of great thinkers of the past. Yes, I aggree with you that Germany after the entnazifierung by the Americans and the Democratic lectures by the same Americans, together with the Marshall plan, and the hard work of Germans themselves managed to create a wealthy and adult free society and the democratic state (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) of today.
You are right, I never heard about Thomas Molnar or Mortimer, but know Adler Derrida, Foucault, Habermas. In my interest in Polish philosophy and literature I now know thanks to you, that I have to search for the philosophers Alfred Tarski and Henryk Elzenberg, and the poets Cyprian Kamil Norwid or Zbigniew Herbert. I heard of Herbert in the ninetees.
Stil leftist people in the Western world (America and Europe) beleive in the Hegelian Utopia, so the ‘Hegelian bite’ will be exported to the West. Yes Leszek Kolakowski and Zygmunt Bauman got biten by Hegel, too. I have to read this book „Main Currents of Marxism” some time. I really want to read a book of Kolakowski, because I found his essays (which I read in Duch translation) so wise, intelligent and insightful too. For me he is a bright light and someone who is very good in analysing the late 20th century and our time (the beginning of this century). I respect the fact that you ar a man of faith, Adam, because I am interested in my Catholic roots (Justinus, Thomas of Aquino, Francis of Assis), christianity in general and Judaism (Torah, Talmud, Mishnah, Kabalism, Maimonides) and so the bible ( a book I read regulary). Next saturday I go to a Monastry in the Catholic province Brabant in the South of the Netherlands, near the city of Eindhoven, where there will be a spiritual muliti-confession meeting of a group of men who discuss certain subjects, there will be two Catholic theologists, one Protestant theologist, one humanist (or Agnost, I do not exactly know), a half Hungarian friend of mine who is a theatrical actor - who will introduce me to his group- and me. My religious being concentrates on the practice that I go to an empty church or chapel and meditate or pray, or do the same thing in a wood. I am not really attending mass, exept for christmas, a wedding or a funeral. With you and Shestov I don’t think it is possible to make a paradise on Earth. The human collective mind or purpose looks more like hell on Earth sometimes. I really asked myself sometimes if hell really was not already existent overhere. We human beings can be really harsh to oneanother, and make our own lives pretty difficult or unbearable.
Pieter
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Post by pieter on Nov 22, 2005 11:58:52 GMT -7
Witaj Pieter! Thank you for your answers. I read both with great pleasure, I appreciate the relation about your personal quest, and in fact all your remarks and experience. I will, naturally, return to these when time allows. And now, I have a question. What do you think about asking J&N to create a subfoder 'Philosophy'? In this manner we'll find these threads easily, and - what's more important - it woild be more visible for probable future participants. THe only problem is that a honorary 'moderator' would be needed. Would you take such a function? I am a very irregular visitor here and travel from time to time, when I am abroad I don't check the forum at all. And the 'honorary moderator' is required to check the forum regularly. So - would that be ok with you, and do you like the idea?
For this morning I 've got another poem by Zbigniew Herbert for you. It is somehow realated to our discussion about Hegel You'll find how communism in Poland was viewed by a major part of Polish intelligentsia, buy not just intelligenstia of course, before communism in Poland eventually fell. Milego dnia, Pieter!
The Power of Taste (Potæga smaku)
It didn't require great character at all our refusal disagreement and resistance we had a shred of necessary courage but fundamentally it was a matter of taste
Yes taste
in which there are fibers of soul the cartilage of
conscience
Who knows if we had been better and more
attractively tempted
sent rose-skinned women thin as a wafer or fantastic creatures from the paintings of
Hieronymus Bosch
but what kind of hell was there at this time a wet pit the murderers' alley the barrack called a palace of justice a home-brewed Mephisto in a Lenin jacket sent Aurora's grandchildren on into the field boys with potato faces very ugly girls with red hands
.............. So aesthetics can be helpful in life one should not neglect the study of beauty
Before we declare our consent we must carefully
examine
the shape of the architecture the rhythm of the drums
official colors the despicable ritual of funerals
Our eyes and refused obedience
the princes of our senses proudly chose exile
--translated by John Carpenter and Bogdana Carpenter
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Post by pieter on Nov 22, 2005 11:59:30 GMT -7
Dear Adam!
You're welcome. My personal quest is important to me, because there is a relation between life and thoughts which form themselve in the walk of life, and the intellectual resources (philosophy, history, arthistory -very important to me-, theology and sociology) which you are able to find, read, think about, digest, and so are becomming a part of your mental luggage, and in some occasions part of your mind, heart and soul. The Polish writers, artists and musicians I read, saw, heard and felt in my experiance are part of my h life, just as much as my babcia and jadek, Kotowicz-Pantoflinski, and my lively memories of Poland of the seventees, eightees and april 2004 (Krakow). For me philosophy is not only rational-analythic or scientific, but also creative, personal and sometimes ambivallent, because both objectivism and subjetivism play a role in that, empirical and metaphysical experiance and knowledge go hand in hand. I think that asking Jaga & Nancy to create a subfoder 'Philosophy', is a good idea! Accepting the function of moderator is not a problem for me when Jaga and Nancy would explain me how it works, because I have never been a moderator before. The only trouble I have is that I travel from time to time too, and being in Amsterdam, Vlissingen and other places abroad, I have no possibility to check the forum at all. So when I am, in Arnhem, I have no problem with being a Moderator, but if J&N find that not a problem I could accept the function. I work four days a week (tuesday to friday), spend some time in my studio in the weekends and mondays, and every month I go to Amsterdam one long weekend. And in that time I am debendant on the laptop of a friend or the I-mac of a girlfriend. So yes, that woulkd be ok with me, and I like the idea, if you and J&N accept my limitations.
Thank you for the poems by Zbigniew Herbert.
Pieter
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Post by pieter on Sept 9, 2006 9:31:36 GMT -7
Dear friends,
I copied and pasted whole this discussion between Adam and me on the Bella board some time ago, because I found it interesting. I was fascinated by Adams fascination with this Russian existentialist, and this fact made it suitable for me to post it here. A Polish interest in Russian Existentialism is in a strange way a Polish philosophical subject.
I wish Adam was here, because his contributions had a great indepth, since he is an interesting Varsovian, Pole and scientist!
Pieter
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Post by pieter on Sept 11, 2006 2:42:24 GMT -7
Lev ShestovFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaLev Isaakovich Shestov, born Yehuda Leyb Schwarzmann, was a Russian - Jewish existentialist philosopher. Born in Kiev (Russian Empire) on January 31 (February 13) 1866, he emigrated to France in 1921, fleeing from the aftermath of the October Revolution. He lived in Paris until his death on November 19, 1938. LifeShestov was born Lev Issakovich Schwarzmann in Kiev into a Jewish family. He obtained an education at various places, due to fractious clashes with authority. He went on to study law and mathematics at the Moscow State University but after a clash with the Inspector of Students he was told to return to Kiev, wherein he completed his studies there. Shestov's dissertation prevented him from becoming a doctor of law as it was dismissed as being too revolutionary. In 1898 he entered a circle of prominent of Russian intellectuals and artists which included Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Diaghilev, Dmitri Merezhkovsky and Vasily Rozanov. Shestov contributed articles to a journal the circle had set up. During this time he completed his first major philosophical work, Good in the teaching of Tolstoy and Nietzsche: Philosophy and Preaching; both authors mentioned in the title had a profound impact on Shestov's thinking. He developed his thinking in a second book on Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, which increased Shestov's reputation as an original and incisive thinker. All Things Are Possible was published in 1905, whereby Shestov had adopted the aphoristic style of Friedrich Nietzsche. Shestov dealt with such issues as religion, rationalism, and science in this brief work, issues he would examine in later works. Shestov's works however were not met with approval, even by some of his closest Russian friends. Many saw in Shestov's work, a renunciation of reason and metaphysics, with an espousal of nihilism. Nevertheless, he would find admirers in such writers as D. H. Lawrence. In 1908 Shestov moved to Freiburg, Germany, and he stayed there until 1910 where he moved to a small Swiss village named Coppet. During this time Shestov worked prolifically and during this period Great Vigils and Penultimate Words were published. He returned to Moscow in 1915, during which his son Sergei died in combat against the Germans. During this period, his work became more influenced by matters of religion and theology. The seizure of government by the Bolsheviks in 1919 made life difficult for Shestov, and the Marxists forced Shestov to write a defence of Marxist doctrine as an introduction to his new work, Potestas Clavium, otherwise it would not be published. Shestov refused this, yet with the permission of the authorities he lectured at the University of Kiev on Greek philosophy. Shestov's dislike of the Soviet regime led him to undertake a long journey out of Russia where he eventually ended up in France. Shestov was a popular figure in France due to the recognition of his originality. He was asked to contribute to a prestigious French philosophy journal also. In the interwar years Shestov continued to become a thinker of great prominence. During this time he had become totally immersed in the study of great theologians such as Blaise Pascal and Plotinus, whilst at the same time lecturing at the Sorbonne in 1925. In 1926 he met Edmund Husserl, with whom he maintained a cordial relationship with despite radical differences in their philosophical outlook. In 1929, during a return to Freiburg he met with Martin Heidegger, and was urged to study Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. The discovery of Kierkegaard prompted Shestov to realise that his philosophy shared great similarities, such as his rejection of idealism, and his belief that man can gain ultimate knowledge through ungrounded subjective thought rather than objective reason and verifiability. However, Shestov thought that Kierkegaard did not pursue this line of thought far enough, and proceeded to continue where he thought the Dane left off. The results of this are seen in his work Kierkegaard and Existential Philosophy: Vox Clamantis in Deserto, published in 1936, a foundational work of religious existentialism. Despite his weakening condition Shestov continued to work at a quick pace finally completed his magnum opus, Athens and Jerusalem. This work examines how reason must be rejected in the discipline of philosophy. He adumbrates how the scientific method has made philosophy and science irreconcilable, since science concerns itself with empirical observation, whereas, Shestov argues that philosophy must be concerned with freedom, God and immortality, issues that cannot be solved by science. In 1938, Shestov contracted a terrible illness whilst at his vacation home. He continued to work on studying the works of his contemporary Edmund Husserl, who had died recently, and studied Indian philosophy. He died at a clinic in Paris. PhilosophyThe Philosophy of DespairShestov's philosophy is, at first sight, not a philosophy at all: it offers no systematic unity, no coherent set of propositions, no theoretical explanation of philosophical problems. Most of Shestov's work is fragmentary: with regard to the form (he often used aphorisms), the style (which is more web-like than linear, and more explosive than argumentative) as well as to the content. He seems to contradict himself on every page, and even seeks the paradox. This is because he believes that life itself is in the last analysis deeply paradoxical, not understandable through logical or rational inquiry. Shestov believes that no theory can solve the mysteries of life. His philosophy is not ' problem-solving', but problem-generating, and tries to make life appear as enigmatic as possible. His point of departure is not a theory, an idea, but an experience. It is the experience described so eloquently by James Thomson in The City of Dreadful Night: The sense that every struggle brings defeat Because Fate holds no prize to crown success; That all the oracles are dumb or cheat Because they have no secret to express; That none can pierce the vast black veil uncertain Because there is no light beyond the curtain; That all is vanity and nothingness.
It is the experience of despair, which Shestov describes as the loss of certainties, the loss of freedom, the loss of the meaning of life. The root of this despair is what he frequently calls ' Necessity', but also ' Reason', ' Idealism' or ' Fate': a certain way of thinking (but at the same time also a very real aspect of the world) that subdues life to ideas, abstractions, generalisations and thereby kills it, by ignoring the uniqueness and livingness of reality. ' Reason' is the obedience to and the acceptance of Certainties that tell us that certain things are eternal and unchangeable and other things are impossible and can never be attained. That's why his philosophy is a form of irrationalism, though it is important to note that he doesn't oppose reason, or science in general, but only rationalism and scientism: the tendency to consider reason as a sort of omniscient, omnipotent God that is good for its own sake. It's also a form of personalism: people can't be reduced to ideas, social structures, or mystical oneness. He rejects any mention of " omnitudes", " collective", " all-unity." As he explains in his masterpiece Athens and Jerusalem: " But why attribute to God, the God whom neither time nor space limits, the same respect and love for order? Why forever speak of "total unity"? If God loves men, what need has He to subordinate men to His divine will and to deprive them of their own will, the most precious of the things He has bestowed upon them? There is no need at all. Consequently the idea of total unity is an absolutely false idea....It is not forbidden for reason to speak of unity and even of unities, but it must renounce total unity - and other things besides. And what a sigh of relief men will breathe when they suddenly discover that the living God, the true God, in no way resembles Him whom reason has shown them until now!" Through this attack on the " Self evident", Shestov implies we are all seemingly alone with our suffering, and can't be helped by others, nor by philosophy. This explains why he lacked a systematic philosophical framework. Penultimate Words: Surrender versus StruggleBut despair is not the last word, it is only the ' penultimate word'. The last word can't be said in human language, can't be captured in theory. His philosophy begins with despair, his whole thinking is desperate, but Shestov tries to point to something beyond despair - and beyond philosophy. This is what he calls ' faith': not a belief, not a certainty, but another way of thinking that arises in the midst of the deepest doubt and insecurity. It is the experience that everything is possible ( Dostoevsky), that the opposite of Necessity is not chance or accident, but possibility, that there does exist a god given freedom without boundaries, without walls or borders. Shestov maintains that we should continue to struggle, to fight against Fate and Necessity, even when a successful outcome is not guaranteed. Exactly at the moment that all the oracles remain silent, we should give ourselves over to god, who alone can comfort the sick and suffering soul. In some of his most famous words he explains: " Faith, only the faith that looks to the Creator and that He inspires, radiates from itself the supreme and decisive truths condemning what is and what is not. Reality is transfigured. The heavens glorify the Lord. The prophets and apostles cry in ecstasy, "O death, where is thy sting? Hell, where is thy victory?" And all announce: "Eye hath not seen, non ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him." Furthermore, although acknowledged as a Jewish philosopher, Shestov saw in the resurrection of Christ this victory over necessity. He courageously proclaimed the incarnation and resurrection to be a transfiguring spectacle in which god was showing humanity that the purpose of life is indeed not "mystical" surrender to the "absolute", but ascetical struggle: " Cur Deus homo? Why, to what purpose, did He become man, expose himself to injurious mistreatment, ignominious and painful death on the cross? Was it not in order to show man, through His example, that no decision is too hard, that it is worth while bearing anything in order not to remain in the womb of the One? That any torture whatever to the living being is better than the 'bliss' of the rest-satiate 'ideal' being?" Likewise, the final words of his last and greatest work, Athens and Jerusalem, end: " Philosophy is not Besinnen [surrender] but struggle. And this struggle has no end and will have no end. The kingdom of God, as it is written, is attained through violence." InfluenceShestov was highly admired and honored by Nikolai Berdyaev and Sergei Bulgakov in Russia, Jules de Gaultier, Lucien Levy-Bruhl and Albert Camus in France, and D. H. Lawrence and John Middleton Murry in England. Shestov isn't very well known, in fact he is so much as nearly forgotten, even in the academic world. This is partly due to the fact that his works aren't readily available anymore (which has changed with The Lev Shestov homepage), partly also to the specific themes he discusses (unfashionable and " foreign") and the sombre and yet ecstatic atmosphere that permeates his writings, but mostly perhaps to his quasi-nihilistic position and his religious outlook - an unsettling and incongruous combination at first sight. He did however influence writers like Albert Camus (who wrote about him in Le Mythe de Sisyphe), Benjamin Fondane (his ' pupil'), and notably Emil Cioran, who writes about Shestov: " He was the philosopher of my generation, which didn't succeed in realizing itself spiritually, but remained nostalgic about such a realization. Shestov [...] has played an important role in my life. [...] He thought rightly that the true problems escape the philosophers. What else do they do but obscuring the real torments of life?" (Emil Cioran: Oeuvres, Gallimard, Paris 1995, p. 1740, my translation.) More recently, alongside Dostoyevskys philosophy, many have found solace in Shestovs battle against the rational self-consistent and self-evident; for example Bernard Martin of Columbia University, who translated his works now found online ; and the scholar Liza Knapp, who wrote "The Annihilation of Inertia: Dostoevsky and Metaphysics." This book was an evaluation of Dostoyevskys struggle against the self-evident "wall", and refers to Shestov on several occasions.
Main Works
These are Shestovs most important works, in their English translations, and with their date of writing: The Good in the Teaching of Tolstoy and Nietzsche, 1899 The Philosophy of Tragedy, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, 1903 All Things are Possible (Apotheosis of Groundlessness), 1905 Potestas Clavium, 1919 In Job's Balances, 1923-29 Kierkegaard and the Existential Philosophy, 1933-34 Athens and Jerusalem, 1930-37
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