In 'All Things Are Possible', Jewish Russian philosopher Lev Shestov challenges the notion of fate and necessity by embracing the philosophy of possibility and freedom. Translated by the renowned author D.H. Lawrence, Shestov's work offers a unique perspective on what it means to be human, and the struggles we face against limitations and determinisms. Shestov's rigorous examination of the human experience takes readers on a journey of self-discovery and faith, as he explores the infinite potential of the human psyche and the possibility of a new, liberating ideal.
The Jewish philosopher Lev Shestov (1866-1938) is perhaps the great forgotten thinker of the twentieth century, but one whose revival seems timely and urgent in the twenty-first century. An important influence on Georges Bataille, Albert Camus, Gilles Deleuze and many others, Shestov developed a fascinating anti-Enlightenment philosophy that critiqued the limits of reason and triumphantly affirmed an ethics of hope in the face of hopelessness. In a wide-ranging reappraisal of his life and thought, which explores his ideas in relation to the history of literature and painting as well as philosophy, Matthew Beaumont restores Shestov to prominence as a thinker for turbulent times. In reconstructing Shestov's thought and asserting its continued relevance, the book's central theme is wakefulness. It argues that for Shestov, escape from the limits of rationalist Enlightenment thought comes from maintaining an insomniac vigilance in the face of the spiritual night to which his century appeared condemned. Shestov's engagement with the image of Christ remaining awake in the Garden of Gethsemane then, is at the core of his inspiring understanding of our ethical responsibilities after the horrors of the twentieth century.
In Lev Shestov: Existential Philosopher and Religious Thinker, Michael Finkenthal explores the evolution of Lev Shestov's philosophical and religious intellectual contributions. The hermeneutical effort is mainly based on the Shestovian oeuvre, but his thought is considered in light of existential philosophies in their evolution from Pascal, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard to those of the twentieth century. Shestov's «deconstruction» of philosophy is discussed parallel to the analysis of the formation of his religious thought and its relevancy in the context of efforts by Buber, Rosenzweig, and Levinas to redefine Judaism.
This study spans, in a single monograph, the entire life and work of the Russian philosopher Lev Shestov (1866-1938). It offers essential keys to understanding his thought, while also tracing the historical itinerary and influence of his work both in Russia and in Europe.
This study spans the entire life and work of the Russian philosopher Lev Shestov (1866-1938). It offers keys to understanding his thought, while also tracing the historical itinerary of his work. Shestov’s thought is not only interesting in itself, as a “philosophy fighting against philosophy,” but also because it reveals an entire world of cultural connections in its extraordinarily keen exploration of other “souls.” The reader will find in Shestov some of the sharpest analyses of authors such as Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Tolstoi, Dostoevskii, Luther, Plotinus, Pascal, Kierkegaard and many others. This study will better determine the controversial and fascinating philosopher’s place in the history of Russian and Western thought.
For more than two thousand years, philosophers and theologians have wrestled with the irreconcilable opposition between Greek rationality (Athens) and biblical revelation (Jerusalem). In Athens and Jersusalem, Lev Shestov—an inspiration for the French existentialists and the foremost interlocutor of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Martin Buber during the interwar years—makes the gripping confrontation between these symbolic poles of ancient wisdom his philosophical testament, an argumentative and stylistic tour de force. Although the Russian-born Shestov is little known in the Anglophone world today, his writings influenced many twentieth-century European thinkers, such as Albert Camus, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, Czesław Miłosz, and Joseph Brodsky. Athens and Jerusalem is Shestov’s final, groundbreaking work on the philosophy of religion from an existential perspective. This new, annotated edition of Bernard Martin’s classic translation adds references to the cited works as well as glosses of passages from the original Greek, Latin, German, and French. Athens and Jerusalem is Shestov at his most profound and most eloquent and is the clearest expression of his thought that shaped the evolution of continental philosophy and European literature in the twentieth century.
Based on new research and translations of unpublished writings by Russian émigré philosopher Lev Shestov, this book analyses the thoughts of one of the most influential thinkers of the past century in an interdisciplinary context. His work is read in the light of pivotal figures such as Dostoevsky, Husserl, Jaspers, Buber and Freud.
William C. Hackett’s English translation of Jean Wahl’s Existence humaine et transcendence (1944) brings back to life an all-but-forgotten book that provocatively explores the philosophical concept of transcendence. Based on what Emmanuel Levinas called “Wahl’s famous lecture” from 1937, Existence humaine et transcendence captured a watershed moment of European philosophy. Included in the book are Wahl's remarkable original lecture and the debate that ensued, with significant contributions by Gabriel Marcel and Nicolai Berdyaev, as well as letters submitted on the occasion by Heidegger, Levinas, Jaspers, and other famous figures from that era. Concerned above all with the ineradicable felt value of human experience by which any philosophical thesis is measured, Wahl makes a daring clarification of the concept of transcendence and explores its repercussions through a masterly appeal to many (often surprising) places within the entire history of Western thought. Apart from its intrinsic philosophical significance as a discussion of the concepts of being, the absolute, and transcendence, Wahl's work is valuable insofar as it became a focal point for a great many other European intellectuals. Hackett has provided an annotated introduction to orient readers to this influential work of twentieth-century French philosophy and to one of its key figures.
The collection is comprised of twelve scholarly essays written by leading Chekhov specialists from around the world, each analysing an interpretation of Chekhov by one of three Russian thinkers of the Silver Age of Russian culture - Vasilii Rozanov, Dmitrii Merezhkovskii and Lev Shestov. It thus examines the hitherto under-researched relationship between the origins and the results of the cultural phase that came to be known as the Silver Age, and focuses specifically on the complex connections betweens Chekhov's legacy and the Russian culture of that period.
