Text/Editor丨Xi talks about Suzaku
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●—Preface—●
The philosopher Lev Shestov aimed to establish a new way of thinking freely, which manifested itself in the fight against the illusion that we rationally grasp the necessary truths on the issues that matter most to us, such as the question of life and death. As understood by Russian philosophers, philosophy is not pure thinking, but "some kind of inner act, inner rebirth or second birth."
Shestov adopted the concept of "regeneration of faith" in Dostoevsky's vocabulary in his early works, further developing the concept of "awakening" in his mature thought, in which the theme of "awakening" constitutes one of the main ideas of his philosophy: the struggle for the individual's freedom and right to creative transformation when the individual is on the verge of despair or death.
In this article, I analyze Shestov's idea of "awakening" as one of the key metaphors and developmental features of his philosophical vision. In particular, I argue, stemming from Shestov's earlier interpretations of Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, and Protino, in his later writings, the concept of "awakening"—the possibility of a radical, inner transformation of one's worldview—marked the beginning of a new mode of redemption in his writing.
●—《Introduction》—●
Russian philosopher in exile Lev Shestov, often described as an existentialist writer, existential humanist, and historian of philosophy, is widely regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Lev Shestov's philosophy has its origins in the Russian literary philosophical tradition of the XIX century and is closely related to his reading of world philosophers, writers and theologians.
Among other thinkers, Shestov's early studies of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Friedrich Nietzsche were particularly important in shaping his philosophical worldview. At the end of the XIX century, Dostoevsky became increasingly popular in Russia and Europe. Shestov emphasized that Dostoevsky's psychological realism challenged the idea of Western ideals.
For him, Dostoevsky was not only "a free thinker and powerful artist", but also a pioneer and inspiration for a radical renewal of understanding of human nature. Created by "Nietzsche's predecessor" Shestov, in Dostoevsky's work, conscious and unconscious components are fused together.
As Nikolai Berdyaev wrote, "Dostoevsky found a crater in every living thing." The radical critique of human knowledge by the rebellious and contradictory characters of Dostoevsky's novels gave impetus to Shestov's philosophy of tragedy.
This provocative approach to human existence, as well as the deep insight into the human psyche gained from the literature of Fyodor Dostoevsky, had a profound impact on the formation of Shestov's beliefs.
Known as an original thinker and excellent stylist, Shestov embraced the ideas of Dostoevsky's underground figures, expounding his bold attacks on modern rationalism and scientific positivism. "As one of the first to recognize the new reality of Plotinus' philosophy", Shestov's ambivalent position also stems from the tension between his personal wishes and moral demands when reading Shakespeare's tragedies.
In The History of Russian Philosophy, Vasily S. V. Cenkovsky believed that it was impossible to fully understand Shestov's ideas without taking into account the Russian philosophical tradition.
Cenkovsky's description of Shestov's way of thinking as "a sense of faith, rare for its persistent and sober qualities," suggests that in Shestov's writings, the development of Russian religious thought in the twentieth century reached its highest point.
In hindsight, however, some contemporary scholars have observed that it was Shestov's rejection of Western philosophical positivism that led to his isolation among other Russian philosophers of the last century.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, a series of historical events known as the Russian Revolution brought a spiritual crisis to Russian intellectuals. From the end of the nineteenth century and continuing throughout the revolutionary period, there was a sense of impending disaster. The concept of the apocalypse appeared in the works of such writers as Alexander Bullock, Alexei Rymitsov, Andrei Belly, Maxim Gorky and Sergei Bulgakov.
At that time, many of Shestov's colleagues were influenced by Marx's theoretical approach to analyzing economic, political, and historical events. As Berdyaev wrote, "For Russian intellectuals in the late 1890s, Marxism undoubtedly meant Europeanization, exposure to Western trends and ascending to a broader stage."
By the end of the nineteenth century, Marxism, as a completely new form, had become the dominant philosophical theory among Russian intellectuals. Although Shestov initially sympathized with the new intellectual current, he was soon disappointed with the ideals of a socio-political utopia. When he opposed the creative freedom of the individual to the representative power of dogmatism (philosophy, science and morality), he longed to move away from theoretical arguments.
In contrast to the majority of his contemporaries, the Western European philosophers of the first half of the twentieth century, Shestov's philosophical vision emerged in its determination to expand the field of philosophical research beyond existing and accepted norms. From the earliest books published in Kiev and St. Petersburg in the late 1890s, Shestov's writing has been dominated by his concern with the tragic absurdity of human life.
Philosophers observe that the tragedy of human existence does not conform to idealistic, positivist and materialist systems of thinking; It is built on the irreconcilable contradictions of life and goes beyond the calculation of truth and the predictable definition. According to him, "tragedy occurs deep in the human soul, where there are no eyes to reach out".
While the reality of "knowing everything" may seem reasonable to some, for a lonely person (such as the desperate), the final, forever unconquerable and unforgiving reality contains inevitable horrors.
Thus, Shestov saw that the beginning of philosophy began not with surprise, not with the Inquisition, but with despair. Formed in his pre-revolutionary works, Shakespeare and his critic Brandes (1898), The Teaching of Tolstoy and Nietzsche: Philosophy and Didactic (1900).
Dostoevsky and Nietzsche: The Philosophy of Tragedy (1903) and Unfounded Deification (1905), ideas of sudden creative transformation in times of crisis or in the face of life-threatening situations and death became the central concepts of Shestov's philosophy of tragedy. In his first book, Shakespeare and His Critic Brandes (1898), Shestov argued that the truths of classical and speculative philosophy set limits for human freedom.
Contrary to the Russian nihilistic view that prevailed in the mid-nineteenth century, human suffering is random, meaningless events that do not depend on people's actions, footnote 5 Shestov rejects randomness (sluchainost) and meaninglessness as fundamental features of human life.
Based on his analysis of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard III, King Lear, Macbeth, and Hamlet, Shestov posed questions that would become central to his philosophy: the question of human life as the subject of absurd tragedies and human suffering. Thus, in his view, the essence of Hamlet's tragedy lies in the prince's inability to abandon the fictional world of life that he was familiar with and face reality—the world of pain and consciousness.
The comparison of life to sleep, and the call to awaken from a life guided by reason, footnote 7 This will become one of the key metaphors in his mature writing, probably from Shestov's early reading of Shakespeare. Importantly, in his first book, the thinker made a very important observation that would inspire his future philosophical inquiry: that one should suffer in order to complete inner development.
In Dostoevsky and Nietzsche: The Philosophy of Tragedy (1903), Shestov brought the ideas of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche into a comparative discussion, providing a critical and philosophical analysis of the ideas of two nineteenth-century thinkers. In this article, Shestov emphasized the importance of the writer's ability to tell the story of his personal life through his literary works, the story of his "rebirth of faith".
Explaining the motivation behind this analysis, Shestov noted that for him, familiarizing himself with the author's biography to track the development of the author's thoughts and "understand how beliefs are born".
Drawing on Nietzsche's critique of Western ideals, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche Shestov established that the purpose of his philosophy was to break the logic of argument and the continuity of idealism. He proposed that, unlike scientific inquiry, philosophy should come from human life, and the deepest thoughts can only come from despair.
From Shestov's point of view, Dostoevsky's most important work is "Notes on the Underground". In his narrative, Dostoevsky reveals in this novel the story of his own life's faith and painful renunciation of the past. It is noteworthy that The Underground Notes was written at a time when Dostoevsky was experiencing "one of the most terrible crises, which only the human soul can prepare and endure for itself."
Shestov defined Dostoevsky's state of mind when writing the novel as a "heartbreaking cry of fear" who suddenly realized that all his life he had mistakenly believed that the highest purpose of life was to serve "the most humble people." Shestov suggested that starting with the Notes on the Underground, Dostoevsky abandoned his previous ideals and accepted the challenge, discovering a new doctrine in his philosophical vision.
Shestov praised the writer's "unprecedented courage" in "Dostoevsky to allow himself to laugh at the most precious and sacred human feelings," noting that "the truth of the underground is completely different from its magnanimous predecessors."
●—"Literature"—●
[1] Bakhtin, M. (2019) "Problems in Dostoevsky's Poetics"
[2] Baranov-Chestorv, N. (1983) The Life of Lev Shestov: Based on the Correspondence and Memories of His Contemporaries
[3] Berdyaev, N. (1934) Dostoevsky: An Interpretation
[4] Berdyaev, N. (2000) The Transition to Revolution and Socialism: Marxism and Idealism
[5] Camus, A. (1955) The Myth of Sisyphus
[6] Ermichev (2016) "The Uprising and Submission of Lev Shestov"