Lev Shestov

Lev Isaákovich Shestov (Лев Исаа́кович Шесто́в) -in Spanish he is known as León Chestov (Kiev, 1866-Paris, 1938), was a Russian existentialist philosopher.

Biography

Born Lev Isaakovich Schwarzmann and of a Jewish family, Shestov is considered the greatest exponent of existentialism in Russia. He studied in Moscow and then lived in Saint Petersburg until the Russian Revolution, after which he went into exile in France until his death.

His philosophy was inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche in regards to anarchism, but was also influenced by the religious significance of Søren Kierkegaard and Pascal. These influences led him to investigate Western philosophical history in critical approaches to the confrontations between Faith and Reason (Jerusalem-Athens relationship) with the greatest exponents of philosophy and literature, in order to conclude that the first has primacy over the second. regarding the solution of the transcendental problems of man.

This approach consists of a critique of both secular and religious rationalism, of which he argues that reason and knowledge are proud and a consequence of original sin in antiquity that instead of liberating, oppresses; so Shestov's existentialism is spiritual rather than anthropocentric and subjective.

Shestov was at the center of philosophical debate since his arrival in France around 1920 and held conversations with some of the most important European philosophers of the time such as Edmund Husserl, Martin Buber (with whom he discussed after a conversation about Hitler), Karl Jaspers (with whom he maintains a controversy around Nietzsche) or Martin Heidegger, a philosopher he meets in 1928 at Husserl's house and who was invited to the Sorbonne to give a lecture through Shestov, as we can read in the correspondence that both kept. Shestov tried to make Heidegger known in France, as he had done with the teacher Husserl before. It was Shestov who wrote about him for the first time for the French public and who invited him to give lectures in France. Shestov met Heidegger through Edmund Husserl who recommended that he read it (Shestov had not yet read it, like Kierkegaard). According to Husserl, Shestov had to read Kierkegaard and Heidegger, because for him one was nothing more than the continuation of the philosophy of the other. All these testimonies have come down to us, above all, as a result of the only disciple that Shestov had, Benjamin Fondane and his book Rencontres avec Léon Chestov. In addition, Shestov's relationship with Husserl and Heidegger is important because he went to As a result of a conversation between the first two, Heidegger came up with the ideas to write his famous text What is metaphysics?, strongly inspired by the ideas he heard in that conversation. What happened in their meetings can be read in more detail in the biography of Lev Shestov that was published in the 90s in France by his daughter.

Savater points out that for Shestov human beings live in this world as a prisoner of necessity and the irremediable, subjected to injustice, to the crushing of the weakest and finally to the fatality of death... and that aspires to a freedom that, still unknown, is found in divinity, in the possibility of a spirituality where everything is possible. For Shestov, his intellectual rival, his & # 39; black beast & # 39; it is Spinoza and his allies Plotinus, Luther, Pascal and Dostoevsky

Shestov's way of philosophizing would have repercussions and influences on some thinkers of the XX century, such as Albert Camus or Emil Cioran who recognized that Shestov had left a deep mark on him. As Sanda Stolojan relates in the preface to the anthological edition of Of Tears and Saints by Emil Cioran: In his conversations with Shestov, Benjamin Fondane quotes some words of Shestov's, according to which the best The way to philosophize consists in 'following one's own way alone', without using another philosopher as a guide, or, better yet, in talking about oneself. Fondane adds: 'the type of the new philosopher is the private thinker, Job sitting on a dunghill'. Cioran belongs to that breed of thinkers.

Lev Shestov influenced some thinkers of the XX century who have recognized him as Sartre, Camus, Heidegger, Levinas, Bataille, Blanchot, Deleuze, Cioran, Ionesco, Vladimir Jankélévitch and Rachel Bespaloff, among others.

Works

• Shakespeare and his critic Brandes (1898)
• Tolstói and Nietzsche, Philosophy of Good (1900)
• Dostoyevski and Nietzsche, Philosophy of Tragedy (1903)
• Apotheosis of the unfounded. Adogmatic thought attempt (1905)
• The beginnings and ends. Compilation of articles (1908)
• The great unveils. Compilation of articles (1912)
• What is Bolshevism? (1920)
• The night of Gethsemane (1923)
• Potestass Clavium (1923)
• On the scale of Job (1929)
• Kierkegaard and Existential Philosophy (1936)
• Athens and Jerusalem (1938)
• Sola Fide. Luther and the church (1960)
• From Medieval Philosophy

Translations to Spanish

• Shestov, Lev Isaákovich, 1866-1938. The Philosophy of Tragedy: Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche. - Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1949. - 267 p.
• Shestov, Lev Isaákovich, 1866-1938. The Revelations of Death. - Buenos Aires: Sur, 1938. - 205 p.
• Shestov, Lev, Apotheosis of the unfounded. Adogmatic thought attempt - Get in. Alejandro Ariel González, Madrid: Hermida Editores, 2015. - 192 p.
• Shestov, Lev, The night of Gethsemane. - Buenos Aires: South, 1958. - 102 p.
• Shestov, Lev, Kierkegaard and existential philosophy (Vox clamamtis in desert). — Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1947. - 327 p.
• Shestov, Lev, Athens and Jerusalem - Get in. Alejandro Ariel González, Madrid: Hermida Editores, 2018. - 533 p.
• Shestov, Lev, Potestass clavium: The Power of Keys - Get in. Alejandro Ariel González, Madrid: Hermida Editores, 2019. - 424 p.
• Shestov, Lev I., Dostoievski and Nietzsche. Philosophy of tragedy, trad. Alejandro Ariel González, Madrid, Hermida Editores, 2022.
• Shestov, Lev I., In Job's scale. Pilgrimages for souls, trad. Alejandro Ariel González, Madrid, Hermida Editores, 2020.