PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES
V. V. Varava, E. V. Chelnokova
Moscow Orthodox Institute of St. John the Evangelist
EXISTENTIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN BEING IN PHILOSOPHY
LVA SHESTOVA
The article analyzes philosophical views Lev Shestov, which represent the existential direction of Russian philosophy. It is shown that Shestov's existential reflection does not contradict the conciliar intentions of Russian philosophy, since it acquires a brightly ethical coloring from him. This corresponds to the moral character of Russian philosophy. The article also shows the deep connection between Dostoevsky's "philosophy of the underground" and the existential philosophy of Lev Shestov.
Key words: Russian philosophy, existential thinking, L. Shestov, F. Dostoevsky, rationalism, biblical faith, man.
V. V. Varava, E. V. Chelnokova
St. John the Theologian "s Moscow Orthodox Institute
(Moscow, Russia)
THE EXISTISTAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PERSON IN THE PHILOSOPHY
The article analyzes the philosophical views of Leo Shestov, who represent the existential direction of Russian philosophy. It is shown that Shestov "s existential reflection does not contradict the conciliar intentions of Russian philosophy, since it acquires a bright ethical coloring. This corresponds to the moral character of Russian philosophy. The article also shows a deep connection between Dostoevsky" s "underground philosophy "and the existential philosophy of Lev Shestov.
Keywords: Russian philosophy, existential thinking, L. Shestov, F. Dostoevsky, rationalism, biblical faith, man.
The problem of man, according to many researchers, occupies a central place in Russian philosophy. Today, when there is a clear de-anthropologization in culture, it is important to rely on the experience of Russian philosophy, which has accumulated a large spiritual and intellectual baggage regarding a person, his place in life and society. Initially, in essence, Russian philosophy was never just a theory, speculative speculation, but a spiritual life-building. Of course, it is utopian to try to translate the metaphysical wealth of Russian philosophy into the political realm, as it once was the case with the "Russian idea", but it is quite possible to use its achievements in terms of personal moral improvement. Here
the help of Russian philosophy can be much more effective than the popular various psychological practices.
Questions of history, nature, society, religion, culture, technology in Russian philosophy, ultimately, are pulled together into a single knot, at the base of which is the problem of man. Metaphysics, ontology, cosmology, for all their significance in the Russian tradition, never act as self-sufficient principles of philosophy, but always have a pronounced anthropological coloration. The well-known words of V.V. Zenkovsky are indicative in this regard: “If you already need to give any General characteristics Russian philosophy ... then I would have highlighted the anthropocentrism of Russian philosophical searches. "
Most of all, says Zenkovsky, Russian philosophy is occupied with the topic of man, and hence its dominant moral attitude. But this is not just morality as a regulator of human behavior, it is "panmoralism" that affects the "highest" and "ultimate" in human existence. In this sense, it is appropriate to interpret such panmoralism in existential terms, since it is associated not only with social morality, but with genuine being, which can be acquired only at the limit of life and death.
One of the most prominent representatives of the existential trend in Russian philosophy is Lev Shestov. NA Berdyaev in his work "The Basic Idea of Lev Shestov's Philosophy" wrote: "His [Shestov's] philosophy belonged to the type of existential philosophy, that is, did not objectify the process of cognition, did not separate it from the subject of cognition, linked it with the integral destiny of man ... This type of philosophy assumes that the mystery of being is comprehensible only in human existence. " And the modern researcher R. A. Galtseva already writes about both philosophers: “N. Berdyaev shared with L. Shestov the place of the discoverer of the newest philosophy of existence, thus turning Russia into the homeland of existentialism. "
Russia as the "homeland of existentialism" sounds strong and binding. However, if we penetrate deep into the philosophical constructions of L. Shestov, it turns out that there is no absolutization in these words. Indeed, already in his first work "Shakespeare and his critic Brandes" L. Shestov touches upon the themes of the existential direction: the fate of man in this world; real human life with all its tragic reality; denial of formal, compulsory morality, rejection of the scientific approach to the study of living life, criticism of any attempts to create a scientific or philosophical system that obscures the world in its diversity.
L. Shestov himself, considering his philosophy existential, placed at the center of his reflections the existence of a lonely human "I" who wants to have his personal right to a unique vision of the world around him. Any manifestation of the freedom of the human person was considered by the philosopher as the basis of true existence. "Man is free in a world bound by laws", and religious faith is the highest degree
liberation of man, as a kind of breakthrough into the field of absolute freedom, where the possibility of free creative activity reigns.
At first glance, it seems that placing the lonely “I” in the center of philosophical reflection contradicts the root conciliar intentions of Russian philosophy. At the same time, collegiality as a spiritual first principle in empirical reality is transformed into “totalitarianism”, as N. A. Berdyaev speaks about in his “Russian Idea”. He writes the following: “It is very important to note that Russian thinking has a penchant for totalitarian teachings and totalitarian world outlooks. Only this kind of teaching was successful with us. This reflected the religious makeup of the Russian people. The Russian intelligentsia has always strived to develop for itself a totalitarian, holistic outlook, in which truth-truth will be combined with truth-justice. "
This is a very important characteristic of Russian thought, showing its fundamental non-individualism. The "totalitarian world outlook" appears here not as a negative political characteristic, but as a property of wholeness and integrity (totality), and in this sense it is synonymous with collegiality. Against this background, the sharp individualism of L. Shestov can be perceived as a foreign phenomenon for traditional Russian philosophizing. However, it is not. L. Shestov's existential individualism does not in the least contradict the conciliar principles of Russian philosophy, but is its deepening and complement. In addition, this "individualism" has a direct connection with the moral searches of FM Dostoevsky, which were marked by an extreme personal acuteness. In this sense, it is more appropriate to use the concept of "personalism" as a more precise concept that characterizes the Russian style of philosophizing.
Practically all of Dostoevsky's works were marked by personological questioning. Moreover, these questions always go under the sign of a question, not an answer. This distinguishes Dostoevsky from ordinary novelists and makes him a writer-thinker, which corresponds to the philosophical spirit of Russian literature. Dostoevsky's philosophical and personological credo is expressed in the famous words addressed in a letter to his brother back in 1839. He wrote: “Man is a mystery. It must be solved, and if you will be solving it all your life, then do not say that you have wasted time; I am engaged in this secret because I want to be human. From these words it is clear that the very "guessing" is the most important thing in life, coinciding with the meaning of life. This is a prologue to existential thinking. At the heart of which is the division into genuine and inauthentic. The secret, obviously, contains those innermost principles of life that are not equal to its social projections.
Shestov, like Dostoevsky, tries to find an answer to the main question human existence- what is its existential significance, which translated into Dostoevsky's language means "to solve the mystery of man." The philosopher defends the individual from the power of the general, against any form of suppression of the individual, any ideology that considers
a person as an element of the state machine, any, including natural law. And here he is the direct heir of Dostoevsky's antideterminist ideas, which were put into the mouth of the “underground man”. Here is Dostoevsky's classic expression of these ideas: “Impossibility means a stone wall? What kind of stone wall? Well, of course, the laws of nature, the conclusions of the natural sciences, mathematics. As soon as they prove to you, for example, that it came from a monkey, so there is nothing to frown, take it as it is. ... Lord God, what do I care about the laws of nature and arithmetic, when for some reason I don't like these laws and twice two four? Of course, I will not break through such a wall with my forehead, if I really don’t have the strength to break through, but I won’t reconcile with it just because I have a stone wall and I didn’t have enough strength. ”
Here, obviously, is the source of L. Shestov's existential philosophy. In the struggle against the power of the universally binding, he reached radical solutions, believing that for each person there is his own truth. As a matter of fact, Shestov develops the philosophy of Dostoevsky's "underground man", embedding the latter's reflection in a wide, including European, philosophical context. At the same time, it is important to understand that in "Notes from the Underground" we are talking about the universal existential properties and manifestations of a person, caused by his being, and not social status. Often, the "psychology of the underground" is reduced to the psychology of a certain class, as, for example, René Girard does. In his book Dostoevsky: From Duality to Unity, he writes: “A feeble, weak creature, a hero from a dungeon belongs, by his bad weather, to that bureaucratic class, pretentious and miserable, whose mentality the writer considers especially indicative and even, in a certain sense prophetic for an emerging society. "
Projected behind the "screen" of Shestov's philosophy, Dostoevsky's "underground philosophy" is apparently acquiring a universal character. Existential philosophy, Shestov argues, begins with the tragedy of understanding that everything given by a scientific worldview and common sense is not inherently such. Science, overcoming the diversity of living being, searches for the same and establishes the truths expressed in convincing evidence. The world, depending on the law of causality, acquires an invariable uniformity. But the philosopher believes that "in the end, choosing between life and reason, you give preference to the former." Thus, he rejects any rationalism and the idea of progress based on it.
Shestov's work "The Apotheosis of Groundlessness (The Experience of Adogmatic Thinking)" caused a lot of controversy and quite polarized assessments in the intellectual circles of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The main idea of this work is that the world is too diverse to squeeze it into the scheme of our human cognition, moreover, the creation of such schemes simplifies and impoverishes reality. The only way of knowing it is the experience of each individual person through his own thinking and her
assessment, as well as acceptance of both all the beauty and the tragedy of existing reality: “... we in our mind and in our experience do not find absolutely nothing that would give us a reason to at least somehow limit the arbitrariness in nature. In other words: maybe in human judgments about phenomena there are elements both necessary and accidental, but, despite all attempts, we still have not found and, apparently, will never find a way
to separate the former from the latter ... Hence the conclusion: philosophy should give up
attempts to find veritates œternœ. Its task is to teach a person to live in the unknown - the person who is most afraid of the unknown and hides from it behind various dogmas. "
“Living in the unknown” is life in a world devoid of clarity and reliability, in a world where nothing is guaranteed, and in which everyone, at their own peril and risk, makes their way to some unknown goal, driven by fear and hope. In essence, this is life taken in an existential dimension. This is well explained by Otto F. Bolnov, showing the origins of existential thinking: “Since a person became disillusioned with any objective faith and everything became doubtful for him, since all the meaningful meanings of life were questioned by variability, there was only a return to his own inner, so that here, in the final depth preceding all meaningful orientations, to obtain that support that would no longer belong to the objective world order. "
Shestov exactly meets this criterion and tries to find this unconditional support not in the "objective world order", but in "groundlessness", which, however, can guarantee the highest metaphysical certainty of being. In order to break through to the authentic, it is necessary to overcome the obstacles that inevitably arise in the "objectified" world. Shestov sees philosophical rationalism as his main opponent, which, in his conviction, makes culture and man creatively sterile and biased. A culture that claims to form human actions and assessments is a prison for human freedom, Shestov believed. He also does not accept Hegel with his universal spirit, since belief in miracles and the omnipotence of God for Kant, Hegel and other philosophers is nothing more than "Deus ex machina". Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky were close to him by his understanding of the loneliness of man in this world, the search for eternal meaning, the struggle with the deathlessness of morality.
In his book Athens and Jerusalem, Shestov contrasts rational thinking, which, as he believes, goes back to ancient philosophy, to the biblical concept of the world. Proceeding from this, the conflict between biblical revelation and Greek philosophy consists in man's preference for the tree of life of the tree of knowledge, from which he began to feed, having lost the opportunity to join the tree of life. Therefore, the philosopher opposes the power of knowledge, which subordinates the individual to the law, but deprives him of true life: “Knowledge is not accepted as the last human goal, knowledge does not justify being, it itself must receive its justification from being.
Assuming the goal of human life exclusively in knowledge and reason, as was the case in the entire previous mainline of European culture, does not lead a person to the truth, the living truth of being, but only to the dead truth of rational culture, which has an exclusively speculative character. A person can never feel their existential significance in such a culture. In the spirit of Dostoevsky's "underground man", Shestov asks in his book about Kierkegaard: "Where does the mind have the power to impose on being its truths - which are useless to it and hated for being, sometimes completely unbearable?" And he replies: “Reason dictates the laws which it wants to dictate, or, rather, which, by virtue of its nature, it is forced to dictate. He, after all, also does not have freedom in choice, because he, too, if he wanted to, he could not give the world to people not in support, but in full ownership. But he himself does not ask why and for what he dictates laws, and does not allow others to ask about it. It is, it was, and it always will be. Human destinies, the destinies of the universe are a foregone conclusion. Being is bewitched by some kind of impersonal and indifferent power, and it is not given to him to shake off the witchcraft. "
Even being itself is “bewitched,” that is, not free, but connected by something that is higher and stronger than being. In this situation, one can only hope for the liberating power of an absolutely irrational biblical faith, whose truth is acquired through the experience of existential suffering, and not self-confident faith, for which the observance of routine ritual practice is sufficient. Shestov criticizes attempts at a philosophical understanding of God, offering an exclusively individual, existential path of faith. The idea of faith, along with the idea of human freedom, is fundamental in the work of Shestov. He characterizes faith as the source of existential philosophy, for it "dares to rebel against knowledge", moreover, only faith, according to the philosopher, justifies the meaning of the historical existence of man. And this is the essence of the biblical faith: “Only in the Bible is there an indication that not everything is well with reason and with the eternal truths it brings. ... Faith leads to the tree of life, but from the tree of life comes not knowledge, not speculative philosophy, but existential philosophy. "
In fact, in Shestov, there is a coincidence of "faith" and "existence." And therefore Shestov does not accept faith as an unconditional recognition of a certain authority. Faith, he believes, arises when a person alone in a world hostile to him, devoid of justice, became convinced of the imperfection of his own reason in the face of life, raised the question of the existence of a single truth and "felt the complete impossibility of living with reason." Therefore, faith is very often born from the tragedy of understanding that there is no harmony in the empirical world. A person comes to faith on his own, after painful attempts to restore the unity of the world, as
creating a new world that lives within us and makes us human. Religious faith in the work of a philosopher appears as the highest degree of man's liberation from the power of “self-evident truths”, as a breakthrough into the field of absolute freedom: “Faith, in its essence, has nothing to do with our knowledge or our moral feelings. To achieve faith, one must free oneself from both knowledge and moral ideals. "
According to Shestov, faith is impossible without personal communication with the Creator; on the contrary, it would be much worse, he writes, if Hegel were right that the Absolute is "the limit of human achievement." For Shestov, God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and not the God of philosophers. The philosopher believes in the omnipotence of God. Everything lives and changes with God, and a person is able to find faith only thanks to Him: “Only the grace of God can pull the frozen and numb human soul out of a deep and painful, unbreakable sleep. Faith is not a willingness to recognize certain propositions as true. No matter how much you recognize certain judgments as true, you will not get one step closer to God from this. Faith is the transition to a new life. "
And only after embarking on this path can we talk about true life, the very life that all great minds dreamed of, and which leaves the existentially silent majority indifferent. The originality of Shestov's philosophy lies in the fact that in many ways he reinterprets biblical truths in a new way, remaining fundamentally faithful to them. This is the typical path of a Russian religious philosopher who does not take "on faith" many of the postulates of faith, but passes them through the crucible of their existential suffering. Man finds himself in the center of Shestov's philosophical reflection, which seeks to give human existence the greatest possible authenticity. This is the practical task of philosophy, and as such it is ethics. But in the Russian tradition, it acquires a sharply existential orientation, it is a kind of existential ethics.
Thus, Shestov's existential significance of man stems from three sources: the Bible, Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky. The Bible provides the basis for a super-rational and super-moral faith, and Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky give it the necessary reliability, with their searches and questions pointing to the dead ends of rational thinking. For a philosopher, “pure” biblical faith alone is not enough; he needs faith that has passed through the existential experience of Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky, which in many ways “complements” or clarifies the tragic and apophatic lacunas that are encountered in biblical anthropology and in everyday life.
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Lev Shestov: Irrationalism and Existential Thinking. L. Shestov's contemporaries invariably noted his original mindset, brilliant literary talent. The talent of a loner, who did not adhere to either Westerners, or Slavophiles, or Church believers, or metaphysicians. In life, he invariably remained both “hopelessly intelligent” (V.V. Rozanov) and “bottomless heart” (A.M. Remizov).
L. Shestov (this is a literary pseudonym, his real name is Lev Isaakovich Shvartsman) was born on January 31, 1866 in Kiev, in the family of a large merchant-manufacturer. He studied at the Kiev gymnasium, then at the physics and mathematics faculty of Moscow University, from which he transferred to the law faculty of Kiev University. He graduated in 1889. Shestov's first book, Shakespeare and his critic Brandes, was published in 1898. This is followed by “Goodness in the teachings of gr. Tolstoy and F. Nietzsche ”(1900),“ Dostoevsky and Nietzsche ”(1900) and“ The Apotheosis of Groundlessness ”(1905). October 1917 L. Shestov did not accept and in 1919 he became an emigrant. In emigration, Shestov's most significant works were published: "The Power of the Keys", "On the Scales of Job (Wandering Through the Souls)", "Kierkegaard and Existential Philosophy (The Voice of One Crying in the Desert)", "Athens and Jerusalem", etc. L. Shestov died in Paris on November 19, 1938.
The origins of Shestov's philosophical comprehension should be sought in the great Russian literature of the nineteenth century. Shestova characterizes concentrated attention to the “small”, often “superfluous” person; situations - deeply significant (later they will be called borderline); tragedies of historical life, and in connection with this - an increased interest in the revelations of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, the revelations of Russian literature. The influence of the spiritual field of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche is undoubted. Shestov himself, in an article dedicated to the memory of Husserl, writes: “... My first teacher of philosophy was Shakespeare. From him I heard such a mysterious and incomprehensible, and at the same time so formidable and alarming: the time went out of its rut ... ”.
L. Shestov's fame was brought not so much by his first books (“Shakespeare and his critic Brandes”, “Good in the Teachings of Count Tolstoy and F. Nietzsche”, “Dostoevsky and Nietzsche”), as by his “Apotheosis of Groundlessness (The Experience of Adogmatic Thinking)” - a book of “aphorisms, outrageous and cynical for the mind, which does not feed with porridge, but give a“ system ”,“ an elevated idea ”, etc. (Remizov). Shestov's irony about various philosophical systems confused the reader. It was a fame of a shocking nature.
Most of Shestov's ideological legacy is embodied in the form of philosophical essays - “wandering in souls” of his favorite thinkers and heroes - Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Socrates, Abraham, Job, Pascal, and later Kierkegaard. He writes about Plato and Plotinus, Augustine and Spinoza, Kant and Hegel; polemicizes with Berdyaev and Husserl (Shestova had a personal friendship with both). He "philosophized with all his being," - this is how N. Berdyaev will say about him.
“To teach a person to live in obscurity ...” One of the main problems for Shestov is the problem of philosophy. Already in "Apotheosis ..." he defined his vision of the tasks of philosophy: "To teach a person to live in the unknown ..." - a person who is most afraid of the unknown and hides from it behind various dogmas.
However, in certain circumstances, every person feels in himself a tremendous desire to comprehend the fate and purpose of his own existence, as well as the existence of the entire universe. The fact that a particular person turns to zhiznesmyslovy and world-sense problems, to “beginnings” and “ends” leaves a person face to face with the “damned” questions: the meaning of life, death, nature, God. In such circumstances, people turn to philosophy for answers to their tormenting questions. “... In literature,” Shestov ironically, “for a long time there has been prepared a large and varied supply of all kinds of general ideas and worldviews, metaphysical and positive, about which teachers begin to remember every time, as soon as too demanding and restless human voices begin to be heard” ...
These existing worldviews turn into a dungeon of the seeking spirit, because in these reserves of ideas and worldviews "philosophers seek to" explain "the world so that everything becomes visible, transparent, so that there is nothing in life or there would be as little problematic and mysterious as possible." Shestov doubts the usefulness of such explanations. “Shouldn't we,” he says, “on the contrary, strive to show that even where everything seems clear and understandable to people, everything is unusually mysterious and mysterious? To free ourselves and to liberate others from power (italics ours. E. V) concepts that kill mystery with their definiteness. After all, the origins, beginnings, roots of being are not in what is discovered, but in what is hidden: Deus est Deus absconditus (God is a hidden God) ”.
That is why, Shestov believes, when “they say that intuition is the only way to comprehend the last truth,” it is difficult to agree with this. “Intuition comes from the word intueri - to look ... But you need to be able not only to see, you need to be able to hear ... For the main thing, the most necessary thing - you cannot see: you can only hear. The secrets of being are silently whispered only to those who know how, when necessary, to turn to the ear. "
And he sees the task of philosophy not in reassuring, but in embarrassing people.
Such assumptions in the spirit of absurdity pursue completely human goals: to show the openness, “lack of guarantee” of any existence, including the existence of people, to help find the truth where it is usually not sought. "... Philosophy is a teaching about truths that are not obligatory for anyone." Speaking out against classical metaphysics, more precisely, against metaphysical reason, Shestov calls for recognizing the reality of the incomprehensible, irrational, absurd, which does not fit into reason and knowledge, which contradicts them; rebelling against logic, against everything that makes up the familiar, habitable world, imperceptibly and inevitably idealized, and therefore false, deceptive - the world of human existence. The illusions of this world are carefully rationalized, so that they look solid, stable, but this is only before the emergence of the reality of the unforeseen. As soon as the reality of the unforeseen, catastrophic and unconscious declares itself, all this habitation and everyday life suddenly turns out to be a crater of an awakened volcano.
"Faith calls everything to its own judgment." Shestov does not accept traditional metaphysics and theology. In the period from 1895 to about 1911, a radical anthropocentric turn towards the philosophy of life and the search for God took place in his views. And we are not talking about the Christian God (for him the God of goodness is God with a small letter), but about the God of the Old Testament. In his judgments about God, L. Shestov was restrained and not that he hesitated to admit the existence of God, rather he hesitated to say anything affirmative about him. Here are quite characteristic words for Shestov, they, in fact, begin his large, published already in exile, work “The Power of Keys” (Berlin, 1923): “Did at least one philosopher recognize God? Except for Plato, who recognized God only half, everyone else was looking only for wisdom ... Of course, from the fact that a person perishes, or even from the fact that states, peoples, even lofty ideals perish, it does not "follow" what is an all-good, omnipotent, omniscient Being that you can turn to with prayer and hope. But if it did, then there would be no need for faith either; it could be limited to one science, which includes all "should" and "should".
Let us pay attention to how Shestov, speaking about the destructive processes of reality, is concerned about their incompatibility with an all-good, omnipotent, omniscient Being, but it is precisely from the desire to overcome this incompatibility that, from Shestov's point of view, the need for faith arises. “And yet people cannot and do not want to stop thinking about God. They believe, doubt, completely lose faith, then they begin to believe again ”.
“Doubt ...”! These doubts give rise to arguments “about an all-perfect being” - “we willingly talk” about him, “are accustomed to this concept” and even “sincerely think that it has a definite, for everyone the same meaning”. Shestov invites the reader to reveal the concept of an "all-perfect being" through some features that can be named first of all when solving problems of this kind. First of all, there is a certainty of two signs - omniscience and omnipotence. “Is omniscience really the mark of the most perfect being? "Shestov asks and immediately gives a negative answer, explaining at the same time:" Foresee everything ahead, always understand everything - what could be more boring and hateful than that? "" An all-perfect being does not have to be all-knowing! To know a lot is good, to know everything is terrible ”. With omnipotence, Shestov believes, the same thing. "Who can do everything, he does not need anything."
And the third sign, often called the sign of eternal rest, Shestov also finds no better than those already analyzed. So what are people guided by, attributing certain qualities to a perfect being? Shestov's answer is quite definite - “they are guided not by the interests of this creature, but by their own. They, of course, need the supreme being to be omniscient - then he can be safely entrusted with his fate. And it is good that it be omnipotent: it will help out of any trouble. And so that it is calm, dispassionate, etc. ”.
Anticipating possible objections and even reproaches of limitedness, inability to understand the “sublime charm” of omniscience, omnipotence, undisturbed peace, Shestov reasonably adds to what has been said above: “But those who admire these heights are not people, or something, and not limited? Can't you object to them that, due to their limitations, they have invented their perfect being and rejoice at their invention? ”. As for Shestov himself, his God is, first of all, God “hidden”, unknown and powerful enough to be what he wants, “and not what human wisdom would make him if her words were turned into deeds .. . ”.
Shestov's judgments about God most of all correspond to the Old Testament ideas about an unknown creature, inspiring not so much hope as horror and fear. The God of the Old Testament is "above compassion, above good." And from man “God demands the impossible. God only requires the impossible. ”
The mysteries of biblical faith became defining for him in the book "Sola fide - Only by faith." “Faith calls everything to its own judgment,” Shestov asserts in his other book, Kierkegaard and Existential Philosophy. For "faith is ... a new dimension of thinking that opens the way to the Creator."
Faith is not this worldly, but the other world, it is where there is already madness, the original Divine freedom and the transition from the visible to the invisible world. “Only on the wings of faith can one fly over all the“ stone walls ... ”.
It is an absolutely unreasonable and baseless personal meeting with God of the person he has chosen, opening up “impossible” possibilities. Shestov decisively rejects any theological rationalism. "Faith not only cannot, it does not want to turn into knowledge."
“So, when the truth that comes from faith is transformed by us or comprehended as self-evident truth, it is necessary to see in this an indication that we have lost it.”
Athens and Jerusalem. Or or. Faith or reason ... Such opposition is often found in philosophy. In its most pronounced form, it was revealed by Kierkegaard, to the reading of which Lev Shestov was prompted by Edmund Husserl (Shestov and Husserl were connected since 1928 by friendship based on mutual respect, despite the fact that their understanding of philosophy was at opposite poles). It was a surprise for Shestov to learn that Kierkegaard saw the source of philosophy not in surprise, as the ancients thought, but in despair, and that he opposed Job to Plato and Hegel. It was from Kierkegaard that Shestov borrowed the expression “existential philosophy”, applied to his own thoughts, in order to distinguish them from speculative philosophy.
In Shestov's philosophy we meet not so much opposition as denial of the truths of reason. The world of “the laws of nature,” he says, is a nightmare from which we should have awakened. Shestov contrasts Athens and Jerusalem, the Hellenic and Biblical principles of European thought, eternal truths in ancient philosophy and the sphere of revelation. The meaning of the opposition: the untruth of the mind is not in what it essentially possesses, but in the fact that in the renunciation of freedom (and the root of this renunciation, according to Shestov, in the ethical sphere), a person is oriented in the mind not to his creative insights, but to immutability and necessity. And the agony of the situation lies in the fact that the mind leaves a person alone with his worries and worries.
Reason disappoints Shestov primarily because it does not give a person reconciliation with reality, with a world in which life is "a meaningless, desperate cry or insane sobbing." The mind does not know the "mystery of the eternal" - death, this is "the most incomprehensible", the most "unnatural of everything that we observe in the world." And trying to calm a person down, the mind only deceives him, leads him away from reality. It is painful for Shestov to realize that "on the scales of Job, human sorrow turns out to be heavier than the sand of the sea", that "the groans of the perishing reject the evidence."
One should not think that Shestov's attacks on reason lead him to cognitive skepticism. Everything can be cognized, and knowledge can be unlimited. However, in a certain, one might say existential, sense, they turn out to be unnecessary. One after another, we see pictures of Ivan Ilyich's dying, the torment of Dostoevsky's "underground" man, the revelations of the frantic Plotinus, the cries of Job - through death, catastrophes and hard labor, a certain initial delusion of man is highlighted. What is it connected with?
To clarify this question, Shestov, following Kierkegaard, turns to the Fall. Is it for him? the result of a kind of fright, fright in front of nothing. The tempting serpent is the mind itself, which instills in man a distrust of divine freedom and wants to take the place of God. Reason offers man its “reliable necessity” and guarantees of rightness in distinguishing between good and evil, but how many times has reason deceived us.
Nevertheless, a person prefers the reliability of reason instead of the mysterious, unsecured paradoxical freedom of faith. And people do not need God, but guarantees. Whoever is able to “give” or create the illusion of these guarantees will become God for them. (Motives of this kind were clarified by FM Dostoevsky. Perceiving the relationship between freedom and necessity, inspired by reason and "self-evidence", L. Shestov could not help dwelling on this topic). The book “On the Scales of Job” includes the part “What is Truth. On ethics and ontology ”, where Shestov reproduces the story of the“ murder ”of God by both the Hellenic sages and Spinoza ... depths of despair not towards eternal reason, but towards a personal God.
The search for truth where it is usually not sought. Shestov notes that the entire history of philosophy is the history of the search for truth, and this same history reveals that “for man, the search for truth has always been a pursuit of universally binding judgments. It was not enough for man to possess the truth. He wanted something different ... so that his truth was the truth "for all."
The most profound and courageous philosophers, both among the ancient Greeks and among us, says Shestov, “nevertheless remained naive realists in their methodological methods and proceeded from the assumption that truth is adaequatio rei et intellectus” (correspondence of a thing and intellect. - E. V). He cites the Aristotelian definition: “... To say what is, about what is, and to say what is not, about what is not, means to assert the truth ...”. For the needs of a sane man in the street and for the needs of a scientific researcher (which, according to Shestov, do not differ from each other in this respect), this definition is sufficient. Inherited this position from science and philosophy. But it’s just a philosopher who can’t follow his truths to those places “where the mathematician learns that the sum of the angles in a triangle is equal to two straight lines”. Truth as authenticity, as human truth, is opposite to the truths of science, morality and human communication. It is not associated with logical truths and judgments.
She is not born in a dispute either. "Truth comes to life without showing anybody any supporting documents." “Truth does not need any grounds - cannot it bear itself! The last truth, what philosophy is looking for, what is most important for living people, comes “suddenly”. It is like a miracle, a mystery. “Truth is like a treasure, it is not given into the hands ... We worry, we are tormented, we strive for the truth, but the truth needs something from us. She, apparently, is also vigilantly watching us and looking for us, as we are her ... ”.
The search for “living”, “real”, “last” truth both in antiquity and in our time has more than once led to a loss of confidence in reason (Plotinus, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky), and yet rationalism with all its “argumentation from consequences” is not it is given to drown out the vague feeling that lives in people that the last truth, the truth that our ancestors so unsuccessfully sought in paradise, lies on the other side of reason and reason comprehensible and that to find it in that dead and motionless world in which only rationalism can rule , impossible. Truth in its primordial nature is transcendental, it is identical with revelation, it is God. “To see the truth, you need not only a keen eye, resourcefulness, vigilance, etc., you need the ability to the greatest self-denial” and readiness for a miracle.
According to Shestov, miracle and mystery are fundamental qualities of being. Every being is a miracle, since it meets all the requirements of the latter. “Our mind, which in childhood has assimilated so many absurdities, has lost the ability to defend itself and accepts everything except what it has been warned against since childhood: that is, from the miraculous, in other words, actions without a reason ... That, for example, is understood by a modern person in the words "natural development of the world"? Forget your "school" for a minute, and immediately make sure that the development of the world is terribly unnatural: it would be natural if there was nothing - no peace, no development. "
No social rearrangements will banish tragedies from life ... Shestov's existential philosophy with the new, aforementioned dimension of truth is tuned not to “understanding”, but to “life” (“the righteous will live by faith”). He experienced life as “the freedom of individual existence”, as a miracle, as a “creative mystery” and unlimited possibility. When Shestov wanted to emphasize that we are talking about real realities, he used the expressions “living truth”, “living being”, “living person” - in contrast to the beloved by philosophers “man in general”. Spinoza’s advice to Shestov seemed terrible: “Don't laugh, don't cry, don't hate, but understand ...”. On the contrary, says Shestov, a person would have to shout, yell, laugh, mock, protest. He again mentions the biblical Job, who, to the great indignation of his wise friends, groaned and screamed.
Shestov is suspicious of any peace of mind, for the land on which we live is by no means conducive to this. He loved those who, like Pascal, “seek while groaning”. Referring again and again to the category of “life”, he stresses every time that life is creativity, unpredictability and freedom. Even death (and the theme of death is practically present in all of his works) is considered by him in the context of the transition of a personality from one order of the world to another. Death has a lot to do with human existence. "Death is the most unnatural, mysterious and enigmatic of everything that happens around us." Death has its own truths, its own evidence, its own possibilities and impossibilities.
Shestov's reflections on death are associated with the concepts of fear, horror and loneliness. In the "Revelations of Death" he writes: "In order to have a great delight, a great horror is needed ...". In the chapter “At the Last Judgment,” Shestov reflects on the latest works of L. Tolstoy. He believes that Tolstoy was given to hear and understand the mysterious language of death. This refers to the stories of Tolstoy "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", "The owner and the worker." “Death cuts all invisible threads by which we are connected on earth with creatures of our own kind. And absolute loneliness, which is fuller neither at the bottom of the sea, nor under the earth, - loneliness, which cannot be endured ... ”. “The last law on earth is loneliness,” Shestov writes in “Apotheosis ...”.
But there is still the routine and the occasion; routine and violence are perhaps the main features of reality. Dostoevsky's “underground” person is pathetic, but a “normal person”, that is, a person who lives in the same underground, only not suspecting that the underground is underground, and convinced that his life is a real, higher life ... in the “underground” hero he evokes Homeric laughter.
And Dostoevsky's heroes are not alone! Gogol's terrible cry: “It's boring to live in this world, gentlemen! - refers, Shestov believes, not to the worst of us (Chichikovs, Nozdrevs, Sobakevichs, etc.). It's about the best. They are “living automata, wound up by a mysterious hand and do not dare to show their own initiative, their personal will anywhere and in anything. Some, very few, feel that their life is not life, but death. "
Tolstoy's heroes “pass away” by the will of a terrifying, insidious accident. Happening? not yet a borderline situation, it is a kind of routine. Shestov is interested in his senselessness and mass character. This is a special kind of trifle - stupid, illogical - but it puts a person on the border of being in the world. “When an“ accident ”brings us to an abyss, when, after many years of a carefree, calm life, suddenly, like Hamlet’s, some formidable something new, mysterious - maybe a blessed, maybe a hostile force directs and determines our actions. " Chance is what deprives life of all objective meaning.
Each of us is forever hidden from prying eyes in an absolutely impenetrable shell of our body. "Nature," says Shestov, "arranged it in such a way that one person does not even notice, does not even dare to know the other." And the very being, called I, what can it know about itself and desire? For the I, who directly perceives myself, are “judgments based on purely external signs” so important - kind, hot-tempered, gifted, etc.? Of course, as a cosmic and social being, he is “obliged” to apply them when he encounters a world that follows its own laws, a world of necessity; but do they not burden and disfigure him?
"The main feature of every person is impermanence, and he values the privilege of impermanence most of all: impermanence, after all, is life and freedom." However, this impermanence irritates neighbors, and even for the I myself it turns out to be a dangerous property, just as the commandment “Know thyself” turned out to be dangerous, contrary to the advice of the ancients. Before our ancestors violated the commandment forbidding a person to eat fruits from the tree of knowledge, were they ashamed of their nakedness? “... They admired her, and did not“ judge ”her. Their existence was not subject to external judgment, they generally did not judge themselves, and no one judged them. And then there was no nudity, but beauty. But "know thyself" came - and the "judgment" began. “It is clear,” Shestov emphasizes, “that the rule“ know thyself ”is a human rule. Its meaning is that everyone should appreciate and measure themselves in the same way as the people around them value and measure them ”.
Shestov is sad to realize that I am very fragile in comparison with the force that is outside, but Shestov is even more worried by the fact that, getting used to deal only with his image, “how it is reflected on the surface of being,” a person “has forgotten how to see his essence” ... Moreover, what is “inside” gradually loses its inherent properties. And a person gets used to “know” about himself only what others know. But if he wanted and could look at his real I, then “his real I would seem to him ugly, and meaningless, and insanely scary,” because it would turn out to be “inconsistent with anything and not like anything else. what we usually think is right and proper. " And it is possible that from this real (essential) I, he would rush to the “appearing”: with him, at least, it is calmer, for “before the unrighteous and selfish judgment of others” it “is still not so mercilessly exposed as our real I AM".
“Necessity” besieges the Self both “outside” and “from within”, despite this, a person wants to be (italics of the authors) and does not want to “hide and hide anything, as it is necessary to do now”. Truly a person begins when he rebelles against routine and necessity, when he appears in the daring of freedom and creativity. Creativity, Shestov believes, is a universal characteristic of the true world, it is discontinuity, it is a leap, as a result of which the unprecedented, unknown is born “out of nothing”. But creativity is also an unprecedented torment, mixed with unprecedented delight. In creativity, human existence appears as a beginning that has no end, as openness to infinity, as an infinite possibility and a possibility of infinity ...
We have joined only a small fraction of Shestov's philosophical reflections. This could conclude this section. But one cannot ignore the resonance that these reflections had among his contemporaries - sometimes followers, and more often opponents of Shestov. It was the latter who called him "the anti-philosopher." Those who were inclined to see Shestov as a kind of philosophical “prophet” of the coming century, called his philosophy differently: philosophical impressionism, perhaps for the aphorism and understatement of judgments (from impression fr. “Impression”); more often - existentialism. Shestov himself was inclined to the latter name after coming into contact with the philosophy of Seren Kierkegaard.
Albert Camus calls Shestov, along with Kierkegaard, the protagonist of paradox and absurdity. In his work The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus defines the difference between the position of his Parisian contemporaries and Shestov's: “For Shestov, reason is sterile, but there is something above reason. For a person of absurdity, reason is sterile and there is nothing higher than reason ”. Fr. Vasily Zenkovsky is the author of a two-volume work on the history of Russian philosophy: “... Regarding this very dubious“ compliment ”to Shestov, I must say that, minus a few motives, Shestov’s work moves away completely from“ existentialism ”(in both its forms - atheistic and religious). In essence, Shestov is a religious thinker, he is not at all anthropocentric, but theocentric ... ”.
Man and humanity have always been interested in two complex problems: himself and the world around him.
Western philosophers paid more attention to the external world of man, and Eastern - to the internal world of man.
The first human problem is the human origin problem.
Primitive religion believed that the ancestors of man in plants, animals, and even in parts of the earth's surface. This is the meaning of one of the ancient forms of religion - totemism.
Later, other forms of religion appear, explaining the origin of man by the action of God.
This is the position of modern religion. Philosophical theory is based on the natural science theory of the origin of man ( anthropogenesis) Darwin (19th century). He was the first to formulate the hypothesis of the origin of man from ape. The separation of man from the animal world was due to labor. It was the work and communication of people in the process of their work that contributed to the development of their speech. An important factor in the formation of a person was moral norms, relationships between people. Thus, work, articulate speech and morality became factors in the formation of a person.
Many Russian philosophers also tried to contribute to the solution of the problem of the origin of man.
According to Lev Shestov, there are 2 hypotheses of human origin: biblical and Darwinian. The biblical, he believed, is more believable: this is evidenced by the indefatigable longing and eternal thirst of man, his eternal inability to find what is needed on earth. But in the world there are a lot of people who descended from a monkey, who managed to adapt to life like a monkey. It follows that both Darwin and the Bible are right. Some people descended from the sinned Adam, they feel the sin of their ancestors in their blood, they are tormented by it, while others - from the monkey who did not sin, their conscience is calm, they are not tormented and not tormented.
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche believed that man had not yet emerged at all, for the most part he still remains a superchimpanzee. Precisely "super", because in comparison with the monkey he is smarter, more cunning, more dexterous, but still a monkey.
Like Russian thinkers, Nietzsche believed that Darwin's theory was not supported by any serious facts. Natural selection does promote survival, but not the best or most significant individuals. As a result of natural selection, no progress occurs. Everything bright, beautiful, talented evokes or even hatred and perishes. This is especially true for society, but the same thing happens in nature. Only gray, nondescript individuals give offspring. People of genius rarely have children at all. Bright people, strong and brave, always go forward, are not afraid to risk their lives and therefore most often die early.
The only representatives of true humanity are, according to Nietzsche, only philosophers, artists, saints. Only they managed to escape from the animal world and live entirely in human interests.
Professor, Doctor of Medical Sciences Ernest Muldashev claims that the first people descended from the Atlanteans, who lived on the sunken continent of Atlantis and were aliens from space.
In the 60s of the 20th century, the so-called mutational theory appeared. About 3 million years ago in East Africa, as a result of an earthquake, the earth's crust fractured, and uranium deposits were exposed. Ionizing radiation began, it negatively affected all living things. A mutation began, including monkeys, which led to the emergence of man.
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1. Biography
Lev Shestov (Yehuda Leib Isaakovich Schwarzeman) was born on January 31 (February 13) 1866 in Kiev, died on November 20, 1938 in Paris from senile tuberculosis, - Russian religious philosopher, literary critic.
Born into the family of a large manufacturer, merchant Isaak Moiseevich Shvartsman. Located on the Podil "Partnership Is. Shvartsman "with a millionth turnover was known for the quality of the English fabric he bought. My father was a great connoisseur of ancient Hebrew writing, read freely Hebrew books, went to synagogue, but he was what the Jews call "epikoires" - a free-thinker. There was a time when they even wanted to expel him from the synagogue for profaning a holy place and for blasphemous attacks. But with all his free thinking, he used to say: - Still, when the Torah scrolls are carried through the synagogue on a solemn holiday, I kiss them. Shestov loved to listen to old legends and beliefs from his father's lips. The father took to the children, rather out of traditional habit, the teacher of the Hebrew language, but Shestov later completely forgot this language. L.I. Shestov had two younger brothers and four sisters.
He studied at the Kiev 3rd gymnasium, but was forced to transfer to Moscow. In 1884 he entered the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow University, then transferred to the Faculty of Law, studied for a semester in Berlin, graduated from the University in Kiev (1889) with the title of Candidate of Law in 1889. Doctoral dissertation "On the Situation of the Working Class in Russia" was held at Kiev University. But in order to publish it, Shestov had to send it to the Moscow Censorship Committee. This committee not only denied permission to print the manuscript, but requisitioned it. "If this book were to be published, a revolution would have taken place in Russia," the stern censor told the surprised author.
For several years Shestov lived in Kiev, where he worked in his father's business, at the same time intensively studying literature and philosophy. However, it was not easy to combine business and philosophy. In 1895 Shestov fell seriously ill (nervous breakdown), and the next year he went abroad for treatment. In the future, the father's business venture will become a kind of family curse for the thinker: he will repeatedly be forced to break away from his family, friends, and beloved work and rush to Kiev to put things in order in the affairs of the company, shaken by an aging father and careless younger brothers.
In 1896, in Rome, Shestov married Anna Eleazarovna Berezovskaya, who at that time was studying medicine (venereologist); two years later they moved to Bern together, and in 1898 returned to Russia.
The February revolution did not evoke particular delight in Shestov, although the philosopher was always an opponent of autocracy. In 1920, Lev Shestov left with his family Soviet Russia and settled in France, where he lived until his death. November 19, 1938 Lev Shestov died in Paris, in a clinic on st. Boileau.
Daughters - Tatiana (1897) and Natalia (1900).
2. Creativity
First articles: A large article about the large book of Vl. Solovyov "Justification of Good". In the newspaper "Kievskoe Slovo" dated February 22, 1895, the article "Georg Brandes on Hamlet", signed with the letters L. Sh. It served as the beginning of a great work on Shakespeare.
In 1890-95 he published articles on social and economic issues.
In the middle of the 1890s. devotes himself to the pursuit of literary and philosophical work.
In the work of Shestov, addressed to Holy Scripture, permeated with "damned questions" of Russian literature, two main stages are distinguished: literary-critical (before 1911) and philosophical proper. He called Shakespeare his “first teacher of philosophy”. The essay "Shakespeare and his critic Brandes" (1898) is Shestov's philosophical debut. The cross-cutting problems of Shestov's creativity are: limited and insufficient scientific knowledge as a means of "orienting" a person in the world; distrust of "general ideas", "systems", "worldviews" that obscure real reality from our eyes in all its beauty and all its diversity; highlighting individual human life with its problematic and sometimes tragic nature. In particular, in the work "Shakespeare and his critic Brandes," he, using the example of the heroes of Shakespeare's tragedies ("Macbeth", "Othello"), tries to show the inconsistency of the moral law, universal moral norms. Among other things, he shows the type of rebel person who has nothing more to lose but his life, and that is why he is still ready to fight. A decisive influence on him was exerted by Nietzsche, to whom the books “Good in the Teachings of Gr. Tolstoy and F. Nietzsche "(1900)," Dostoevsky and Nietzsche "(1903, It was translated into eight languages, including even Chinese.), Which brought fame to the author. Shestov was captured by the personality of a "mad thinker" who, face to face with a terrible illness, sought God beyond the bounds of morality and culture.
3. Letter from Shestov to Fondant (memoirs of Herman Lovtsky)
“During this time I was reading Kant, Shakespeare and the Bible. I immediately felt like an opponent of Kant. Shakespeare turned me over so that I lost my sleep. And then one day I read in a Russian magazine several chapters of Brandes in translation dedicated to Shakespeare. I was furious. A little later, while in Europe, I read Nietzsche. I felt that in him the world was completely overturned. I cannot convey the impression he made on me.
At first I read Beyond Good and Evil, but I didn't really understand it, probably because of the aphoristic form ... It took a while for me to grasp it. Then there was the "Geneology of Morality". I started reading at 8 pm and finished only at 2 am. The book excited me, angered everything in me. I could not sleep and looked for arguments to resist this terrible, ruthless thought ... Of course, Nature is cruel, indifferent. Undoubtedly she kills in cold blood, relentlessly. But thought is not Nature. There is no reason that she also intended to kill the weak, to push them in order to help Nature in her terrible business. I was beside myself ... At that moment I did not know Nietzsche at all. I didn't know anything about his life. Then one day, it seems in the Brockhaus edition, I read a note on his biography. He was also one of those with whom Nature dealt cruelly, inexorably: she found him weak and pushed him. On this day, I understood.
While still abroad, I once saw Brandes' book on Shakespeare in the window. I buy it, read it and the anger reignites in me again. Brandes was then a big person. He discovered Nietzsche, he kept in touch with Stuart Mill, and so on ... But it was a kind of "pod-Ten", little Ten, of course, not devoid of some talent. But he read without going deep, and glided over the surface of things. "We feel with Hamlet," "we feel with Shakespeare," etc. etc. ... In a word, Shakespeare did not interfere with his sleep.
In my book Shakespeare and His Critic Brandes, I still held the point of view of morality, which I left a few time later. But this point of view has already reached the degree that one could have foreseen that "the frames are beginning to crumble." Do you remember the lines: "The connection of times has fallen, why was I born to tie it" *). I then tried to restore this connection, but only later did I realize that it was necessary to leave time out of the connection. Let it fly to pieces. Needless to say, Brandes advised me in this, he was far from such a problem.
When, after this book, I wanted to return to Nietzsche and especially to his biography, I realized that with my moral problems I could never get down to him. The moral issue does not hold up to a collision with Nietzsche. For Brandes, Shakespeare's tragedy was entertainment, the enjoyment of art, and against such an attitude I was forced to defend myself with the epigraph from Nietzsche: "I hate all reading idlers."
We can say that from that moment on, the topic of God-seeking becomes the main one for Shestov. His work is now theocentric: God, about whom Shestov writes, is not an abstract "God of philosophers", but a living "God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob." Words: “Nietzsche opened the way. You need to look for something that is higher ... good, you need to look for God "- express the essence of Shestov's philosophical position and are applicable to all of his work.
Shestov took part in the work of religious and philosophical meetings, collaborated in the magazine "World of Art", was (since 1915) a member of the Moscow Psychological Society. The books The Apotheosis of Groundlessness (1905) and The Great Eves (1912) have been published in Russia. Not accepting the revolution of 1917, Shestov emigrated to France (1920). In 1922-37 he taught the history of philosophy at the Sorbonne, gave courses on Vl. Soloviev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Pascal, Kierkegaard. The most significant works of Shestov were published in Europe: "The Power of Keys" (1923), "On the Scales of Job" (1929), "Kierkegaard and Existential Philosophy" (1939), "Athens and Jerusalem" (1951), "Speculation and Revelation" ( 1964), "Only by faith" (1966).
4. Philosophy
L.I. Shestov defined his philosophy as existential: at the center of it is the existence of a lonely human I, who does not want to merge with the "one", striving to defend his right to individuality, to a unique personal vision of the world around him. Freedom of the individual - internal and external, spiritual and political - is considered by the philosopher as the highest value, the basis of true existence. Religious faith in his work appears as the highest degree of man's liberation from the power of "self-evident truths", from the power of "all-land", as a breakthrough into the field of absolute freedom. "Nothing brings to the world as much enmity, the most bitter as the idea of unity."
Human Self
The human mind is an embryo that needs to develop.
Man is looking for freedom. He longs for the gods and the divine, although he “knows nothing” about the gods and the divine, or, if you like, because he knows nothing. You don't even need to know anything about the gods. It is enough just to hear that they are calling you to them, to that upper region in which freedom reigns, where the free reign. And the first step towards the gods is the readiness to overcome, at least mentally, that heaviness, that gravitation towards the center, the soil, towards the constant and stable, with which people have become so accustomed that they see in this not only their own nature, but also the nature of all living things. There are no laws over a person. Everything for him: both the law and the Saturday. HE is the measure of things, he is called upon to legislate, like an unlimited monarch, and he has the right to oppose any situation with the opposite position.
The main feature of every person is impermanence, and he values the privilege of impermanence most of all: impermanence, after all, is life and freedom. But for others, impermanence in one's neighbor is completely unbearable. And even for a person himself, his inconstancy is the most dangerous property. All the exercises, all the education of the "soul" comes down to instilling such skills in oneself, to create for oneself what is called character. Even art requires school. To become a virtuoso, you need to limit your interests to only one area, i.e. cultivate constancy in yourself. And all people, willy-nilly, become specialists to a greater or lesser extent, i.e. give up a lot in order to achieve little and at least somehow survive. “Knowing yourself” is reduced to the fact that, ignoring, suppressing everything impermanent, free, originally divine, subordinate yourself to the historically created rules and scales, so that “know yourself”, contrary to the ancients, is not a commandment of God at all.
Problems of the theory of knowledge.
The habit of seeking not so much truth as explanations has taken root in man, a peculiar taste, an ineradicable autonomous need has appeared, which have become the pathos of philosophical creativity, just as the pathos of religious creativity is the desire at all costs to reconcile a person with the fate prepared for him by the gods. Some want to explain the world, others want to justify. But they both achieve their explanations and reconciliation in one way: by generalizing the observed individual phenomena into general laws. In other words, having learned something, people decide that they already know a lot, that they already know almost everything, even just everyone knows that they have general provisions that make it possible to navigate the mysterious and complex variety of real life. They create for themselves a priori positions that serve as a basis and are the result of discursive thinking. Discursive thinking exists only so that a person has the illusion of perfect knowledge. In fact, abstract concepts not only do not give knowledge of reality, but, on the contrary, lead away from reality. Reality is irrational, absolutely unknowable, and our science is only an ideal ignorance of life.
Philosophy of Religious Existentialism
The man succumbed to temptation, tasted of the forbidden fruits, his eyes were opened and he became knowledgeable. What was revealed to him? What did he learn? What was revealed to him was what was revealed to the Greek philosophers and Hindu sages: the divine "good is green" did not justify itself - in the created world not all good, in the created world - and precisely because it was created - there cannot be evil, moreover, there is a lot of evil and unbearable evil. This is evidenced with indisputable evidence by everything that surrounds us - the direct data of consciousness; and the one who looks at the world with "open eyes" is the one who "knows", otherwise he cannot judge it. From the moment when a person became “knowledgeable”, in other words, together with “knowledge” he entered the world of sin, and after sin and evil. So according to the Bible.
Reason greedily seeks to give man to the power of necessity, and the free act of creation, which is described in Scripture, not only does not satisfy it, but irritates, worries and frightens. He prefers to surrender himself to the power of necessity, with its eternal universal and unchanging principles, than to entrust himself to his Creator. So it was with our forefather, tempted or bewitched by the words of the tempter, and so it continues to be with us. Aristotle twenty centuries ago, Spinoza, Kant and Hegel in modern times unrestrainedly strive to surrender themselves and humanity to the power of necessity. And they do not even suspect that this is the greatest fall - they see in gnosis not death, but the salvation of the soul.
We have exchanged faith, which determines the attitude of the creature to the Creator and signified unlimited freedom and infinite possibilities, for knowledge, for slavish dependence on dead and deadening eternal principles. Can you think of a more terrible and fatal fall?
The first man was frightened by the unrestricted will of the Creator, saw in it such a terrible "arbitrariness" for us and began to seek protection from God in knowledge, which, as the tempter suggested to him, equated him with God, that is, put him and God in equal importance from eternal, uncreated truths, revealing the unity of human and divine nature. And this "knowledge" flattened, crushed his consciousness, driving him into the plane of limited possibilities, which now determine for him both his earthly and his eternal destiny. This is how Scripture depicts the "fall" of man. And only faith ... can get rid of the immeasurable burden of original sin from us, give us the opportunity to straighten up again, to “stand up”.
... The whole meaning of faith, its very essence lies in the fact that it breaks, and not with one or another definite authority, but with the very idea of authority. And in this transformation, so unexpected, so little included in the calculations and hopes of a person, what happens to him, not only apart from, but directly against his will, is the great miracle of faith, which seems absolutely impossible for those who have not experienced it. At least some kind of support, some kind of authority, some kind of criterion - you can't immediately, completely break with what we grew up on and with which we have grown so spiritually. A person suddenly begins to feel that no support, no support is needed. The insane fear that grips a person at the first feeling that the soil has swum from under his feet - passes. The habit of supporting is, as if our second, no, not the second, but the first nature, with which we are so connected, as if it conditioned the very possibility of our existence, is only a habit.
From any attempt to touch the tentacles of reason to faith - faith dies. She can only live in an atmosphere of madness. She does not share her power with anyone. And the question is posed just like that - either reason or faith.
The opposite concept to sin is not virtue, but freedom. Freedom from all fear, freedom from coercion. The opposite of sin is faith.
Only faith that does not reckon with anything, does not "know" anything and does not want to know - only faith can be the source of truths created by God. Vera does not ask, does not inquire, does not look back. Faith only appeals to the one by whose will all that is is. And if speculative philosophy proceeds from the given and self-evidence and accepts them as necessary, then existential philosophy overcomes all necessity through faith. "By faith, Abraham obeyed the calling to go into the land that he had to receive as an inheritance, and he went, not knowing where he was going." To come to the promised land, knowledge is not needed; for a knowledgeable person, the promised land does not exist. The Promised Land where the believer came, it became the promised land because the believer came there: no doubt - because it is impossible.
Faith is not “trust” in the invisible truths facilitated by reason, it is not also trust in the proclaimed instructors or St. books to the rules of life. Such faith is only a less perfect knowledge and testifies to the same fall of man as the third kind of knowledge of Spinoza or the uncreated truths of Leibniz. If God means that nothing is impossible, then faith means that the end of necessity has come and all the stone "you must" generated by necessity. There are no truths, the dawn of freedom is dawning: Listen, Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord. And there is no sin: God took it upon himself and destroyed him and all the evil that entered the world with sin. Contemplative philosophy "explains" evil, but the explained evil not only persists, it is justified in its necessity, is accepted and turns into an eternal principle. Existential philosophy goes beyond the limits of "explanations", existential philosophy in "explanations" sees its worst enemy. Evil cannot be explained, evil cannot be “accepted” and negotiated with it, just as it is impossible to accept sin and negotiate with sin: evil can and must only be exterminated.
4. Philosophy of history
What else is important to note? It has to do with history.
The human spirit does not develop in time at all. Or even better: when it develops, and when it does not develop. If we compare the 19th century A.D. from the 8th century BC, then we can say that religiously people have gone backwards. We have psalmists like King David, we have sages like King Solomon, do we have prophets like Isaiah? Call at least a hundred Hegels - they will not do anything about this circumstance ... Therefore, it is absolutely impossible to apply Hegel's general formula here. The spirit breathes where it wants, and the time is not an order for it.
History should be a depiction of what was. Where you can see the connection of events - we will try to find it. But we must be ready to see the lack of communication, the breaking of the chain. I know that this is difficult, I know that it is fraught with great, with the greatest risk.
It seems to some that they are doing a great thing, saving humanity, while others do not think about anything at all: they simply adapt to the new conditions of existence, taking into consideration only their own interests of today. What will happen tomorrow - they do not care, they do not believe in tomorrow, just as they do not remember what happened yesterday. There is a huge, overwhelming majority of such people in Russia, as elsewhere, by the way. And, strange as it may seem at first glance, they, these people of today, completely immersed in their petty, insignificant interests, are making history; in their hands is the future of Russia, the future of humanity and the whole world.
Russia is saving Europe — all the "ideological" defenders of Bolshevism are deeply convinced of this. And it will save precisely because, in contrast to Europe, she believes in the magical effect of the word. Strange as it may seem, but the Bolsheviks, fanatically professing materialism, are in fact the most naive idealists. For them, the real conditions of human life do not exist. They are convinced that the word has supernatural power. By the word, everything will be done - you just need to fearlessly and boldly trust the word. And they trusted. Decrees are pouring in in the thousands. And if the regime of Nicholas I, as well as most of his predecessors and successors, deserves in all fairness the name of unenlightened despotism, then with even greater right the Bolshevik regime can be described with this word. This is despotism, and - I am strenuously emphasizing - unenlightened despotism.
Here, in Europe, and partly in Russia, many are inclined to think that Bolshevism is some kind of innovation and even a huge innovation. This is a mistake, Bolshevism has failed to create anything and will not create anything: this is its gravest sin before Russia and before the whole world. Bolshevism does not create, but lives by what was created before it.
Both the Russian intelligentsia and the Russian people are too immersed in worries about the Heavenly City, but they do not know how about earthly interests, and, most importantly, do not like to think. The Russian peasant and the Russian worker, even the Russian educated person, first of all needed the title of citizen. It was necessary to instill in him the consciousness that he was not a slave who was mocked by everyone and sundry, that he had rights, sacred rights, which he himself and everyone was obliged to protect. October 25, 1917 should be considered the day of the failure of the Russian revolution. The Bolsheviks did not save, but betrayed the working and peasant population of Russia.
poles existentialism cognition
Conclusion
From the memoirs of Lovtsky: “On Sunday, November 20, I called Tatiana and learned that he had died early in the morning from senile tuberculosis.
In the afternoon we all gathered at the clinic. He lies on the bed, calm, calm, his face is quiet, beautiful. His wife says that he was still feeling quite well last night. This morning, before she came, the nurse came to set the thermometer. He turned. And he passed away. Heart. “He loved you so much,” and she cries. And then he points to a small table by the bed: there is an open Bible (in Russian) and the Vedanta System (Brahma Sutra, etc.). The book is opened to the chapter: Brahma as Joy. Shestov emphasized the following lines:
"Not a gloomy asceticism marks the Sage of Brahma, but a joyful, hopeful consciousness of unity with God."
Appendix
Lev Shestov (Yehuda Leib Isaakovich Schwarzeman)
"Nothing brings to the world as much enmity, the most bitter as the idea of unity."
“HE (man) is the measure of things, he is called upon to legislate as an unlimited monarch, and he has the right to oppose any situation with the opposite position. The main feature of every person is impermanence, and he values the privilege of impermanence most of all: impermanence, after all, is life and freedom "
"Reality is irrational, absolutely unknowable, and our science is only an ideal ignorance of life."
“.. Aristotle twenty centuries ago, Spinoza, Kant and Hegel in modern times unrestrainedly strive to surrender themselves and humanity to the power of necessity. And they do not even suspect that this is the greatest fall - in gnosis they see not death, but the salvation of the soul. "
“From any attempt to touch faith with the tentacles of reason, faith dies. She can only live in an atmosphere of madness. She does not share her power with anyone. And the question is posed just like that - either reason or faith. "
“The opposite concept to sin is not virtue, but freedom. Freedom from all fear, freedom from coercion. The opposite concept to sin .. is faith "
“Contemplative philosophy“ explains ”evil, but the explained evil is not only preserved, it is justified in its necessity, is accepted and turns into an eternal principle. Existential philosophy goes beyond the limits of "explanations", existential philosophy in "explanations" sees its worst enemy. Evil cannot be explained, evil cannot be “accepted” and negotiated with it, just as it is impossible to accept sin and negotiate with sin: evil can and must only be exterminated. "
“The human spirit does not develop in time at all. Or even better: when it develops, and when it does not develop. If we compare the 19th century A.D. from the 8th century BC, then we can say that religiously people have gone backwards. We have psalmists like King David, we have sages like King Solomon, do we have prophets like Isaiah? Call at least a hundred Hegels - they will not do anything about this circumstance ... Therefore, it is absolutely impossible to apply Hegel's general formula here. The spirit seeks where it wants, and the time is not an order for it. "
“Some think that they are doing a great thing, saving humanity, others do not think about anything at all: they simply adapt to new conditions of existence, taking into consideration only their own interests of today. What will happen tomorrow - they do not care, they do not believe in tomorrow, just as they do not remember what happened yesterday. There is a huge, overwhelming majority of such people in Russia, as elsewhere, by the way. And, strange as it may seem at first glance, they, these people of today, completely immersed in their petty, insignificant interests, are making history; in their hands the future of Russia, the future of mankind and the whole world. "
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SHESTOV, LEO(1866-1938), Russian philosopher, literary critic. Real name - Lev Isaakovich Shvartsman. Born in Kiev in the family of a businessman on January 31 (February 12) 1866. In 1884 he entered the Faculty of Mathematics of Moscow University, a year later he moved to the Faculty of Law. He was expelled from the university for participating in political speeches of students. Completed his education at the Faculty of Law of Kiev University (1889). Later Shestov left the world of literary criticism and philosophical essayism, and this choice turned out to be final. He participated in the Religious and Philosophical Meetings in St. Petersburg, maintained relations with the leading representatives of the Russian religious and philosophical movement at the beginning of the century - with D.S. Merezhkovsky, S.N. Bulgakov, V.V. Rozanov, M.O. Gershenzon, Vyach. Ivanov and others. Especially close relations connected him with N.A. Berdyaev.
In 1898 Shestov's first book was published - Shakespeare and his critic Brandes... An important milestone in the creative biography of Shestov was his books Good and evil in the teachings of gr. Tolstoy and Fr. Nietzsche (1900), Dostoevsky and Nietzsche: The Philosophy of Tragedy(1903) and Apotheosis of groundlessness(1905). Shestov did not categorically accept the October Revolution and characterized the power of the Bolsheviks as "despotic" and "reactionary." In 1919 he emigrated from Russia: in 1920 he settled in Geneva, from 1921 until the end of his life - in France. The period of emigration became the most productive in the work of Shestov. During these years, his works came out: The power of the keys (1923), Job on the scales(1929). After Shestov's death, the following were published: Athens and Jerusalem (1938), Kierkegaard and existential philosophy (1939), Speculation and revelation (1964), Sola fide - Only by faith(1966). Shestov was an active participant in the European philosophical process of the 1920s – 1930s: friendly relations linked him with E. Husserl, A. Malraud, L. Levy-Bruhl, A. Gide, M. Buber, C. Barth, T. Mann and others A. Camus in his book The myth of Sisyphus(1942), characterizing the existential type of philosophizing, refers to the work of Shestov.
Already in the first big work of Shestov - Shakespeare and his critic Brandes(1898) - the main themes of his work are outlined quite definitely: the fate of a person in an indifferent and merciless world; science and "scientific" worldview, essentially blessing the hopelessness of human existence, depriving life even of its tragic meaning. Already in this work, Shestov discovers his main enemy - philosophical rationalism, which, in his opinion, with all the power of reason, sanctions the necessity and regularity of "objective circumstances" that humiliate and destroy a person, and at the same time requires him to be optimistic in realizing the "reasonable necessity "(Spinoza, Hegel, Marx).
Criticism of reason in general and philosophical speculation constitute the content of Shestov's work. In this struggle, he sought and found "allies" (Nietzsche, Dostoevsky) and even "doubles" (Kierkegaard). Even the teaching of his close friend N.A. Berdyaev about irrational, "uncreated" freedom seemed to Shestov too speculative. Criticizing any attempts at a speculative relationship to God (philosophical and theological in equal measure), Shestov opposed them exclusively to the individual, life (existential) path of faith.
Existential philosophy, Shestov argued, begins with a tragedy, it proceeds from the assumption that “the unknown cannot have anything to do with the known, that even the known is not so well known, as it is customary to think, and that, therefore, all assumptions ... were only by deceptive illusions. " Shestov proposes to forget about that familiar image of the world, which is imposed on man by science, rationalistic philosophy and common sense. In the world of existential philosophy, the future is completely unknown: “Every genuine creation is a creation out of nothing ... Creativity is a continuous transition from one failure to another. The general state of the creator is uncertainty, uncertainty. " The truth, which the philosopher possesses at the moment, has a meaning ("it is worth something") only if he admits "that it certainly cannot be obligatory for anyone." Shestov denied the "justification" of any universalism in history and was ready to subvert the idea of progress under any guise: Hegel's panlogism, "the formation of absolute total unity" by Vl.S. Solovyov or "the creation of God-manhood" by Berdyaev. Historical knowledge in the scientific-rationalistic sense is generally impossible. The story is "simple storytelling." The relationship to the past should always be personal. Truth in history can be discovered "only by those who are looking for it for themselves, and not for others, who have made a solemn vow not to turn their visions into generally binding judgments."
The idea of faith-freedom in the work of Shestov turns out to be the only possible positive answer to the question about the meaning of the historical existence of man. It is impossible to prove metaphysically that “the former will become unfulfilled” and by the will of the Absurd, the “iron” logic of historical and natural processes can be canceled, but it can be believed. "For God, nothing is impossible - this is the most cherished, deepest, only, I am ready to say, Kierkegaard's thought - and at the same time it is what fundamentally distinguishes existential philosophy from speculative."
