Lev Shestov is best known for his critiques of both philosophic rationalism and positivism.
27 Facts About Lev Shestov
2.
Lev Shestov's work advocated a movement beyond reason and metaphysics, arguing that these are incapable of conclusively establishing truth about ultimate problems, including the nature of God or existence.
3.
Lev Shestov's published books include Apotheosis of Groundlessness and his magnum opus Athens and Jerusalem.
4.
Lev Shestov lived in Paris until his death in 1938.
5.
Lev Shestov was a cousin of Nicholas Pritzker, a lawyer who emigrated to Chicago and became the patriarch of the Pritzker family that is prominent in business and politics.
6.
Lev Shestov obtained an education at various places, due to fractious clashes with authority.
7.
Lev Shestov went on to study law and mathematics at the Moscow State University but after a clash with the Inspector of Students he was told to return to Kiev, where he completed his studies.
8.
Lev Shestov's dissertation was rejected by the St Vladimir's Imperial University of Kiev on account of the revolutionary tendencies it express, thus preventing him from becoming a doctor of law.
9.
Lev Shestov contributed articles to a journal the circle had established.
10.
Lev Shestov developed his thinking in a second book on Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Friedrich Nietzsche, which increased Shestov's reputation as an original and incisive thinker.
11.
Lev Shestov's works were not met with approval even by some of his closest Russian friends.
12.
In 1908 Lev Shestov moved to Freiburg, Germany, and he stayed there until 1910, when he moved to a small Swiss village named Coppet.
13.
Lev Shestov returned to Moscow in 1915, and in this year his son Sergei died in combat against the Germans.
14.
Lev Shestov refused this, yet with the permission of the authorities he lectured at the University of Kiev on Greek philosophy.
15.
Lev Shestov was close to Eugene and Olga Petit, who helped him and his family relocate to Paris and integrate into the French political and literary circles.
16.
The discovery of Kierkegaard prompted Lev Shestov to realise that his philosophy shared great similarities, such as his rejection of idealism, and his belief that man can gain ultimate knowledge through ungrounded subjective thought rather than objective reason and verifiability.
17.
However, Lev Shestov maintained that Kierkegaard did not pursue this line of thought far enough, and continued where he thought the Dane left off.
18.
In 1938, Lev Shestov contracted a serious illness whilst at his vacation home.
19.
Lev Shestov's philosophy is, at first sight, not a philosophy at all, or it is a kind of anti-philosophy: it offers no systematic unity, no theoretical explanation of philosophical problems.
20.
Lev Shestov maintains that no metaphysical speculation can conclusively solve the mysteries of life.
21.
For Lev Shestov, philosophy has employed reason to place humans and God alike in a servile position with respect to "necessities" that are eternally true, unchangeable, and ultimately tyrannical.
22.
Lev Shestov's philosophy begins with despair, his whole thinking is desperate, but Shestov tries to point to something beyond despair - and beyond philosophy.
23.
Furthermore, although a Jewish philosopher, Lev Shestov saw in the resurrection of Christ this victory over necessity.
24.
Lev Shestov described the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus as a transfiguring spectacle by which it is demonstrated that the purpose of life is not "mystical" surrender to the "absolute", but ascetical struggle:.
25.
Lev Shestov did however influence writers such as Albert Camus, Benjamin Fondane, the poet Paul Celan, and notably Emil Cioran, who writes about Shestov:.
26.
Lev Shestov appears in the work of Gilles Deleuze; he is referred to sporadically in Nietzsche and Philosophy and appears in Difference and Repetition.
27.
Lev Shestov argues that Shestov's radical views on theology and an interest in extreme human behavior probably coloured Bataille's own thoughts.