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Автор: Lev Shestov
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isbn: 9780821445617
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      Athens & Jerusalem

       Athens & Jerusalem

      LEV SHESTOV

       Translated, with an introduction, by Bernard Martin

       SECOND EDITION

       Edited, with a new introduction and annotations, by Ramona Fotiade

      OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS

      ATHENS

      Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

       ohioswallow.com

      First edition © 1966 by Ohio University Press

      Second edition © 2016 by Ohio University Press

      New introduction © 2016 by Ramona Fotiade

      All rights reserved

      To obtain permission to quote, reprint, or otherwise reproduce or distribute material from Ohio University Press publications, please contact our rights and permissions department at (740) 593-1154 or (740) 593-4536 (fax).

      Printed in the United States of America

      Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper

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       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Shestov, Lev, 1866–1938, author. | Martin, Bernard, 1928– translator, writer of introduction. | Fotiade, Ramona, editor, writer of introduction.

      Title: Athens and Jerusalem / Lev Shestov ; translated, with an introduction, by Bernard Martin.

      Other titles: Afiny i Ierusalim. English

      Description: Second edition / edited, with a new introduction and annotations, by Ramona Fotiade. | Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2016040552| ISBN 9780821422199 (hardback) | ISBN 9780821422205 (pb) | ISBN 9780821445617 (pdf)

      Subjects: LCSH: Religion—Philosophy. | Philosophy and religion. | BISAC: PHILOSOPHY / General. | PHILOSOPHY / Movements / Phenomenology. | PHILOSOPHY / Movements / General.

      Classification: LCC BL51 .S52273 2016 | DDC 210—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016040552

      To Nancy, Rachel, and Joseph Martin

      Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis?

      —Tertullian

       Contents

      Introduction to the Second Edition by Ramona Fotiade

       Lev Shestov—The Thought from Outside

      Prefatory Note by Bernard Martin

      Introduction by Bernard Martin

       The Life and Thought of Lev Shestov

       ATHENS AND JERUSALEM

      Foreword by Lev Shestov

       Wisdom and Revelation

       I. Parmenides in Chains

       On the Sources of the Metaphysical Truths

       II. In the Bull of Phalaris

       Knowledge and Freedom

       III. On the Philosophy of the Middle Ages

       Concupiscentia Irresistibilis

       IV. On the Second Dimension of Thought

       Struggle and Reflection

       Lev Shestov—Biographical Timeline

       Notes

       Bibliography: Lev Shestov’s Main Works and Translations into English, French, and German

       Index

      INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION

       Lev Shestov—The Thought from Outside

       Ramona Fotiade

      An influential forerunner of French Existentialism, best known for his unique blend of Russian religious philosophy and Nietzschean aphoristic thought, Lev Shestov (1866–1938) elaborated a radical critique of rational knowledge from the point of view of individual existence. His view of philosophy as “the most worthy” (τὸ τιμιώτατον) was inspired by Plotinus’s flight “beyond reason and knowledge” in order to grasp the meaning of life, free from the constraints of logical and ethical thinking, which pose death as the ultimate limit of temporal existence.

      One of the precursors of the generation of Absurdist playwrights and essayists (most notably acknowledged in the works of Camus and Ionesco), Shestov fought against the disparagement of real, individual beings and personal experience in a world rendered absurd by the drive toward absolute knowledge and scientific objectivity. He saw the effects of the dehumanizing search for mathematical certainty in the gradual confinement of philosophical investigation to abstract, logical matters, which culminated in Husserl’s phenomenology. “Philosophy as rigorous science” (defined along the principles of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason) not only confirmed the nonexistence of real, temporal entities, from the point of view of scientific thought, but also restated the equivalence between thought and true being, on the one hand, and true being and meaning, on the other. Within this framework, the search for truth becomes a search for meaning (achieved through intentional constitution), and whatever cannot be “constituted” in the same manner as mathematical objects (e.g., the rule of “2 x 2 = 4”), or concepts (such as the idea of “table” in general), falls outside the category of true being and has no intelligible meaning and no place in philosophical discourse. Shestov sought to restore the rights of the living individual against the rise of the scientific mentality that discarded insoluble metaphysical questions and viewed life in a necessary relationship to death and destruction.