Lev Shestov

“ Philosophy must have nothing in common with logic; philosophy is an art which aims at breaking the logical continuity of argument and bringing man out on the shoreless sea of imagination, the fantastic tides where everything is equally possible and impossible. Certainly it is difficult, given sedentary habits of life, to be a good philosopher. The fact that the fate of philosophy has ever lain in the hands of professors can only be explained by the reluctance of the envious gods to give omniscience to mortals. ”

“ And we must confess that Goethe's and Spinoza's conception of the world lives so much in each one of us that in most cases we can love and respect the world only when our souls feel in it a symmetrical harmony. Harmony seems to us at once-the highest value and the ultimate truth. It gives to the soul great peace, a stable firmness, a trust in the Creator—the highest boons accessible to mortal men, as the philosophers teach. Nevertheless, there are other yearnings. Man's heart is suddenly possessed by a longing for the fantastic, the unforeseen, for that which cannot be foreseen. ”

“ She shows glimpses of Paradise to us in our youth, awakens hopes and impossible desires, and at the moment of our supreme expectation she shows us the hollowness of our hope. Nearly every life can be summed up in a few words: man was shown heaven—and thrown into the mud. We are all ascetics—voluntary or involuntary. Here on earth dreams and hopes are only awakened, not fulfilled. And he who has endured most suffering, most privation, will awaken in the afterwards most keenly alive." Such long speeches metaphysics whispers to us. ”

“ Is the essence of life really in the rank, the charter, the patent of nobility? And can the words of Christ be understood in their literal sense? Are not all the Sanhedrim set over man, and as it were giving meaning to his life, mere fictions, useful and even necessary in certain moments of life, but pernicious and dangerous, to say no more, when the circumstances are changed? Does not life, the real and desirable life, which men have sought for thousands of years, begin there where there is neither first nor last, righteous or sinner, genius or incapable? ”

“ Artists and philosophers like to imagine the thinker with a stern face, a profound look which penetrates into the unseen, and a noble bearing—an eagle preparing for flight. Not at all. A thinking man is one who has lost his balance, in the vulgar, not in the tragic sense. Hands raking the air, feet flying, face scared and bewildered, he is a caricature of helplessness and pitiable perplexity. Look at the aged Turgenev, his Poems in Prose and his letter to Tolstoy. ”

“ The only answer which the wise, educated, long-lived Nicolai Stepanovich, a teacher all his life, can give to Katy's question is, 'I don't know.' There is not, in all his great experience of the past, a single method, rule, or suggestion, which might apply, even in the smallest degree, to the wild incongruity of the new conditions of Katy's life and his own. Katy can live thus no longer; neither can he himself continue to endure his disgusting and shameful helplessness. They both, old and young, with their whole hearts desire to support each other; they can between them find no way. ”

“ You won't tear yourself out of the claws of madness or disease. Only one thing is left: in spite of traditions, theodicy, wiseacres, and most of all in spite of oneself, to go on praising mother nature and her great goodness. Let future generations reject us, let history stigmatise our names, as the names of traitors to the human cause—still we will compose hymns to deformity, destruction, madness, chaos, darkness. ”

“ There is the same custom in literature as in Terra del Fuego. The young, growing men kill and eat the old. Mihailovsky struggled with all his might, but he no longer felt the strength of conviction that comes from the sense of right. Inwardly, he felt that the young were right, not because they knew the truth—what truth did the economic materialists know?—but because they were young and had their lives before them. The rising star shines always brighter than the setting, and the old must of their own will yield themselves up to be devoured by the young. ”

“ For in a philosophy of life, as in a cemetery, a place is prepared for each and all, and everyone is welcome. There also are enclosures where rubbish is dumped to rot. But for those who have as yet no desire to be fitted into a world-philosophy, I would advise them to keep their tongue between their teeth, or like Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, take to literature. To a writer, in books and only in books, all is permitted provided he has talent. But in actual living even a writer must not let loose too much, lest people should guess that in his books he is telling the truth. ”

“ Von Koren calls Layevsky a scoundrel and a rogue, and demands that he should be punished with the utmost severity. To reconcile them is impossible. The more they meet, the deeper, the more merciless, the more implacable is their hatred for each other. It is impossible that they should live together on the earth. It must be one or the other: either the normal Von Koren, or the degenerate decadent Layevsky. Of course, all the external, material force is on Von Koren's side in the struggle. He is always in the right, always victorious, always triumphant—in act no less than in theory. ”

“ We allow ourselves the greatest luxury that man can dream of—sincerity, truthfulness—as if we were spiritual Croesuses, as if we had plenty of everything, could afford to let everything be seen, ashamed of nothing. But even Croesuses, the greatest sovereigns of the world, did not consider they had the right to tell the truth at all times. Even kings have to pretend—think of diplomacy. Whereas, we think we may speak the truth, and the truth only, that any lie which obscures our true substance is a crime; since our true substance is the world's finest treasure, its finest reality.... ”

“ If there is not in philosophy one universal principle binding upon and acknowledged by all, it means that it is permitted to each man, at least for the meantime, to feel and even to act in his own way. A man may listen to Spinoza, or he may stop his ears. He may kneel before Plato's eternal ideas, or he may give his allegiance to the ever-changing, ever-flowing reality. Finally, he may accept Schopenhauer's pessimism, but nothing on earth can compel him to celibacy on the ground that Schopenhauer successfully laughed at love. ”

“ If we compare our knowledge with that of the ancients, we appear very wise. But we are no nearer to solving the riddle of eternal justice than Cain was. Progress, civilisation, all the conquests of the human mind have brought us nothing new here. Like our ancestors, we stand still with fright and perplexity before ugliness, disease, misery, senility, death. All that the wise men have been able to do so far is to turn the earthly horrors into problems. We are told that perhaps all that is horrible only appears horrible, that perhaps at the end of the long journey something new awaits us. ”

“ We have not taken Constantinople, we have not united the Slavs, and even the Tartars still live in the Crimea. He terrified us by prophesying that Europe would be drenched in rivers of blood because of the warfare between the classes, while in Russia, thanks to our Russian ideal of universal humanity, not only would our internal problems be peacefully solved, but a new unheard-of word would still be found whereby we should save hapless Europe. A quarter of a century has passed. So far nothing has happened in Europe. But we are drowning ourselves, literally drowning ourselves, with blood. ”

“ A point of view.—Every writer, thinker—even every educated person thinks it necessary to have a permanent point of view. He climbs up some elevation and never climbs down again all his days. Whatever he sees from this point of view, he believes to be reality, truth, justice, good—and what he does not see he excludes from existence. Man is not much to blame for this. Surely there is no very great joy in moving from point of view to point of view, shifting one's camp from peak to peak. ”

“ And the dogmatist, after such a victory—my confession is surely a complete victory for him—must consider himself satisfied in full.
Socrates was right, Plato, Tolstoi, the prophets were right: there is only one truth, one God; truth has the right to destroy lie, light to destroy darkness. God, omniscient, most gracious and omnipotent, will like Alexander of Macedon conquer nearly all the known world, and will drive out from his possessions, amid the triumphant and delighted shouts of his millions of loyal subjects, the devil and all those who are disobedient to his divine word. ”

“ The less a man has fulfilled in experience, the more in him remains of unsatisfied passion and desire, the greater are the grounds for thinking that his essence cannot be destroyed, but must manifest itself somehow or other in the universe. Voluntary asceticism and self-denial, such common human phenomena, help to solve the riddle. Nobody compels a man, he imposes suffering and abstinence on himself. It is an incomprehensible instinct, but still an instinct which, rooted in the depths of our nature, prompts us to a decision repugnant to reason: renounce life, save yourself. ”

“ And the cause must be that the keen edge of the soul of those century-old poets which cut through false patriotism so surely is in us dulled and blunted. We must learn honesty again: not the laborious and meagre honesty of those who weigh advantage against advantage in the ledger of their minds, but the honesty that cries aloud in instant and passionate anger against the lie and the half-truth, and by an instinct knows the authentic thrill of contact with the living human soul. ”

“ Beautiful things must be created. Not one single aesthetic theory has so far been able to guess what direction the artists' mind will next take, or what are the limits to his creative activity. The same with the theory of knowledge. It may arrest the work of a man of learning, if he be himself afraid that he is going too far, but it is powerless to pre-determine human thought. Even Kant's counterposing of things-in-themselves to the world of phenomena cannot finally clip the wings of human curiosity. There will come a time when this unshakeable foundation of positivism will be shaken. ”

“ Is not the pursuit of recognition, of superiority, of patents and charters, of rank, that which prevents man from seeing life with its hidden miracles? And must man really seek protection in the College of Heralds, or has he another power that time cannot destroy? One may be a good, able, learned, gifted man, even a man of genius, but to demand in return any privileges whatsoever, is to betray goodness and ability, and talent and genius, and the greatest hopes of mankind. ”

“ The possibilities which open out before mankind are sufficiently limited. It is impossible to see everything, impossible to know everything, impossible to rise too high above the earth, impossible to penetrate too deeply down. What has been is hidden away, what will be we cannot anticipate, and we know for certain that we shall never grow wings. Regularity, immutably regular succession of phenomena puts a term to our efforts, drives us into a regular, narrow, hard-beaten road of everyday life. ”

“ Worse still, the organisation appears to be the enemy of the will and of man. One must spoil, devour, destroy, ruin. To think out things quietly, to anticipate the future—that is impossible. One must beat one's head, beat one's head eternally against the wall. And to what purpose? Is there any purpose at all? Is it a beginning or an end? Is it possible to see in it the warrant of a new and inhuman creation, a creation out of the void? 'I do not know' was the old professor's answer to Katy. 'I do not know' was Tchekhov's answer to the sobs of those tormented unto death. ”

“ Theodicy has long ago wearied us. The mechanistic theories, which contend that there is nothing special in life, that its appearance and disappearance depend on the same laws as those of the conservation of energy and the indestructibility of matter, these look more plausible at first sight, but people do not take to them. And no theory can survive men's reluctance to believe in it. In a word, good has not justified the expectations placed on it. Reason has done no better. So overwrought mankind has turned from its old idols and enthroned madness and evil. ”

“ We shall never again be drunk with hope: let us never be blind with fear. There can be in the lap of destiny now no worse thing which may befall us. We can afford to be honest now.
We can afford to be honest: but we need to learn how, or to increase our knowledge. The Russian writers will help us in this; and not the great Russians only, but the lesser also. For a century of bitter necessity has taught that nation that the spirit is mightier than the flesh, until those eager qualities of soul that a century of social ease has almost killed in us are in them well-nigh an instinct. ”

“ He will not return to idealism, and he will hate logic: light, that seemed to him so beautiful, will have become hideous. He will turn to darkness, where logic and its binding conclusions have no power, but where the fancy is free for all her vagaries. Without light we should never have known that vitriol ruins beauty. No science, nor any art can give us what darkness gives. It is true, in our young days when all was new, light brought us great happiness and joy. ”

“ Socrates, who spent thirty days without interruption in persuading his pupils that he was dying for the sake of truth and justice; Socrates himself, I say, perhaps, most probably even, knew as little why he was dying as do simple people who die a natural death, or as babes born into the world know by what beneficent or hostile power they have been summoned from nonentity into being. Such is our life: wise men and fools, old men and children march at random to goals which have not yet been revealed by any books, whether worldly or spiritual, common or sacred. ”

“ The philosopher has no right to appeal to the ordinary person. The philosopher must doubt and doubt and doubt, and question when nobody questions, and risk making a laughing-stock of himself. If common sense were enough to settle all problems, we should have known everything long age. So that—why do we value health more than sickness? Or even further—which is better, health or sickness. If we will drop the utilitarian point of view—and all are agreed that this has no place in philosophy—then we shall see at once that we have no grounds whatever for preferring health and sickness. ”

“ You will not consent to accept that our life is only a shadow of actual reality, you will revolt against Spinoza's God, who cannot love, yet demands love for himself, Kant's categorical imperative will seem to you a cold monster,—but you will never forget Plato, or Spinoza, or Kant, and will for ever keep your gratitude to them, who made you believe that authority is given to mortals. Then you will understand that there are no errors and no truths in philosophy; that errors and truths are only for him above whom is set a superior authority, a law, a standard. ”

“ They would call it immoral, godless, they would begin to talk about pessimism, scepticism, and so on. To destroy what has cost such labour to construct! Why, what is wrong with this complete, cosy, comfortable little world? To keep it intact they call to their aid sacred morality and the idealistic theory of knowledge. Nobody cares that the caterpillar has grown wings, that when it has nibbled its old nest away it will fly out into space—nobody gives a thought to this. ”

“ Without which thing is it impossible for man to live? Without scientific knowledge, or without the conviction that truth and spiritual perfection are in the last resort the victors of this world? And how will the theory of knowledge stand with regard to questions such as these?
Will it still continue its exercises in apologetics or will it at last understand that this is not its real problem, and that if it would preserve the right to be called philosophy, it will have not to justify and exalt the existing science, but to examine and direct some science of its own. ”

“ That is why idealists stick so tight so logic. In the twinkling of an eye logic will convey us to the remotest conclusions and forecasts. Reality could never overtake her. Love is eternal, and consequently a disfigured face will seem as lovely to us as a fresh one. This is, of course, a lie, but it helps to preserve old tastes and obscures danger. Real danger, however, was never dispelled by words. In spite of Schiller and eternal love, in the long run vitriol triumphs, and the agreeable young man is forced to abandon his beloved and acknowledge himself a fraud. ”

“ For if we do not know what is truth, what value have the postulates of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul? How can we justify or explain any one of the existing religions, Christianity included? Although the Gospel does not at all agree with our scientific notions of the laws of nature, yet it does not in itself contain anything contrary to reason. We do not disbelieve in miracles because they are impossible. On the contrary, it is as clear as day to the most ordinary common sense that life itself, the foundation of the world, is the miracle of miracles. ”