Lev Shestov

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It should be so: and we, who are, according to our strength, faithful to humanity, must also strive according to our strength to make it so. We are not, and we shall not be, great men: but we have the elements of greatness. We have an impulse to honesty, to think honestly, to see honestly, and to speak the truth to ourselves in the lonely hours. It is only an impulse, which, in these barren, bitter, years, so quickly withers and dies. It is almost that we dare not be honest now. Our hearts are dead: we cannot wake the old wounds again. ”

“ 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 room of the world is infinite, and will not only contain all those who lived once and those who are yet to be born, but will give to each one of them all that he can desire: to Plato, the world of ideas, to Spinoza, the one eternal and unchangeable substance, to Schopenhauer, the Nirvana of Buddhism. Each of these, and all the other philosophers, will find what they want in the universe even to the belief, even to the conviction, that theirs are the only true and universal doctrines. But, at the same time, the profane will find suitable worlds for themselves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The law of causation, like the whole harmony of the world, seems to him a pleasant gift, facilitating life, but yet a degrading one. He has sold his birthright for peace, for undisturbed happiness—his great birthright of free creation. He does not understand how a giant like Goethe could have been seduced by the temptation of a pleasant life, he suspects the sincerity of Spinoza. There is something rotten in the state of Denmark. The apple of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, has become to him the sole purpose of life, even though the path to it should lie through extreme suffering. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We are obliged to think that nothing certain can be said either of self-renunciation or of megalomania, though each one of us in his own experience knows something of the former as well as of the latter. But it is well known that the impossibility of solving a question never yet kept people from reflecting. On the contrary: to us the most alluring questions are those to which there is no actual, no universally valid, answer. I hope that sooner or later, philosophy will be thus defined, in contrast to science:—philosophy is the teaching of truths which are binding on none. ”

“ To the first, philosophy is art for art's sake. Every philosopher tries to construct a harmonious and various system, curiously and nicely fashioned, using for his material his own intrinsic experience as well as his own personal observations of the life beyond him, and the observations of others. A philosopher is an artist of his kind, to whom his works are dearer than everything in life, sometimes dearer than life itself. We very often see philosophers sacrifice everything for the sake of their work—even truth. Not so the profane. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One can answer irony with irony, or even with abuse. One can deny psychology the right to be called a science and call the materialists a pack of fools, as is often done. Incontestably, anger has its rights. But this has sense and meaning only while you are among people and are listened to. Nobody wants to be indignant alone with oneself, when one is not even reckoning upon making use of one's indignation for literary purposes: for even a writer is not always writing, and is more often preoccupied with transitory thoughts than with his forthcoming works. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Surely a man who lives now in paradise, now in hell sees life utterly differently from others. And he wants to think that he is right, that his experience is of great value, that life is not at all as it is described by men of different experience and more limited emotions. How desperately did Dostoevsky desire to persuade all men of his rightness, how stubbornly he used to demonstrate, and how angry he was made by the consciousness that lived in the depths of his soul that he was impotent to prove anything. ”

“ And yet if anything of this generation that suffered is to remain, if we are to hand any spark of the fire which once burned so brightly, if we are to be human still, then we must still be honest at whatever cost. We—and I speak of that generation which was hardly man when the war burst upon it, which was ardent and generous and dreamed dreams of devotion to an ideal of art or love or life—are maimed and broken for ever. ”

“ Nevertheless Kant, in spite of all temptation to acquire the knowledge to which such beings have access, notwithstanding his profound conviction of the truth of his discovery, did nothing to dispel the charm of forms of perception and categories of the reason, or to tear the blinkers from his eyes and see all the depth of the mysterious reality hitherto hidden from us. He does not even give a little circumstantial explanation why he considered such a task impracticable, and he confines himself to the dogmatic assertion that man cannot conceive a reality beyond space and time. ”

“ How many men, above all among writers, wear their fingers to the bone in the effort to be unlike others, and yet they cannot shake themselves free of cliché—yet Tchekhov was original against his will! Evidently originality does not depend upon the readiness to proclaim revolutionary opinions at all costs. The newest and boldest idea may and often does appear tedious and vulgar. In order to become original, instead of inventing an idea, one must achieve a difficult and painful labour; and, since men avoid labour and suffering, the really new is for the most part born in man against his will. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The essence of the true, primordial life beyond the grave appears to Plato as absolute good refined from all alloy, as the essence of virtue. But after all Plato himself cannot suffer the absolute emptiness of the ideal existence, and constantly flavours it with elements which are by no means ideal, but which give interest and intensity to his dialogues. If you have never had the occasion to read Plato himself, acquaint yourself with his philosophy through the teaching of any of his admirers and appreciators, and you will be struck by its emptiness. ”

“ Their works astonish by their power, depth, boldness, beauty and originality of thought. While you read them it seems that truth herself speaks with their lips. And what strong measures of precaution did they take to prevent themselves from being mistaken! They believed in nothing that men had grown accustomed to believe. They methodically doubted everything, reexamined everything, tens, hundreds of times. They gave their life to the truth not in words, but in deed. ”

“ We create something like the veil of Maia: we are awake in sleep, and sleep in wakefulness, exactly as though some magic power had charmed us. And just as in sleep we feel for instants that what is happening to us is like a half-dream, an intermediate half-life. Schopenhauer and the Buddhists were right in asserting that it is equally wrong to say of the veil of Maia, the world accessible to us, either that it exists or does not exist. It is true that logic does not admit such judgments and persecutes them most implacably, for they violate its most fundamental laws. ”

“ I have always been convinced, and am still certain, that dogmatists feel no shame, and are by no means to be driven out of life; besides, I have lately come to the conclusion that the dogmatists are perfectly justified in their stubbornness. Belief, and the need of belief, are strong as love, as death. In the case of every dogmatist I now consider it my sacred duty to concede everything in advance, even to the acknowledgment of the least, and least significant, shades of his convictions and beliefs. ”