Lev Shestov Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Robert L. Strong, Jr.

Critical Essay by Robert L. Strong, Jr.

SOURCE: A review of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Nietzsche, in The Russian Review, Vol. 30, No. 3, July, 1971, pp. 314-15.

Below, Strong gives a mixed appraisal of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Nietzsche.

Beginning his adult life as a lawyer, Lev Shestov (1866-1938) came to philosophy by way of literary criticism. His first book (1898) dealt with Shakespeare and was soon followed by the two long essays which have been translated for the present volume, The Good in the Teaching of Tolstoy and Nietzsche: Philosophy and Preaching (1900) and Dostoevsky and Nietzsche: The Philosophy of Tragedy (1903). Written in a rambling, non-rigorous, and impressionistic style, they nevertheless convey aesthetic power. The subtitle of the second essay indicates a similarity to the interpretation given Dostoevsky by Berdyaev and Rozanov. It is, furthermore, in the tragic view of life that the key to these two works may be found. For, despite their early successes,...
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