Shestov, Lev Isaakovich [addendum]
Shestov has become the object of academic philosophical attention only since 1968. After the 1917 Russian Revolution Shestov became a significant voice in European philosophical existentialism, in his later life engaging with Blaise Pascal and Søren Kierkegaard, actively influencing the thought of Albert Camus, and corresponding with Martin Buber. Some of these philosophical relationships have received concentrated, though not exhaustive, critical attention (Maia Neto 1995). In addition, Shestov corresponded with and wrote an article on Edmund Husserl, which is the focus of one critical article.
Because of the Soviet ban on research and publication relating to Shestov, scholars inevitably found it difficult to define and establish Shestov as a philosopher. To begin with there was very little criticism outside the Paris émigré community. The two-volume biography on Shestov written by his daughter, Natalie Baranova-Shestova (1983), drew attention to the man and his work. Since the end of the Soviet Union Shestov has won renewed consideration among Russian philosophers.
Existentialist aspects of Shestov's thought have generally garnered the most critical attention and have generated other critical approaches. Some existentialist commentaries focus on the experience of suffering, isolation, and tragedy while others concentrate on the aspect of the absurd. Shestov has received attention as a religious thinker particularly in two contexts. First, scholars have viewed him in the context of the "Russian religious renaissance," a group of Russian religious philosophers of the early twentieth century who brought a personalist, antidogmatic and antirational approach to the question of religious experience and faith. Second, scholars have seen him as a major modern Jewish thinker. In the late twentieth century, philosophical research focused on two contrasting aspects of Shestov's thought, the paradoxical but invigorating interaction between skepticism and religious faith. His philosophy has been viewed together with that of Pascal and Kierkegaard, as part of the tradition of skeptical thought, Pyrrhonism, that goes beyond pure skepticism to employ reasoned doubt in a positive role within categories of faith.
Bibliography
Works by Lev Shestov
Sobranie sochinenii. 6 vols. St. Petersburg: Izd. Shipovnik, 1911.
Athens and Jerusalem. Translated with an introduction by Bernard Martin. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1966. Originally published as Afiny I Ierusalim. Parizh: YMCA Press, 1951.
A Shestov Anthology, edited with an introduction by Bernard Martin. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1971.
Works About Lev Shestov
Baranova-Shestova, Natalie. Zhizn' L'va Shestova: po perepiske i vospominaniiam sovremennikov (The life of Lev Shestov from his correspondence and reminiscences of contemporaries). 2 vols. Paris: Presse Libre, 1983.
Clowes, Edith. "Philosophy as Tragedy." In Fiction's Overcoat: Russian Literary Culture and the Question of Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004, 130–154.
Kline, George L. Religious and Anti-Religious Thought in Russia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.
Maia Neto, Jose R. The Christianization of Pyrrhonism: Skepticism and Faith in Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Shestov. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1995.
Martin, Bernard, ed. Great Twentieth Century Jewish Philosophers: Shestov, Rosenzweig, Buber, with Selections from Their Writings. New York: Macmillan, 1970.
Zakydalsky, Taras D. "Lev Shestov and the Revival of Religious Thought in Russia." In Russian Thought after Communism: The Recovery of a Philosophical Heritage, edited by James P. Scanlan, 153–164. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1994.
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