Crisis, Alienation and Authenticity in Lev Shestov’s Philosophy

In this study of Lev Shestov, the biographical method is used to explain his philosophy. The grave crisis or nervous breakdown Shestov went through caused a total transformation of his - convictions and values. It was probably this drama that led to his repudiation of the common life and traditional philosophy with its emphasis on reason, knowledge, and ethics in favour of an extreme individualism and religious transcendence. The aim of the dissertation is to examine, amongst the great number of philosophers and writers Shestov analysed, mainly those in his view “marginal thinkers”, who were of the greatest interest to him – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Lev Tolstoy, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Luther, and Søren Kierkegaard. On the basis of this analysis the character of Shestov’s philosophy is defined. According to Shestov, like his own crisis, the crises that these thinkers experienced occasioned a total transformation of their convictions and values. Šestov does not let his life find complete expression in his philosophy. Instead he projects his crisis into the five thinkers’ crises and philosophy. To characterize the previous and new modes of thinking, the concepts of alienation (degeneration, degradation, depravity) and authenticity (deliverance from alienation) are used. Shestov’s judgment of the consistency of the five thinkers’ new attitudes is presented, i.e. deliverance from the common life with its emphasis on rational eternal truths and moralism. Authentic life is in Shestov’s opinion the from the individual’s everyday life concealed experience of despair in extreme situations. This constitutes a grave crisis that leads to the repudiation of all hitherto held convictions and cherished hopes. The contrast between the Russian philosopher’s personal, (after his crisis) mainly tranquil, harmonious life and his philosophy is glaring. Analyzing the five thinkers, Shestov finds that they did not persevere with their new convictions, instead they complied with the by everybody accepted and everywhere valid truths. Shestov’s “theoretical”, uncompromising and consistent stance on one side and the lack of these characteristics with the aforementioned thinkers on the other side, to a great extent places Shestov in another category than these. In Shestov’s view freedom is in the region of tragedy, which nobody enters on his own will and in the incomprehensible trust in a capricious, “inhuman” God. According to Shestov, only the philosopher, who derives his thinking from a situation, where he experiences extreme despair and hopelessness, can claim to be a true philosopher.Examinator: docent Julie Hansen; Uppsala universitet