of God as Logos to reason and Greek wisdom, in line with the conception of Philo, the Hellenized Jew.50 It is also noteworthy that this question played a significant part in Shestov’s polemic with Jean Hering concerning the sources of truth and the object of philosophical enquiry. When the Protestant theologian quotes the “words of the Logos-Messiah” in order to underpin his defense of Husserlian phenomenology, Shestov replies:
It is true that God is called logos in the Gospel, but can the logos of the Gospel be equated with that of the philosophers? [ . . . ] Husserl’s argument is based on self-evident truths; has it then a right to enlist the support of the Gospel commandments? Dostoevsky was able to take the passage in Saint John (12:24) as motto for his Brothers Karamazov; but Dostoevsky is hardly a fitting mate for Husserl.51
The famous line in the Fourth Gospel about “the kernel of wheat that falls to the ground and dies,” which has a special place in Shestov’s work, crops up in a philosophical argument seemingly dominated by the rational, speculative grounding of faith. The conclusion of the aphorism devoted to the Gospel of John in the Russian edition of Athens and Jerusalem emphasizes the link between the conceptual approach to religion and the doctrine of the Logos:
And we must not forget that theologians draw mainly on the Fourth Gospel. Theology is a science of faith. But a science must prove its statements and, therefore, cannot do without rational arguments, or in other words, it reduces “revelation” to rational arguments: theology does not need God, but verbum Dei and Deus dixit [God’s word and God said].52
It is also interesting to note Shestov’s significant and deliberate misquotation of a phrase he often liked to mention to Fondane as his “literary will.” In the preliminary drafts of the aphorism on the Fourth Gospel, Verlaine’s well-known “prends l’éloquence et tords-lui le cou” [take eloquence and break its neck] becomes “prends la raison et tords-lui son cou” [take reason and break its neck],53 which aptly renders the equivalence between the “logos” and speculative discourse, or “eloquence” and “reason,” according to Shestov.
Athens and Jerusalem, Shestov’s posthumously published work, written during the last years of his life (and in the runup to World War II), enables the reader to appreciate the lasting impact his work had on the evolution of Continental philosophy and European literature in the twentieth century, given his interaction with major European writers (e.g., André Gide, Albert Camus, D. H. Lawrence, David Gascoyne, Thomas Mann) and his legacy on the postwar literary diaspora (Czeslaw Milosz and Joseph Brodsky).
In the anglophone world, Shestov became known even before he was forced into exile by the Bolshevik revolution in 1921, thanks to several translations published in London, Dublin, and Boston, which were prefaced by high-profile personalities of the time such as D. H. Lawrence and John Middleton Murry (a close friend of D. H. Lawrence and Katherine Mansfield’s husband). Three collections of articles came out in quick succession: Anton Tchekhov and Other Essays (published by Mansel & Co., in 1916), Penultimate Words and Other Essays (published by W. Luce, also in 1916), and All Things Are Possible (the first translation of the volume originally entitled The Apotheosis of Groundlessness, published by Martin Secker in 1920, with an introduction by D. H. Lawrence). Shestov’s work had a powerful influence on the British poet David Gascoyne, who was briefly associated with the Surrealist movement in Paris in the 1930s before becoming Fondane’s close friend and disciple. Gascoyne later published a long essay on Shestov (in the magazine Horizon in 1946) and an account of his encounter with Fondane (and, indirectly, with Shestov’s philosophy), which first came out in French in 1987, and was then collected in a volume of Existential Writings (published by Amate Press, Oxford, in 2001). Nevertheless, half a century passed between the first English translations of Shestov’s essays in 1916 and the more recent editions of his works starting with Chekhov and Other Essays prefaced by Sidney Monas in 1966 (for the University of Michigan Press), and Athens and Jerusalem, which Bernard Martin edited and published with Ohio University Press the same year. From that moment on the list of available titles by Shestov from Ohio University Press grew steadily, reaching a peak in the late 1960s and mid-1970s, but suddenly coming to a halt in 1982—the year that Speculation and Revelation was published. Four decades after the last publication of a book by Shestov in English translation, most of his major works (such as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Nietzsche, In Job’s Balances, Potestas Clavium) have long been out of print.
The new edition makes once again available Shestov’s masterpiece of religious existential philosophy, which is frequently referenced in Continental philosophy, religion, and interfaith studies. The recent renewal of interest in his work has been sparked by comparative studies in phenomenology, existentialism, and the philosophy of religion that have brought out Shestov’s influence on the evolution of twentieth-century luminaries such as Albert Camus, Vladimir Jankélévitch, Emile Cioran, Leszek Kolakowski, Michel Henry, and Gilles Deleuze. Deleuze and Guattari brought to light Shestov’s preeminent role in the postmodern attempt at breaking with the tradition of speculative thought and overcoming the limits of the scientific account of being, in order to establish a new type of thinking, most aptly defined as “the thought from the outside” or the “nomad thought”:
Noology, which is distinct from ideology, is precisely the study of images of thought, and their historicity. . . . But noology is confronted by counterthoughts, which are violent in their acts and discontinuous in their appearance, and whose existence is mobile in history. These are the acts of a “private thinker,” as opposed to the public professor: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, or even Shestov. Wherever they dwell, it is the steppe or the desert. . . . “Private thinker,” however, is not a satisfactory expression, because it exaggerates interiority, when it is a question of outside thought. . . . There is another reason why “private thinker” is not a good expression. Although it is true that this counterthought attests to an absolute solitude, it is an extremely populous solitude, like the desert itself, a solitude already intertwined with a people to come, one that invokes and awaits that people, existing only through it, though it is not yet here.54
Shestov’s solitary journey far from the beaten tracks of speculative discourse, across the wastelands of reason, presents the reader not so much with the riddle of a voice crying out in the desert, but with the call addressed to nomad thinkers and explorers who have, at different times, and in discontinuous yet persistent manner, set out in search of the impossible figure of an “eternal return” without repetition, outside of time.
Prefatory Note
Bernard Martin
The present translation includes the entire text of Athens and Jerusalem except for some of Shestov’s quotations in the original languages from Greek, Latin, French and German authors. All of these quotations have here been rendered into English. In some cases, where this was deemed necessary for a full appreciation both of Shestov’s substance and style, the original languages have also been retained.
I am grateful to Shestov’s daughters, Madame Tatiana Rageot and Madame Natalie Baranov of Paris, who supplied me with much valuable biographical information about their father and read large parts of my translation. The translation was read in its entirety by Professor Stanley Green of Ohio University and in part by Professor George Kline of Bryn Mawr College, to both of whom I would express my appreciation. Responsibility for any errors in the translation is entirely my own. I am grateful, also, to Professor Paul R. Murphy of Ohio University for transliterating a large number of Greek quotations in the text, to Miss Jane Ann Caldwell for preparing the index and to Mr. Mark McCloskey and the late Mr. Cecil Hemley of the Ohio University Press for their unfailing kindness and courtesy.
INTRODUCTION
The Life
