In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Chapter 13 The Tension of Athens and Jerusalem in the Philosophy of lev Shestov The reaction to Afil1Y i Ierusalim (1938), Lev Shestov's final book, on which he worked for at least ten years, is reflected by Bernard Martin, who observed in his introduction to Shestov's philosophy: "The essays and aphorisms of Afiny i Ierusalim represent, in many respects, the culmination of Shestov's entire lifetime of intellectual inquiry and spiritual striving, and they bring together the diverse strands appearing in his earlier writings.,,1 Although Afiny i Ierusalim supposedly sums up Shestov's entire worldview, it is worth noting that before it was published Shestov never employed the images of these two cities to describe his philosophy. At first glance, it would appear that Shestov arbitrarily chose the title, since the book does not deal with the ancient Jews or the Greeks exclusively, but concentrates equally on modern and early philosophy . Although his main aim was to promote his idiosyncratic existentialist viewpoint, which emerged from distinctly modern sources, Shestov did not force his thought into the binary opposition that the title implies. How, then, could Shestov use Athens and Jerusalem to characterize his final, cumulative 1 Bernard Martin, comp., Great Twel1tieth-Century Jewish Philosophers: Shestov, Rosenzweig , Bubel', with Selections from Their Writings (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 5-6. The history of the writing of Afiny i Ierusalim has been thoroughly detailed by A. Akhutin and E. Patkosh in their notes to Shestov's Sochineniia v 2-kh tomakh, ed. A. Akhutin (Moscow: Nauka, 1993), 2: 461-65. The book first appeared in French in 1938, published as Athenes et Jerusalem (essai de philosophie religieuse). A German translation by H. Rouff also appeared in 1938. In 1966, the book appeared in English as Athens and Jerusalem, translated by Bernard Martin from the French edition. Three parts of the book have appeared in Italian: Parmenide Incatenato (1944); Ye sapere e la Liberta (1943); Concupiscentia Irresistibilis (della filosofia medioevale) (1946). For more on the publication of translations, see Nathalie Baranoff [Baranova-Shestova], Zhizn ' L'va Shestova: Po perepiske i vospominaniiam sov remennikov, 2 vols. (Paris: La Presse Libre, 1983), 2: 218-28. A Russian version of Afiny i Ierusalim did appear in 1952 published by YMCA Press in an edition of 1,000 copies. This volume most likely did not have a large impact in Russia, since the number of copies was so small and among those that did reach that destination, it is likely that most were placed in the special holdings of major research libraries to which readers could not gain easy access. The renewed interest in Shestov during the post-glasnost' period was sparked by the two-volume edition of Shestov's writings, which appeared in 1993. TH ETENSION OF ATHENS AND JERUSALEM 233 work without either misrepresenting his philosophy or the significance of these two ancient cities? In his very first works, Shestov sketched out a paradigm in which logic was questioned from the standpoint of religious existentialism. He criticized the reliance on logic characteristic of Logical Positivism, examples of which he found in Western and Russian literature. Later he characterized Greek philosophy as an original progenitor of contemporary Positivism. He began using the Jewish theme consistently rather late in his career, in emigration, employing images from the Old Testament to illustrate his positive conception of religious faith. In this paper I trace the evolution of Shestov's thought, showing how he arrived in the final instance at the dichotomy of Athens and Jerusalem . To carry out this task, we need to examine his philosophical development in relation to changes in the Russian intellectual life of his time. Shestov's path from his home in Kiev (then in Russia, now the capital of Ukraine) to the heights of Athens and Jerusalem was indirect. As did many intellectuals of his time, Shestov arrived at religious philosophy through an interest in radical politics. The scion of a wealthy Kievian merchant well versed in Jewish culture and associated with the Zionist movement, Shestov was acquainted with both the Jewish tradition and Russian European culture. But, as he recounts, he "forgot" his Jewish education, and early in life he chose assimilation to Russian culture as the keystone of his intellectual development. It is often said about Shestov that his insights were formed from his own existential experience, which, however, he never revealed to the public. According to Evgenia Gertsyk, his close friend, this revelation occurred in 1895 when he suffered...

Share