Leon Chestov

Leon Chestov (in), born the February 13rd 1866 (January 31st, 1866 of the Calendar Julien) with Kiev and dead the November 20th 1938 with Paris, is a Russian philosopher.

He makes his studies in Kiev and Moscow where he follows courses of mathematics which he gives up for the right. He turns by the continuation to philosophy.

Its first book (1898) is Shakespeare and its critic Brandès , then the idea of the Good at Tolstoï and Nietzsche; On the borders of the life: the apotheosis of the uprooting Commancements and the Ends and in 1910 the great days before .

He lived in Italy, in Suisse with Coppet, then in Germany before returning to Moscow. In 1920, it settles with Paris. He travelled much, in particular in Palestine.

Its most known books are: capacity of the keys , On the balance of Job and the famous Athens and Jerusalem .

It is an ignored work, probably because it is located apart from the great systems of philosophy. It is difficult to summarize the thought of Chestov which passes by the Philosophie, its various systems of thought, to release and tackle from them the crucial questions with the eyes of Chestov. It is by this step that it expresses its freedom and its creativity. Dostoïevski, Plotin, Plato, Tolstoï, Mozart, Spinoza, Blaise Pascal, Kant which “discusses” as if they were with the paradise or in the hell of the philosophers and the artists.

Quotations:

a letter with his/her daughters (exhausted text):

Geneva 13.04. 1921

(…) And maintaining about my article, it is here about the revelation of death. Tolstoï initially wrote “Guerre and peace, then “Maître and servant”, “the Death of Ivan Ilitch” and other accounts. It should not be forgotten. I.e. it should not be thought that the revelation proceeds only of death. Death is the greatest mystery and the greatest enigma: it is not without reason that it inspired so many philosophers, artists and saints. But nonless are the mystery and the enigma of the life. And, at the bottom, only that which passed by the life can include/understand or more exactly approach the mystery of death. If Tolstoï had not written Guerre and Peace, he would not have written his last works either. Our reason is directed by nature towards “the action”, and it is by no means necessary to scorn the action. Only can devote itself to a nonidle inaction, that which before knew to act. Also this would be a great error to deduce from the “revelation from dead” of the rules of life. Essence, precisely, consists in not deducing. I.e. with knowing to take the life in its totality with all its irreconcilable contradictions. Ivan Ilitch per hour of the dead judge severely his former life, but that does not mean that this life was not worth absolutely anything. When the child grows, it is not attracted any more by the center of his mother, but it would not be natural, if, as of the first day, it pushed back it. When we climb we turn the back on walk lower while passing than higher walk, but before lower walk was in front of us.

That should not be forgotten - otherwise one will obtain exactly the opposite of what one would have liked to obtain: i.e. instead of a complete knowledge, alive, a truncated knowledge, abstracted. This arrived sometimes at Tolstoï, when in its “philosophical” works supposedly, he endeavoured to show the life as proceeding of only one principle which he called well “the ”. This is not right. I.e. the men cannot in their human language unify all that they live and feel so that can be expressed by only one word or only one design. It is a great art, a difficult art, which to know to keep itself of exclusivism towards which we are unconsciously pulled by our language and even by our thought educated by the language. This is why one cannot limit oneself to only one writer. Always should be kept the open eyes. It there with died and its horrors. It there with the life and its beauties. Remember what we saw with Athens, remember the the Mediterranean, of what you saw at the time of our excursions in mountain, or with the Musée of Louvre. The beauty is also source of revelation. And even the revelation of dead is finally only research, beyond the apparent horrors of the decomposition and the end, of the principles of a new beauty. It is true that often the writer is so deeply plunged in the concern to be it which it does not make a success of, even in its best works, to exhaust all that there is to say or to see. But at Tolstoï, just like at Plato and Plotin, the thought of dead was accompanied by a particular feeling, of a species of conscience of what, while in front of them the horror emerged, of the wings pushed to them in the back. Probably something of similar occurs it with the chrysalis when it starts to corrode its cocoon. It corrodes it because it pushes wings to him. Also neither works of Tolstoï, nor that of Plato or Plotin must be interpreted like a call to forget the life. Of course somebody being in the state of Ivan Ilitch judges many things differently others. But it is not diverted life. I would say rather than he learns how to appreciate many things who before were indifferent for him.

Previously the charts and comfort seemed to him to be the height of what one could reach, advance in its functions and possession of an apartment, similar to those of “all”, the ideal of its situation in the “world”. He saw neither the sun, nor the sky, he did not see anything in the life, although he had very in front of the eyes. And when death arrived, it suddenly included/understood that it did not have anything considering, as so in the life nothing did not exist apart from the charts, of advance and comfort. All that it had been able to see of truth, it had seen it during its childhood, its youth, then had forgotten it, employing all its forces solely not to be itself, but with being like “everyone”. Also the revelation of dead is not a negation of the life, but, on the contrary, rather an assertion - but an assertion of another thing that of this usual stir of mouse by which let themselves take the men. ”

" At the beginning was the verb:

If Plato tells truth, if philosophy is other thing only the preparation with died and the act to die, we are not in right to await philosophy the appeasing, the joy. No matter what we say indeed and whatever the idea that we have death, all our words, all our ideas concerning death dissimulate a great anguish and an immense tension. And as we more deeply dig the thought of death, our anguish is accentuated. The last task of philosophy thus does not consist in building a system, to found our knowledge, to reconcile apparent contradictions of the existence; all that it is the function of sciences which, contrary to philosophy, are with the service of the life - i.e. transitory needs - and do not think of death, i.e. to eternity. The task of philosophy consists in tearing off the man of sound living with the life. And just as the man comes in the world while crying or escapes while shouting from a sleep populated from nightmares, the passage of the life to dead must be also accompanied, seems to him it, of a despaired effort, absurd whose cries, the tears are only the demonstration not less despaired, not less absurd. I think that many philosophers know of such " réveils" and even try to speak to us about it. The poets spoke about it them also: you point out Eschyle, Sophocle, Dante, Shakespeare, and more close to us Dostoïevski and Tolstoï. But they had recourse to the " verbe" , of course; however the verb has a strange property: it lets pass only what is useful for the life. The verb was invented for the life, for hiding with the men the mystery of the eternal and nailing their attention with what is held here, on ground. (...) Immediately after the creation of the world, God ordered with the man to name all the creatures. But the names having been given, the man of this fact was cut sources of the life. The first names were common nouns; the man called, named the objects; he thus determined those which he would use and the way in which he would benefit from it as long as he would be on ground. Thereafter, it is only what was included in the name that the man was in a position to conceive. And undoubtedly, wanted he to conceive only that: he seemed to him, he still seems to him that the main thing, essence in the things is what they have of commun run between them and what he named. They are the other men, acts it of itself, it seeks always only " the essence" , in other words the " général". (...) Que would be thus our life if those which as Hamlet feel that time left its hinges, managed to tear off all the men of the rut! but once again, the good nature which " with the commencement" we gave the " Verb " arranged itself so that no matter what the man says, its close relations can hear only what is useful or pleasant for them. And as regards the moanings, the cries, the tears, one does not regard them as the expression of the truth, one chokes them by all the means: " not ridere, not lugere, neque destari, sed intelligere". Men one indeed need only for the compréhensible."

Spinoza

" (...) But the testimony of Spinoza is very different. He often repeats, with insistence and conviction, as if he wanted to insert it to us with blows of hammer, that he feels nonfree (see especially letter LVIII, where he writes, inter alia things: ego sane meae conscientiae, hoc is Rationi and experientiae contradicam… nego ulla asolute cogitandipotentia cogitare poses me, quod vellem and quod not vellem scribere: For me certainly, if I do not want to be in contradiction with my conscience, i.e. with the reason and the experiment… I deny that I can stop in myself with power this thought, I want to write and I do not want to write), that the feeling of freedom is an illusion, that a stone, if it were endowed with conscience, would be convinced that it falls freely by ground, although it is completely obvious, for us, that it cannot not fall. And all these assertions of Spinoza are not a theory, a " naturalisme" or many consequences drawn from general considerations, it is the testimony of the express, the voice of the deepest lived things and most serious. The same thing was affirmed to us, with the same force and same insistence, by other men, whom we would know in no way of putting at the number of the " naturalistes" and we do not have the right to question the veracity. You point out for example the work of Luther, servo arbitrio, that he wrote in answer to Diatriae of libero arbitrio of Érasme of Rotterdam.

And it is not astonishing only Spinoza, during the time different from its life, " sentît" in a different way? As he wrote his Cogitata metaphysica, he affirmed in a peremptory way that the will is free. In " Éthique" and in its letters, it puts same energy to affirm the opposite. By taking account of the law of contradiction, one is obliged to admit that in both cases, he uttered a lie. But if account of this " is not taken; loi" , if one admits, as Mr. Bergson teaches it judiciously to us, than our me is infallible in its immediate observations, one arrives at a completely unexpected result, or, more exactly, with a great enigma: not only the will of certain men is free for certain periods of its life and is not it for other periods. When Spinoza wrote its Cogitata metaphysica, its will was already controlled: it was dominated by a force which it obeyed as submissively as a stone obeys the laws of gravities. it was not any more him which spoke, but something spoke in there through him, probably this same Spirit of the time, in which Hegel saw and greeted the driving force of the history. or, if you do not fear the biblical metaphors, Spinoza said not what he wanted, but said what was ordered to him by God. As of this moment, it became indifferent that it accepted or did not accept to him even what he proclaimed with the men: it could not proclaim it any more. Goes and says to your people, or, even, not with your people, but with all the people - Spinoza, just like Philon, was an apostle of the nice ones, i.e., addressed itself to very whole humanity - speaks them so that they look at and do not see; so that they listen and do not understand, so that their hearts are hardened and that their eyes become blind. (...) "

Thus Spinoza was obliged to act. If you want to find the truth, he said, forget all, and above all forget the biblical revelation, remember only mathematics. The beauty, the ugliness, the good, the evil, the good, the bad one, the joy, sadness, fear and the hope, the order and the disorder, all that is " humain" , all that is momentary, and does not have any relationship with the truth. You believe that God takes care the needs of the men, that it created the world for the man, that God works towards high ends? But where there are goals, where there are the concern, the joy and sadness, there it is no God. To include/understand God, it is necessary to try to release itself from the concern, and the joys, and fears, and of the hopes, LMBO nullo alio modo… has Deo produci potuerunt quam productae sunt (the things could not be created by God differently than they were not created (Ethical I)). As in mathematics, all the theorems, all the truths rise, with a need which does not know with the top of it any law, their fundamental concepts, thus all in the world occurs with the same irreversible need, and there is no force which can fight against the order of the existence established since eternity, Deus ex soli suae naturae legibus and has nemine coactus acts (God does not act the only laws of its nature and without undergoing any constraint (Ethical I)). known as Spinoza and he explains then what these words mean: Ex sola divinae naturae necissitate, vel (quod idem is) ex solis ejusdem naturae legibus (According to the only need for its nature or (what is the same thing) according to the only laws of its nature (Ethical I)). It is the supreme truth which it is given to us to conceive and, having conceived it, we reach the supreme good, the satisfaction at the heart and peace, acquiescentia animi. Do not believe that by your virtues you can deserve the favor of God. The daily experiment teaches us that successes and the failures also arrive to the pious men and to the irreligious people, with virtuous and with the vicious one. It is thus currently, it always was thus, thus will be always. Therefore, it must be thus, because that rises from the divine need, and it is neither useful, nor even possible to change the established order of the things. (Hegel will say later: was wiklich STI, STI vernünftig (What is real, is reasonable). Indeed, does the virtue need a reward? The defect seeks the reward, and it receives it, because, since the virtue does not require for reward and that the reward exists despite everything in the world, it necessarily falls to the defect which needs some and which accepts it readily. (.)"

(...) Spinoza does not stop there. He says: if homines releases nascerentur, nullum profit and Mali formarent conceptum quamdiu liberi essent (If the men were born free, they would not by no means create the concept of good and the evil as long as they would remain free (Ethics IV))). to clear up this truth, it refers to the biblical account concerning the fall; faculty to distinguish the good from the evil écatit not specific to the first man, i.e. " of its nature" the defect is not distinguished anything the virtue. And that did not prevent Spinoza from devoting its Treaty théologico-policy, treaty which had an immense historical importance (it determined, inter alia things, theology Protestant modern and not only Protestant), to prove the idea that the Bible by no means aspires to learn with the man the truth, but that its task is only moral: that to learn how with the man to live in the good…

But then, by which chance the account concerning the fall could it penetrate in the Bible? And why the Bible starts it by revealing with this entirely incomprehensible Truth for their reason, namely that the concepts of the good and the evil are, in fact, completely illusory, that, according to the words of Saint Paul, " the loi" came later, i.e. when the history was already started and that it " came so that the crime is augmenté" ; that the first man did not distinguish the good from the evil, that he was unaware of the law, and that when he gathered and tasted the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of the good and the evil, i.e. when he started to distinguish the good from the evil, he accepted " the loi" , and with the law, it also received the Dead? Contradiction is manifest and by no means accidental, as all contradictions are not accidental whose works of Spinoza are penetrated. it is high time to forget the legend concerning the extraordinarily consequent character of the philosophy of Spinoza. This legend is due only to the form external of the exposure, forms supposedly mathematical: definitions, axioms, postulates, lemmas, evidence, etc. the Spinoza system is woven of two entirely irreconcilable ideas between them. On a side, the design " mathematics of the world (it is it which had an importance " historique" and Spinoza made so influential): all in the world occurs according to the same interior need according to which develop the mathematical truths. When one of its correspondents reproached him for regarding his philosophy as best, he answered him in a sharp way: I L do not regard the best, but as the true one. And if you me requests why, I will say to you: for the same reason for which you regard the sum of the angles of a triangle as equal to two right angles. With each step Spinoza speaks about mathematics. He declares that the men would never have known the truth if mathematics had not existed. Only mathematics has the true method of investigation, they only present the model eternal and perfect thought, and this precisely because they do not speak about the goals or the needs for the man, but of figures, lines, plans, in other words, they seek the truth " objective" who exists by itself, independently of the men or other beings conscients."

In spite of the topicality of its reflections, Chestov is hardly republished. Following works in French, are often translated from Russian and are often exhausted. (The dates are those of the first French editions, the 2nd date if republication))

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