Lev Shestov Quotes (7 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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Famous Lev Shestov Quotes

“Spinoza’s formula, “Deus=natura=substantia”, like all conclusions drawn from it in his Ethics and his earlier works, simply means that there is no God. This discovery of Spinoza’s became the starting point for modern philosophical thought.”

Lev Shestov

Source: In Job's Balances: on the sources of the eternal truths, Foreword p. xxxix

“Philosophy can never reconcile itself with science. Science aims at self-evident truths and finds in them that "natural necessity" which, after having proclaimed itself for ever eternal, claims to serve as the foundation of all knowledge and strives to rule over all wanton "suddenly."”

Lev Shestov

But philosophy has always been, and will always be, a fight with and a conquest of self-evident truths; philosophy is not looking for any "natural necessity", it sees in naturalness and in necessity alike an evil magic, which, if one cannot quite shake it off (for in this no mortal has ever yet succeeded), yet one must at least call by its right name; and even this is an important step! p. 342
Source: In Job's Balances: on the sources of the eternal truths, Words That Are Swallowed Up - Plotinus's Ecstasies

“We burn with longing to find some firm stance, some ultimate, unshakable basis, on which we may build the tower that can reach up to infinity. But all our foundations crack and earth opens to the abyss. THEREFORE LET US NOT SEEK CERTAINTY OR SECURITY.”

Lev Shestov

Source: In Job's Balances: on the sources of the eternal truths, Gethsemane Night - Pascal's Philosophy p. 284-285

“The first commandment of modern philosophy runs: Thou shalt emancipate thyself from all postulates. The postulate has been declared a deadly sin, and he who makes one is the enemy of truth.”

Lev Shestov

Source: In Job's Balances: on the sources of the eternal truths, On The Philosophy of History p. 247

“Reason, which is based upon the world common to us all, which furnishes us with truths like "twice two is four" and "nothing happens without a cause" this reason not only cannot justify and explain these new terrors and anxieties of Tolstoy's; it condemns them pitilessly as unreasonable, motiveless, arbitrary, and consequently unreal and visionary.”

Lev Shestov

Source: In Job's Balances: on the sources of the eternal truths, The Last Judgment; Tolstoy's Last Words p. 101

“There are no ideals exalting the soul, but only chains, invisible indeed, but binding man more securely than iron. And no act of heroism, no “good work” can open the doors to man’s “perpetual confinement.””

Lev Shestov

Dostoievsky’s barrack vows of “improvement” now appeared to him as a sacrilege. He experience which he underwent was much the same as Luther’s when he remembered with such unfeigned horror and disgust the vows which he had pronounced on entering the convent. P. 10
Source: In Job's Balances: on the sources of the eternal truths, The Conquest of the Self-Evident; Dostoievsky’s Philosophy