So much distrust, so much philosophy: Shestov's nietzschean slap for functionaries of humanity So much distrust, so much philosophy: Shestov's nietzschean slap for functionaries of humanity So much distrust, so much philosophy: Shestov's nietzschean slap for functionaries of humanity
Abstract
In times when Husserl started to feel satisfied that he has already found the unshakeable method to overcome the threat that all our present knowledge could crumble into chaotic relativism, his antipode Leo Shestov appeared on the scene. He did not hesitate to philosophize with hammer against those so hardly achieved grounds of knowledge.
The background of this friendly struggle of titans is nothing less than the question of truth. Therefore their meeting becomes a fight for the meaning of philosophy, culture and a man as such.
While Husserl sees the treatment of the crisis of spiritual Europe in fixing "the joints of time that are thrown out", thus in the deeper grounding of the rationality, Shestov refused to give another sacrifice of the innermost freedom of a man at the altar of the Reason and he proclaimed duty to fight against any dictatorship of logic, against the desire for illusory certainty. The text is trying to show that only by means of this struggle of those two extreme attitudes could occure this most important philosophical-historical dialog of modern age.
From its sparks it is still possible to make a critical insight into the limits of rationalizing approach to life, as well as open the question of meaningful life after the absolute dreams of metaphysics are over. It is clear that acute shestovian tone (drifted by the keyword memento mori, echoing not only throughout the philosophical but also the literary world, e. g.
Dostoyevsky, Kafka etc.) really "dug up the well-trodden field of contemporary thought", so today even more courageous "free spirits" of the overwhelming kosmos can fly over it. The deliberate intention to put accent on nietzschean savour of Shestov's position allowed us to capture his provocative philosophical spirit truly, singing his upsetting apotheosis of groundlessness.