Work · Life & Existential Philosophy
Athens and Jerusalem
Shestov’s summa, first published in French in 1938: against the tradition from Greek philosophy to Kant and Hegel, which submits even God to reason and necessity, it sets biblical faith, for which all things are possible.
Introduction
“Athens and Jerusalem” was Shestov’s last book, written in the 1930s and published in French in 1938, the year of his death; the Russian text appeared in Paris in 1951. Its four parts examine the philosophical tradition from the Greeks through medieval scholasticism to Spinoza, Kant, Hegel and Husserl. Shestov argues that this tradition, which he calls “Athens”, submits everything, even God, to necessity and to eternal truths that may not be questioned. Against it he sets “Jerusalem”, the faith of the Bible, for which nothing is impossible and which does not accept even that what has happened cannot be undone. The book sums up his lifelong polemic against rationalism and his reading of Kierkegaard; it has been discussed by theologians and existential philosophers and is the work by which Shestov is chiefly known.
More works by Lev Shestov
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