ŠESTOV, LEONE (LEV ISAÁKIEVIČ ŠVARCMAN). — Russian religious writer, born in Kiev in 1866, died in Paris in 1938, where he had emigrated after the revolution.
During the years of exile he wrote his finest works, which are cited in the French edition: Les révélations de la mort (Paris 1923); La nuit de Gethsemani (there 1923; Italian translation, Milan 1945); Kierhegaard et la philosophie existentielle (Paris 1936); Athènes et Jérusalem (there 1938; partial Italian translation, there 1943, under the title Il sapere e la libertà); as well as the essays collected in the volume Le pouvoir des clefs (there 1928).
S. may be defined as a mystical-religious Nietzsche; he carries to the point of paradox Dostoevsky’s critique of science, (v.) Nietzsche’morality (v.), and the Pascalian opposition between the “God of philosophy” and the “God of religious faith.” He contrasts rational “knowledge,” or “speculative philosophy” (which he identifies with “sin” and “diabolical pride”), with “existential philosophy,” intimately united with faith, whose truth is not “comprehension” or “evidence,” but subjective certainty, “free” from every “logical constraint.” He accepts Tertullian’s “certum est quia impossibile.”
S.’s fideism, despite its religious intensity, denies every rational foundation of faith and the validity of reason itself. In this skepticism (v.) in conflict with Catholic doctrine.
Michele Federico Sciacca