Maj/junij/2006 (EDITORIAL) - Milica Kač
Whatever does not proceed from
faith is sin (Rom 14:23)
Symposium »Groundlessnesses: Lev
Shestov between Literature, Religion and Philosophy«
Ljubljana, May, 12, 2005
What fascinated me most when I met
Shestov’s texts, or what did I get as a real gift
attending the symposium? Better to say: what could I
venture to share with people I do not know, to keep the
face of not becoming so very personal that I should
actually be embarrassed?
What I learned at the symposium,
what I cherish and consider as a real and nearly
personal gift which was given to me beside all
scientific and professional achievements of the
symposium is the typical ever lasting and never ending
focus on the same basic questions in groundlessness and
uncertainty of mind. And Shestov was never tired of
asking and answering them. You know that there is no
final answer to such questions, you do not pretend your
ambition is to solve them, but you do not turn away from
them. Once you have accepted the fact that these
questions can never be answered – accepted, not because
of a natural necessity, but from a supernatural freedom
– you are not dealing with a problem any more, you are
embracing the mystery.
The fact that truth, no matter how
abominable, is always above any lie, makes you restless,
and the fact that the truth should always be your guide,
up to the point that it really makes you lose your mind
scares me, but nevertheless:
That which makes Athens so very
uncompromisingly different from Jerusalem and vice versa
turns out, if we take a closer look at Athens or
Jerusalem, to be a too zealous or even a too arbitrary
interpretation of the one or the other capital. Fearing
that either Athens will be considered too irrational or
Jerusalem not spiritual enough, we are prepared to say
aloud only that which can be considered to have a 100 %
rational support. And what about that way which is able
to include the one and the other without looking too
rational and without making a fool of itself?
How different is Shestov! With
utmost sincerity and without any fear he discloses,
lives and writes all that which was best revealed at the
informal part of the symposium: in the discussion which
was often very heated and challenging, during the breaks
and over a glass of wine: namely the radical fragility
of the very idea of logical thought. He moves among
literature, philosophy and religion; not just among, he
lives in literature, philosophy and religion at the same
time; he is responsible to truth, but not only to truth,
to good, not only to Good, to God. And logic? Let it
take care of its own problems.
The main stream of argumentation,
better to say argumentation itself is to Shestov only
potentially interesting. His works can not be
successfully grasped by analysis or various scientific
and professional methods. Insistently, almost stubbornly
he turns again and again to the same few chosen
statements. And he lives with them and from them in most
different and nearly astonishing ways. On one hand, he
deals with reproaches that he is repeating himself, in a
very self-confident way: “Sure, I am repeating myself,
but why do I get on your nerves by doing that? I keep
repeating something you do not want to hear.” On the
other hand he is not afraid of admitting that it is
quite possible that he will not have (stand for) the
same ideas next year.”
It looks like he is more interested
in the thought that stems from personal impressions and
experience than from well established uniform
philosophical or religious system, an existentially
engaged fight against reason and its truths, which
demand obedience. The groundlessness and uncertainty of
mind are more a comfort than a limitation to him.
And in a nearly invisible
coexistence, we glide slowly towards sincerity, we let
us influence by something which is not logic, nor
understanding, not a wish for impossible, not even…
and You
remain silent
