After the Christianization of Pyrrhonism: Shestov’s Irrationalism

Abstract

Lev Shestov (1866–1938) is a Russian philosopher who strongly resisted the arrival, in particular through Kant and Neo-Kantianism, of Western European Enlightenment in Russia.¹ Shestov’s opposition to Kantian Enlightenment and Positivism was motivated mainly by the challenge to Judeo-Christianity posed by these philosophical movements. All of Shestov’s writings are religiously motivated and in all of them he attempts to vindicate the legitimacy of non-rational religious experiences. Although Shestov is Jewish by birth, Luther is the only modern theologian with whom Shestov sympathizes (although this sympathy is not without serious qualifications). But because the only religious authority Shestov recognizes is the Bible (in particular the Old Testament), he does not claim affiliation with any institutional religion.²