#russian philosopher

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With regard to Dostoyevsky you can’t say: ‘I don’t care about him’. Everyone cares about Dostoyevsky, because no one can be indifferent to one’s soul

Vasily Rozanov (1856-1919)

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“ The Russian soul sits not in one spot, this is no small-place soul, no locale-bounded soul. In Russia, in the soul of the people there is a sort of endless searching, a searching for the invisible city of Kitezh, an home unseen. Distances open up before the Russian soul, and no traces of an horizon are there before its spiritual eyes. The Russian soul is ablaze in its fiery search for truth, for the absolute and Divine truth and for the salvation of all the world and the universal resurrection unto new life. It grieves eternally over the sorrow and suffering of the people and all the world, and its torment knows no solace. This soul is absorbed in finding resolution to the ultimate and accursedly difficult questions concerning the meaning of life. There is a rebellious and unsubmissive aspect within the Russian soul, not to be appeased nor satisfied by anything temporal, relative or conditional. All farther and farther along it has to go, to the very end, to the limit, to the exit point from "this world", from this earth, from everything merely local, narrow, attached to it.”

--   N. A. BERDYAEV (BERDIAEV) (Russian philosopher,  1874-1948),  from “THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  RUSSIAN  PEOPLE. The  Soul  of  Russia.” (1915)

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The Russian soul sits not in one spot, this is no small-place soul, no locale-bounded soul. In Russia, in the soul of the people there is a sort of endless searching, a searching for the invisible city of Kitezh, an home unseen. Distances open up before the Russian soul, and no traces of an horizon are there before its spiritual eyes. The Russian soul is ablaze in its fiery search for truth, for the absolute and Divine truth and for the salvation of all the world and the universal resurrection unto new life. It grieves eternally over the sorrow and suffering of the people and all the world, and its torment knows no solace. This soul is absorbed in finding resolution to the ultimate and accursedly difficult questions concerning the meaning of life. There is a rebellious and unsubmissive aspect within the Russian soul, not to be appeased nor satisfied by anything temporal, relative or conditional. All farther and farther along it has to go, to the very end, to the limit, to the exit point from “this world”, from this earth, from everything merely local, narrow, attached to it.

N. A. BERDYAEV (BERDIAEV) (Russian philosopher,  1874-1948), from “THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  RUSSIAN  PEOPLE. The  Soul  of  Russia.” (1915) 

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Dostoevsky even finds a sort of delight in telling us of his constant defeats and miseries. No one before him, and none since, has described with such desperate fullness all the humiliations, all the sufferings of a soul crushed by the weight of "self-evidence". He cannot rest until he has torn from himself this desperate confession: "Can a man who has looked into his own soul, really respect himself ?" Who can, in fact, respect weakness and triviality ?

Lev Shestov (1866-1938), from “In Job’s Balances. Part 1. Revelations Of The Death. The Conquest Of The Self-Evident. Dostoevsky’s Philosophy” (1921), translated from the Russian by Camilla Coventry and C.A.Macartney (1932)  “ Достоевскому доставляет даже особого рода наслаждение повествовать о своих непрерывных поражениях и неудачах. Никто ни

 до него, ни после не описывал с такой томительной, выматывающей душу обстоятельностью унижения и муки раздавленного "самоочевидностями" человека. Достоевский не успокаивается, пока ему не удается вырвать у самого себя признания: "да разве сознающий человек может уважать себя". И точно, кто может уважать бессилие и ничтожество ? “

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Of all our [Russian] romantics, Dostoevsky was the most fanciful, the most transcendental, the most sincere.

Lev Shestov (1866-1938), from “Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. The Philosophy of Tragedy” (1903), translated from the Russian by Spencer Roberts  “Из всех наших романтиков Достоевский был самым мечтательным, самым надзвездным, самым искренним.”

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Dostoevsky himself was uncertain, to the end of his life, whether he had really seen what he described in The Notes from Underground, or whether he had dreamed it, taking hallucinations and ghosts for reality. Hence the strange style of the underground man's story; this is why each of his sentences gives the lie to the one before and mocks it; this explains too its bursts of ecstasy, of inexplicable joy, alternating with fits of no less inexplicable despair. It is as though he has stumbled over a precipice and fallen sheer into an unplumbed abyss. An unexampled, joyous feeling of flight, combined with terror of the abyss, the all-engulfing void.

 Lev Shestov (1866-1938), from “In Job’s Balances. Part 1. Revelations Of The Death. The Conquest Of The Self-Evident. Dostoevsky’s Philosophy” (1921), translated from the Russian by Camilla Coventry and C.A.Macartney (1932)   “ Сам Достоевский до конца своей жизни не знал достоверно, точно ли он видел то, о чем рассказал в "Записках из подполья", или он бредил 

наяву, выдавая галлюцинации и призраки за действительность. Оттого так своеобразна и манера изложения "подпольного" человека, оттого у него каждая последующая фраза опровергает и смеется над предыдущей. Оттого эта странная череда и даже смесь внезапных, ничем не объяснимых восторгов и упоений с безмерными, тоже ничем не объяснимыми отчаяниями. Он точно сорвался со стремнины и стремглав, с головокружительной быстротой несется в бездонную пропасть. Никогда не испытанное, радостное чувство полета и страх пред беспочвенностью, пред всепоглощающей бездной. “

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Read what Dostoevsky has to say about normal men, and then ask yourself which is better: the painful convulsions of a doubtful awakening, or the grey, yawning torpidity of certain sleep.

Lev Shestov (1866-1938), from “In Job’s Balances. Part 1. Revelations Of The Death. The Conquest Of The Self-Evident. Dostoevsky’s Philosophy” (1921), translated from the Russian by Camilla Coventry and C.A.Macartney (1932)  “ Прочтите, как описывает Достоевский "нормальных" людей, и спросите, что лучше, мучительные ли судороги "сомнительного" пробуждения или тупая, серая, зевающая, удушающая прочность "несомненного" сна. “

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People go to philosophers for general principles... But what sense is there in them ? None at all. Nature demands individual creative activity from us. Men won't understand this, so they wait forever for the ultimate truths from philosophy. which they will never get...  The wise are no wiser than the stupid — they have only more conceit and effrontery. Every intelligent man laughs in his soul at "bookish" views. And are not books the work of the wise ? They are often extremely interesting — but only in so far as they do not contain general rules. Woe to him who would build up his life according to Hegel, Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, Schiller, or Dostoevsky. He must read them, but he must have sense, a mind of his own to live with.

Lev Shestov (1866-1938), from “Apotheosis of Groundlessness (An attempt of adogmatic thinking)” (1905), translated from the Russian by S.S. Koteliansky (1920) “Люди обращаются к философам за общими принципами… Меж тем является вопрос: какой толк в общих правилах ? Почти одновременно с 

вопросом приходит и ответ: никакого. Природа повелительно требует от каждого из нас индивидуального творчества. Люди не хотят этого понять и все ждут от философии последних истин, которых не было, нет и никогда не будет. Истин столько, сколько людей на свете…  Мудрецы не больше знают, чем глупые - у них только больше храбрости и самоуверенности. Всякий умный человек от всей души смеется над "книжными" взглядами. А ведь книги - от мудрецов… Горе тому, кто вздумал бы строить свою жизнь по Шопенгауэру, Гегелю, Толстому, Шиллеру или Достоевскому ! Их можно и даже должно читать - но жить надо своим умом.”