Lev Shestov

Lev Shestov (1866 to 1938), born Yeguda Lev Shvartsman in Kiev, was a Russian existentialist and religious philosopher, best known for his critiques of both philosophical rationalism and positivism. He argued that reason and metaphysics cannot conclusively establish truth about ultimate problems such as the nature of God or existence, and some scholars associate his work with the label anti-philosophy. He wrote on Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and on the Russian writers Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov, and his books include All Things Are Possible (1905) and his major work Athens and Jerusalem (1930 to 1937). After emigrating to France in 1921 he lived in Paris until his death in 1938, befriending and influencing thinkers such as Edmund Husserl, Benjamin Fondane and Georges Bataille.