SOURCE: An introduction to Athens and Jerusalem by Lev Shestov, translated by Bernard Martin, Ohio University Press, 1966, pp. 9-44.

In the following excerpt, Martin discusses the basic tenets of Shestov's most important work as representative of his philosophical thought.

In his last years Shestov brooded incessantly over what he called, in a letter to [Sergei] Bulgakov, "the nightmare of godlessness and unbelief which has taken hold of humanity." He was convinced that only through "the utmost spiritual effort," as he termed it, could men free themselves from this nightmare. His own life concentrated on a passionate struggle against the "self-evident" truths of speculative philosophy and positivistic science which had come to dominate the mind of European man and made him oblivious to the rationally ungrounded but redeeming truths proclaimed in the Bible. This struggle is most fully reflected in his last and greatest book, the monumental Athens and...