SOURCE: "Lev Shestov: A Russian Existentialist," in The Russian Review, Vol. 26, No. 3, July, 1967, pp. 278-85.

Russian-born Shein is a Canadian editor, translator, former Presbyterian minister, and author of works on theology and philosophy. In the following essay, he presents an overview of Shestov's work and stresses the relevance of his philosophical thought for contemporary readers.

Lev Shestov is a strange and in some respects a rather unique phenomenon in the history of Russian philosophic thought. He was a man whose whole being was dominated by a "single Idea." This all-embracing idea was a passionate desire to liberate man from the tyrannical power of necessity in order to find the truth that is beyond the limits of necessity.

Shestov's personal friend Nicholas Berdyaev, himself a religious existentialist, says that Shestov was a philosopher who philosophized with his whole being, for whom philosophy was a matter of life and death...