All Things are Possible - Lev Shestov

Fatalism frightens people particularly in that form which holds it just to say, of anything that happens, or has happened, or will happen: be it so! How can one acquiesce in the actuality of life, when it contains so many horrors? But amor fati does not imply eternal acquiescence in actuality. It is only a truce, for a more or less lasting period. Time is needed in which to estimate the forces and intentions of the enemy. Under the mask of friendship the old enmity persists, and an awful revenge is in preparation.

In the "ultimate questions of life" we are not a bit nearer the truth than our ancestors were. Everybody knows it, and yet so many go on talking about infinity, without any hope of ever saying anything. It is evident that a result—in the usual acceptance of the word—is not necessary. In the very last resort we trust to instinct, even in the field of philosophy, where reason is supposed to reign supreme, uttering its eternal "Why?" "Why?" laughs at all possible "becauses." Instinct, however, does not mock. It simply ignores the whys, and leads us by impossible ways to ends that our divine reason would hold absurd, if it could only see them in time. But reason is a laggard, without much foresight, and, therefore, when we have run up to an unexpected conclusion, nothing remains but for reason to accept: or even to justify, to exalt the new event. And therefore,—"reality is reasonable," say the philosophers: reasonable, not only when they draw their philosophic Salaries, as the socialists, and with them our philosopher Vladimir Soloviov, explain; but still reasonable even when philosophers have their maintenance taken away from them. Nay, in the latter case, particularly in the latter case, in spite of the socialists and VI. Soloviov, reality shows herself most reasonable. A philosopher persecuted, downtrodden, hungry, cold, receiving no salary, is nearly always an extreme fatalist—although this, of course, by no means hinders him from abusing the existing order. Theories of sequence and consequence, as we already know, are binding only upon disciples, whose single virtue lies in their scrupulous, logical developing of the master's idea. But masters themselves invent ideas, and, therefore, have the right to substitute one for another. The sovereign power which proclaims a law has the same power to abolish it. But the duty of the subordinate consists in the praise, in the consequential interpretation and the strict observance of the dictates of the higher will.

The Pharisee in the parable fulfilled all that religion demanded of him: kept his fasts, paid his tithes, etc. Had he a right to be pleased with his own piety, and to despise the erring publican? Everybody thought so, including the Pharisee himself. The judgment of Christ came as the greatest surprise to him. He had a clear conscience. He did not merely pretend before others to be righteous, he himself believed in his own righteousness. And suddenly he turns out guilty, awfully guilty. But if the conscience of a righteous man does not help him to distinguish between good and evil, how is he to avoid sin? What does Kant's moral law mean, that law which was as consoling as the starry sky? Kant lived his life in profound peace of soul, he met his death quietly, in the consciousness of his own purity. But if Christ came again, he might condemn the serene philosopher for his very serenity. For the Pharisee, we repeat, was righteous, if purity of intentions, together with a firm readiness to fulfil everything which appears, to him in the light of duty, be righteousness in a man.

We jeer and laugh at a man not because he is ridiculous, but because we want to have a laugh out of him. In the same way we are indignant, not because this or the other act is revolting to us, but because we want to let off our steam. But it does not follow from this that we ought always to be calm and smooth. Woe to him who would try to realise the ideal of justice on earth.

We think with peculiar intensity during the hard moments of our life—we write when we have nothing else to do. So that a writer can only communicate something of importance in reproducing the past. When we are driven to think, we have unfortunately no mind to write, which accounts for the fact that books are never more than a feeble echo of what a man has gone through.