All Things are Possible - Lev Shestov

General rules.—People go to philosophers for general principles. And since philosophers are human, they are kept busy supplying the market with 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. Why should not every grown-up person be a creator, live in his own way at his own risk and have his own experience? Children and raw youths must go in leading strings. But adult people who want to feel the reins should be despised. They are cowards, and slothful: afraid to try, they eternally go to the wise for advice. And the wise do not hesitate to take the responsibility for the lives of others. They invent general rules, as if they had access to the sources of knowledge. What foolery! 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. Those who have tried to live according to theories from books have found this out. At the best, their efforts produced banality. There is no alternative. Whether man likes or not he will at last have to realise that cliches are worthless, and that he must live from himself. There are no all-binding, universal judgments—let us manage with non-binding, non-universal ones. Only professors will suffer for it....

Metaphysical consolations.—Metaphysics mercilessly persecutes all eudaemonistic doctrines, seeing in them a sort of laesio majestatis of human dignity. Our dignity forbids us to place human happiness in the highest goal. Suppose it is so? But why then invent consolations, even metaphysical ones? Why give to such a "pure" ideal concept as metaphysics such a coarse "sensual" partner as consolation?—sensual in the Kantian meaning of the word. Metaphysics had much better associate herself with proud disconsolation. Consolation brings calm and ease, even quiet gratification to the soul. But surely, if metaphysics condescend to accept any assistance whatever, she must scorn all earthly gratifications, leave them to wingless positivism and materialism. What are joys and pains to metaphysics?—she is one thing, they another. Yet all of a sudden metaphysicians begin to shout about consolations. Evidently there is a misunderstanding here, and a big one. The more you pierce to the ultimate ends of the "infinite" metaphysical problems, the more finite they reveal themselves. Metaphysicians only look out for some new boon—I nearly said pleasure. Voltaire said that if there was no God, then He should be invented. We explain these words by the great Frenchman's extreme positivism. But the form only is positive, the content is purely metaphysical. All that a metaphysician wants to do is to convince himself that God exists. No matter whether he is mistaken or not, he has found a consolation. It is impossible for him to see that his belief in a certain fact does not make that fact veritable. The whole question is whether there does exist a supreme, conscious First Cause, or whether we are slaves to the laws of dead necessity. But what does the metaphysician care about this real question! Having declared himself the avowed enemy of eudaemonism, he next seeks consolation, nothing but consolation. To doubt his right to be consoled drives him to fury and madness. He is prepared to support his convictions by every means—ranging from righteous indignation to fists. It is obviously futile to try to enlighten such a creature. Once a man cares nothing for God, and seeks only to make the best of his life, you will not tear away his attention from the immediate moment. But perhaps there is a God, and neither Voltaire nor the metaphysicians have any need to invent Him. The metaphysicians never saw that an avowed disbelief in God does not prove the non-existence of God, but just the opposite; it is a surer sign of faith than ever belief is. Unfortunate metaphysicians! They might have found their greatest consolation here, and fists and moral indignation and other forms of chastisement to which they have been driven might have been spared us.

Practical advice.—People who read much must always keep it in mind that life is one thing, literature another. Not that authors invariably lie. I declare that there are writers who rarely and most reluctantly lie. But one must know how to read, and that isn't easy. Out of a hundred book-readers ninety-nine have no idea what they are reading about. It is a common belief, for example, that any writer who sings of suffering must be ready at all times to open his arms to the weary and heavy-laden. This is what his readers feel when they read his books. Then when they approach him with their woes, and find that he runs away without looking back at them, they are filled with indignation and talk of the discrepancy between word and deed. Whereas the fact is, the singer has more than enough woes of his own, and he sings them because he can't get rid of them. L'uccello canto, nella gabbia, non di gioia ma di rabbia, says the Italian proverb: "The bird sings in the cage, not from joy but from rage." It is impossible to love sufferers, particularly hopeless sufferers, and whoever says otherwise is a deliberate liar. "Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." But you remember what the Jews said about Him: "He speaks as one having authority!" And if Jesus had been unable, or had not possessed the right, to answer this sceptical taunt, He would have had to renounce His words. We common mortals have neither divine powers nor divine rights, we can only love our neighbours whilst they still have hope, and any pretence of going beyond this is empty swagger. Ask him who sings of suffering for nothing but his songs. Rather think of alleviating his burden than of requiring alleviation from him. Surely not for ever should we ask any poet to sob and look upon tears. I will end with another Italian saying: Non e un si triste cane che non meni la coda. ... "No dog so wretched but he wags his tail sometimes."

If a patient fulfils all the orders of a sensible doctor, we say he behaves wisely. If he wantonly neglects his treatment, we say he acts stupidly. If a healthy person wished to inoculate himself with some dangerous disease—say phthisis—we should say he was mad, and forcibly restrain him. To such an extent are we convinced that disease is evil, health good. Well—on what is our conviction based? At a glance the question seems absurd. But then at a glance people would absolutely refuse to doubt the fixity of the earth, at a glance an ordinary person would giggle if he was shown the problem of the relation between the real world and the ideal. Who knows what would seem amenable to discussion to the ordinary person? The philosopher has no right to appeal to the ordinary person. The philosopher must doubt and doubt and doubt, and question when nobody questions, and risk making a laughing-stock of himself. If common sense were enough to settle all problems, we should have known everything long age. So that—why do we value health more than sickness? Or even further—which is better, health or sickness. If we will drop the utilitarian point of view—and all are agreed that this has no place in philosophy—then we shall see at once that we have no grounds whatever for preferring health and sickness. We have invented neither the one nor the other. We found them both in the world along with us. Why then do we, who know so little about it, take upon ourselves to judge which are nature's successes, which her failures? Health is agreeable—sickness disagreeable. But this consideration is unworthy of a philosopher: otherwise why be a philosopher, why distinguish oneself from the herd? The philosopher invented morality, which has at its disposal various pure ideas that have no relation to empirical life. Then let us go further. Reason should have a supply of pure ideas also. Let Reason judge in her own independent way, without conforming to conventional ideas. When she has no other resort, let her proceed by the method of negation: everything that common sense asserts, I, Reason, declare to be false. So—common sense Says sickness is bad, reason therefore asserts that sickness is the highest boon. Such Reason we should call autonomous, law-unto-itself. Like a real monarch, it is guided only by its own will. Let all considerations point in favour of health, Reason must remain inexorable and keep her stand till we are all brought to obedience. She must praise suffering, deformity, failure, hopelessness. At every step she must fight common-sense and utilitarianism, until mankind is brought under. Is she afraid of rebellion? Must she in the last issue, like morality, adapt herself to the inclinations of the mob?

Experience and Science.—As we are well aware, science does not, nay cannot, admit experience in all its extent. She throws overboard an enormous quantity of individual facts, regarding them as the ballast of our human vessel. She takes note only of such phenomena as alternate constantly and with a certain regularity. Best of all she likes those phenomena which can be artificially provoked, when, so to speak, experiment is possible. She explains the rotation of the earth and succession of the seasons since a regular recurrence is observable, and she demonstrates thunder and lightning with a spark from an electric machine. In a word, in so far as a regular alternation of phenomena is observable, so far extends the realm of science. But what about those individual phenomena which do not recur, and which cannot be artificially provoked? If all men were blind, and one for a moment recovered his sight and opened his eyes on God's world, science would reject his evidence. Yet the evidence of one seeing man is worth that of a million blind. Sudden enlightenments are possible in our life—even if they endure only for a few seconds. Must they be passed over in silence because they are not normal and cannot be provoked?—or treated poetically, as beautiful fictions? Science insists on it. She declares that no judgments are true except such as can be verified by all and everyone. She exceeds her bounds. Experience is wider than scientific experiment, and individual phenomena mean much more to us than the constantly recurrent.

Science is useful—but she need not pretend to truth. She cannot know what truth is, she can only accumulate universal laws. Whereas there are, and always have been, non-scientific ways of searching for truth, ways which lead, if not to the innermost secrets, yet to the threshold. These roads, however, we have let fall into ruin whilst we followed our modern methodologies, so now we dare not even think of them. What gives us the right to assert that astrologers, alchemists, diviners, and sorcerers who passed the long nights alone with their thoughts, wasted their time in vain? As for the philosopher's stone, that was merely a plausible excuse invented to satisfy the uninitiated. Could an alchemist dare to confess openly that all his efforts were towards no useful or utilitarian end? He had to guard against importunate curiosity and impertinent authority in outsiders. So he lied, now frightening, now alluring the mob through its cupidity. But certainly he had his own important work to do: and it had only one fault, that it was purely personal to him. And about personal matters it is considered correct to keep silent.... Astonishing fact! As a rule a man hesitates over trifles. But it does sometimes occur that a moment arrives when he is filled with unheard-of courage and resolution in his judgments. He is ready to stand up for his opinions against all the world, dead or living. Whence such sudden surety, what does it mean? Rationally we can discover no foundation for it. If a lover has got into his head that his beloved is the fairest woman on earth, worth the whole of life to him; if one who has been insulted feels that his offender is the basest wretch, deserving torture and death; if a would-be Columbus persuades himself that America is the only goal for his ambition—who will convince such men that their opinions, shared by none but themselves, are false or unjustifiable? And for whose sake will they renounce their tenets? For the sake of objective truth? that is, for the pleasure of the assurance that all men after them will repeat their judgment for truth? They don't care. Let Don Quixote run broadcast with drawn sword, proving the beauty of Dulcinea or the impending horror of windmills. As a matter of fact, he and the German philosophers with him have a vague idea, a kind of presentiment, that their giants are but mill-sails, and that their ideal on the whole is but a common girl driving swine to pasture. To defy such deadly doubt they take to the sword or to argument, and do not rest until they have succeeded in stopping the mouth of everybody. When from all lips they hear the praise of Dulcinea they say: yes, she is beautiful, and she never drove pigs. When the world beholds their windmilling exploits with amazement they are filled with triumph; sheep are not sheep, mills are not mills, as you might imagine; they are knights and cyclops. This is called a proven, all-binding, universal truth. The support of the mob is a necessary condition of the existence of modern philosophy and its knights of the woful countenance. Scientific philosophy wearies for a new Cervantes who will put a stop to its paving the way to truth by dint of argument. All opinions have a right to exist, and if we speak of privilege, then preference should be given to such as are most run down to-day; namely, to such opinions as cannot be verified and which are, for that self-same reason, universal. Once, long ago "man invented speech in order to express his real relation to the universe." So he may be heard, even though the relation he wishes to express be unique, not to verified by any other individual. To attempt to verify it by observations and experiments is strictly forbidden. If the habit of "objective verification" has destroyed your native receptivity to such an extent that your eyes and ears are gone, and you must rely only on the evidence of instruments or objects not subject to your will, then, of course, nothing is left you but to stick to the belief that science is perfect knowledge. But if your eyes live and your ear is sensitive—throw away instruments and apparatuses, forget methodology and scientific Don-Quixotism, and try to trust yourself. What harm is there in not having universal judgments or truths? How will it hurt you to see sheep as sheep? It is a step forward. You will learn not to see with everybody's eyes, but to see as none other sees. You will learn not to meditate, but to conjure up and call forth with words alien to all but yourself an unknown beauty and an unheard-of power. Not for nothing, I repeat, did astrologers and alchemists scorn the experimental method—which, by the way, far from being anything new or particularly modern, is as old as the hills. Animals experiment, though they do not compose treatises on inductive logic or pride themselves on their reasoning powers. A cow who has burnt her mouth in her trough will come up cautiously next time to feed. Every experimenter is the same—only he systematises. But animals can often trust to instinct when experience is lacking. And have we humans got sufficient experience? Can experience give us what we want most? If so, let science and craftsmanship serve our everyday need, let even philosophy, also eager to serve, go on finding universal truths. But beyond craft, science, and philosophy there is another region of knowledge. Through all the ages men, each one at his own risk, have sought to penetrate into this region. Shall we, men of the twentieth century, voluntarily renounce our supreme powers and rights, and because public opinion demands it, occupy ourselves exclusively with discovering useful information? Or, in order not to appear mean or poverty-stricken in our own eyes, shall we accept in place of the philosopher's stone our modern metaphysics, which muffles her dread of actuality in postulates, absolutes, and such-like apparently transcendental paraphernalia?