Volume 1, Number 2 · June 1, 1963
Second Thoughts on Existentialism
By Lionel Abel
Leon Shestov, a gifted Russian writer on philosophy, once criticized Plato and Aristotle, as well as Spinoza, Descartes, Kant and Hegel on the following grounds: Nothing said by these thinkers could be convincing or important, since none of them would have had anything important or convincing to say to Job. In Job's balances their moral exhortations would have weighed as nothing. A strange idea that Job, who was not a philosopher, should be the ultimate critic of philosophy, and that the test of rational doctrine should be its meaningfulness to one who, from his dunghill, saw all life as meaningless. But if the test seems unfair when applied to rational thinkers, might it not take on appropriateness if applied to our modern Existentialists?
Feature, 2878 words
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