“Once an idea is there, the gates must be opened to it.”
― Lev Shestov
The business of philosophy is to teach man to live in uncertainty—man who is supremely afraid of uncertainty, and who is forever hiding himself behind this or the other dogma.
More briefly, the business of philosophy is not to reassure people, but to upset them…
The task of a writer [is] to go forward and share his impressions with his reader. In spite of everything to the contrary, he is not obliged to prove anything.
But, because every step of his progress is dogged by those police agents, morality, science, logic, and so forth, he needs always to have ready some sort of argument with which to frustrate them.
There is no necessity to trouble too deeply about the quality of the argumentation. Why fret about being “inwardly right.”
It is quite enough if the reasoning which comes handiest will succeed in occupying those guardians of the verbal highways whose intention it is to obstruct his passage…
Thus many writers, like gladiators, shed their blood to gratify that modern Caesar, the mob.
You can find this passage in Lev Shestov’s brilliant book titled— All Things are Possible and Selected Essays
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