“The apotheosis of groundlessness” or L. Shestov’s ideas in the context of the postmodern worldview

This article discusses the ideas of the Russian philosopher L. Shestov, who outlined the vector of existential thinking by reflecting the innovations of modernity and predetermining the intellectual transformations of postmodern European worldview. The concept of “groundlessness” reveals the stylistic and content originality of his works and is a significant notional element of Russian existential thought and Western philosophical reflection. “Groundlessness” expresses the need to intensify the thought process without reliance on the authority of reason and the universal requirements of rationality. The thinker does not accept the transference of the utilitarian attitudes of thinking to philosophical cognition. He develops a way of cognition, associated with the divine Revelation, which sets the moral guidelines of cognitive activity. The tendencies of Shestov's thought are present in postmodern philosophy, which reflects modern European self-consciousness. However, the postmodern worldview is the result of conscious secularization and dehumanization, with complete loss of human identity in all spheres, while L. Shestov's philosophical reflection postulates ontological fixation and experience of faith, and “groundlessness” is seen as an opportunity to find “ground”, the existential basis of the subject. Postmodernist “groundlessness” destroys the logocentric attitudes and historical continuity in culture and acts as intellectual experimentation. Its consequences are the destruction of the criteria of morality and the possibility to manipulate human consciousness, which led to the creation of an existential vacuum and the loss of sense-forming reference points.