Shestov, Lev: - He was born Yeguda Leib Shvartsman on January 31, 1866, and died on November 19, 1938. Lev Isaakovich Shestov was a Russian existentialist and religious philosopher. He is famous for saying bad things about both theoretical rationalism and positivism. His writings pushed for a movement beyond reason and philosophy, saying that these can't prove for sure the truth about big issues like what God is like or why we exist. In modern times, critics have called his work "anti-philosophy." A lot of what Shestov wrote was about Russian writers like Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov, as well as thinkers like Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. Apotheosis of Groundlessness (1905) and Athens and Jerusalem (1930-37), his most important work, are among the books he has written. He met and had an impact on minds like Edmund Husserl, Benjamin Fondane, Rachel Bespaloff, and Georges Bataille after moving to France in 1921. He died in 1938 after living in Paris. His name at birth was Yeguda Leib Shvartsman, and he was born in Kiev into a Jewish family. Nicholas Pritzker, a lawyer who moved to Chicago and became the head of the powerful Pritzker family in business and politics, was his cousin. He got his schooling in different places because he had problems with authority.