The hard problem of consciousness as a crisis of rationalist metaphysics according to Lev Shestov

Summary

The article argues that the debate on the hard problem of consciousness supports Lev Shestov's critique of rationalist philosophy, highlighting a longstanding conflict between rational explanation and lived experience. It suggests that modern responses to the knowledge argument reveal tensions in physicalism and emphasizes Shestov's philosophical framework, which questions the necessity of a unified theory of everything in understanding reality.

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Abstract

Abstract This article argues that the contemporary debate surrounding the hard problem of consciousness confirms Lev Shestov’s structural critique of rationalist philosophy. First, it shows that the hard problem should not be understood as a merely recent technical difficulty within analytic philosophy, but as a new configuration of a much older conflict between rational explanation and lived experience—a conflict Shestov articulated through the opposition between the “tree of knowledge” and the “tree of life.” Second, it contends that contemporary responses to the knowledge argument, especially eliminativist tendencies within physicalism, bring into sharp relief the tensions Shestov diagnosed in systems governed by the demand for necessity and explanatory closure. Far from offering a technical solution, Shestov provides a philosophical framework that illuminates the metaphysical stakes of current debates over consciousness and challenges the assumption that reality must be exhaustively subsumed under a unified theory of everything.

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