The Children of Ecclesiastes

This book is about the attempts of intellectuals to find the purpose and meaning of history, which has turned its terrifying face towards them. In the search for meaning, they encounter the contradictions that have become the flesh and blood of European culture: the familial and the universal, the heavenly and the earthly. These contradictions are capable of causing soul unrest, becoming the cause of feuds and wars. Evidence of this is the tragic history of the last century and the alarming beginning of the current one. At the center of the book are the texts of Joseph Brodsky and his favorite philosopher Lev Shestov, who proposed the idea of "wandering through souls." Such a choice of center implies a route of wandering - from the dialogues of Plato, the treatises of Plotinus and Philo of Alexandria, the logical reasoning of Spinoza to the essays of Edward Said, the poems of Ezra Pound, the prose of Isaac Bashevis Singer and "Three Conversations" by Vladimir Solovyov. The endless dispute lasts, which is in fact finite - directed towards "here and now" as a possible end of history.