The paper discusses Dostoevsky’s insight into the oxymoronic metaphysics of the Russian revolution. The keys to it are contained in two of Dostoevsky’s works. The first is Demons with Kirillov’s idea of self-deification in death intended to fill the gap left by the proclaimed absence of God. The second is Notes from the House of the Dead, where Dostoevsky depicts the Russian peasants as people for whom even such notions as freedom, happiness and honor are expressed in (...) monetary terms. The Russian revolution was created by people of Kirillov’s persuasion; yet this ideal was offered to people whose teleology was firmly rooted in the earthly life. The interpenetration of these worldviews resulted in the initial victory of the revolution, but the dominance of the peasant Weltanschauung with its earthly teleology ultimately led to the collapse of the communist project a few decades later. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article deals with Dostoevsky’s controversial concept of love and its relation to that of Nietzsche. Despite many parallels, Dostoevsky’s thought on love can be viewed as a criticism, avant la letter, of Nietzsche’s claim to having unmasked the Christian idea of neighbour-love ‘for God’s sake’ as an illusion. Yet, in addition to neighbour-love, Dostoevsky also entertains the idea of ‘furthest love’, love for the Übermensch of the future. The article examines Dostoevsky’s experiments with love’s different (...) forms and argues that the question underlying these explorations is whether Christian love can positively impact the world or whether it is doomed to be ineffectual, even destructive. It is argued that, while Dostoevsky’s novels often expose love’s fallibility and even its impotence, they nonetheless manifest the quest for a love capable of redeeming the world. It is shown how Dostoevsky considered one’s understanding of love to hinge on anthropological views, such as belief in the immortality of the soul or the degree of human freedom and responsibility; and how the reality and practice of love, in turn, influences both who we are and understand ourselves to be.​. (shrink)

This article compares the works of Lev Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky as interpreted by the philosopher Lev Shestov. The author shows how Shestov analyzes Anna Karenina and War and Peace in light of...

This article examines stylistic and linguistic aspects of photographic thinking in the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Bruno Schulz. The analysis is framed by the insights of Western and Ukrainian theorists of the image. The development of photo technologies anticipates photographic thinking as an aesthetic phenomenon. Photographic thinking is embodied in the specific artistic and imaginative reflection of reality and the human world, embedded on the linguistic—syntactic—level of the artistic text. In Dostoyevsky’s tract, the text can be seen (...) as a photo album with consecutive snapshots, each frame containing a certain dominant. On the syntactic level, the phrases “suddenly” and “for a moment” introduce the photographic frame or a change of frame. The phrase “for a moment” grounds a new poetic technique, a way of capturing the psychological states of a character when the soul is revealed, that is, when he or she is reacting unconsciously. The capturing of life from the point of view of a camera distinguishes the surrealist fiction of Bruno Schulz. This photographic perspective is connected with a new conceptualization of temporality: the past and the present are on the same plane and neither is the time of representation, which means the subject of representation is always dead. The conception of time as ‘frozen’ in the moment is also part of Dostoevsky’s poetics. (shrink)

In his book Iris Murdoch: The Saint and the Artist, Peter J. Conradi suggests that “a task for critics today would seem to be to understand the indebtedness of her demonic, tormented sinners and saints and of the curious coexistence in her work of malevolence and goodness, to the dark tragi-comedies of Dostoevski.”1 In his 1986 essay “Iris Murdoch and Dostoevskii,” Conradi goes even further to argue that Fyodor Dostoevsky has been “unnoticed by commentators, a hovering or brooding (...) presence for at least two decades.”2 Both here and in his book Fyodor Dostoevsky, Conradi demonstrates “convergence” through a number of remarkable similarities: the parallels between Dostoevsky’s holy... (shrink)

The paper discusses the perception of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s work by Yuly Aykhenvald (1872–1928), a famous literary critic of the first quarter of the twentieth century. It shows that Aykhenvald’s attitude toward Dostoevsky had undergone a certain evolution from a rejection via demands to “overcome” him to his recognition as one of the “spiritual leaders” of the thinking Russia alongside Pushkin and Leo Tolstoy. Yet Aykhenvald still had some controversy with Dostoevsky, above all over philosophy of history. (...) The ques­tion of Russia’s destiny and its relation to the West is addressed by Aykhenvald following the same algorithm that is used in the article by Thomas G. Masaryk (to which Aykhen­vald was reacting), namely through the prism of and in dispute with Dostoevsky. The pa­per proves that Aykhenvald focuses not on interpreting or analyzing Masaryk’s ideas, but on refuting the views of the Eurasianists and that Eurasian ideas are the very philosophi­cal context that serves as a background for his argument with Dostoevsky. In refuting Dostoevsky’s views on Europe and justifying his own historiosophic view of the entire world as a unified Europe, Aykhenvald eventually comes to the paradox that Dostoevsky, being the “denier of Europe”, is the “intercultural cross-link” that ties Europe and Russia even more closely together. In this way, Dostoevsky’s work turns out to be a starting point for Aykhenvald’s own historiosophic framework, which brings him closer to both Russian interpreters of the Silver Age (Vikentii V. Veresaev) and the European philosoph­ical and political tradition (Thomas G. Masaryk). (shrink)

One of the trends of modern mass perception of Dostoevsky, denial and controversy with a classic, is described in the article. The work also contains a brief history of this tradition of perception. From the point of view of its structure, any renunciation of Dostoevsky or any polemics with him is founded on the rejection of the ‘fantasticality‘ of his poetics or the identification of the writer with one of his heroes. The paradigm of this receptive tradition was (...) defined in the first lifetime responses about Dostoyevsky. In the twentieth century, the controversy with Dostoevsky turned into a purely ideological plane. New rethinking of the writer began only in the middle of the century. The article gives notoriety to the unknown until recently historical source - youth diary of Romain Nazirov, who later became the largest Russian literary scholar. The most recent element of negative perceptive tradition of Dostoevsky - is rejection of him as of boring cultural stamp. It is noteworthy that in recent decades the trend of mass and elite culture is largely identical in relation to Dostoevsky . From this perspective, the article analyzes the series of mass and elite interpretations of Dostoevsky in Contemporary Culture. (shrink)

Money and gossip in nineteenth-century Russian fiction act as combined forces that disrupt the narrative and the relationships between the main characters. The motifs of money are prominent in the novels of both major and minor Russian writers and when seen side by side, the function of the motifs of money becomes clear as a genre marker. The two writers discussed in this paper are Fyodor Dostoevsky and Yevdokia Rostopchina. By placing their works side by side, it becomes (...) evident that their treatment of money represents a similar artistic response to the changing world of Russian social relations in the nineteenth century and the emergence of a new value system replacing that of the old estate culture. More than that, the treatment of money in combination with the prominence of gossip as a structuring device, which moves the plots in Rostopchina’s and Dostoevsky’s novels, reflects the development of the novel as a genre. Rostopchina’s seemingly compliant demeanor conceals a more intricate and subversive agenda. Through her strategic use of feminine masquerade, Rostopchina not only anticipated modern theories of gender as a social construct but also employed a timeless tactic of encoding subversive messages within seemingly conventional works. What is of particular interest in this paper is the incorporation of the society tale into the novel and how this reflects the transformation of value in the nineteenth-century Russian novel. (shrink)

The article surveys various potential sources for Dostoevsky’s knowledge of the Faust legend, examines a range of arts, from literature to music, and focuses on the novel of Friedrich Maximilian Klinger as an important influence for Dostoevsky as the writer interacts with Faustian themes in The Brothers Karamazov on both literary and meta-literary levels. Klinger’s novel is considered in terms of the problems of epistemology and the limits of human cognition, problems rooted in finiteness as a defining characteristic (...) of human nature. In the literary worlds of Klinger and Dostoevsky, the attempts to establish limited human cognition as unlimited, essentially divine, and capable of grasping the entire picture of the existence of both the individual human being and humanity as a whole cause unforeseen and tragic consequences. The article treats the Faustian musical scene in The Adolescent as a variation on the relevant scene in Gounod’s Faust, exploring similar epistemological problems. The article claims that Dostoevsky grants his characters and readers the same degree of freedom in exploring the nature of their cognitive processes and in choosing the voice they decide to listen to and follow. (shrink)

The article provides a summary of “Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky and European Culture” International Scientific Online Conference, held by the International Laboratory for the Study of Russian-European Intellectual Dialogue of the National Research University Higher School of Economics in cooperation with the Dostoevsky’s Moscow House Museum Center. At the conference, leading experts in various fields of the humanities presented various reports on the mutual influence of Dostoevsky and European culture. Research attention was paid to the problem of (...) the influence of the Russian writer on the creative development of European philosophical and artistic thought. The speakers demonstrated the history of translations of Dostoevsky’s novels into foreign languages. The participants of the conference also reflected the influence of the concepts of Western European philosophy, literature, and culture on the fiction and religious thought of the writer. A number of conference reports were devoted to the cultural and philosophical problems of Dostoevsky’s works. The researchers examined the religious and philosophical dialogues of the novel Demons, paying special attention to the controversial image of the protagonist of the novel – Nikolai Stavrogin. Leading Dostoyevsky specialists turned to the littlestudied aspects of his journalism, defining the role of the “Jewish question.” The conference presented literary critics’ interpretations of Dostoevsky’s novels, the history of screen and musical adaptations of his works in European and Russian art. (shrink)

Fyodor Dostoevsky is renowned as one of the greatest psychologists in world literature, but what we know about the origins and the workings of the human mind has changed drasti­cally since the late nineteenth century. If Dostoevsky was such a sensitive reader of the human condition, do his insights hold up to modern research? To judge just by the issue of the psychology of confession, the answer appears to be: yes. The work of Michael Tomasel­lo indicates that (...) the human conscience evolved in order to make people obey group norms. From this I draw the proposition that confession should be best directed to the group as a whole, and not to an individual. Judging by Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment and an assortment of characters in The Brothers Karamazov, this appears to be exactly how confes­sion works in Dostoevsky’s novels: sin is against all, so forgiveness must be from all. (shrink)

The relation between aisthesis and interiority manifests in Wittgenstein’s account of the subject and his private language argument. But it is also an overlooked leitmotif in Dostoevsky’s novels—one of Wittgenstein’s favorite authors, and in W.G. Sebald’s work—who was inspired by Wittgenstein’s philosophy. This book reflects on the role literature can play in answering the philosophical question of an adequate presentation of intention and pain.

Fyodor Dostoevsky's highest and most permanent achievement as a novelist lies in his exploration of man's religious complex, his world and his fate. His primary vision is to be found in his last five novels: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Devils, A Raw Youth, and The Brothers Karamazov. This volume culminates twenty years of studying, teaching, and writing on Dostoevsky. Here George A. Panichas critically analyzes the religious themes and meanings of the author's major works. Focusing (...) on the pervasive spiritual consciousness at play, Panichas views Dostoevsky not as a religious doctrinaire, but as a visionary whose five great novels constitute a sequential meditation on man's human and superhuman destiny. (shrink)

Fyodor Dostoevsky understood this practical dimension well, and it is embodied in his literary treatment of the problem of evil in his masterpiece, The Brothers' Karamazov.1 In what follows, I will interpret the powerful existential repudiation of Christianity based on the facts of human suffering voiced by the antagonist, Ivan. After noting some similarities of Ivan’s case to that given by the French existentialist philosopher Albert Camus in his novel, The Plague, I then turn to Dostoevsky’s response, (...) expressed through the final discourse of the Elder Zossima. My goal here is solely to interpret and to set in a clearer focus the way Dostoevsky approaches the problem of evil. At the end, I briefly note some outstanding issues facing his strategy for resolving it. (shrink)

In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s influential novel Notes from underground, we find one of the most memorable characters in nineteenth century literature. The Underground Man, around whom everything else in this book revolves, is in some respects utterly repugnant: he is self-centred, obsessive and cruel. Yet he is also highly intelligent, honest and reflective, and he has suffered significantly at the hands of others. Reading Notes from underground can be a harrowing experience but also an educative one, for in an (...) encounter with what at first seems unfamiliar and disorienting we can awaken the ‘stranger within’. Dostoevsky’s work, if we are ready for it, can shake us from our slumbers and allow us to see that what appears to be strange may in fact be deeply familiar to us. (shrink)

sThe salience of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels for philosophical reflection is undeniable. By providing a myriad of often dialectically mediating perspectives on certain subjects, he can serve as a rich fount for philosophical polemic. Many readers have been prone to confine the philosophical import of Dostoevsky’s prose to such a polyphony of dialectically interacting perspectives. In this article, this topic is taken up with a focus on the differing points of view on human salvation espoused by the protagonists (...) of The Brothers Karamazov. It will be argued that Dostoevsky held to a view that only through certain existential struggles the human agent can attain a full-blooded experience of redemption. This argument will be made from the dialectical development of predominantly Ivan and Alyosha Karamazov. (shrink)

Fyodor Dostoevsky understood this practical dimension well, and it is embodied in his literary treatment of the problem of evil in his masterpiece, The Brothers' Karamazov.1 In what follows, I will interpret the powerful existential repudiation of Christianity based on the facts of human suffering voiced by the antagonist, Ivan. After noting some similarities of Ivan’s case to that given by the French existentialist philosopher Albert Camus in his novel, The Plague, I then turn to Dostoevsky’s response, (...) expressed through the final discourse of the Elder Zossima. My goal here is solely to interpret and to set in a clearer focus the way Dostoevsky approaches the problem of evil. At the end, I briefly note some outstanding issues facing his strategy for resolving it. (shrink)

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky is one of the classic Russian writers who has been well known by Chinese readers. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Dostoevsky came to China along with the dissemination of Russian literature, and his works participated in the process of the development of Chinese literature in a unique way. After more than a century of development, Dostoevsky studies in China have accumulated more than two thousand pieces of literature, which record the tireless (...) interpretations and explorations of Chinese scholars into the thought and art of Dostoevsky’s works. With the help of data analysis and bibliometric methods, this paper will analyze the research and dissemination of Dostoevsky in China over the past one hundred years, and present a visualization of the trajectory of the development of Dostoevsky studies in China, the research hotspots, and the studies of the representative scholars, to outline the course and appearance, as well as characteristics and routines, of the development of Dostoevsky studies of in China. (shrink)

An attempt is made to develop a basic framework for an existential-phenomenological perspective on personality disorders. Its starting point is taken from the psychiatrist Antoni Kępiński and the philosopher Józef Tischner. The former provides a clinical framework capacious enough to allow ethical, existential, and phenomenological explorations. This conceptual “space” is then explicitly recognized, addressed, and fulfilled by the latter’s investigation of personality dynamics proper to “the hideout.” In order to supplement this thread of thought with a specific illustration, a “case” (...) provided by Fyodor Dostoevsky in his Notes from the Underground is investigated. Then, in turn, Paul Tillich’s The Courage to Be is referred to, so that the deepest roots of personality disorders can be identified with an ontological dynamic proper to the avoidance of non-being. Finally, some brief remarks are made concerning how all the above relates to the idea of a normatively neutral science and how it can be integrated with more up to date clinical practice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dostoevsky, Girard, LevinasApocalyptic Frenzy and Eschatological Ethics in Dostoevsky's DevilsJ. A. Jackson (bio)In his interview with René Girard, Benoît Chantre connects the mimetic theory of René Girard with the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, observing, "It is in the confrontation with otherness that the individual acquires self-consciousness. The self has no meaning except in the relationship, even when the relationship takes the form of a duel. Can we (...) not say, following Levinas, that only experience of war can allow us to think about reconciliation?" Girard concurs and expands: "According to what you have said, Levinas saw the duel, like love, as an escape from totality that we absolutely need. However, it is in this sense that it explodes totality…. By affirming that the duel is already the relationship to the Other, it shows that the relationship sits at the heart of violent reciprocity."1 How fitting that a discussion regarding the thought of Girard and Levinas should center at some point on the duel, an act of violence, of course, and yet an event also pregnant with ethical implications, as rivals must respond face-to-face. Perhaps we should not be so surprised that our two thinkers should fashion the duel as both a temptation to murder and the command "Thou shalt [End Page 227] not murder"; both men have a deep love and sense of indebtedness to the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, a man in whose works the duel—both literal and relational—often plays a crucial narrative, and penitential, role.As the conversation between Chantre and Girard reveals, the pairing of Girard and Levinas seems wholly natural and still much underappreciated.2 Dostoevsky seems to be a natural interlocutor, as one cannot help but feel Dostoevsky's hyperbolic excessiveness coursing through the works of both Girard and Levinas. To read Dostoevsky now, thanks to Girard, one cannot help but be dazzled by Dostoevsky's genius regarding mimetic desire and modern man's underground psychology, the very foundations for Girard's notion of the Apocalyptic. To read Levinas means having the notion of infinite responsibility illumined by Dostoevsky's beautiful religious meditations, where previously one may have only seen Dostoevsky's relishing the idea of the impossible, a mixture of monastic asceticism, Karamozovan passion, and Dostoevsky's own romantic proclivities.3 In this essay, I wish to pursue a reading of Dostoevsky's Devils with Girard's thoughts on apocalypticism and mimetic frenzy—with its inherent focus on the human "political" community—on one side. This is, in turn, partnered with Levinas's sense of the eschatological as an anarchic response to history and politics, with ethics being prior to both politics and history. Most importantly, however, I want to offer my own reading of Dostoevsky and investigate his own position inside of this exchange. To this end, alongside Levinas's idea of eschatology, especially as spelled out in Totality and Infinity, and Girard's often understated, yet very-much-present notion of positive mimesis (love), I also investigate Dostoevsky's notion of kenosis, a key idea in Dostoevsky's anthropology, psychology, and theology.René Girard has always maintained that he did not invent his mimetic theory—that he simply needed only to listen to what great authors like Cervantes, Dante, Shakespeare, Proust, and, especially, Dostoevsky had to say about desire. Indeed, Dostoevsky maintains a central position in Girard's first book, Deceit, Desire and the Novel, and is his only subject matter in Resurrection from the Underground. The connection between Girard and Dostoevsky became even more profound for Girard: "When I wrote the last chapter of my first book, I had a vague idea of what I would do, but as the chapter took form I realized I was undergoing my own version of the experience I was describing. I was particularly attracted to the Christian elements, for example, Stepan Verkhovensky's final journeys and turn to the Gospel before his death. So I began to read the Gospels and the rest of the bible. And I turned into a Christian."4 One can find in much of Girard's meditations on Dostoevsky the seeds of so many [End Page 228] of his... (shrink)

The author examines the key philosophical problem of theodicy and freedom as it was first formulated by Fyodor Dostoevsky and later developed by Nikolai Berdyaev.

Philosophers of education have had a longstanding interest in the nature and value of reason. Literature can provide an important source of insight in addressing questions in this area. One writer who is especially helpful in this regard is Fyodor Dostoevsky. In this essay Peter Roberts provides an educational reading of Dostoevsky's highly influential shorter novel, Notes from Underground. This novel was Dostoevsky's critical response to the emerging philosophy of rational egoism. In this close reading of (...) Notes from Underground, Roberts compares rational egoism with neoliberalism, analyzes the experiences of the central character (the Underground Man), and considers the need for harmony in our educational development as reasoning, feeling, and willing beings. (shrink)

The well-known epistolary conflict between Fyodor Dostoevsky and Nikolai Strakhov over the latter's slander of the great Russian writer's terrible sins is considered in the article from the point of view a philosophical anthropology and relations not two but between three participants of this story: Dostoyevsky, Strakhov and Tolstoy. This conflict is presented through anthropological, existential, and class prisms of description, based on a reconstruction of Strakhov's concept of man as a controversial, dual, and undefined being reflected in (...) Dostoevsky's work. A direct relation between the definition of the dual nature of man in the works of Strakhov and Dostoevsky and interpersonal conflicts within "boundary forms of literature" is substantiated. Special attention is paid to the class of seminarians, the object of Dostoevsky's targeted criticism. He saw their worst characteristics in Strakhov personality. Tolstoy plays the role of an arbiter in this controversy, assessing the situation both in terms of literary, existential and religious thought. In the course of his examination of this conflict, his unexpected closeness to Dostoevsky was discovered in regard to assessment of Strakhov. The point of their coincidence was the "pink Christianity" of the writers, who justify man in a quite similar manner, in terms of their religious consciousness. (shrink)

The author reveals Fyodor Dostoevsky's works main features, his importance for Russian and world philosophy. The researcher analyzes the concept of "Russian Idea" introduced by Dostoyevsky, which became a study subject in Russian philosophy's subsequent history. The polemics that arose regarding the characteristics of Dostoevsky's soilness ideology and his interpretation of the Russian Idea in his Pushkin Speech and subsequent comments in A Writer's Diary are unveiled. The author concludes that Dostoevsky overcomes the limitations of soilness (...) and comes to universalism. The universal for him does not have a rootless cosmopolitan character but is born from the national's heyday. Diversity adorns the truth, and national diversity enamels humankind. People's real unity is in that all-human value that is found in the highest examples of each national culture. The truth is not in rootless cosmopolitanism or nationalism - it is in the "golden mean," which, in our opinion, the writer-philosopher sought to express. Dostoevsky wanted to rise above the dispute, to recognize the points of view of the Slavophiles and Westernizers as one-sided, to get out of any particularity to universality. (shrink)

Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth,nothing easier than flattery.— Fyodor DostoevskyFyodor Dostoevsky, whose 200th birthday we celebrated in 2021, is perhaps one of the most emi...

Analyzing the content of the parable of the Grand Inquisitor from Fyodor M. Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov allows us to identify the root ideas and consequences of a program for reorgani...

While there has been considerable interest in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard and Fyodor Dostoevsky, both of whom are considered seminal existential thinkers, relatively little has been said about similarities in their thought. In this paper, I propose to read their philosophical and literary works together as texts that offer an elaborate model of an existential religious transformation. Both Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky sketch a path leading from the inauthentic, internally fragmented and egotistic self to the authentically Christian, (...) humble and loving individual. By examining the underlying structure of this transformative process, I try to show that its portrayal is in many ways similar in the account of both writers. Furthermore, I maintain that they set out not only to describe the inner workings of the existential religious transformation, but that their effort constitutes a direct appeal to the reader to initiate the transformative process herself or himself. (shrink)

This brief text assists students in understanding Dostoevsky's philosophy and thinking so they can more fully engage in useful, intelligent class dialogue and improve their understanding of course content. Part of the Wadsworth Notes Series, (which will eventually consist of approximately 100 titles, each focusing on a single "thinker" from ancient times to the present), ON DOSTOEVSKY is written by a philosopher deeply versed in the philosophy of this key thinker. Like other books in the series, this concise (...) book offers sufficient insight into the thinking of a notable philosopher, better enabling students to engage in reading and to discuss the material in class and on paper. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Case against Rational Egoism in Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground*James P. ScanlanWriting in his own voice, in letters, notebooks, and diaries, Fyodor Dostoevsky frequently attacked the philosophy of the Russian “nihilists,” as he typically called them—Nikolay Chernyshevsky, Dmitry Pisarev, and other representatives of the radical Russian intelligentsia in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. But because Dostoevsky also used fiction to argue against them, (...) if we wish to discern the full contours of his opposition, we must turn to his stories and novels; and there we face the problem of determining to what extent, if any, the statements of his narrators and characters express his own views.This problem is particularly challenging in regard to the radicals’ “Rational Egoism,” to use the label by which the Russian variant of the theory of enlightened egoism came to be known. 1 Dostoevsky’s most sustained and spirited attack on that aspect of “nihilist” philosophy is found in Part One of Notes from Underground (1864), but it is voiced by one of the darkest, least sympathetic of all his characters—the nameless narrator and protagonist known as the Underground Man. Was this repellent creature speaking for Dostoevsky? The Underground Man, moreover, can easily be viewed as a sheer irrationalist whose rejection of Rational Egoism is a tortured emotional outburst with no logical credentials. Robert L. Jackson, in his groundbreaking study of 1958, describes the Underground Man’s thinking at one point as follows: “It is impossible to argue [End Page 549] with the rationalists: reason is on their side. All that remains is irrationally to negate reason.” 2 If those words were to be taken not simply as a moment in Jackson’s rich analysis but as a comprehensive description of the Underground Man’s attitude, it would be senseless to expect philosophically nuanced arguments from him. And we would have no grounds for thinking that Dostoevsky’s own treatment of Rational Egoism went beyond emotional rejection.Critics from Vasily Rozanov to Joseph Frank have debated the Underground Man’s stance toward Rational Egoism and its relation to Dostoevsky’s, with no sign yet of a definitive resolution. Frank’s recent treatment, presented in the third volume of his monumental literary biography of Dostoevsky, offers a helpful history of the dispute as well as his own finely elaborated interpretation of the Underground Man as an irrational opponent of Rational Egoism. 3 Frank reads Notes from Underground as satire, and he contends that the Underground Man is caught in an agonizing self-contradiction: intellectually, he accepts the basic premises of the Rational Egoists’ outlook, such as the denial of free will; but he finds that, “despite the convictions of his reason,” he cannot live with the amoral and dehumanizing implications of those premises, which strip human beings of moral responsibility. 4 From a rational point of view, of course, rejection of the implications should force the Underground Man to reject the premises as well (by the hoary logical law of modus tollendo tolens), and indeed he does at times passionately condemn them. But according to Frank, these condemnations simply show the depth of his predicament: his “intellectual acceptance” of Chernyshevsky’s determinism is conjoined with “simultaneous rejection of it with the entire intuitive-emotional level of personality identified with moral conscience,” causing him to respond irrationally in a multitude of instances. 5 Frank’s Underground Man, then, is an intellectual disciple but an emotional critic of Rational Egoism; and he is triply an irrationalist: his thinking is mired in self-contradiction, he acts irrationally as a result, and his opposition to Rational Egoism has not a rational but an “intuitive-emotional” basis.But where does this leave Dostoevsky? Must we conclude that he, too, is somehow suspended between acceptance and rejection of Rational Egoism and for that reason has created in Notes from Underground a Bakhtinian equilibrium in which neither position is clearly privileged? For Frank, certainly not. It follows from Frank’s analysis that Dostoevsky himself, unlike the Underground [End Page 550] Man, is a fully consistent opponent of Rational Egoism, for that theory is the target of the inverted irony at the core of his satire; “the... (shrink)

The paper attempts to situate the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky in the tradition of Russian existentialism, and to indicate his influence on the subsequent development of existentialism in its ontological or ethical guise. In fact, Dostoevsky may be seen as the originator of a tradition which will later on influence and be taken up, via Nietzsche and Shestov, by the figures like Emanuel Levinas, Albert Camus or Maurice Blanchot, all explicitly concerned with existentialist questions of debt, guilt (...) or suicide. Dostoevsky's writings are also interpreted in relation to Russian nationalism, and the sense of Russian Messianic election, which at the end of Crime and Punishment coalesce in another destination for Raskolnikov, launching him towards a Messianic future prior to the Abrahamic time and monotheistic sacrificiality. The end of Crime and Punishment imagines another existence for Raskolnikov, before the religious history, or the history tout court, has taken place or time. That time space is akin to something that Jacques Derrida formulated as an advent of an event to-come, a-venir. Dostoevsky is thus, in our interpretation, both a progenitor of the important strains of existentialism, but also a writer returning his hero's existence to an advent of a completely other, time before time, yet to come. (shrink)

The Solution of the Fist: Dostoevsky and the Roots of Modern Terrorism addresses the political and psychological aspects of terrorism as seen through the eyes of a first-generation observer of terrorism, Fyodor Dostoevsky. Through an in-depth analysis of the first novel ever written about terrorism,The Demons, this book explains Dostoevsky's uniquely privileged position in observing this modern political phenomenon.

Jan Patočka became politically active for the first time as a spokesperson of the dissident movement Charter 77. In this capacity he wrote several essays, the first of which, entitled "On the Matters of The Plastic People of the Universe and DG 307", I interpret as the explanation and justification of his turn toward political engagement. The following article is a reading of Patočka's essay that pays particular attention to a peculiar formal feature of the essay – namely that it's (...) presented as a reversal of Dostoevsky's short story "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man". In reversing this story, Patočka shows us the two basic ways of human life and explains his political engagement as an action taken on behalf of the properly human way of life, which he calls "life in truth" or "the responsible life". The purpose of his political engagement thus wasn't defending human rights, but defending life in truth, to which human rights provide suitable conditions. "On the Matters…" also presents Patočka's assessment of the Communist regime with clarity and severity not seen elsewhere in his writings, and shows a shift in his views of youth and youthful rebellion. (shrink)

The thought of Lev Karsavin—like all representatives of the Russian religious and philosophical renaissance—is deeply rooted in the work and ideas of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. However, instead of focusing on the broad relationship between the two thinkers, we focus here on a specific aspect of their connection: two significant articles by Karsavin on Dostoevsky. These are: Dostoevsky and Catholicism (1922) and—or rather primarily—Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov as an ideologist of love (1921). After a short presentation of the first (...) text, I will try to show the debatable, controversial, but also inspiring and even daring nature of the second text. (shrink)

The philosophical influence is a concept, a methodological tool and a process worth inquiring, because it sets the frame for the philosopher's contribution into tradition. This study takes a close look at the philosophical influence on the dependence and inter-dependence between ideas and concepts, currents and tendencies and the experiences that every philosopher inherited from past tradition. It also presents four philosophers in order to identify the roots of influence: Arthur Schopenhauer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche and Emil Cioran.

This paper explores Sigmund Freud's concept of repression in the existential strife exhibited by two main characters, Makar Alexyevitch and Varvara Alexyevna, in Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Poor People." To demonstrate this, I psychoanalyze of how they handle their repressed desires, emphasizing the necessity of Freud's main rule for this method: Openness. Dostoevsky's "Poor People" presents an existential crisis handled through openness and mishandled when an individual represses one's desires. In delving into Dostoevsky's first novel, I demonstrate a (...) link between the existential and psychological, wherein individuals strive to overcome themselves. Surprisingly, this link has a common influence between Dostoevsky and Freud: Immanuel Kant. I briefly discuss this shared similarity to show the basic idea of an "existential middle" derived from a Freudian psychoanalysis of Dostoevsky's "Poor People.". (shrink)

In this engaging study, Sean Illing examines the impact of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Friedrich Nietzsche on the development of Albert Camus's political philosophy. It innovatively attempt to offer a substantive examination of Camus's dialogue with Nietzsche and Dostoevsky. The connections among these writers have been discussed in the general context of modern thought or via overlapping literary themes. This project emphasizes the political dimensions of these connections. In addition to re-interpreting Camus's political thought, the aim is to (...) clarify Camus's struggle with transcendence and to bring renewed attention to his unique understanding of the relationship between nihilism, ideology, and political violence in the twentieth century. The book focuses on Camus's dialogue with Nietzsche and Dostoevsky for three reasons. First, these are the thinkers with whom Camus is most engaged. Indeed, the problems and themes of Camus's work are largely defined by Dostoevsky and Nietzsche; a full account of this dialogue will therefore enhance our understanding of Camus while also reinforcing the enduring importance of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky. Second, it allows a recasting of Camus' political philosophy as both a synthesis of and a response to Nietzsche and Dostoevsky's projects. Finally, this approach allows for a reassessment of Camus's broader political significance, which I contend has been undervalued in the literature. Ultimately, I argue that Camus remains among the most important moral and political voices of the twentieth century. Although limited, his philosophy of revolt offers a humane portrait of justice and articulates a meaningful alternative to the extremes of ideological politics. (shrink)

Fyodor M. Dostoevsky’s analysis of the theme of Russia–Europe relations, as well as the nature of Russian society, is replete with concept-metaphors like “people,” “national principle,” “soul,” “sp...

This article discusses the connection between the ideas of Fyodor M. Dostoevsky and Vladimir S. Solovyov on the need for cultural and moral transformation of those who would claim to participate in...

The article is foremost dedicated to Nietzsche’s account of cruelty, which represents one of the central focuses of Nietzsche’s genealogical polemic, if not its very foundation. This close reading is complemented by drawing parallels with two other outstanding intellectual figures of the nineteenth century, in whom cruelty plays no less a role. These two authors – one could say that together with Nietzsche they form a kind of cruel trio from the European East – are the writers Fyodor Mikhailovich (...) Dostoyevsky and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the latter of whom is also the inventor of a particular genre of erotic discourse characterised by ‘tyranny, cruelty and, above all, the infidelity of a beautiful woman,’ which inspired Krafft-Ebing to name a type of perversion after Masoch. The paper shows that the affinity between the authors lies not only in the fact that cruelty is one of the key themes in all three of them, but that the connection between them – and thus perhaps the beginning of an era characterised, as Alain Badiou said, by an intellectual fascination with cruelty – needs to be sought in the idea of the internalisation of cruelty, which Nietzsche in particular considered to be one of the fundamental driving forces of civilisation. (shrink)

This article discusses the little-studied issue of the dramatic content of philosophical issues in Fyodor M. Dostoevsky’s works. The polyphonic quality, the dialogism combined with the markers of t...