Unit 3: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821–1881) was a Russian novelist, journalist, and essayist whose literary works are among the most important texts in the history of existentialism. Despite never self-identifying as an existentialist, Walter Kaufmann, a German-American philosopher and author, declares, "It is as if Kierkegaard had stepped right out of Dostoevsky's pen", adding that "part one of Notes from Underground is the best overture for existentialism ever written".
Dostoevsky's (also written Dostoyevsky) literature investigates the loneliness, alienation, and despair humans experience living in conditions populated with ominous protagonists and gloomy situations. The hardships he encountered early in life influenced his preoccupations with the oppressed, suffering, and tormented. He viewed the human condition as constrained by social, political, and economic institutions and limited by God, whose existence constrains human existence. One of his most meaningful themes is that life is about being true to oneself. This unit will guide you through Dostoevsky's key existential themes, focusing on human freedom and moral responsibility in Notes from the Underground (1864) and The Grand Inquisitor (1880).
Completing this unit should take you approximately 4 hours.
Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- identify Fyodor Dostoevsky's place in the history of existentialism;
- describe Dostoevsky's notions of freedom and revolution;
- summarize the idea of Dostoevsky's Underground Man;
- analyze Dostoevsky's perspective on morality;
- explain Dostoevsky's critique of reason and the notion of truth; and
- summarize the main themes in Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor.
3.1: Fyodor Dostoevsky's Role
Fyodor Dostoevsky lived just before the Russian Revolution, an era when societal realities strongly influenced his existential preoccupations. Dostoevsky was fully aware of the impending social and political upheaval; he witnessed the demise of Russia's tsarist government and the elements of the 1917 revolution falling into place. Russia's geographical proximity to Europe but cultural remoteness gave Dostoevsky a distinct perspective on many historical events. For instance, he witnessed the moral implications of obvious social inequity across Europe, the growing desperation of daily Russian life, and the nature of religious faith in a rapidly changing world. Thus, Dostoevsky depicts Russian and European perspectives before the revolution and introduces essential existential questions that will lead humanity into the 20th century.
As you read Dostoevsky's biography, consider how much of his work was influenced by the ongoing social and personal hardships he experienced. Consider why he may not have wanted to be called an existential philosopher or for his works to be part of the emerging existential philosophical movement.
This passage outlines the key history of Dostoevsky's life and works. Is there anything in his biography that leaves you wondering why he chose to explore existential themes in his life? How might his story and life's work help individuals struggling with existential issues?
3.2: Dostoevsky's Notions of Freedom and Revolution
As reflected in his novels, Dostoevsky's perspective on freedom was fraught with complications. Terry Eagleton, an English literary theorist who teaches at Lancaster University, notes that the characters in his novels The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, and The Idiot "seem to occupy a permanent state of pathological anguish or morbid sensitivity: ruined gentlefolk, buffoonish landowners, and socially paranoid clerks reap a perverse delight from being insulted or humiliated".
The Grand Inquisitor is a chapter from the novel The Brothers Karamazov, in which Dostoevsky examines the idea that institutionalized religion provides humans with stability by removing the burden of freedom and responsibility. To understand this better, he suggests we explore what it means to be an atheist. An atheist must take sole responsibility for their own creation and the meaning of their life and establish standards for what is "right" and "wrong" as they do not rely upon an institution to give them these answers. Or some atheist movements will search for a secular equivalent that limits their freedom and responsibility in the same way that institutionalized religion might. Thus, freedom and independence come with the burden of responsibility – constructing meaning, determining values, and selecting one's choices amid various ideologies bidding for our attention.
Freedom provides the context for revolution (the forcible overthrow of existing norms or regimes) in socio-economic and political terms. But revolution also describes the movement of one object around another. Dostoevsky examines both meanings. He was concerned with the existential conditions and components of violent change (nihilism, terrorism, and destruction) and the implacability of the ideas that foment revolutions, the ideas that change revolve around.
In his book The Devils (also translated as The Possessed), Dostoevsky focused on the ways nihilistic social conditions "infected" individuals who become revolutionaries. Change is achieved when terrorism annihilates the existing order in the name of social and economic equality. Even worse, the radicals self-destruct because the organizing belief around the events is a belief in nothing: revolution is destructive but not constructive since a plan to replace the old with the new does not exist. In this sense, one of Dostoevsky's main criticisms of revolution is its moral indifference.
Read this passage from Dostoevsky's The Possessed (or, The Devils), Part II, Chapter I. Night, VII. As you are reading, consider whether nihilism threatens religious belief and existential philosophy. Do you think the fact that Dostoevsky wrote this during a time when the ideologies of existentialism, nihilism, socialism, and communism were still evolving influenced how he portrayed his characters?
Read this resource and consider the lessons it teaches about religion's social purpose and role. In connection to religion, how can people imagine liberation? Can religion generate truth for the masses?
3.3: Dostoevsky's Idea of the Underground Man
Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground is a collection of disjointed memoirs written by a lonely, spiteful man who appears to be secluded from other humans. The first few lines of the story show that despite being educated and presumably economically affluent, the narrator suffers from profound self-loathing. His terrible behavior toward others demonstrates this. The Underground Man considers himself far more intelligent and aware than anyone else, making him skeptical, incapable of feeling confident, and preventing him from participating in life like other people. On page three, he emphasizes that being overly "conscious is an illness". His awareness allows him to perceive beauty and the impossibility of attaining it.
The Underground Man represented what Dostoevsky believed humanity was generating rather than what Dostoevsky believed humanity should become. The "notes" reflect his ongoing battle to engage with the world and oneself: to defy, define, and be a part of something bigger than oneself. The reader is exposed to the narrator's various moods throughout the Notes, including his anxiousness and despair. Dostoevsky's Underground Man is a character without typical and traditional heroic values, and he does not attempt to convey a story or present some form of ideal. The Underground Man does not believe in God or Christian values; rather, he exists as an individual who is free to think, feel, and act according to his desires. This is the distinguishing characteristic of an existentialist.
As you watch this video, pay close attention to the Underground Man's opinion of himself. Do you think the Underground Man is as maladjusted as he makes himself out to be? Could he be experiencing a mental health condition? Why is the Underground Man unable to make the decisions that are so easy for the rest of us to make? Given what the Underground Man says about himself at the beginning of the book, how is the Underground Man in revolt against himself?
3.4: Dostoevsky's Perspective on Morality
The traditional method for studying morality is to determine what is "good" or "bad". Dostoevsky investigated human behavior to demonstrate, in the most dramatic way possible, that what is "moral" can never be totally good since we cannot eliminate evil. He repeatedly dismissed a distinction between good and evil and hoped we would understand that categorizing people as "good" or "bad" is deceptive. This is because moral values such as good and evil are connected, mutually-exclusive categories that rely on one another for meaning. The same holds for people. Dostoevsky's characters are simultaneously good and bad, much like real individuals in society.
Dostoevsky considers love the greatest moral value, but he cannot separate love from hatred. In The Underground Man, he says that "the main thing is to love others like yourself; that is everything – nothing else is necessary". He concludes that "in my hatred for the people of our land there is always a nostalgic agony: why can't I hate them without loving them? … and in my love for them was nostalgic sorrow: why can't I love them without hating them?"
Thus, Dostoevsky demonstrates that morality is an existential problem rather than a religious or social issue through his various characters. When he declares, "Good and evil are in a monstrous coexistence within man, " he refers to every human being as a complicated mixture of kindness and cruelty, simplicity and intellect, modesty and passion. And this is reiterated in The Grand Inquisitor:
Corrupt people are often good-natured; criminals are tender and sensitive, puritans and moralists are callous and cruel … everyone is equally capable for good and for evil.
The notion that humans cannot defeat evil presents a problem for morality. However, Dostoevsky does not want us to sink into despair, nihilism, or suicide; rather, he wants the opposite. He believes that suffering leads to redemption and gives our lives meaning.
When you read this passage from The Brothers Karamazov, you will encounter this sentence:
I think if the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.
What do you think Dostoevsky is trying to say? Why do human beings need to follow their whims? Why are the laws of reason an illusion? In this respect, Dostoevsky has a lot in common with Pascal and Kierkegaard: a suspicion of reason. Create a list of the most common philosophical features the three thinkers share.
3.5: Dostoevsky's Critique of Reason
In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky expresses his skepticism of the capabilities of human reason. Dostoevsky felt that overestimating our intellectual capacity would lead to disillusionment. This belief contrasts with the Enlightenment's trust in the power of reason to disclose fundamental truths about the cosmos and everything in it.
This insight is consistent with a major theme throughout Dostoevsky's work: existence is intrinsically contradictory. As such, we cannot justify it.
This essay discusses Raskolnikov, the main character and protagonist in Dostoevsky's masterpiece Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov is a self-assured and reasonable creature who must confront the repercussions of his deeds. Think about Dostoevsky's anti-rationalism throughout the work and his suspicion of others who tout human reason as superior to human will. Is total freedom compatible with intellectual pride? How can reason get in the way of freedom? Or, how can reason enable freedom?
Watch this video. Do you find the existential questions that Dostoevsky grappled with relevant today? If so, in what way? How do ethical themes intersect with existential questions to present the audience who reads Dostoevsky with opportunities for dual philosophical inquiry?
3.6. Dostoevsky's Notion of Truth
We often use truth to evaluate claims: Today is Wednesday, 2 + 5 = 7, I like coconut ice cream, God exists, and you acted ethically. We frequently believe the truth is objective or independent of our subjective opinion. In other words, we try to apply logic to discover the "real" truth.
Dostoevsky demonstrated that telling the truth is difficult. He reminds us of the profound contradictions inherent in objective descriptions of the universe and our place in it. We make statements about good and evil, freedom and determinism, and guilt and salvation as if these were all knowable and completely consistent with our other worldviews.
Instead, reasonable analysis rapidly exposes that our assertions, such as our knowledge of suffering, freedom, and truth, are typically meaningless. This could explain Christ's silence in The Grand Inquisitor. His only motion is to softly kiss the old man on the lips.
Read this selection from The Brothers Karamazov. The Underground Man seems to revolt against nature as he critiques who he considers narrow-minded people and the masses. How is this so? Ultimately, Dostoevsky's Underground Man feels as if he is in a revolt against nature's laws. Consider how Dostoevsky illustrates this and other types of revolt in this work.
3.7: The Grand Inquisitor
Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov is a Matryoshka nesting doll of stories. Within the story, two brothers, Ivan and Alyosha, engage in a conversation. Ivan tells Alyosha a story set during the Spanish Inquisition about a conversation between the Grand Inquisitor and Jesus, who has returned to Earth. The Grand Inquisitor also tells Jesus a story. In all of these layers of stories, Dostoevsky expresses the idea that fiction is paradoxical: it expresses truths but is false because the events never actually occurred.
In a discussion that Terry Eagleton describes as "either one of the craftiest apologies for religious despotism ever written or a scathing satire of such autocracy", the Grand Inquisitor accuses Jesus of having misunderstood human nature. He argues that freedom, which God granted humans, is a terrible intolerable burden for man to carry. Humans really only want the security of food: they will happily trade freedom for bread and safety:
In the end, they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us'.
– The Grand Inquisitor, p. 6The Grand Inquisitor maintains that the Church has rectified God's error:
...at last they have vanquished freedom and have done so to make men happy.
– The Grand Inquisitor, p. 5With his return, Jesus threatens all of the Church's good work and, most importantly, human happiness.
Faith is equally burdensome to humans who want to worship but has a guarantee. They want to "worship what is established beyond dispute" (The Grand Inquisitor, p. 7), even though faith is defined by uncertainty.
The Grand Inquisitor offers humans three versions of what Christ rejected during his temptation:
- The satisfaction of basic desires over uncertainty;
- Consolation through an undeniable object of worship over the spiritual agony of faith; and
- The comfort of material gain, manifest in ignorance, over the wretchedness of poverty, manifest in deliberate choice.
Read Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor, a parable that a character in Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov tells. Think about how you would answer the following questions as you read. Why is Jesus on trial? What is he accused of? List the temptations Jesus faced, according to the Grand Inquisitor. Then, sketch the main argument the Grand Inquisitor presents against Jesus. Why do you think Jesus is silent most of the time as the Grand Inquisitor speaks? How does Dostoevsky suggest that Christ's rejection of the temptations places an unbearable burden, and an unreachable ideal, on humankind? Why does Ivan, who is telling us the story of the Grand Inquisitor, reject God's absolute power?
Unit 3 Assessment
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