All the questions that worried the humanist writer, unraveling the mystery of man, who has lost integrity, who has lost harmony, who is at odds with reality and himself, begin to be drawn towards their center, their focus - to the idea “even more unbearable” - to the idea of God. He suffers from this idea. Upon leaving hard labor, Dostoevsky talks about his thoughts to one of the “Decembrists” - N. Fonvizina - the following: “I will tell you about myself that I am a child of the century, a child of disbelief and doubt to this day and even (I know this) to the end of my days.
What terrible torment this thirst to believe has cost me and is now costing me, which is the stronger in my soul, the more contrary arguments I have. And yet, God sometimes sends me moments in which I am completely calm; in these moments I formed a symbol of faith for myself, in which everything is clear and sacred to me.
This symbol is very simple, here it is: to believe that there is nothing more beautiful, deeper and more symmetrical, more reasonable, more courageous and more perfect than Christ, and not only is there not, but with jealous love I tell myself that it cannot be. Moreover, if someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and it really were that the truth is outside Christ, then I would rather remain with Christ than with the truth” (4, 176). “The writer’s confessions are amazing,” notes N. Budanova, “about his enormous thirst for faith and painful religious doubts, among which the person of Christ acts as an anchor of salvation, as a guiding star. Christ appears as the embodiment and criterion of perfect Morality, Goodness and Beauty, and thereby the embodiment of the absolute, eternal and highest Truth, opposing all relative, temporary, coming truths.”
Having conceived the novel “The Life of a Great Sinner,” he wrote to A. N. Maikov: The main question that is raised in all parts is the same one with which I have been tormented consciously and unconsciously all my life - the existence of God.” In the last year of his life, the artist noted in his Notebooks: “The scoundrels teased me with my uneducated and retrograde faith in God. These rumors never dreamed of such a force of denial of God, which is supposed in the Inquisitor and in the previous chapter, to which the entire novel serves as an answer. I don’t believe in God like a fool (fanatic). And these wanted to teach me and laughed at my lack of development! Yes, their stupid nature never dreamed of such a force of denial that I went through. Should they teach me?
Referring to “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” and the chapter on children in “The Brothers Karamazov,” Dostoevsky wrote: “And in Europe there is not and never was such a force of atheistic objections. Therefore, it is not like a boy that I believe in Christ and confess him, but through a great crucible of doubts my hosanna passed, as the devil says to me, in the same novel.
How to understand all these statements by F. M. Dostoevsky? Do these statements mean that in periods of doubt he reached complete atheism? In our opinion, no. All his life he had a sharply negative attitude towards atheism, considering it “stupidity and thoughtlessness.” None of you are infected with rotten and stupid atheism,” he says confidently in a letter to his sister. He even doubted the existence of real atheism. In a letter to K. Opochinin (1880), the writer notes: “No one can be convinced of the existence of God. I think that even atheists retain this conviction, although they do not admit it, out of shame or something.”
Dostoevsky approached atheism, perhaps, only in 1846, when he was under the influence of the socialist ideas of V. Belinsky. Although during this period he was actually worried about the question of how to understand and reconcile the existence of God and world evil, Belinsky argued: “... I don’t want happiness for nothing if I’m not calm about each of my blood brothers.” Following him, the writer does not accept “victims of living conditions and history” and demands an account of all those innocently and accidentally lost in the course of historical “progress”.
But from whom should we demand an account? In traditional religious perception, there is only one judge - God. It remains, to be logical, either not to accept God and his world order, or to repeat, following Hegel and all Western philosophy, that “everything that is real is rational,” therefore, all sacrifices are inevitable and justified by the wisdom of God. Neither Belinsky nor Dostoevsky would ever agree to accept this answer from the Western world. Then there was one way out: rebellion against God, rejection of Divine Revelation.
But this required a revision of the entire existing ideological system of guidelines and ethics. The problem of independent creation of new religious and ethical values inevitably arose. Dostoevsky begins this painful path of spiritual knowledge, recording in his experience the crisis tendencies of the era of “world-historical” destruction of religious consciousness. The decisive point here is hard labor, where, as many researchers rightly note, the writer’s “rebirth of convictions” occurs.
Dostoevsky was plunged into the hell of human existence, where the “secret of man” appeared with terrible nakedness, where it bled like a never-healing wound, confirming, at first glance, the injustice and disharmony of God’s world order. And in these conditions, the artist and the person turns to the Bible. This was a book given to him by the wives of the Decembrists in Tobolsk on the way to the prison and was the only one allowed for him to read. “Fyodor Mikhailovich,” writes his wife, “did not part with this holy book during all four years of his stay in hard labor. Subsequently, it always lay in plain sight, on his desk, and he often, having conceived or doubted something, opened this Gospel at random and read what was on the first page...”
In the Bible he drew strength and courage, and at the same time a readiness to fight the difficulties that opened up to him in life, in that mysterious book that came out from among ignorant shepherds, carpenters and fishermen, which was destined to become a book of books for European peoples" And this was precisely in those years,” L. Shestov further notes, “when the enlightened West most decisively turned away from the Bible, seeing in it a relic of ideas that were not justified by either our knowledge or our reason. The criticism of biblical doctrine, which began with the famous “Theological Treatise” of Spinoza, bore fruit. Philosophical thought recognized, in the person of its greatest representatives, especially in Germany, only “religion within the limits of reason” (this was the title of one of the works of the famous founder of German idealistic philosophy, Kant). Long before “The Brothers Karamazov,” even in “Crime and Punishment,” Dostoevsky makes an attempt to contrast the Bible with what the West brought to the West with the totality of knowledge acquired in modern times in all areas of life.
Moreover, he relies on the Gospel, which has not yet been remade by modern enlightened thought. Here the words of Revelation: “God is Love” have turned into a reasonable truth: Love is God Dostoevsky, in his perception of the doctrine, comes not only from the Sermon on the Mount, but also from the legend of the resurrection of Lazarus. According to the writer, it signifies omnipotence. Works miracles and gives meaning to other biblical words that are so inaccessible to the poor “Euclidean” human mind. The “Euclidean” mind that does not believe in immortality human soul, it seems reasonable to achieve happiness for people, a “golden age” on earth. Such a mind really cannot find an excuse for “a child’s tear,” and future harmony here is immoral.
But reading the Bible, tormented by the insoluble, Dostoevsky comes to the conviction that this problem does not have a purely intellectual solution. The laws of logic oblige us to reject the idea of the goodness of God's world. But the artist’s thought finds its way out: you can discover the meaning of life only by taking life itself as a basis, by loving “ living life” – God – before logic, before yourself. After all, for a “non-Euclidean” mind, the tragedy of the world does not begin and end on Earth. The Creator Himself is Love; Love and Good cannot but be free. This means that they cannot help but make a person initially and absolutely free. A person in this system is equally capable of both Good and the birth of Evil in the self-will
(No ratings yet)
Other writings:
- In the development of realism in European XIX literature centuries parallel to other “turning-point” processes in public consciousness. In science, in accordance with positivist principles, the operation of abstract entities gave way to the identification of the material fundamental principle earlier mysterious phenomena, related to both the human psyche and Read More......
- F. M. Dostoevsky wrote two works about the lives of people rejected by society. I read them. In the work “The Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree,” Dostoevsky describes the fate of one person. He is still very small, but plays a significant role in this life. He was rejected Read More......
- “Crime and Punishment” (1866) opens a series of “great” novels by Dostoevsky. This is in many ways an innovative work. It deeply and comprehensively covers the problems posed. “Crime and Punishment” is an ideological novel, social and philosophical in theme, tragic in the nature of the problems posed, and adventurous in its plot. But, Read More......
- In accordance with Borges’s philosophy of “echo” in culture, manuscripts/books generated by the divine fire of creativity are also immortal because they continue to be quoted in one way or another in the “dreams” of subsequent generations of singers. “The ruins” are settling in. “The circle of Bakhtin, the circle of Borges...”, playing on polysemy, directs our Read More ......
- St. Petersburg is one of the heroes of F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment.” This image is important not only for understanding the novel itself, but also the entire work of the great Russian writer. Dostoevsky's Petersburg exists along with such concepts as Griboyedov's Moscow, Pushkin's and Read More......
- “Beauty will save the world,” wrote F. M. Dostoevsky in his novel “The Idiot.” Dostoevsky searched for this beauty, which is capable of saving and transforming the world, throughout his entire creative life, therefore, in almost every novel there is a hero, in whom Read More ......
- – The very essence of the human personality is, at its very core, that mysterious principle that Dostoevsky, in one of his sketches for “The Brothers Karamazov,” calls “the miracle of freedom.” This is truly a “narrow path”, surrounded on all sides by the abysses of sin, madness and Read More......
- Philosophical directions can be divided into materialism and idealism, depending on whether matter or spirit is considered primary. Those who claim that matter is primary and thinking is secondary belong to the camp of materialists. Those who consider the spirit to be primary form an idealistic direction, Read More......
“RUSSIAN THOUGHT”: Historical and methodological seminar at the Russian Art Academy
Seminar presenter- Doctor of Philosophy, Professor of the Russian Academy of Chemical Sciences Alexander Alexandrovich Ermichev.
April 19, 2013 - Igor Ivanovich Evlampiev presents his new book about F.M. Dostoevsky.
Evlampiev I. I. Philosophy of man in the works of F. Dostoevsky (from early works to “The Brothers Karamazov”). - St. Petersburg: Russian Christian Publishing House humanitarian academy, 2012. - 585 p. ISBN 978-5-88812-548-9
A.A. Ermichev: Good evening! Eighty-fifth meeting.
Applause
Yes, this is already history, 85. Every month, 10-12-13 times a year. And today at the 85th meeting we will listen to the report of the author of this book: “The philosophy of man in the works of F. Dostoevsky (from his early works to The Brothers Karamazov”).
We will listen for 40 minutes, Igor Ivanovich, 40 minutes, no more.
A.L. Kazin: Let's give him 45.
A.A. Ermichev: It will be visible there, because boundaries are always moving after all. After that - questions and those wishing to speak. Then, as expected, tea in one of the classrooms.
A.A. Ermichev: And now I would like to outline the program of our work on last month this season, the 2012-2013 season. On the 17th, one wonderful researcher from Kaliningrad will come to us, this is Liliya Vladimirovna Dovydenko, who is researching the work of one of the Russian emigrant philosophers, rather a philosopher of culture, Nikolai Sergeevich Arsenyev. She will tell us about her research on this figure, who somehow stands somewhere in the background, or perhaps in the shadow of the first philosophical figures of the Russian emigration, he is somewhere here in the shadow, or maybe even in the background. So, it happily happened that in one of the new publishing houses, the Vestnik publishing house, there appeared just a re-edition of a book familiar to many of us, a re-edition of Arsenyev’s famous book “Gifts and Encounters of the Path of Life.”
Thus, on Friday, May 17, we will have an evening about Arsenyev, and this is the first event for May.
As for another event, I will only dare to invite those present here to attend our Holy Trinity Readings. And on the last day of May, a section on the history of Russian philosophy will work at the Holy Trinity Readings. The participants in this section will be the participants of our seminar. And in this section we will discuss the problem of church and state in the history of Russian thought “from Peter to the meter”, i.e. from the establishment of the Synod. Perhaps one of our researchers will go and take a deeper look at this era, but until today this is certain. This is our program for the month of May.
Please note that the 17th is Friday and May 31st. Of course, we will send you a newsletter about our events in a timely manner.
A.A. Ermichev: Igor Ivanovich, please, let's start.
I.I. Evlampiev: Hello, dear colleagues! Thank you for coming!
My book, which you can see here, is the result of about ten years of work. Although I worked on other topics at the same time, ten years have crammed into this book. So I will talk about the results of this great work. I want to say right away that, in my opinion, I managed to break some very, very long-standing and established stereotypes regarding Dostoevsky in this book. At least, I try to break them, and whether they are broken or remain is for the readers and, accordingly, critics to judge, who will either accept or not accept the corresponding changes. Because the fact that Dostoevsky is great philosopher, no longer raises any doubts. But if we go further, i.e. To begin to clarify what we mean by Dostoevsky the philosopher, here a number of established points of view arise, which, in my opinion, are absolutely wrong. Actually, it was for the sake of their significant correction that this book was written.
I will try to outline some of the most important ideas that I tried to prove in my book and which are quite radically at odds with traditional estimates Dostoevsky. I repeat, he is recognized as a philosopher. But when they try to expound his philosophy, then, as a rule, this is done according to the “one-two-three-four” principle, i.e. They don’t see any system in Dostoevsky. As an example, we can cite two famous works devoted to the philosophy of Dostoevsky. One is the classic book by N. Berdyaev “The World Outlook of Dostoevsky”; Very good book, but precisely different in that, having read Berdyaev, one can understand that Dostoevsky put forward many, many bright ideas, but he has no system. The second example is a modern book, and the level is certainly lower than Berdyaev’s work; this is a book by R. Lauth, a German researcher, which is called “The Philosophy of Dostoevsky.” Where is just a list of topics: man, good, evil, God, etc. - and no system. In my opinion, this is even a counter-productive book, because it makes you wonder why this writer should be considered as a philosopher if he did not create any system? Still, by philosophy we mean a certain system of ideas, a certain holistic concept.
The first thing I wanted to say, what I tried to prove, is that in fact Dostoevsky throughout his life thought of himself not so much as a writer but as a philosopher, from his earliest youth, this can be seen from his letters. And in this sense the form fiction, the form of the novel was precisely the form of expression of his philosophy. And moreover, he very early came to a fairly complete understanding of what he wants to tell us, the public, with his philosophical novels, i.e. He very early came to a fairly integral concept of man. Of course, I mean that Dostoevsky's philosophy is first and foremost a philosophy of man.
In modern literature about Dostoevsky, the opposite belief prevails. Due to the popularity of Bakhtin’s concept, on the contrary, it is generally accepted that there is no “integrated worldview of Dostoevsky” at all. After all, Bakhtin put forward the idea that Dostoevsky’s novel is a polyphonic novel, it is not the author who speaks here, it is his heroes who speak, and therefore the position of the author, if there is one, we can only guess with great difficulty. It turns out that Dostoevsky portrays different worldviews, but does not seem to show his own. In my opinion, Bakhtin's concept is absolutely false, and due to its popularity, it creates a false stereotype about Dostoevsky; She portrays him as a philosopher who, in principle, does not strive for systematicity. In fact, he is a student of German philosophy, like everyone else in that era, in the middle of the 19th century. And German philosophy is necessarily a consistent system that describes man and God. We find very expressive judgments on this topic in one of the letters of the young Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky writes (from memory, not exactly): the poet, in his inspiration, unravels God! - in this he sees the meaning of philosophy. The writer brings poetry and philosophy together and calls the main goal of both “unraveling God.” An extremely expressive phrase, which suggests that he thought of philosophy precisely as a description of God the absolute, completely in the spirit of German systems.
Therefore, here is my position: Dostoevsky had a clearly expressed philosophical system, and the fact that we still cannot see it is our misfortune as researchers and readers, and not Dostoevsky’s fault; he did everything so that he could be understood correctly. In my book I try to show that it is not at all difficult to see this system if you carefully read his tests. Thus, the systematic nature of Dostoevsky’s philosophy is the first principle from which I proceeded. And accordingly, the first stereotype that I tried to reject is the idea that there is no such system, an idea that is widespread due to the popularity of Bakhtin's concept.
Second. Even if we admit that Dostoevsky is a philosopher, even if we admit that his writings express a certain system of ideas (and some authors still admit this), then the second most important stereotype that dominates the understanding of Dostoevsky concerns his creative biography , is a statement that a radical change occurred in his life, which made him a great thinker. This idea was first put forward by Lev Shestov, and it became extremely popular. In my opinion, almost all researchers accept it to one degree or another. Shestov expressed it most clearly at the beginning of the 20th century. This is the idea that Dostoevsky, having been sentenced to hanging and facing death on the parade ground, experienced an existential crisis that caused in him an absolute “degeneration of beliefs,” as Shestov puts it. Until that moment, there was a writer, maybe even an ordinary one, who wrote literary works, but didn’t even think about philosophy. But after standing on the parade ground, after a meeting with death, after an existential crisis, a great philosopher was born who wrote great philosophical novels. I devote the introduction and first chapters of my book to a critique of this widespread belief. In fact, Dostoevsky was indeed born as a philosopher as a result of a deep existential crisis. But this crisis was not associated with standing on the parade ground awaiting execution - that’s the paradox! Dostoevsky experienced an existential crisis much earlier, in the winter of 1841/1842, while still a young man, without even thinking much about a writing career. It was during this period that the most important thing happened to him. And on the parade ground, if there was something similar, then this was already the second crisis and, I think, not so important. In fact, great thinker born at the beginning of 1842, i.e. when he was 20 years old, and not at all at the moment of awaiting execution, when he was almost thirty years old. This helps to understand that Dostoevsky’s earlier work, which at first glance does not carry any philosophical ideas, is in fact already imbued with these ideas.
Actually, now I wanted to begin to present some specific ideas, which, in my opinion, are very important to understand, bearing in mind the philosophy of Dostoevsky. First of all, we need to figure out what kind of existential crisis he experienced at the age of 20. We can talk about this with confidence, although I have never written about this crisis that occurred in his early years - everyone writes about what happened to him on the parade ground in the face of death. But Dostoevsky left us absolutely clear evidence of this! That's the most important thing. Here I rely exclusively on Dostoevsky’s texts. 20 years after the crisis, in his 1861 work “Petersburg Dreams in Poetry and Prose” (this work is called a feuilleton), Dostoevsky suddenly turns to his early youth, precisely to the era I’m talking about, and suddenly tells a strange incident, which happened to him. Moreover, there is obvious irony in his story, about which many Dostoevsky researchers know that where irony appears in his words, very serious things are being stated, and the writer is cleared of misunderstanding by irony - so that the discerning reader understands, and the undiscerning one understands a joke I took it all in. So Dostoevsky, with some irony, says that some strange incident happened to him, which turned his whole life upside down. What kind of case is this? In literary criticism this description is known, although the common reader, as a rule, does not know it. So, Dostoevsky says that he was walking through frosty Petersburg, apparently on a bridge, and, looking at frozen Petersburg, over which clouds of steam were visible, he suddenly dreamed that over this real Petersburg another “fantastic”, ghostly Petersburg was piled up, like he's writing. And suddenly he felt that this second Petersburg would now melt into thin air, and with it this first, real one, i.e. he had an eerie feeling of the unreality of this world. The omission that this world is about to melt away will dissipate like a dream. And after that he says the following words, here I will turn to Dostoevsky’s text for the first time: “It was as if I understood something at that moment, which until now had only been stirring in me, but had not yet been comprehended; as if he had seen the light into something new, completely in new world, unfamiliar to me and known only by some dark rumors, by some mysterious signs. I believe that from that very moment my existence began...” Pay attention to these words; literary scholars do not pay attention to some important words. “I believe that from that very moment my existence began...” Well, then again the irony. “Tell me, gentlemen: am I not a dreamer, have I not been a mystic since childhood? What happened here? What's happened? Nothing, absolutely nothing, just a feeling, and everything else is fine.” And yet, despite the irony, we understand from the context of this statement that for some reason Dostoevsky 20 years later, already a mature writer, at the age of 40, returns to this moment and talks about it for discerning readers. And if we are insightful enough, we must understand that he is telling exactly where his personality and his work began. Here the existential crisis that happened to him in the winter of 1841/1842 is recorded; It is not entirely clear which month is meant, but most likely it is January 1842. It is this event that should be considered the starting point for Dostoevsky the thinker. The significance of this strange event that he describes, this existential crisis that he experienced, is clearly emphasized by the fact that he goes on to describe similar crises in the stories of his heroes. And thanks to this we can understand more clearly what he means. It is from these stories that one can and should begin to derive Dostoevsky’s philosophy of man. Having experienced something himself, having experienced some kind of existential crisis, still completely incomprehensible to us, he gained some kind of new vision. It was Shestov who wrote that after the crisis, Dostoevsky gained some kind of new super-vision and saw things that he had not seen before. We can agree with this, but we just need to clarify that this happened much earlier than Shestov thinks, not on the parade ground, but back in 1842, when Dostoevsky was a very young man who had not even written his first novel, “Poor People.” So what happened here?
To understand this, you need to turn to the works of Dostoevsky. Here I turn again to my book - a significant part of my book is an analysis of Dostoevsky’s early works, oddly enough. This is another paradox, because, I repeat: any person who writes a book whose title contains the phrase “philosophy of Dostoevsky”, as a rule, completely ignores early works, believes that there is no philosophy in them. In great novels, yes, there is as much philosophy as you like, but in early works there is none. In contrast, more than half of my book is an analysis of Dostoevsky’s early works, relatively speaking early, up to “The Gambler” inclusive (“Notes from the Underground” and “The Gambler” are, strictly speaking, no longer early works) - i.e. analysis of Dostoevsky's work before the great novels, before Crime and Punishment. The main focus of my book is precisely on his early work, which has never been done from the point of view of analyzing Dostoevsky’s philosophical views. But in fact, it is there that we find all the sources of Dostoevsky’s philosophy. Moreover, the general outline, the diagram of Dostoevsky’s philosophy of man can already be clearly seen there. And the starting point for understanding this early philosophy is precisely the story about the crisis experienced by the young Dostoevsky.
What kind of crisis is this? In order to understand this, you need to take a closer look at some of his early heroes. I won’t describe this in detail here, I’ll just take two examples, two very strange heroes of Dostoevsky. One is an official who imagines himself to be Garibaldi, no more, no less. It is not clear whether Dostoevsky invented this story or not, but here he writes about such a strange official who imagined that he was Garibaldi. The essence of his experiences is precisely that he is experiencing a strange crisis of the foundations of his personality, he feels the absolute groundlessness of his existence. I think that it is through such heroes that Dostoevsky is trying to show us what happened to him. In his heroes he depicts the same crisis with some variations. Therefore, looking at them, we can understand what happened to him. What happened to this strange official who suddenly imagined himself as Garibaldi? Dostoevsky describes his condition as follows: “The whole of God’s world slid in front of him and flew away somewhere, the earth slipped from under his feet.” Those. a feeling of complete disembodiment of the world, as if the world no longer exists, as if it alone exists in the world. This leads him to horror, to madness, he imagines himself as Garibaldi. What does Garibaldi mean? Garibaldi is the great destroyer, great conqueror, the one for which the world exists. This is Dostoevsky's first strange hero who will help us understand what happened to him and what kind of existential crisis he experienced.
The second hero is Mr. Prokharchin, a much more famous hero than the previous one, main character story "Mr. Prokharchin". This is a simple official who served and served, and nothing changed in his life for years, and suddenly something completely radical happens to him, as Dostoevsky describes it, “he suddenly became afraid.” Those. he, too, is experiencing a crisis of the validity of his existence, and trying to “gain a foothold” in life, he begins to save money, because the only way for him to understand that the world is strong and you occupy a firm place in this world is to have capital. And he tries to achieve the sustainability of his existence with the help of capital. He is almost a beggar, but accumulates capital, because this is the only way he feels the validity of his existence. The story contains a conversation between Prokharchin and his fellow official, in which a completely strange topic arises, at first glance absolutely incomprehensible, but extremely important. In my opinion, this dialogue is absolutely metaphysical, and through it Dostoevsky gives us the answer to what kind of existential crisis is happening to his heroes and happened to himself. According to the plot of the story, Prokharchin ultimately cannot stand his experiences, he feels so bad from the unreasonableness of his existence that he runs away from home, he is eventually found on the street in a half-mad state, they bring him home and, trying to calm him down, they constantly say: nothing wrong with him. will not be you, no one will touch you, you are the most inconspicuous and quiet person. But he does not accept these consolations, and then suddenly tries to explain his anxiety. And listen to this strange dialogue. This is how he explains his fears: “I’m not the one... You understand, just understand, you sheep: I’m quiet, today I’m quiet, tomorrow I’m quiet, and then I’m not quiet, I’m rude; buckle for you, and off you go, freethinker!” He suddenly realizes that for no reason at all he can become a freethinking revolutionary. Just as the mad official imagined himself to be Garibaldi, so this one for some reason thinks that he can become a revolutionary. Why does it suddenly occur to such small and downtrodden people that they are Garibaldi or revolutionaries? And then Prokharchin’s interlocutor suddenly guesses something. In my opinion, here Dostoevsky shows this very subtly, this is an insight in which Prokharchin’s neighbor Mark Ivanovich guesses a very important idea that explains what is happening to Prokharchin. He says this: “What, are you alone in the world? Was the light made for you? What kind of Napoleon are you? what do you? who you are? Are you Napoleon? Napoleon or not?! Tell me, sir, is it Napoleon or not?” This is what he says to Prokharchin, a little official who lives as a beggar and is about to die! Mark Ivanovich suddenly realizes that Prokharchin considers himself some kind of “metaphysical Napoleon”. Why would this happen all of a sudden? I repeat, these are all mysteries that can only be solved if you understand Dostoevsky’s entire system of views. What is Dostoevsky talking about here? In such a paradoxical, slightly humorous form, he talks about the same crisis that he himself experienced. When a person suddenly feels that the world around us is not solid, grounded, that it is plastic, that a person truly exists, “I exist,” but this world may not exist. Maybe this is a phantom that will now dissipate, as in the vision of fantastic St. Petersburg in his feuilleton. But what does it mean? And this means that I cannot rely on the world. On the contrary, I must find the basis in my own being. And if I find the foundation in myself, then I will become above this world. Moreover, then I will rule this world. Hence these strange identifications: “Napoleon, Garibaldi...”. Here Dostoevsky shows us here that in the indicated existential crisis a person, having found himself truly, will simultaneously gain power over the world, he will become strong, higher person. Here I come to a topic that, in my opinion, is the main theme of early Dostoevsky, of all his early work.
In fact, there is a deeply incorrect belief that Dostoevsky is a “democrat” who describes the humiliated and insulted, who fights for the equality of all people, and that the main thing for him is to show that in the most humiliated person there is the same soul as in an exalted, high person. Nothing like this! The main idea of early Dostoevsky is the idea that among us there is special people, superior people. Those who experienced the described existential crisis and were able to survive it; he knows where this leads a person, because he himself went through it. A person experiences a tragic breakdown of his worldview, which can lead to death, but, having gone through it, he realizes that he does not depend on the world, but the world depends on him. It is paradoxical that Dostoevsky shows such a crisis in the simplest people, the most insignificant people, but thereby he proves that this universal a condition that everyone can and should experience. And then he will become a completely different person, he will receive a different measure of responsibility - if the person does not die, he survives, he will become a higher person. And, in fact, Dostoevsky talks about such high people. In my opinion, all the most interesting pages of Dostoevsky’s early work are devoted precisely to the description of such strange people who experienced such a crisis and as a result realized that they could influence the world, and the writer shows this influence, literally mystical influence on the world.
Here I want to give some examples, although perhaps for most of you these examples will not be indicative, because, unfortunately, few people read Dostoevsky’s early works, because they are truly incomprehensible. And they are incomprehensible precisely because in them the writer does not pose and solve artistic problems, but philosophical ones. And that's why when you read them, they look mysterious. They ask riddles that are almost impossible to solve. But this becomes possible if you really understand well what I’m talking about, if you realize the initial concept of a person, which he tested on himself, because, I repeat, he himself experienced an existential crisis and became supreme man who is able to control the destinies of other people. In this sense, I admit that Dostoevsky may have been a real mystic. It is no coincidence that he introduces mystics in his novels; perhaps I will have time to talk about Kirillov in this regard.
But let's return to Dostoevsky's early work. Here is Dostoevsky's story "The Mistress", a very strange story that no one understood and does not understand, starting with Belinsky, who simply burst into abuse about this story. Even the great critic Belinsky did not understand anything in this story. And the essence of the story is that for the first time Dostoevsky portrays a real mystic, a certain old man Murin, who has mystical power over people and over his own destiny. And the essence of the story is that the main character Vasily Ordynov, meeting this old man Murin, a real mystic, himself receives the same mystical ability through the life crisis that he experiences in communication with him. Those. here we see another description of the same crisis and the same transformation of the common man into the superior, which, in my opinion, is the main theme of the early Dostoevsky.
Paradoxically, the same theme can be found in yet another strange work first periods of Dostoevsky's creativity. This is the story “The village of Stepanchikovo and its inhabitants.” This story is also absolutely mysterious. In the reference book that was published by our Dostoevsky Museum and where all points of view on the writer’s works are given, only one point of view regarding this story is formulated - that this story is a purely artistic experiment in which there are no big ideas. It turns out that this story lies apart from all other works of Dostoevsky. This is weird. After all, Dostoevsky, having written this story, called it his best work. Why does Dostoevsky call an “experimental” work, which does not seem to contain any ideas, his best work? In fact, everything is not like that, this story quite naturally lines up with other works, Dostoevsky says the same thing in it main idea expresses. In this story, the main character, Foma Fomich Opiskin, is a man who in some incomprehensible way gains power over everyone in the house, although he was initially just a hanger-on in the house of Colonel Rostanev. Foma Fomich Opiskin shown unpleasant person, even disgusting, but Dostoevsky, it seems to me, just shows that the quality of a person to rule over other people, to simply literally mystically rule, to determine their fate, this quality is completely unrelated to any moral virtues of a person - neither with the mind, nor with nobility, nothing. This is a certain irrational nature, a certain existential basis of personality, which, if it is truly revealed in a person, gives him power over the world. And it is precisely the “higher” people who have such strange power over the world that Dostoevsky describes.
Last example from the same series of higher, strong people - these are the heroes of “Notes from the House of the Dead”. This is already a semi-documentary story, where Dostoevsky describes hard labor and convict people. Here, too, the main thing for him is a certain systematics. He tries to classify all the convicts into certain categories. This is quite natural, since this is not a work of fiction, but in some way empirical, it is an observation of the reality of hard labor. But the most important characters here are two strong people. Dostoevsky directly calls them “strong people.” Even in hard labor, writes Dostoevsky, there are so many strong people. He only shows us two, Orlov and Petrov, deliberately giving them simple Russian surnames, as if emphasizing that the point here is not about any special outstanding qualities, but simply about the fact that they were able to reveal in themselves the ability that everyone has . A comparison of these two convicts shows that strength can also be different. Petrov turns out to be the most important in this pair. Here I will give a quote, it talks about how Dostoevsky first learned about this Petrov.
|
“I started inquiring about him. M., having learned about this acquaintance, even warned me. He told me that many of the convicts instilled horror in him, especially at first, from the first days of the prison, but not one of them, not even Gazin, made such a terrible impression on him as this Petrov. “This is the most decisive, the most fearless of all the convicts,” said M. “He is capable of anything; he will stop at nothing if a whim comes to him. He will kill you too, if he feels like it, just kill you, without wincing or repenting. I don't even think he's completely sane. This review really interested me. But M. somehow could not give me an account of why he thought so. And a strange thing: for several years in a row I then knew Petrov, talked to him almost every day; all the time he was sincerely attached to me (although I absolutely don’t know why) - and during all these few years, although he lived in prison prudently and did absolutely nothing terrible, every time I looked at him and talked to him , was convinced that M. was right and that Petrov was perhaps the most decisive, fearless person who did not know any coercion over himself. Why it seemed like that to me, I also can’t explain.” |
If Orlov, the second strong convict, really killed six people, then Petrov stabbed the commander when he whipped him on the cheeks on the parade ground. Those. even the murder he committed looks natural and understandable: he killed a man for an insult and did not kill anyone else. Unlike Orlov, Petrov does not look like an outright villain, and yet everyone treats him as the most terrible person. Here Dostoevsky extremely clearly demonstrates his brilliant ability to see the fundamental difference between people. It seems that people are no different, and yet one of them is a strong person, capable of everything and absolutely free, no force will suppress him, the other is strong, but “standard”, ordinary and “ordinary” in his strength. In this story, Dostoevsky also depicts the opposite pole of human existence - a man of routine, who is completely subordinate to laws, norms, orders, who does not deviate one iota from the established order. But Dostoevsky is of little interest to such people; he calls them “everything”. They represent a kind of material from which history and life are made by higher people - this is what Dostoevsky writes about in his early stories. This is my image of early Dostoevsky. This is a completely unusual image, but in the book it is substantiated by analyzing almost all of Dostoevsky’s early works, and absolutely all of them naturally fit into this logic, into this concept.
As a result, a fairly clear concept of man emerges in Dostoevsky’s reasoning. Dostoevsky thinks of each of us as a certain absolute center of reality, but at the same time shows that this is hidden in us. Only through a certain crisis can a person reveal the existential basis of personality and truly become the center of reality. And then in some strange way - magically, mystically - he will dominate other people, and not only over people, this still seems possible - but even over fate, over the world, he will literally rule the world in which he lives . This is exactly what he shows in last piece of this period, the first period, before the great novels, - in the novel “The Gambler”. Here we see a man who, due to some special properties of his, suddenly understands that he can win at roulette, and he goes and wins a huge amount of money at roulette. Those. the hero, having discovered some kind of absolute foundation in himself, gains the ability to completely determine his destiny.
I’ll read two small quotes from “The Player,” where this is exactly what we’re talking about.
A person is absolutely sure that what he wants will definitely happen, and it happens. In this case, it is winning at roulette, but this is just an example of how a person controls his destiny. And after Alexey, the main character of this novel, discovers this ability in himself, he realizes that everything else is unimportant to him now. Before this, the main thing was his love for Polina; their relationship is generally the main theme of the novel. But it all ends with the fact that he doesn’t need Polina. He realizes that he has magical power over the world, and everything else leaves his consciousness, including his love. And this is precisely the essence of the novels - to demonstrate a person’s ability to magically influence the world.
This is where I end with early period creativity of Dostoevsky, the first half of the book is devoted to this. I repeat, here a certain concept of man comes to light, which, in my opinion, runs very logically through all of Dostoevsky’s works. The main principle of this concept is the assertion that man is the center of reality, who is able to control this reality. Here we also need to remember the story “Notes from Underground” - this is the most important work of the first period of Dostoevsky’s work. Since I have little time, it is difficult to talk about this very deep work. The only thing I would like to say is that the meaning of this story is that here Dostoevsky is trying to understand the metaphysical essence of man, and many researchers have guessed this. He proves that the basis of our consciousness, the basis of human existence is nothing- essentially a Hegelian idea. The two poles of the universe are existence and nothingness. And man is nothing, that’s what Dostoevsky claims. It is precisely because we are nothing that we can control existence. Because being is inert, and nothing is dynamic. It is nothingness that gives existence its form, its meaning. Therefore, the main thesis of the underground man, the most paradoxical, is that he does not want to reckon with the evidence. Twice two makes four, a stone wall is what stops a person’s tyranny, and underground hero does not want to reckon with them. A strange protest against the laws of nature. Why? For the same reason that I spoke about earlier: because he feels that he has the ability to change the world, and therefore any laws of the world are relative, conditional for him. Now this is explained by the fact that at the base of our consciousness lies nothingness.
So that you don’t think that these are my inventions, it’s worth giving here a few more quotes that are completely unknown to ordinary readers, because they are from Dostoevsky’s notebooks, little known to the general public. But among researchers these statements are quite well known. Dostoevsky has several very important statements about being and nothingness. For example, there is such a strange phrase in one of the notebooks: “Being only exists when it is threatened by non-existence, being only begins to be when it is threatened by non-existence.” Non-existence is a person, and the whole world is being. So, being exists when we exist. We are primary in relation to the world, we dominate this world, and not vice versa.
Now I move on to the second part of my book and, accordingly, to another important idea, which, perhaps, is even more important and more shocking in some sense. The fact is that when we take the mature Dostoevsky, the Dostoevsky of the great novels, then in relation to him, researchers have long been wondering who influenced him most. Because there certainly were some philosophical influences. This is primarily German philosophy. Here Kant is most often remembered, in addition to Hegel, Schelling, Feuerbach, Stirner, Schopenhauer, and all this probably makes sense. But the key point of the second half of my book is that the main figure who influenced Dostoevsky was Johann Gottlieb Fichte. I see such striking coincidences between some of the arguments of Dostoevsky and Fichte that for me there is no doubt that Dostoevsky read Fichte, knew Fichte well and was influenced by him. And it is clear why - because of all the German classical philosophers, only Fichte emphasized the absoluteness of the human personality.
This is exactly what Dostoevsky takes from Fichte. Here we must keep in mind that he was a member of Belinsky’s circle, where Fichte was popular. He was a member of the Petrashevsky circle, where Fichte was specifically discussed, I say this by the way, so that it is clear that there is evidence of the direct influence of Fichte, although, unfortunately, we never find the name of Fichte in Dostoevsky’s texts. And yet, we can say that he knew him, and apparently knew mainly two late works that were popular in Belinsky’s circle. These are “Instructions for a Blissful Life” and “Main Features of the Modern Age.” Especially regarding last work It must be said that we find a summary of this work in Dostoevsky’s diary entries under the title “Socialism and Christianity.” This has already been noticed by Dostoevsky researchers.
What did Dostoevsky take from Fichte? This is a huge topic, to which two hundred pages of my book are devoted. But nevertheless, I will try to formulate it briefly. It must be borne in mind that after hard labor, in the era when Fichte’s influence most likely took place, Dostoevsky thought especially intensively about the connection with Christianity of his work. Before this, he was generally indifferent to Christianity. Now Christian motives are clearly manifested in his work. And Fichte, of course, was a religious, Christian thinker. But it was Fichte who was the first to clearly formulate the idea that in the history of European culture there were not one, but two Christianity. And that which we traditionally consider to be the only and genuine one, which is associated with the Christian church, Fichte declares false. He believes that the teachings of Jesus Christ were distorted in church Christianity. The true teaching of Jesus Christ is the doctrine of the identity of God and man, this is Fichte’s thought. And in church Christianity a radical separation of God from man was made; God was pushed into the transcendental, otherworldly distance. In my opinion, it is precisely this idea that Dostoevsky takes from Fichte and develops precisely. The entire late Dostoevsky, his entire late metaphysics of man, which is expressed in his great novels and especially in The Brothers Karamazov, are determined precisely by this idea. Using Fichte’s thoughts, I would formulate this late metaphysics of Dostoevsky (deeply religious metaphysics) in the form of such a thesis. Strictly speaking, in general God "in itself" No, God is only O in his appearance in man- this is the main thesis of the metaphysics of the late Dostoevsky. Each of the people, of course, first of all Christ, but also each of us - this is the manifestation of God, and we must, relatively speaking, help this phenomenon. And this absolutely rhymes with what I said about Dostoevsky’s early work. The higher man of whom Dostoevsky speaks reveals something in himself - now we can add that he reveals God in himself. Using Fichte's ideas, Dostoevsky now justifies this idea much more clearly. The true meaning of Christianity, the true meaning of the teachings of Jesus, is the idea that God must be revealed in each of us. I will quote here to clarify this idea, because this is a fundamental point. This is how Fichte writes about this, that each of us is a manifestation of God: “At all times in every person without exception who vividly comprehends his unity with God and who truly and truly conveys his entire individual life Divine life in itself, the eternal word, without flaw and without reservation, is perfected in the same way as in Jesus Christ it becomes flesh, a sensually personal and human existence.”
Just as Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, so each of us is God in the flesh. The point is, of course, that this is potential, this is a certain prospect that is very difficult to realize. Therefore, Fichte literally makes a demand to people, with a sermon: you must understand this, you must reveal God within yourself! The fact of the matter is that we find ourselves incapable of doing this. And for this you need to become the same as Christ, this is not a metaphor - literally become like Christ. With this understanding of the main thing in Christianity, Christ is simply the first person who realized this truth and revealed God in himself and told us all about it, thereby inviting us to do it too. Fichte specifically dwells on this and introduces two forms of understanding of Christ - metaphysical and historical. He attributes the metaphysical to church Christianity, where Christ is a special phenomenon that is unique and incomparable with anything. He rejects him. He says that Christ must be understood only historically, in the sense that I formulated - that Christ is the first person who revealed God in himself, became God, and this was recognized by those people who were with Him, who became His disciples. And after they told us about this, Christ acts as a model for us, but He does not unique phenomenon. Each of us, I repeat, must do the same. Although this is something beyond every person, a certain mysticism of revealing the divine principle within oneself.
Dostoevsky follows exactly this path. Here a number of completely paradoxical themes are outlined in Fichte, which are all present in Dostoevsky. In Fichte's philosophy they are even less known; Dostoevsky presents them more clearly and clearly. What topics? Well, firstly, this is an understanding of Christ as a person - as a person who reveals God within himself. Secondly, this is the understanding that Christianity is an eternal religion, it has always been, it was not born with Christ, it was born along with man as such. It’s just that Christ revealed its essence to us for the first time, but it is still not dominant and determining our lives. This is one of the most important postulates of Fichte, that the era of Christianity is still ahead, we do not yet live in the era of Christianity. Because now false Christianity dominates, which does not correspond to its goal; it does not help the revelation of God in us, but, on the contrary, hinders it. In his understanding of history, Fichte distinguishes three eras, and the third era, which is still ahead, is the era of Christianity. We literally find this idea of Fichte in Dostoevsky’s text, which is called “Socialism and Christianity.” It has long been noted about this text that there is Fichte's influence here. Those. I wasn’t the first to see this, it’s just that no one has analyzed Fichte’s influence in detail, as I am trying to do. So, listen carefully to Dostoevsky’s test, he is a certain historical chronology, according to Fichte, he sets out. So, Dostoevsky writes: “Patriarchy was a primitive state. Civilization is average, transitional. Christianity is the third and final degree of man, but here development ends, the ideal is achieved...”
Please note: “Christianity is the third and final degree of man.” What era is he talking about? About our? Not about ours, he’s talking about the future! For Dostoevsky, as for Fichte, the true Christian civilization, which will truly reveal man, will truly make man God in some sense that still needs to be clarified, is still ahead, because the middle, transitional era is civilization, this is our time. Here I took a small fragment, but from the entire context of this phrase it is clear that we live in an era of civilization. In this sense, the statement that Dostoevsky considered the Orthodoxy that existed in Russia in his time, in the 19th century, to be the ideal of Christianity, true Christianity, is an absolute lie! This has nothing to do with his lyrics. In the quoted text, I repeat, it is very clearly visible that he sees the Christian era in history only as the future. Here one can argue that Dostoevsky has phrases in which he seems to consider modern Orthodoxy to be the correct form of Christianity, from which a new revival of all human civilization will begin. But let's carefully read these phrases; I wrote them out several times.
But first, about how he evaluates Western Christianity, it is important to demonstrate the full range of his attitudes towards modern Christianity. Here, for example, is what he writes: “the papacy has entered much deeper and more fully throughout the West than they think that even the former reformations are a product of the papacy, and Rousseau, and the French Revolution are a product Western Christianity, and, finally, socialism, with all its formalism and splinters, is a product of Catholic Christianity.”
For Dostoevsky, Catholic Christianity no longer exists; such degradation has occurred in it that it does not in the slightest degree correspond to its essence. Here is another phrase on the same topic: “You say: Europe has done a lot of Christian things besides papacy and Protestantism. Of course, Christianity didn’t die there right away; it took a long time to die and left traces. Yes, there are Christians there even now, but there is an awful lot of distorted understanding of Christianity.” Those. he deflects possible objections to his very radical point of view: yes, there are individual Christians, but Christianity, precisely as a cultural tendency that should revive humanity, no longer exists in the West. Well, okay, but what about the Russian people? It seems that Christianity has been preserved, because we read, for example, a statement in one of the notebooks: “The Russian people are all about Orthodoxy and its idea. There is nothing more in him and he has nothing - and there is no need, because Orthodoxy is everything. Orthodoxy is the church, and the church is the crowning of the building and is forever.”
It would seem that he evaluates Orthodoxy positively. But let’s read further: “What is the church - from Khomyakov” And also: “whoever does not understand Orthodoxy will never understand anything about the people.” In order to understand the meaning of Dostoevsky’s statements about Orthodoxy, in order to understand what kind of Orthodoxy he means, you need to turn to Khomyakov, because he interprets the essence of the Orthodox Church precisely according to Khomyakov. What is a church according to Khomyakov? I will read only one well-known phrase, which Florensky very sarcastically interprets in some of his work about Khomyakov, and at the same time interprets absolutely correctly - in the sense that what kind of Orthodoxy is there, this is not Christianity at all! For Khomyakov, the church is not earthly, but mystical church, to which we are all involved (even regardless of whether we are believers or atheists), and through it we are directly involved in God, we are in unity with God. Here is one phrase from Khomyakov, from “Theological Works” of Khomyakov, from the famous work “The Church is One”: “<Церковь есть>not authority, I say, but truth, and at the same time the life of a Christian, inner life his; for God, Christ, the Church live in him a life more real than the heart beating in his chest, or the blood flowing in his veins.”
Yes, this is pure immanentism! God, Christ, the church - it’s all inside us, we are already divine. Here the same identity of God and man is assumed as in Fichte's philosophy. It seems that he speaks out in favor of Orthodoxy here, but it turns out that Orthodoxy is not at all the kind that really exists, but some kind of ideal that is difficult to relate to the real. I repeat, Florensky, in his comments on Khomyakov’s theology, absolutely clearly describes this difference between the real church and Khomyakov’s ideal.
And Dostoevsky also, apparently, felt this difference and has in mind precisely the future ideal church, and not at all the real one, which he evaluates completely differently. Then we read the following about the Orthodox Church: “The Church is, as it were, in paralysis and this has been for a long time. If they don’t know Orthodoxy, you can’t be angry with them, because they don’t understand anything and are essentially honest people.” Who is this about? This is about the clergy, apparently, about the church he says: they don’t know Orthodoxy... Indeed, we can say that Orthodoxy is the coming Christianity, this is the future of Christianity, but in reality this Orthodoxy does not yet exist anywhere, it has yet to be born in the Russian people. And then it is clear why he understands the third era of human history, associated with Christianity, as still coming, just like Fichte. You can give many more examples from novels. Elder Zosima in one place says in exactly the same way as Dostoevsky here, that, in fact, there is no true church yet, but it rests only on seven righteous people. For the most part, the church does not yet correspond to this ideal, genuine Christianity that Dostoevsky thinks. I repeat, to understand what true Christianity is, you need to read Fichte or Khomyakov. But Khomyakov is the same Fichte and Schelling. So it's not surprising that there are such coincidences here.
This is one theme that Dostoevsky takes from Fichte and which is still somehow not very popular in the research literature, because these phrases of his relating to Orthodoxy are formally taken, but are not at all read into the details, which he formulates in a very specific way and in which is the whole point.
The second topic, and perhaps the most mysterious, is the topic of immortality, which is understood completely differently than in traditional, church Christianity. Because if we postulate the identity of God and man as the main thesis of true Christianity, as Fichte understood it, and after him Dostoevsky understood it, then man is an absolute being and he is immortal. But how should we understand immortality? Fichte specifically dwells on this and emphasizes the difference between the understanding of immortality in the two forms of Christianity. When God is separated from us, i.e. transcendental to man, then immortality is a kind of transcendental being, this being with God in some otherworldly reality. If man is a manifestation of God, there is simply no otherworldly reality, God is immanent to us, he is immanent to the earthly world! He appears in the earthly world. But then the immortality of man is an immortality that is immanent in this earthly world. Here I use a term that I borrowed from Heidegger. Heidegger coined the term “this-worldly religiosity” and, accordingly, “this-worldly immortality” for this understanding of man’s relationship to God (he uses these terms in relation to Nietzsche). In what sense is this worldly? But in the sense that death does not transfer us to some transcendental, otherworldly reality, but leaves us in time. Death is a transformation into a new form of life; a person will exist after death in a sequence of worlds. We face an endless succession of worlds in which we, just like here, must fight for the revelation of God within ourselves. This is such a paradoxical, this-worldly immortality. As a historian of philosophy, of course, I was interested in who was the first to put forward such a concept, where does this tradition come from? This is Nikolai Kuzansky. Nicholas of Cusa has a brilliant phrase about a person, it is a little mysterious, incomprehensible - most likely because he could not express himself directly, this topic was too dangerous, certainly heretical. He wrote this in one of his treatises on man: “What could not become immortal immediately became immortal in a temporal sequence.” “Immortality in time sequence” - the brilliant term of Nicholas of Cusa! And Dostoevsky continues this tradition, going from Nicholas of Cusa to Fichte. Immortality in temporal sequence, in time, and death as a transformation from one form of earthly life to another form of earthly life, this-worldly. Fichte sets out this paradoxical concept in detail in his work “Instructions for a Blissful Life,” and, in my opinion, Dostoevsky completely borrows it and develops it in an original way using the example of his heroes. I will no longer give examples here. I think I spoke about this topic in my lecture several years ago.
Let me sum it up. What is Dostoevsky's concept of man, especially The Brothers Karamazov? I didn’t specifically talk about this novel, but still about the most important points of his book, except for the last chapter dedicated to “The Brothers Karamazov”, he said. Man is the manifestation of God. And if a person recognizes himself as such (and this is the meaning of Christianity), he must live in such a way that God is “born” in him. Our task is the struggle for the “birth” of God in us, i.e. for becoming a superior person. Idea supreme personality- this is the most important idea of Dostoevsky. It’s worth giving one more quote here. Amazing quote; Anyone who has never read this argument by Dostoevsky will not immediately believe that Dostoevsky could have written it. But this is about the question of the stereotypes to which we are subject. So listen:
|
“Oh, eating, sleeping, shitting, sitting on soft things will continue to attract a person to the earth for too long, but not in his higher types. Meanwhile, the highest types reign on earth and have always reigned, and it always ended with millions of people following them when their time was fulfilled. What's happened the highest word and the highest thought? This word, this thought (without which humanity cannot live) is very often uttered for the first time by people who are poor, unnoticed, have no meaning, and even very often persecuted, dying in persecution and in obscurity. But a thought, or a word spoken by them, does not die and never disappear without a trace, they can never disappear, as long as they are spoken only once - and this is even amazing in humanity. In the next generation, or after two or three decades, the thought of a genius already embraces everything and everyone, captivates everything and everyone - and it turns out that it is not millions of people and not material forces, apparently so terrible and unshakable, that triumph, not money, not a sword, not power, but a thought, imperceptible at first, and often of some, apparently, the most insignificant of people.” |
The most insignificant person in the general opinion may turn out to be “ higher type“, which leads humanity, is one of Dostoevsky’s main thoughts.
Well, one last thing. Still, can or cannot a person become God - what is the final answer given by Dostoevsky? In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky answers “cannot”; here another theme appears, the last one I will mention, which I have not mentioned before, is the idea of the deep antinomy of man. This, in my opinion, is one of the main themes in The Brothers Karamazov. What I'm talking about? That in fact God and the devil are, from the point of view of Dostoevsky and his heroes, a certain personification of the beginnings of our self. In addition to the fact that we have the beginning of divinity, the grain of divinity, if you like, we also have the beginning of nothingness, which I spoke about. After all, nothing, don’t forget, is the foundation of man, nothing is negation, this is destruction. And therefore it turns out that a person is deeply antinomic, in him these two principles are always present - the divine and the devil. And this is very expressively emphasized in the novel by the fact that the characters very often say “my God”, “my devil”, literally dozens of times such expressions are repeated. For example, Dmitry Karamazov says “my God saved me,” or vice versa, “my devil pushed me.” It seems to me that here Dostoevsky is telling us that God and the devil in their traditional understanding are myths. Each of us has our own “God” and our own “devil”. These are two dimensions of our essence, the dimension of divinity and the dimension of negativity, negativity. And the task of man is to defeat the negative dimension, not to allow it to dominate him, and to reveal the divine dimension within himself. But this can never be done completely, because if we fully revealed the divine dimension, i.e. relatively speaking, if they became God, then there would be no more man. We would disappear as human persons, and this is impossible. For Dostoevsky, the human personality is the main concept. Even God in this sense is a secondary concept for him, because God reveals himself only through man. Here I will give the last quotation from Dostoevsky, in connection with everything that has been said. This can be seen as an aphorism expressing the essence of what I was saying; a kind of epigraph to the entire work of Dostoevsky. This is Dostoevsky’s definition of Christianity, think about what is said here: “Christianity is proof that God can be contained within a person. This is the greatest idea and the greatest glory of man to which he could achieve." Christianity is proof that man can contain God! What comes first here: man or God? Of course, a philosopher can interpret this phrase in different ways, but, in my opinion, it means that a person’s personality is primary, and God is what is contained in you as a “grain” and what you need to reveal. This is the whole point of Christianity. Thank you.
Applause
QUESTIONS
A.A. Ermichev: Thank you, Igor Ivanovich, everything is very interesting, everyone was captivated! ( Audiences) Let's ask questions!
I have a question about your last quote, that God can fit within a person. After all, Jesus Christ is God incarnate.
I.I. Evlampiev: Yes, God incarnate.
A.A. Ermichev: Please explain how this detracts from the traditional concept of the God-man.
I.I. Evlampiev: You see, the word “will fit” suggests that there is something conventional about what fits. But according to Christological dogma, the divine and human nature of Christ were unfused and inseparably united. Nothing fits into anything here. In this regard, can you give another quote?
A.A. Ermichev: Please.
I.I. Evlampiev: To strengthen the previous quote, I will give one more about Christ. This statement baffles all researchers. It should probably be read right away, because here Christ is obviously understood not as God. This quote: “Christ is God, as far as the earth could reveal God.” By saying “how much,” we assume in Christ a quantitative measure of his divinity, and here it is already quite obvious that he is not God.
A.A. Ermichev: Thank you. Questions please!
A.G. Lomonosov: Thank you for the book, I only got acquainted with it in general outline, but it is clear that here you showed courage and will to achieve your goals. All the authorities that appear in this book, they are literally defeated, completely beaten, lie with Bakhtin. I'll start with this question; 321 pages, you write: “Dostoevsky discovers an underground consciousness that expresses the essence of human consciousness in general.” Explain this thesis, does this express a certain aspect of this divided consciousness, which you expressed in the word nothing, or that same duality? What expresses the essence of a person?
I.I. Evlampiev: Yes, I mean nothing as the basis of consciousness. I argue that the underground man expresses the essence of any person, unlike most interpretations, where he is purely negative character appears. In general, I believe that it cannot be measured by such standards: “negative - positive”, because it is a model, some kind of abstract philosophical model, even a metaphysical model of a person, i.e. each of us. How can a model be measured by the criteria that we apply to real characters? This is a model of human consciousness like nothing. What is the main sign of the underground and the underground man in this story? He can't stop at anything. He says: my thinking process cannot settle into anything. In this I see a kind of anti-Cartesianism of Dostoevsky. After all, as Descartes argues: I look for support in myself and find it in the substance of thinking. But here it’s exactly the opposite. In my opinion, Dostoevsky here deliberately objects to Descartes. It shows that human consciousness, in its search for a foundation, falls into nothingness, and this is a positive result, oddly enough. This is not positive, of course, from the point of view of classical philosophy, but this result must be accepted, and it leads to a completely new, non-classical understanding of man. I called the corresponding chapter “Non-classical understanding of man”, in the sense that here Dostoevsky clearly shows that the basis of our consciousness is Nothing, and thought cannot rely on anything, there are no basic absolute values in this sense.
A.G. Lomonosov: Strange. I want to say that this contradicts the views of Fichte, if I may, I will say later.
A.A. Ermichev: Yes, of course, Alexander Gennadievich. Please, dear lady!
Question: Thanks for the report.
I wanted to ask how much Dostoevsky remains consonant with Fichte’s understanding of man in the concept of the antinomy of human essence? Isn’t he already moving away from Fichte here? And how much?
I.I. Evlampiev: Yes, definitely. And to the answer to the previous question, I can add that I spoke about a certain line of dependence on Fichte, but I do not at all claim that Dostoevsky is a Fichtian. There is a colossal difference between them, of course, for example, this antinomianism of human nature. It can hardly be found in Fichte. Just like the idea of nothing. Fichte specifically opposes nothing, I know this well. Therefore, of course, Dostoevsky is not so devoted to one particular ideology. But it seems to me that he was still extremely amazed that Fichte for the first time decided to express the idea of two lines of Christian development; this is what attracted Dostoevsky. Because this is the most important thing in his discussions about civilization, Christianity, etc.
A.A. Ermichev: I ask you to! Just a second, I'm following.
I.V. Gorina: Igor Ivanovich, I also continue the conversation about antinomy. Look, if we consider the triad “man-God-devil”, don’t we get a person in this crosshairs of the vertical and horizontal? That is, one might say, metaphysical and historical plan of your existence. And then how should we understand this struggle between God and the devil through man? Can the devil potentially become God through a person? Those. carry out the process of resurrection after the fall? Or is this impossible?
I.I. Evlampiev: Yes, I understood the question, but I think that everything is wrong here. Of course, Dostoevsky completely does not accept this mythology that the devil is a fallen angel, and this is not what I meant when I said that the “devil” and “God” are components of the human essence. The devil is simply a metaphor for nothingness and the tendency towards denial, towards destruction, which is contained in every person. The underground man talks about this: why does a person love to build so much, but also love to destroy so much. It seems to me that Dostoevsky was generally quite cold-blooded towards mythological religious ideas. He rationalizes them in this case. “Here the devil fights with God, and the battlefield is the hearts of people,” famous words Dmitry Karamazov. The meaning of these words is that these are two dimensions of our inner being, and there is no need to give them a different meaning, let alone mythologize them, for Dostoevsky this is all uninteresting.
I.V. Gorina: That is You can see a metaphor for rationalism here, right?
I.I. Evlampiev: Well, it's still not quite rational concept, it is difficult to say that this is a rational concept of man if there is, on the one hand, nothing and, on the other hand, some absolute divine dimension. Although the element of rationalism is present here precisely because this is a philosophical concept, and not a religious or mythological one.
A.A. Ermichev: Philip, please!
F. Forsh: What is the difference then between such a potential possibility for a person to become God and Nietzsche’s superman? Is there any difference at all?
I.I. Evlampiev: Unfortunately, this is something that I did not have time to tell, although the plan was to outline the connections between Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. In answer to your question, I will allow myself to say a little about something else. That is, I will answer the question: of course, there is a connection, you saw it absolutely clearly. And, perhaps, one of the main historical and philosophical conclusions of my work is that, in fact, the whole of Nietzsche can be derived from Dostoevsky. I would venture to say that everything that Nietzsche has, Dostoevsky also has, in some embryonic form. Of course, this statement is very pretentious, it needs to be proven, and I assume that I will prove it, I am writing a book about this now, so I have the right to talk about it if I am doing this. But I want to draw your attention to a thing that, oddly enough, no one knows. And all researchers of Russian culture should know it. If we take Nietzsche's Antichrist - Nietzsche's most seemingly anti-Christian work - well, it is 100 percent inspired by Dostoevsky.
R. Klyuchnik: Vladimir Solovyov also has “Antichrist”, that’s the work.
I.I. Evlampiev: No, let’s talk about Nietzsche, Soloviev has nothing to do with it, it’s a completely different topic. Soloviev did not write an anti-Christian work, but Nietzsche’s treatise is considered an anti-Christian work. So I repeat, in the conclusion of the book I briefly talk about this, that the entire “Antichrist”, in fact, is derived from Dostoevsky, because “Antichrist” is a Christian work, not anti-Christian. Nietzsche argues with church Christianity, showing that there is another, genuine Christianity. Therefore, the essence of “Antichrist” is an attempt to see true Christianity. Moreover, the name itself is directly related to Dostoevsky, this is a paradoxical fact that few people still know, although it has already been mentioned in the literature. I've read about this at least once, although without a link, i.e. I don’t know who first said this. But I myself justify this fact in my book. Where did the title of the book “Antichrist” come from? From Dostoevsky! Because before writing “Antichrist”, Nietzsche makes huge extracts from “Demons”, mainly from the story of Kirillov, where we are talking about Christ, about the interpretation of the image of Jesus Christ. And besides this, he makes other extracts. One of these extracts is the words of Stavrogin spoken in “Demons”. These are the words: “Rome proclaimed Christ, who succumbed to the third temptation of the devil; Having announced to the whole world that Christ cannot stand on earth without an earthly kingdom, Catholicism thereby proclaimed the Antichrist and thereby destroyed the entire Western world.” So Nietzsche writes out this phrase from Stavrogin, cutting it off at the word “Antichrist” and emphasizing this word. Three pages after this extract, the first drafts of the treatise “Antichrist” begin. So where did Nietzsche get the name “Antichrist”? This is taken from Dostoevsky, and it denotes the crisis of Western civilization, it is what Nietzsche describes, everything is absolutely logical. Most translators of this treatise understand the word “Antichrist” as the position of Nietzsche himself. This is absurd! Why on earth should he put himself in the name, and even with such a name! This is just a quote from Dostoevsky, completely clear; as a result, he, in solidarity with Dostoevsky, describes the state of contemporary civilization.
F. Forsh: Dostoevsky turns out to be an atheist then?
I.I. Evlampiev: So Nietzsche is not an atheist!
A.A. Ermichev: Let’s agree that we won’t argue with the speaker; we have the opportunity to speak later. Just questions for now.
R.N. Demin: Igor Ivanovich, thank you very much both for the lecture and for the book. I have next question. You talked about the mystery of Dostoevsky's early works. From your point of view" Little hero"Is this a mysterious work?
I.I. Evlampiev: At least I don’t consider it in my work; it seems to me that it is not as mysterious as the others. Moreover, it was written when Dostoevsky had just been imprisoned in the fortress, i.e. This was written to rest the soul, perhaps. This is a simple and clear piece.
A.A. Ermichev: I ask you to!
K. Prugalov:
I have a few questions.
A.A. Ermichev: Several are not possible, one question, the main one!
K. Prugalov: Okay, the main question. In your opinion, it turns out that there are two trends in Christianity, two lines - true Christianity and false, i.e. the false is the church. And then Dostoevsky, in your concept, turns out to be a man of non-church views. But how does this relate to his life itself, since it is known that he was a man of church life? He went to church... Even his last house was opposite the church, it’s known, he loved the church. But in your concept it turns out that it is not needed and even negative role plays.
I.I. Evlampiev: I understand the question. Well, first of all, you say so confidently that we know Dostoevsky’s life. How do we know about his life? I'm not sure we know his life well enough.
K. Prugalov: He went to church according to tradition...
I.I. Evlampiev: Well, “by tradition” I also go to church. Do you doubt that I go to church?
K. Prugalov: No, what does this have to do with it? I'm talking about Dostoevsky.
I.I. Evlampiev: I go and take my children to church, but what would it be like without church? This is our cultural tradition! When we talk about the fate of civilization, does this really coincide with the question of our everyday habits? I don't understand the logic.
K. Prugalov: There is a contradiction in your concept then...
A.A. Ermichev: Please, I beg you, do not bicker!
I.I. Evlampiev: The church is needed, the church plays a huge role, I assess it positively from the point of view of some personal goals of people. But when we think theoretically, we need to evaluate it historical role, not our personal habits. Moreover, you are wrong when you confidently say that we know how Dostoevsky treated the church. As an example, we can cite a well-known fact: it has long been noticed that in all of Dostoevsky’s work, in all of his works, in my opinion, there are only three cases when the hero enters a church. For the most part, his characters do not go to church. Moreover, there are memoirs about him, where very different attitudes towards the church are expressed - both as you describe and the opposite.
A.A. Ermichev: I ask you to!
Question: My question is more related to what you didn’t have in your report.
That's what I mean. Suppose we agree that the main task of man is to reveal God within himself, to reveal these potentialities, let us assume. The question is: what should we mean by this? Revealing the divine within yourself - what does this mean? What qualities should we acquire? What are these qualities for? If we go back to the very beginning of the report, what is this - owning the world? But then the most important existential experience is mastery of the world. But owning the world, if we all move into this state, how can we combine this with many people, because someone alone must own this world...
A.A. Ermichev: Someone will have to be crushed.
Question: The question is what qualities should we have when we know that we have discovered God in ourselves?
I.I. Evlampiev: I understand the question. Great question!
Indeed, an absolutely accurate question! Because in the end, if we are talking about the presence of two forms of religious faith, which give something to a person, somehow transform him, we must show what this leads to in practice, show this difference. Fichte has it and Dostoevsky has it, and, by the way, a little differently. First about Fichte. Why do I still start with Fichte? He brilliantly explains this difference. If God is otherworldly, then my communion with God is the denial of everything earthly. Then I must eradicate everything earthly in myself, and then a person, at least in a tendency, becomes, as it were, castigating everything earthly, denying the value of earthly things. And if, on the contrary, God is revealed only in me, in earthly personality, then the truly divine state of man is truly personal. When I fully become a person, when I reveal everything in myself that is inherent in me, then I will reveal God in myself. As Fichte writes, what you are destined for, that is what you must do, and then God will appear in you. If you become a great scientist, or a great poet, and so on, this will mean the revelation of God. Earthly cultural activities and becomes an expression of the divine state of man. But this is Fichte's. Dostoevsky has other interesting thoughts on this matter. He says, and you are right here, that you cannot stop at the feeling of dominance that I spoke about in connection with early creativity Dostoevsky. The late Dostoevsky talks a lot about the opposite pole of the manifestation of the divine nature of man. It is the desire to give oneself to others. Those. the development of my “I” must reach a state where I must give myself to others. On the one hand, domination, on the other, surrender of oneself, here again is antinomianism, which places Dostoevsky above Fichte. He calls to reveal oneself, to make oneself the center of the universe, the “lord” of the universe, “Napoleon,” as I quoted. On the other hand, in the same capacity of his “dominance”, a person must try to give himself to all people - and then there will be paradise. This is the famous judgment of Zosima. And immediately paradise will become, if you manage to give all of yourself to people, then paradise will come in the world. In this regard, Dostoevsky has another paradoxical phrase, which also baffles many researchers. In one place he says: what if there are “all Christs”? Evaluate the very formulation of the question: “all will become Christs.” If you allow me, I’ll find this quote now, this phrase is contained in the sketches for “Demons”, not included in the main text, here’s a strange phrase: “Imagine that all are Christs - well, would the current vacillations, bewilderments, pauperism be possible? Anyone who does not understand this does not understand anything about Christ and is not a Christian. If people didn't have any the slightest idea about the state and not about any sciences, but if everyone were like Christ, is it possible that there would not be heaven on earth right away?” Think about how such a formulation of the question is possible and how then should we understand Dostoevsky?
A.A. Ermichev: Thank you Igor Ivanovich. Yes, Sergei Pavlovich!
S.P. Zaikin: Igor Ivanovich, thank you very much for the report!
I look forward to the pleasure of reading your book, but I developed another interest while listening to you. I focus on a more traditional reading of Dostoevsky, where the dominant thought is the idea of freedom, the tragedy of freedom revealed to man. You understand that this is a slightly different interpretation, an alternative to your vision of Dostoevsky, because from this revealed depth of the tragedy of freedom a lot of collisions that are characteristic of Dostoevsky are derived. Is this topic present in your research? I followed the report with great interest, to see whether the theme of freedom was present in what you said. In my opinion, you never touched her.
I.I. Evlampiev: Yes, it's possible. Of course, one cannot do without the concept of freedom. For example, when I spoke about this mystical domination of man over the world, this should be understood as the emancipation of metaphysical freedom. You just need to keep in mind that Dostoevsky, as a philosopher, poses such problems most fundamentally. If he poses the problem of freedom, then it is not just freedom from some momentary restrictions, it is freedom from being as such. As the underground man says: I don’t want to reckon with the laws of nature, with “twice two is four” and “stone wall”, I am free from this. This is the theme of freedom; in such a metaphysical formulation it is certainly present.
A.A. Ermichev: Andrey Nikolaevich, please, your question.
A.N. Muravyov: Thank you for the very informative report. I understand that the book is very timely, and it is not for nothing that it was published in the Russian Academy of Art, here there is a complete coincidence in the names: “Russian Christian Humanitarian Institute"and "Dostoevsky's Philosophy of Man" are about the same thing. I’m talking about what you said at the very beginning: Dostoevsky is a great philosopher. Let's say. But then, how would you compare this magnitude with the magnitude of our other thinkers, especially the era of the Silver Age? How would you set these scales? Moreover, you are such an expert in this field.
I.I. Evlampiev: It seems to me that this work has already been done, and in overall value Dostoevsky in the context of Russian philosophy of the 19th-20th centuries is quite understandable. He did very important thing- he overcame the confrontation between Westerners and Slavophiles, which in his era was very acute. And he overcame it not even in an issue that concerns the West and Russia, but in the most fundamental issue of understanding the human personality. After all, for Westerners, for Herzen, for example, personality is a kind of absolute that hangs in the air, does not depend on anything, almost literally this is what Herzen says. For the Slavophiles, for Khomyakov, on the contrary, the main thing is integration into the mystical church. And Dostoevsky shows us that in fact a person is both absolute and dissolved in others. It creates an irrational dialectic of originality, metaphysical freedom and, on the other hand, unity with everyone. This is a very important idea, and it radically determined all subsequent philosophy. Most of the subsequent Russian philosophers developed under the influence of Dostoevsky. Although there is a certain problem here, which, I don’t remember now who, Shestov seems to have noticed. It seems that he was the first to say that everyone cannot be reduced to the line of Dostoevsky, and first of all, Solovyov cannot be considered Dostoevsky’s heir, because Solovyov is in many ways an “anti-Dostoevsky” thinker, oddly enough. This is a fundamental question for assessing the history of Russian philosophy after Dostoevsky. The whole point is that Dostoevsky, as I already said, recognized the human personality as so absolute that even the concept of God for him becomes secondary in relation to personality. That is why, as Dostoevsky is convinced, not one of us will ever become God in our eternal immortal existence, because then man will disappear, and Dostoevsky cannot allow man to disappear. And Soloviev sees exactly this prospect. This is exactly how he understood Dostoevsky - that someday we will all merge into unity, and there will only be God, and there will be no us. This difference, by the way, was reproduced by the heirs of Solovyov and Dostoevsky. At the beginning of the 20th century, some were guided by Dostoevsky, primarily Berdyaev and Karsavin. And some are not Solovyov.
A.A. Ermichev: More questions please! It seems that we are exhausting the limit allotted for questions. Rostislav Nikolaevich, please.
R.N. Demin: You mentioned Lauth's monograph. But what’s interesting is that your monograph is even more monumental than Lauta. But Louth has a subject index and a name index, and for some reason all this is missing from your monograph, which will undoubtedly be consulted for many years to come. Why?
I.I. Evlampiev: I can only repent. Then I will say a few words about the history of this book.
A.A. Ermichev: Please!
I.I. Evlampiev: Just a few words. This is the result of a grant from the Russian Humanitarian Foundation, and at the very beginning of the work a monograph was announced in 20 printed sheets. I wrote it in some preliminary form, reported it, then worked for another two years, it grew to 29 printed sheets. And when there was already an agreement with the RKhGA publishing house, I decided to work on it a little more, and from 29 it turned into 37 sheets. And as a result, although it was supposed to be published in 2012, since the university gave me a grant, unfortunately, it was published only recently, but in 2012. As you understand, there was always a lack of time. Therefore, I can only repent that there are shortcomings in the book.
A.A. Ermichev: Yes, please. No takers? Igor Ivanovich, thank you very much for answering the questions!
Applause
SPEECHES
R. Klyuchnik: My name is Roman Klyuchnik, I have performed here more than once.
From the audience: They were wearing a different T-shirt.
R. Klyuchnik: Yes, I just change my T-shirts ( laughs).
Thank you for the topic and for the reason to talk about our great thinker. I’m already in my sixties and definitely in my thirties, I’m trying to understand Dostoevsky, to think deeply, I’m always discovering something, finding some patterns. And from my personal experience, I would recommend the following such techniques in Dostoevsky’s understanding. Those. in order not to guess through the lips of which hero Dostoevsky speaks, it is better to take “Citizen”, read the magazine, where there are articles, his direct speech, where he himself says everything and then compare and say exactly - this hero speaks instead of Dostoevsky or Dostoevsky through his lips. This time.
Two. If we take conclusions, talk about the conclusions that Dostoevsky came to, wisdom, then the methodology is clear that we do not judge a person at his 10th birthday, at his 20th birthday and at his 50th birthday. We judge by the 50th anniversary what it came to an end. Therefore, those last conclusions, I believe, are the most valuable, they can be listened to the most.
I don’t think that Dostoevsky was a student of Fichte, much less, of course, a plagiarist, because there is no reason, firstly, for sure, when you study him, he is not referred to anywhere or anything. But Fichte himself was great and self-sufficient enough to hang these laurels on him. Well, we are talking and the speaker also emphasized that when he compares with Fichte, he is talking about the late Dostoevsky. And the late Dostoevsky is very developed, already a sage, and he himself is able to invent something, come to some kind of wisdom. You know, as Goethe wrote, who also came to many wisdoms towards the end of his life. When the flowering period of roses comes, they bloom simultaneously in different gardens, in different cities and in different countries. It’s like an invention - a light bulb in different countries... The thoughts are the same, maybe they are just similar, because such a period was going on, many people thought about the same things. At that time there was Blavatsky, and all these so-called trends were just going on, so many people thought and many came to such thoughts.
Well, as for even his last prophecies regarding Christianity, I think that he did not act in any way and did not think of himself in Lucifer’s position, that I am the world nothing, I am the creator of the world, I am going against God, etc. as revolutionaries do, there was also a period of revolutions. But the question is so common: what if Jesus Christ had been born at another time, what would have happened to him? This is an ordinary question, no need for Fichte here! And therefore, Prince Myshkin, Idiot, is a prototype of Jesus Christ, who was born at this time and how hard it is for him. This is the image of Dostoevsky himself! What Dostoevsky also tried within this framework... What is Nikolai Kuzansky? Some of his main thoughts. God is the maximum that one can imagine that exists in the Universe; of course, a person cannot be like that. It could be some kind of small projection, a microcosm. And I have the feeling that Dostoevsky, especially after hard labor, he tried to be like Jesus Christ in almost everything. And regarding Christianity, yes, he had hope for Orthodoxy, but his famous prophecy, I’ll read it, I have a little book, almost only quotes from Dostoevsky:
“The triumph of ideas is coming, before which feelings of philanthropy, thirst for truth, feelings of Christian, national and even national pride of the European peoples will disappear. On the contrary, materialism is coming, a blind, carnivorous thirst for personal material security, a thirst for personal accumulation of money by all means - this is all that is recognized today as the highest goal, as reasonable, for freedom... The godless anarchist is close - our children will see him. The International ordered that the European revolution begin in Russia..."
well, etc. We have been looking around us for the last 20 years after this - a copy! A prophet worse than Nostradamus, he read this future just a hundred years in advance. The state of Christianity is exactly the same, even worse after he wrote. Carnivorous thirst for profit, etc. - well, that’s just it, this is moral, ideological decadence, etc. Therefore, in this regard, such things are worth listening to and taking a closer look at. And these words definitely remembered Russia in 1905, in 1917, they were amazed at his prophecy, foresight, etc.
And about European revolution he paid, in my opinion, most of his life attention, because there really is crucial moment. When he wrote his first work, he immediately showed himself to be a genius, because Belinsky immediately ran to him, you remember, “we have a genius born,” he shouted in all corners. Those. he was definitely born a genius. But when this genius stood in the square and spent time in hard labor, communicated with the people, he was radically reborn. Therefore, when he returned, he began to pick fights with liberals, democrats, immediately quarreled with Belinsky, and immediately took a position in Gogol’s polemics. And all of it up to “Demons”... You can’t break his early works, after Dostoevsky’s hard labor, and his later works, until the end of his life, because this is one line, he doesn’t break anywhere, he traces them there and brings them to the end, as far as he can. The era in which he lived, why did he think about Garibaldi, what is Garibaldi? Revolutionary, Freemason, revolutionary like many Jacobins who wanted to change the world. There are foundations - monarchy, Christianity, and suddenly it all boiled over late XVIII century with the French Revolution and went across Europe. And of course everyone started thinking, including Dostoevsky. This is what he devoted his entire life to. And, for example, he very reproached Herzen that Herzen fought very hard for the freedom of the peasants, for emancipation, but in fact, in life, when he decided to go to London, he did not free them, he very hypocritically took, sold the peasants, earned money and went to squander this money in London and Paris. It is a fact. Therefore, how many times, by the way, did he speak on this issue, citing Herzen and others. The period that was at that time, the so-called revolutionary period of the Pochvenniks, was beginning, I will simply quote from that period: “In order to enjoy the trust of the people, you had to penetrate it in the form of a worker or a peasant.” And for this, the terrorists tried to pretend to be poor and wretched, the Leventhal brothers studied shoemaking and carpentry, and Betty Kaminskaya went to temporarily work in a stinking rag factory, etc.
Regarding this, Dostoevsky writes: “Instead of going to the people... You have a servant, a cook, a maid, a coachman, a footman, a janitor. If you want to be a democrat, sit them down with you at your table, at your tea, introduce them into your family life,” and so on.
Why he was subjected to such an attack by liberals, defamation, Ilyin was not yet there, who said, if you are not a liberal, it means that you will be defamed in all respects. Leskov, Turgenev, and everyone who opposed it were subjected to the same thing. Moreover, one can say how God delved into all questions, Dostoevsky, remember, I think many remember when he tried to understand the origins of drunkenness, the origins of even the process of drunkenness, who gets drunk. Why didn't the Bolsheviks publish Dostoevsky? After all, it began to be published only after Stalin’s death in 1956, if I’m not mistaken. Why did anyone even think about it? Because he had his own interpretation of capital, he opposed Marxism. I’ll just quote to you that he... Moreover, he had such God-given courage, as I said, that even today not everyone would dare, if he was not Jesus Christ or Dostoevsky. What did Dostoevsky write about this? “Capital is accumulated labor: the Jew loves to trade in the labor of others! ...The Jews keep shouting that there are good people among them. Oh my God! Is that really the point?..”
We look at our modern oligarchs, I won’t name their names, and remember Dostoevsky.
A.A. Ermichev: Vekselberg. ( Reminds the presenter about the regulations)
R. Klyuchnik: But then he was already braver than many of us, who are generally so in a rag... and so on. By the way, I can give a lot of quotes from Dostoevsky on this topic... It was brave man, who understood social and different philosophy. I am very glad that there are many young people today, I strongly recommend that they read All, I emphasize All works of Dostoevsky, those that are embarrassed to read. Thank you bye!
A.A. Ermichev: Thank you!
Applause
A.A. Ermichev: Please, who would like to speak? Yes, Alexander Gennadievich! Sergei Pavlovich, you are next. Alexander Gennadievich, if possible, no more than four minutes.
A.G. Lomonosov: I will try. Thank you.
I'll start with the general. Russian literature, this is no secret, was forced to bear the cross of religious and philosophical knowledge, we see this especially in the work of Dostoevsky. However, we note that he did not deal specifically with religious and philosophical topics; unlike his contemporary Leo Tolstoy, he remained an artist of words. And in this regard, to equate literature and philosophy, of course, is wrong. Well, as I understand it, Igor Ivanovich may not have carried out this sign directly, but I still have this impression.
A.A. Ermichev: Straight up - a systematic philosopher, he has a system!
A.G. Lomonosov: The system, yes, but not his! In his diary entries, he himself repeatedly expressed critical judgments about the philosophy existing in Russia at that time and the confidence that, having overcome his misunderstanding, it would yet be created. We can say that he showed an urgent need for a philosophical understanding of the problem of man and he, of course, as far as he could, expressed his religious and philosophical vision through fiction. If we take Russian writers, then among them was the writer Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, who, as we know, practically ceased to engage in literary creativity, devoting himself to the religious and philosophical knowledge of the truth. He wrote wonderful works, which, unfortunately, few people have seriously studied at present, I mean “What is my faith”, “About life”, “The Kingdom of God is within you”. In their content, they are closer to Fichte, whose philosophy Igor Ivanovich often referred to in his report. And in what way is it closer? If Fyodor Mikhailovich draws attention to Christianity in its true sense as Christianity preaching the religion of freedom as opposed to the religion of miracles, i.e. religion, which is based on three pillars - miracle, mystery, authority (see: “The Brothers Karamazov”, book 5, chapter V “The Grand Inquisitor”), then Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy speaks of freedom as reasonable freedom. Dostoevsky did not reach this level of reasonableness of faith. And therefore, the antinomy that we encounter in his “Notes from Underground” is an unresolved contradiction for him, which he stopped at. He looked for a way out, naturally, through the religion of Christ, but he settled firmly on the duality of consciousness and this unresolved state did not leave him, I think, until recently.
It’s good that Igor Ivanovich pays attention to Fichte, because Fichte begins his philosophical research with what artistic means Dostoevsky also begins. Where does it begin? It begins with a philosophical analysis of experience, where we see the same problem, only this problem is no longer presented in a figurative and artistic form, but in a purely philosophical one. This is the same “underground” split consciousness, which is presented in the form of a dialectic of the real and the ideal, consciousness and self-awareness, objective and subjective. It is in these terms.. However, to assert that this is the essence of man is incorrect, in my opinion, because it does not fit into either Fichte’s system or Dostoevsky’s “system”. Why? Because Fichte’s philosophy is a philosophy of salvation, he himself emphasized and wrote that it is necessary to reveal the single essence, the nature of this divided human consciousness, and thereby find a way out of this hell. And Fichte overcomes this by creating scientific teaching as a system of free rational activity of self-knowledge. For Fichte, this is divine, and at the same time completely human self-knowledge, in which Christianity finds its reasonable justification and thereby resolves the conflict of human existence. A blissful life opens up for him. Dostoevsky also tried to resolve this problem through deeper understanding Christianity. However, as we have already said and emphasized, Leo Tolstoy came closer to the reasonable philosophy of Fichte, both in matters of the difference between historical and true Christianity, and in matters of personal immortality, and about the nature of Jesus Christ, and about the identity of the divine and human, having created the doctrine about true life.
A.A. Ermichev: Thank you, Alexander Gennadievich!
Applause
A.A. Ermichev: Sergey Pavlovich, please!
S.P. Zaikin: Dear colleagues, a wish or expectation is the most significant thing I want to say.
At Vl. Solovyov, you probably know, there are “Three Speeches about Dostoevsky”. At one time I read them carefully. I read and was perplexed, rushing between Solovyov and Dostoevsky - where did Solovyov find this in Dostoevsky? All three “Speeches...” in the end turned out to be covered in questions and comments, both in the margins of the book and on separate pieces of paper. I suffered for a long time, and then a clear understanding came: Solovyov does not have Dostoevsky. Solovyov is there, and he lied all about Dostoevsky, using this Nabokovian technique: he slander-slander-slander, seemingly approaching the desired topic, and then, looking back at what he himself said, presents the verbal phantom as an almost ontological reality that can be take as a starting point and develop further. Like a frog in milk...
Listening to Igor Ivanovich, I caught myself with approximately the same kind of sensations - the fundamental premises that underlay his speech were so unusual and so paradoxical. And I asked myself the question: why does what Igor Ivanovich is talking about seem so paradoxical to me? And suddenly I realized what the problem was: in my own biography I found “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” by Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov, which I read a long time ago, while still a student, and which had a tremendous influence on me. There we are talking about the temptations of Christ by the devil. And Rozanov makes a very clear verdict: any mysticism, not to mention magic, any miracle is deeply contraindicated for the Christian consciousness, because a person must recognize God freely, from his deepest, absolute freedom. Then it will be a true choice and true religiosity. And if God appears as a reality, even the most wonderful and mystical, then where is the choice? What is the depth and tragedy of self-determination here? This is where Dostoevsky burst open for me. It became incredibly interesting to read. Any of his work is a drama of self-determination in this world of a person who feels free... Or who does not feel free and is stuck in the faceless das Man. By the way, I am surprised that Igor Ivanovich spoke so much about Fichte and very little about Heidegger, who, from my point of view, was noisily banging on the door that was locked in front of him.
But if I had Rozanov, who had such an influence on me, then, quite possibly, I will experience a new catharsis by reading Igor Ivanovich’s book. The plot you propose is very curious and entertaining: Dostoevsky is a mystic and a Fichtean, starting from his very first works...
But I said that expectations or wishes are the most important thing. I read Igor Ivanovich’s two-volume work with great attention, meticulously compared it with the one-volume “History of Russian Philosophy” in the educational publication for “students of higher educational institutions,” a lot of articles and comments that Igor Ivanovich prepared for various publications. This is not only an impressive volume, but also a first-class, conscientious intellectual product. I made a conclusion for myself a long time ago, which was confirmed by today’s speech: the core idea with which you concluded your speech with such enthusiasm is in fact the fundamental sophiological idea of the early Solovyov, the idea of God-manhood. And even what you said about Fichte fits perfectly into it.
As expectations, or wishes, Igor Ivanovich. God-manhood is your core theme. We had a wonderful philosophical tradition. She stopped emigrating; attempts to continue it in a purely theological or, in the latest edition, in a hesychast version do not suit everyone, not everyone accepts them. I would be sincerely glad if I suddenly saw the topics that are important for your philosophical creativity, in the own thematic field of God-manhood, considered problematically, and not in the context of the thoughts of Florovsky, Ilyin, or even Dostoevsky himself. I am convinced that the intellectual component of what you have written about Russian thinkers allows you to lay claim to bringing the ideas of God-manhood and Sophia out of the state of “abandonment” in which they are today, and somehow calming the agitated sea of mystical psychedelics and feminine fantasies, which threatens to completely overwhelm them.
Thanks a lot! Thank you so much for your speech, it surprised and puzzled me, but also made me happy!
Applause
A.A. Ermichev: Alexander Leonidovich, please! Alexander Leonidovich Kazin.
JavaScript is disabled in your browser
A.L. Kazin: I always listen with pleasure to the performance of my friend and colleague Igor Ivanovich and I think what kind of talent is wasted, in general!
A.N. Muravyov: Does it disappear?
A.L. Kazin: In a sense, it disappears. I understand that from the point of view of Hegelianism he is growing, and his every word is a balm for the soul of the Fichteans, Hegelians, and other Germanophiles in our Russian philosophy. But when Igor Ivanovich talks about Fichte, about Hegel, and about other wonderful people, and at the same time he also says that he goes to church, I completely stop understanding him. You can’t even imagine what kind of topics Igor Ivanovich generally deals with continuously, starting from the most ecclesiastical man Georgy Florovsky, Father Georgy Florovsky, such a volume prepared by him with detailed comments, with a huge introductory article, which he recently presented, and ending, say, with Tarkovsky. And the late Tarkovsky is indeed in many ways a gnostic, of course, and Igor Ivanovich convincingly shows this. But in order to understand that this is Gnosticism, you need to have something other than Gnosticism in your soul, that’s why he goes to church, as I understand it, but Gnostics don’t need to go to church, they have nothing to do there.
Well, one way or another, this entire wonderful lecture, in its elegance, in its depth, was devoted to proving a very strange thesis, in my opinion. Those. the thesis, very orthodox in a sense, that man must give birth to God within himself. Yes, of course, this is why Christ came to earth. And the Fathers of the Church write exactly about this: “God became man so that man could become God”—this is the basics of Christianity. Therefore, I sincerely do not understand why Igor Ivanovich, with such tenacity, worthy of better use, defends this idea that it is not so much God who gives birth to man, but rather man who gives birth to God. You understand, this thought is inherent in any private lecturer’s wife, you know, who says: “Well, there must be God in the soul, well, listen, well, we intelligent people, we almost don’t believe in these fairy tales. Good man He keeps God within himself, everything is fine there.” But then the problem is lost, then the antinomy is lost, then the tragedy is lost, then freedom is lost. In German philosophy, nothing is lost, because everything happens there in a different space, everything happens there in the space of transcendental consciousness, you see, and Fichte and Hegel can say anything about it, construct (Schelling’s favorite word) any Gods they want, including including even “Christ” in quotation marks. Because all this happens within their transcendental scheme. But in the Russian space, in the space of Russian culture, Orthodox in its energy, there is a living Christ, you see, not born by me, but I only become human in His light, this is true. In general, Dostoevsky’s main problem, of course, in the light of your book about Russian philosophy - yes, this is, if you like, a personal search for the Absolute, but precisely through Jesus Christ as the God-man and then God in man. And there is no need to oppose this.
And I think that here we owe Igor Ivanovich a huge thank you for reading all of Dostoevsky’s early works with your characteristic diligence. To be honest, I start reading Dostoevsky, well, let’s say, from “Notes from the House of the Dead”, from “Notes from Underground”, from “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions”, from “The Gambler”, and so on. All the previous “gentlemen of the grub”, “mistresses”, it’s so monstrous to wade through his endless verbal constructions that I tried several times, to be honest with you, to do this, but I couldn’t get through it, it became boring. But when he really starts talking about these higher people, then you are absolutely right, this is absolutely fair, this problem torments him. Yes, starting with this Petrova is a monstrous person. And what is its monstrosity? Yes, in that one feels demonic power in him, unenlightened power, the power of nothing, nothing as power and power as nothing. This is the demon, this is the demon that sits in him, although he killed only one person, not six. So then all these higher people, so to speak, for Dostoevsky, over time, become more and more negative heroes.
They become those same Kirillovs, Stavrogins, Svidrigailovs, Raskolnikovs, who are truly superior people, and who, due to their superiority, are ready to hit an old woman on the head with an ax, because he is a superior person. And Porfiry Petrovich rightly says, but what if there are many such people? But Raskolnikov rightly tells him that you know, actually there are not many of them ( laughs ). Not everyone, you know, will hit an old woman on the skull, but, nevertheless, there is a principle, and they rule the world. So I’ll tell you what it is - it’s infernogenesis in humans. Someone here correctly noted that yes, maybe with the help of such higher people the devil wants to enter the world, be reborn, rise in the world and defeat Christ. Maybe this is Satan’s secret plan - to return to power in the world through man. And here I am even ready to get closer to your, Igor Ivanovich, Gnostic favorite idea that, generally speaking, there may be “two gods,” well, of course, in quotes. Those. God the Father, to a certain extent, provides a free historical arena for the oncoming battle between Christ and the Antichrist. And whoever wins, there will be peace. And all of Dostoevsky’s work is an image of this battle - Christ and Antichrist, God and Satan in the hearts of people. This is the battle space. And therefore, of course, gradually Dostoevsky in a more mature state, in a more mature age, understands that this power can be terrible if it is not directed towards Christ. And what strength does he have directed towards Christ? But Prince Myshkin is an idiot, but this is a truly Christian hero-hero, this is the highest man - Prince Christ, as Dostoevsky writes. This is Alyosha Karamazov, this is Meek, and others. And therefore I can only say that you are right in many respects, except that you sometimes confuse the metaphysical places of Dostoevsky’s heroes. As you know, Satan alone was bold before God. But Dostoevsky said that even if they prove to me mathematically, like twice two makes four, that the truth is not with Christ, I would still rather stay with Christ than with the truth. Another thing is that Konstantin Nikolaevich Leontyev at some points reproached Dostoevsky for “pink Christianity,” because Dostoevsky really has such attempts at an “optimistic” reading of Christianity, what Leontyev called “pink Christianity,” especially in Dostoevsky’s Pushkin speech. When he begins to hope for the this-worldly victory of Christianity (“this-worldly immortality”). And in this sense, Leontyev was right when he said: “Be careful Fyodor Mikhailovich, do not get carried away by these things.” There is not and cannot be “this-worldly immortality” in the sinful world. To be honest, I didn’t quite understand what you were saying about this-worldly immortality; you sounded somehow unconvinced about it. But real victory over death, personal immortality in God, of course, in transcendental existence after resurrection - this is what Dostoevsky wanted to come to and came, in the end. And here I think one more person should be mentioned in Russian culture - this is Pushkin, whom Dostoevsky loved so much. Because, unlike Dostoevsky himself, Pushkin was always in the world, well, with the exception, perhaps, of his early childhood, youth, and lyceum years. I recently wrote a book, “Double Sun: Pushkin and Dostoevsky in Russian Culture,” I’ll give it to you, it was published in Germany by the Lambert publishing house. There I am trying to show that Pushkin and Dostoevsky are unthinkable without each other, because Pushkin is a bright sun, a bright sun, shining. And Dostoevsky looks at this sun from the darkness and reaches out to it. And somewhere along the way they meet. And in this sense, they are absolute for Russian culture, just as the living Christ is absolute for it. Thank you for your attention.
Applause
JavaScript is disabled in your browser
A.A. Ermichev: As the discussion progresses, I would like to make a few comments, without claiming to be Alexander Leonidovich’s conceptualism.
I remember my student days when the so-called “blue sky” appeared. “Blue sky” for students of the Faculty of Philosophy is a designation based on the blue cover of the multi-volume “History of the Philosophy of the Peoples of the USSR” ( laughter in the hall). So in " blue sky"There was a rather large chapter on Dostoevsky, written by Yuri Karyakin. I remember Anatoly Andrianovich Galaktionov was dissatisfied with this and said: “Well, Dostoevsky has also been included in the philosophers.” Although, however, in his 1969 edition of “History of Russian Philosophy” he did include a chapter on Dostoevsky. So, regarding Igor Ivanovich’s statement about Dostoevsky as a “philosopher and even a systematic philosopher.” This is probably a very strong word. After all, the fact is that any normally thinking person is already a systematist, he thinks systematically, otherwise he will be Poprishchin, simply crazy. He may think very poorly, but still systematically. And, if we approach from this point of view, then, of course, there is philosophy in “ The captain's daughter"Pushkin, and in Belkin's Tales, and in the novel "Smoke" by Turgenev. Again, what standards should we use? “Dostoevsky is a philosopher” by German standards? Or by Russian standards? Then Pushkin and Turgenev and any Russian person, as Fyodor Mikhailovich used to say, is a philosopher. Here Igor Ivanovich needs to hold his horses a little. This is the first note.
Second note. Not a remark about Igor Ivanovich’s book. I don’t know how it is in the book, whether Dostoevsky’s era has disappeared in it or not. It was an amazing era. Those. absolutely amazing, which must be compared with what happened in Russia after 1917. In the era when the raznochinets came, everything changed in the most radical way. New people appeared, a new way of thinking appeared, a new way of life appeared. Everything became new. Radically new. Pisarev, Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky, Obruchev, Serno-Solovyevich - these are blocks, this is the beginning of a geological revolution. It is difficult to say how grandiose their appearance was. We need to insist on this. For thousands of years people knew that there is a Lord God, that there is Jesus Christ. And then some commoner appears and says, this is, you know, steam, this, you know, is chemistry. This is not spirit, but digestive secretions occur. For Russia, another era has come, which ended with the advent of another era - Soviet era. This moment, this revolution so strongly moved Fyodor Mikhailovich to search for the philosophy of man. This geological breakdown of Russian life turned his attention to finding the causes of history in the human soul. They always look into the soul at turning points, like, for example, “Vekhi” in 1909.
Here another kind of difficulty arises. The human soul is an ocean. And when you are thrown into the ocean, it doesn’t matter where you swim; you still won’t swim to the shore, no matter where in the ocean you are thrown. You don’t care in which direction you swim, it’s impossible to swim. And here a variety of mental antinomianisms begin - both solvable and unresolvable. Here is the possibility of the appearance of Dostoevsky, who can talk endlessly about the human soul. In fact, I once even thought about asking the State Duma to issue a decree banning writings about Dostoevsky for the next 50-100 years. We won’t write anything about Dostoevsky for the next 50-100 years, until we are wiser enough to understand the subject of Dostoevsky’s research. And then, indeed, everything will turn out to be steam, maybe, indeed, this is just chemistry.
And finally, a final note regarding the last point in your speech regarding how to identify God in a person. And here, in my opinion, interesting considerations came up in connection with the question of the context into which Dostoevsky was inserted at the beginning of the 20th century. There was such a well-developed teaching on how to identify God in a person. This doctrine was created by Alexander Alexandrovich Bogdanov, Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky, Vladimir Alexander Bazarov. It's called god-building. Then there was the great leader of the Soviet Union during the mobilization period, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. These are the random remarks that come to mind while listening to Igor Ivanovich’s absolutely magnificent speech. Let's continue. Who else would like to perform?
Applause
A.A. Ermichev: Please, Valery Alexandrovich! Valery Alexandrovich Fateev.
JavaScript is disabled in your browser
V.A. Fateev: Well, I can say for sure that Dostoevsky is not a “vapor”, because many of those who now live in Russia consider Dostoevsky almost a “god” - the same one about whom, in my opinion, there is a lot and it was said.
I really liked three things. First: I liked it How it was said. Brilliantly, without stopping, without pauses and contradictions. In short, the report is excellent.
The second thing I liked was the “debunking” of Bakhtin. I fully support this point of view. Of course, polyphony exists in Dostoevsky, but it exists in every normal writer who has images, positive, negative, and so on. In my opinion, Dostoevsky’s special dialogical nature is a professor’s far-fetched theory, its significance is exaggerated, and in this I completely agree with Igor Ivanovich.
And the third, of course, is that Igor Ivanovich goes to church. This shocked me to the core, because Fichte says that there are two churches, one is not real, and the second is real, but you didn’t say which one you, Igor Ivanovich, go to ( laughter in the hall), but I think it’s real. “Real”, however, in Germany is called Protestant, but in Russia it is a little different.
But I must say that the generalization of Dostoevsky’s first creative period seemed strange to me. Dostoevsky seems somewhat stupid to you. After all, he preaches a superman and does not even suspect that this is actually an anti-Christian theory. Here he shows characters mastering all sorts of abilities, almost like a real occultist, and in dreams he takes over the world. These aspirations are, if not Nietzschean, then at least occult for sure. Dostoevsky, it seems, never particularly suffered from this, well, and that’s why I question the first part of his speech.
As for Fichte, here I am rather weak: it is difficult for me to say to what extent Fichte and Dostoevsky have something in common. It just seems to me that you “Fichteus” are covering up your anti-Christian pathos, your rationalism, and this, of course, is beautiful from the point of view of abstract philosophy, but from the point of view of philology and concrete analysis of the text it is extremely unconvincing. Well, you never know what someone said in one quote - this is not enough for categorical conclusions. I hope, of course, that in the book you said this in more detail and more convincingly, but you haven’t convinced me yet.
And finally, the most important thing, of course, is “man and God” - a problem that is now widely discussed. In general, I would like to note, judging by your old books, what always surprised me: how you managed to talk all the time about God, in whom you do not believe, and even more so discuss the Orthodox Church. And now, when you go to church, I simply bow to your, this... as you call it, your... “antinomic” approach, and I say: “Thank you.”
Laughter in the hall, applause
A.A. Ermichev: So, please, who else would like to comment on what they read? Please help us out, Andrey Nikolaevich!
JavaScript is disabled in your browser
A.N. Muravyov: Thank you very much, Alexander Alexandrovich, for giving the floor.
I haven’t read Evlampiev’s book about Dostoevsky yet, so I’m basing it only on what I heard from our speaker. In my opinion, one can only be glad that Igor Ivanovich’s talent does not disappear into the ground, as it seems to the respected Alexander Leonidovich Kazin, but is increasingly blossoming and manifesting itself more and more confidently. Why? Because today, as it seems to me, we have heard a new word about Dostoevsky. In what sense is it new? In the sense that the last new word about him, which was said in the mid-1920s. MM. Bakhtin, was formalistic. The content of Dostoevsky’s work is not discussed at all in Bakhtin’s famous book “Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics”. Bakhtin analyzes Dostoevsky's poetics as a literary historian and considers only its form. His dialogical interpretation of Dostoevsky’s poetics, which has won exceptional recognition among us, is a formalist interpretation because Bakhtin reduces all of Dostoevsky’s poetics to the form of dialogue, and in such a way that, from his point of view, Dostoevsky’s contribution to the history of culture consists precisely in the creation of a polyphonic novel. According to Bakhtin, Dostoevsky surpassed even the “monologue” Hegel with his polyphony! The fact that Dostoevsky really created a polyphonic novel cannot be denied, but what is the content of his work? Igor Ivanovich was talking about him today. I, of course, am not an expert in literature about Dostoevsky, but in his report I heard the presentation of a very meaningful and effective point of view on Dostoevsky’s work.
Igor Ivanovich’s point of view is effective because he examines the content of Dostoevsky’s work on a philosophical basis, and philosophy is nothing more than base of the entire culture (and world culture and, in particular, our culture). Therefore, without turning to purebred philosophy, including the philosophy of Fichte, one cannot understand the development of either world or Russian culture. Philosophy is the basis of all culture, including fiction, not, of course, in the sense that, say, Dostoevsky’s work was fertilized by the views of Fichte, with which Dostoevsky became acquainted in some circles, or Pushkin’s work was fertilized by some philosophical works, etc., but precisely in the sense that philosophy is, without any exaggeration, final goal the entire culture. All culture moves slowly from its beginning in the everyday experience of people precisely to the rationality of art, religion and philosophy, which is developed in a conscious way precisely and exclusively by philosophy! This is why the philosophical basis of Igor Ivanovich’s approach to Dostoevsky, in my opinion, is highest degree fruitful. Indeed, he involves the early Dostoevsky in his consideration and, without any orthodox attitudes, examines all statements, including uncensored ones. Reading the censored magazine “Grazhdanin”, we, of course, will never find Dostoevsky’s real views there. This is understandable, because, speaking in a censored magazine, Dostoevsky said in it only what could be allowed by the censorship. And what Dostoevsky writes for himself is a completely different matter. This is Dostoevsky himself, and not Dostoevsky, so to speak, with an official face. I hope to find in the book presented today by the speaker a lot of material worthy of being taken into account when studying and evaluating true views Dostoevsky.
At the end of my speech, I cannot help but express one objection to Igor Ivanovich. Philosophy is only the foundation of culture, and therefore to assert, as he does, that Dostoevsky is undoubtedly a great philosopher is really too much. I agree with Alexander Alexandrovich Ermichev here. Dostoevsky, like Pushkin, is undoubtedly a great Russian thinker, but not a philosopher. Precisely a great thinker who, in my opinion, thinks better than many of our noted philosophers, including the thinkers of the Silver Age who have been too famous in our country in the last twenty-five years. He thinks much better than them! In this sense, he is precisely, if not “our everything,” like Pushkin, then, together with Leo Tolstoy, he constitutes an excellent addition to this “our everything.” As a thinker, it is no coincidence that Dostoevsky acts as the opposite of Leo Tolstoy. What Alexander Gennadievich Lomonosov said about Leo Tolstoy today seems extremely true to me. I don’t know what Igor Ivanovich’s future plans are, but, in my opinion, it is necessary to go from Dostoevsky to Tolstoy and philosophically explore the foundations of the thoughts of this great thinker of ours, who really thought not only as a writer, but also as an outstanding religious thinker. I have been thinking all my life and have come to results that we have yet to fully appreciate. Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy is a great personality, by whom the pan-human perspective of the development of the Russian spirit was personified no less than by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, and certainly much more adequately than by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. Thank you for your attention!
Applause
CONCLUSION
A.A. Ermichev: Igor Ivanovich, please give me the floor for conclusion.
JavaScript is disabled in your browser
I.I. Evlampiev: First of all, thank you, colleagues, for such a lively discussion, both positive and negative feedback.
When I wrote my book, I had no doubt that there would be a lot of criticism, because in many cases I express very provocative ideas, and I did this deliberately. This is why a scientific discussion is needed, to correct points of view, somehow smooth them out, maybe come to an agreement. Smooth out to the extent that it looks convincing and reasonable.
And now a few specific comments about what was said. First of all, about a specific thing, which is really very important. It was Valery Alexandrovich who said about the early Dostoevsky that he was not an occultist. But I’ll say that I’m just an occultist, you know! A careful reading of the letters shows that the early Dostoevsky is an extreme original. Firstly, and this is an established thing in Dostoevsky studies - he is absolutely cold-blooded towards Christianity, the early Dostoevsky; for example, in one of his most famous letters he compares Christ and Homer. Wondering who Christ is? And compares him with Homer. Just as Homer gave a vital foundation to the ancient world, so Christ gave to the new. It is clear that with such an understanding of Christ, his views are very far from Christianity. He is a typical romantic, and romantic in the style of Schiller. Please note that Schiller is an anti-Christian thinker; he was even a Freemason. And this, generally speaking, is evident in Dostoevsky’s many works, where he looks up to Schiller. So, regarding the early Dostoevsky, we can quite confidently say that he was cold-blooded not only towards traditional Christianity, but towards Christianity in general. This is such a romantic fascination with the abysses of the human soul, and even with a hint of the occult. As an example, I can point to a letter in which the young Dostoevsky writes to his brother Mikhail that he has read Hoffmann’s story “The Magnetizer” and admires it. And the essence of the story is that the hero, and an obvious villain, controls other people. And Dostoevsky writes with delight about this story, assessing it positively; he states that the hero is wasting magical power, but he admires the fact that such power exists. So the young Dostoevsky really does have such motives. These letters are little known, but in the book I tried to generalize all the most important thoughts of Dostoevsky in these letters and show that this was the basis of his early philosophy, which was later modernized, but did not change radically, it was precisely modernized.
Another issue that is important to touch upon, since it has been mentioned endlessly, is the relationship between church Christianity and Christianity as such. I have repeatedly expressed ideas about the difference between two forms of Christianity in history and that in church Christianity the teaching of Jesus Christ was radically distorted. And for some reason they interpret me as if I were proposing to ban the church. For God's sake, no, of course not! ( laughs) Valery Aleksandrovich, you should understand this dialectic more than anyone else - this is Rozanov’s well-known position. After all, how much criticism he wrote about the church, and still he is a church man.
R. Klyuchnik: ...he became a church member after the 17th year.
I.I. Evlampiev: So his last work, “Apocalypse of Our Time,” is such a criticism of the church that there is nowhere to go further. He denies Christianity as such.
A.L. Kazin: He prayed there to Osiris.
I.I. Evlampiev: There are such paradoxes in our history. And the second example, in my opinion, is even more expressive - this is Vladimir Bibikhin. He is an absolutely church person, but he has many statements against the church, in a historical and theoretical sense. Therefore, here we need to distinguish between aspects. We live in a certain cultural environment, we have cultural history, cultural memory, and we should not lose it. And the church, of course, to this cultural memory belongs to us and is of lasting value to us. But at the same time, if we want to understand history, we still must talk about what is true, even if this truth contradicts the foundations of the modern spiritual system. So I don't really see any contradiction here. It’s just the honesty of a researcher who, while studying history, shows how it really was, how truth and lies collided. And even if the truth did not always win, we cannot cancel history because of this, we live in a cultural environment that has developed and which we must take into account, there is no escape from this.
Finally, regarding the latter, regarding Dostoevsky as a philosopher. This debate will last forever; it is a matter of taste in a sense. But in my opinion, here we need to apply the biblical truth “by their fruits you will know them.” After all, Dostoevsky gave birth to all of Russian philosophy - well, how can one not consider him a philosopher if all Russian philosophers started from him, from his ideas. However, not all, here I may be exaggerating, but most of the most famous Russian philosophers directly wrote that without the influence of Dostoevsky they would not have succeeded as philosophers. And not only Russians, that’s the point. That is why I consider it very important to pursue this topic - the topic of Nietzsche’s dependence on Dostoevsky. Nietzsche is a much deeper thinker than is commonly believed, and he is not an atheist. Karen Svasyan cites in the afterword to the famous Russian two-volume book Nietzsche the confession that Nietzsche made in one of his letters, the confession that he “as a child saw God in all his splendor,” Nietzsche writes about himself. Well, what an atheist he is! This is a person with a very definite form of religiosity. We just have to finally understand that different shapes There are religiosities. Truly deep thinkers are always religious; it is another matter that their religiosity may be unusual. And Nietzsche is a religious thinker, only his religiosity is unusual, associated with a certain understanding of history. In the same way Camus, who directly called himself an atheist. After all, he also derived his entire philosophy from Dostoevsky. There are a number of Western thinkers who directly pointed to Dostoevsky as the source of their ideas.
In conclusion, I would like to say one more thing in which the importance of Dostoevsky as a philosopher is clearly manifested. I want to demonstrate another book of mine, which was published last year ( takes out a book).
I consider these two books - the one I present today and this one - as a duology. This book is called "The Artistic Philosophy of Andrei Tarkovsky." It contains approximately the same analysis of the philosophical views of the great Russian artist as in this book about Dostoevsky. It would seem that an even crazier idea would be to look for philosophy from a film director! And yet, I am convinced that Tarkovsky had an absolutely integral philosophy, and this is clearly expressed in his diaries; he, like Dostoevsky, calls himself a philosopher. And at the same time he considers himself Dostoevsky’s heir. To me, many of the points that I assert about Dostoevsky seem convincing because in Tarkovsky’s work these same ideas find a much more direct, sharp expression. As a man of the 20th century, he is no longer afraid to express many paradoxical thoughts directly; he is not afraid of censorship, at least religious censorship. Therefore, I repeat, I consider these two books as a duology in which two great artists seem to support each other ideologically. In my opinion, it is difficult to find a second artist like Tarkovsky in the 20th century, who would understand Dostoevsky, precisely Dostoevsky’s philosophy, to such a profound degree, and to such a profound extent refract it in his work. This again comes to the question that the true significance of a thinker is ultimately reflected in the influence he has on culture, on thought, and simply even on our everyday life. Dostoevsky entered Russian culture, someone said it correctly. Without Dostoevsky it is generally impossible to imagine our culture. And such cultural phenomena as Tarkovsky, which are entirely determined by Dostoevsky, they once again prove this significance to us. Well, that's all I wanted to say. Thank you.
Applause
A.A. Ermichev: Thanks everyone! Igor Ivanovich, thank you very much for the report and for the answers!
And regarding May.
This means that on the 17th we are listening to a report from our Kaliningrad guest about Nikolai Sergeevich Arsienev, and there will be a presentation of a book recently published by a new publishing house. And on the last day of May, the 31st, the conference “Church and State in the History of Russian Thought.” All the best!
Video filming - Vladimir Egorov
Photos of Vladimir Egorov and Natasha Rumyantseva
Recording and decoding of Natasha Rumyantseva's voice recording
Thank you for your help in preparing this material:
Igor Ivanovich Evlampiev
Alexander Alexandrovich Ermichev
Alexander Leonidovich Kazin
Alexander Gennadievich Lomonosov
Sergei Pavlovich Zaikin
Valery Alexandrovich Fateev
For more information see:
Speech by Andrei Tarkovsky, London, 1984. First published: The Art of Cinema. - 1989. - No. 2.
Report Igor Evlampiev « Tarkovsky and Nietzsche" Conference “Andrei Tarkovsky. Context-2012", Library of Cinematography named after. S. Eisenstein (Moscow), April 2012
Report Igor Evlampiev « Tarkovsky's ideas about immortality(based on the script “Bright Wind”).” Conference “Andrei Tarkovsky. Context 2013”, Cinematic Arts Library (Moscow), April 3, 2013.
Report Igor Evlampiev « Dostoevsky and Nietzsche" “Open lecture hall of the Russian Academy of Chemical Sciences”, April 7, 2012
Evlampiev I.I. “Dostoevsky and Nietzsche” Part 1.
Evlampiev I.I. "Dostoevsky and Nietzsche", Part 2.
Evlampiev I.I. "Dostoevsky and Nietzsche". Part 3.
A characteristic feature of Russian philosophy - its connection with literature - is clearly manifested in the works of great literary artists - A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov, N. V. Gogol, F. I. Tyutchev, L. N. Tolstoy and others.
The work of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821 – 1881), which belongs to the highest achievements of Russian national identity, has a particularly deep philosophical meaning. Its chronological scope is the 40-70s. XIX century - a time of intensive development of domestic philosophical thought, the formation of the main ideological trends. Dostoevsky took part in the comprehension of many philosophical and social ideas and teachings of his time - from the emergence of the first socialist ideas on Russian soil to the philosophy of unity of V. S. Solovyov.
In the 40s young Dostoevsky joined the educational direction of Russian thought: he became a supporter of the movement that he later called theoretical socialism. This orientation led the writer to the socialist circle of M. V. Butashevich-Petrashevsky. In April 1849, Dostoevsky was arrested and charged with distributing a “criminal letter about religion and government from the writer Belinsky.” The verdict read: deprive of ranks, all rights of state and subject death penalty by shooting. The execution was replaced by four years of hard labor, which Dostoevsky served in the Omsk fortress. This was followed by service as a private in Semipalatinsk. Only in 1859 did he receive permission to settle in Tver, and then in St. Petersburg.
The ideological content of his work after hard labor underwent a significant change. The writer comes to the conclusion that the revolutionary transformation of society is meaningless, since evil, as he believed, is rooted in human nature itself. Dostoevsky becomes an opponent of the spread of “universal human” progress in Russia and recognizes the importance of “soil” ideas, the development of which he begins in the magazines “Time” (1861 – 1863) and “Epoch” (1864-1865). The main content of these ideas is expressed in the formula: “A return to the folk root, to the recognition of the Russian soul, to the recognition of the folk spirit.” At the same time, Dostoevsky opposed the bourgeois system, as an immoral society that replaced freedom with “a million.” He condemned contemporary Western culture for its lack of “brotherly principles” and excessively expanded individualism.
The main philosophical problem for Dostoevsky was the problem of man, the solution of which he struggled with all his life: “Man is a mystery. It must be unraveled...” The complexity, duality, and antinomianism of man, the writer noted, make it very difficult to ascertain the real motives of his behavior. The reasons for human actions are usually much more complex and varied than we later explain. Often a person shows self-will because of his powerlessness to change anything, because of one disagreement with “ inexorable laws", like the hero of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground (1864).
Understanding the moral essence of a person, from his point of view, is an extremely complex and diverse task. Its complexity lies in the fact that a person has freedom and is free to make a choice between good and evil. Moreover, freedom, a free mind, “the outrage of a free mind” can become instruments of human misfortune, mutual destruction, and can “lead into such a jungle” from which there is no way out.
The pinnacle of Dostoevsky’s philosophical creativity was the novel “The Brothers Karamazov” (1879-1880) - his last and largest work, which included a philosophical poem (a legend, as V.V. Rozanov called it) about the Grand Inquisitor. Here two interpretations of human freedom, represented by the Grand Inquisitor and Christ, collide. The first is the understanding of freedom as well-being, arrangement material side life. The second is freedom as a spiritual value. The paradox is that if a person gives up spiritual freedom in favor of what the Grand Inquisitor called “quiet, humble happiness,” then he will cease to be free. Freedom, therefore, is tragic, and the moral consciousness of man, being a product of his free will, is distinguished by duality. But such is it in reality, and not in the imagination of a supporter of abstract humanism, representing man and his spiritual world in an idealized form.
The moral ideal of the thinker was the idea of “conciliar unity in Christ” (Vyach. Ivanov). He developed the concept of conciliarity, coming from the Slavophiles, interpreting it not only as the ideal of unity in the church, but also as a new ideal form of sociality based on religious and moral altruism. Dostoevsky equally rejects both bourgeois individualism and socialist collectivism. He puts forward the idea of fraternal conciliarity as “a completely conscious and unforced self-sacrifice of oneself for the benefit of all.”
A special place in Dostoevsky’s work was occupied by the theme of love for the motherland, Russia and the Russian people, associated not only with his “soil-based” ideas and with the rejection of the “alien ideas” of nihilists, but also with ideas about the social ideal. The writer makes a distinction between the popular and intellectual understanding of the ideal. If the latter presupposes, in his words, the worship of something floating in the air and “for which it is difficult to even come up with a name,” then nationality as an ideal is based on Christianity. Dostoevsky did everything possible, especially in the philosophical and journalistic “Diary of a Writer,” to awaken national feeling in society; he complained that, although Russians have a “special gift” for perceiving the ideas of foreign nationalities, they sometimes know the nature of their nationality very superficially. Dostoevsky believed in the “worldwide responsiveness” of the Russian people and considered it a symbol of Pushkin’s genius. He insisted precisely on the idea of “all-humanity” and explained that it did not contain any hostility to the West. “...Our aspiration to Europe, even with all its hobbies and extremes, was not only legal and reasonable, at its core, but also popular, completely coinciding with the aspirations of the people’s spirit.”
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881) is currently perhaps the most famous Russian writer in the West, through whose works foreigners are trying to understand the secret of the mysterious Russian soul. Dostoevsky does not have a developed philosophical system; his philosophy is expressed through the writer’s worldview, about which N.A. Berdyaev said: “Dostoevsky’s worldview was not an abstract system of ideas, such a system cannot be sought in an artist, and it is unlikely that generally possible. Dostoevsky’s worldview is his brilliant intuition of human and world destiny.”
The main themes of Dostoevsky's philosophical reflections.
Dostoevsky's work is centered around the themes of anthropology, philosophy of history, ethics and philosophy of religion. The central theme of his work is the theme of freedom. The theme of evil and crime is connected with Dostoevsky’s study of freedom. The leitmotif of the writer’s historiosophical themes is associated with the struggle against socialism, which, in his opinion, is nothing more than the construction of a new Tower of Babel in order to bring “heaven to earth.” One of the most important themes in his work is Russian idea, those. the question of Russia's place in world history.
In Dostoevsky’s work there is practically no theme of nature that did not interest him, there is no ontology, there is no special epistemology. He also does not have a theme of God, understood as theology or theology, but the religious quest of the writer himself plays a special role. However, this is not a search for God, whose existence he did not doubt, but an attempt to understand how divine existence Manifests itself in the world and is reflected in what exists. The main “event” of this existence is man. This event is mysterious and contradictory. Dostoevsky's novels are way understanding of this event. Through his heroes, Dostoevsky tries to solve the “mysteries of human existence.”
Human theme. Exploring the theme of man, Dostoevsky first of all turns to himself, to your inner feelings and torment, without hiding anything about yourself. Dostoevsky's work is comparable to confession. This is the repentance of the soul for sins not only committed, but also Bymental - by the author himself or someone he knew. ON THE. Berdyaev believed that Dostoevsky reveals the pangs of conscience at such a depth to which they had not been visible until now, and there, in the very last depths of man, he discovers will to crime. Therefore, be creative. Dostoevsky's property is repentance one for all. The writer embodied in his own life principles of love for every person, and for sinners, perhaps even first of all.
Dostoevsky acted in accordance with the instructions of the Apostle James, who taught: “Confess your faults to each other and pray for each other in order to be healed” (James 5:16). Therefore, the writer’s work can also be considered as a matter of healing souls from everything dark and evil. Creativity is his “business”, his predestination from above, which he must implement in his life. Whatever a person might imagine about himself, for Dostoevsky the indisputable fact is that God provides for each of his creations, man exists in God’s world, and the laws of his Creator operate in it. Dostoevsky's man is not a phenomenon natural world. ON THE. Berdyaev emphasizes Dostoevsky’s exceptional anthropologism and anthropocentrism: “Man is a microcosm, the center of being, the sun around which everything revolves. Everything is in man and for man.”
The theme of freedom. Dostoevsky studies man in his freedom, and freedom is the main possession of man. At the same time, as Dostoevsky showed, he has not only freedom, subject to moral laws, which consequently becomes one of the types of necessity, but also freedom of arbitrariness, caprice, “stupid desire.” There is a possibility of arbitrariness condition in order to moral choice was not forced, but truly free. Only in this case is the person responsible for his behavior, which, in fact, means being a person.
It turns out that, on the one hand, human freedom must be subordinated moral values, and on the other hand, to include the possibility of arbitrariness in relation to these values. In his works, Dostoevsky comprehensively explores this antinomy, showing how a person or rebels, not wanting to be a means even in relation to “ highest values“, or simply breaks down, “tired” of fulfilling one’s moral obligations. In the novel “The Teenager,” the main character Arkady Dolgoruky says: “Why should I absolutely love my neighbor or your future humanity, which I will never see, which will not know about me and which in turn will decay without any traces and memories..."
Dostoevsky, through his hero, criticizes the theory of the French socialist Charles Fourier (1772-1837), widespread in his time, contrasting the Fourierist formula (“A reasonable attitude towards humanity is also my benefit”), firstly, the possibility of finding all these rationalities unreasonable. Secondly, arguing with the atheistic worldview of the Fourierists, he shows that if there is no God, then there is no eternal life, no Kingdom of God, and no higher divine-human ideals. And then a person has the right to ask: “What do I care about what will happen to this humanity of yours in a thousand years, if for this, according to your code, I receive neither love nor future life, no recognition of my feat?
The irrationality of human behavior. But even if moral ideals are objective and based on Divine existence, the problem of freely accepting these ideals does not become easier. To persist in the free acceptance of the Truth, which in Dostoevsky’s view is Christ himself and His teaching, is the lot of the few. The conclusion from Dostoevsky’s artistic research is this: a person’s personality is complex and his actions are not always amenable to logical analysis. A person often does irrational despite even his own benefit and benefit, and this also expresses his desire to be free.
The hero of “Notes from the Underground” reasons: “...You repeat to me that an enlightened and developed person, in a word, such as the future person will be, cannot deliberately want something unprofitable, that this is mathematics. I completely agree, it really is mathematics. But I repeat to you for the hundredth time, there is only one case, only one, when a person can deliberately, consciously wish for himself even harmful, stupid, even stupid things, namely; so that to have a right to wish for yourself even the stupidest things and not be bound by the obligation to wish for yourself only the smartest things.”
Man strives for self-will. Dostoevsky does whole line discoveries about human nature. It is polar, antinomic and irrational. A person does not necessarily strive for profit. In his own will, he often prefers suffering. But where does this passion for self-will come from in a person? In Dostoevsky’s religious perception, the answer is this: God and the devil are not just abstract categories of morality, they are mystically present in the world and fight for the souls of people in the heart of every person. Evil is irreducible to social reasons, but is rooted in human nature itself. According to N.A. Berdyaev, “evil is the child of freedom.”
But goodness is also a “child” of freedom. And man as a free being chooses for oneself either good or evil, but maybe - and even very often - both at the same time. Good or evil is accepted by a person not abstractly, but through his confessed ideas. All of Dostoevsky's heroes live by one or another idea. The writer himself has repeatedly emphasized the role of ideas in the world, believing that ultimately all history is created by ideas.
The concept of Dostoevsky's ideas.
The writer does not have a single concept of idea, but there are images that resonate with each other. The main way in which Dostoevsky clarifies his concept of idea is the image of the “divine seed.” God throws this seed onto the earth and from it grows God's garden on earth. Ideas spread by infections, but why certain ideas “infect” certain people remains incomprehensible. Dostoevsky defines the idea that a person lives by and believes in as his secret. The presence of a certain secret in a person turns him into a personality, and a personality is nothing more than an embodied idea. People, to one degree or another, find themselves at the mercy of the ideas that live in them and act in accordance with what they dictate to them.
Obsession with ideas. According to the philosopher and theologian G.V. Florovsky (1893-1979), “the power of dreams, or obsession with an idea, is one of the main themes in Dostoevsky’s work.” Dostoevsky's ideas do not necessarily have a positive aspect. Ideas come from other world, and therefore they can also be negative, a kind of “temptation”. Most of Dostoevsky's most interesting heroes obsessed just such ideas. A man “from the underground” (“Notes from the Underground”) wants to live according to his “stupid will.”
Raskolnikov (“Crime and Punishment”) believes that there are two types of people - ordinary people and those for whom everything is allowed, for whom even murder is justified. Shigalev (“Demons”) proposes a plan for dividing humanity into two unequal groups, where some will be masters and others will be slaves. The Grand Inquisitor (“The Brothers Karamazov”) has approximately the same plan. Of a number of similar ideas, perhaps the most paradoxical is that of Kirillov (“Demons”). Kirillov believed that there was no God, but since he believed that man could not live without faith in God, he came to the conclusion that it was necessary to declare omnipotent Man as God.
The struggle of ideas in man. The problem of obsession with an idea is that a person can simultaneously be captured not by one, but by two or more ideas, sometimes contradictory and emanating from different spiritual worlds. It is in this struggle of ideas in man that the struggle between God and the devil manifests itself. In Dostoevsky there are practically no unambiguously bad people. Even such a truly satanic personality as Stavrogin (“Demons”) ultimately needs confession and understanding.
And the Grand Inquisitor (“The Brothers Karamazov”), in a conversation with Christ, vaguely senses the vulnerability of his “iron” logic and therefore releases Christ without carrying out his threat of execution. These are examples where the negative idea seems to win out completely, but even here the divine seeds of hope remain. The struggle between positive and negative ideas of approximately equal strength occurs in the soul of Versilov (“Teenager”).
Dostoevsky has heroes in whom a positive idea seems to have won, but nevertheless, their souls also contain the seeds of evil. These are Alyosha Karamazov (“The Brothers Karamazov”), Prince Myshkin (“The Idiot”), Sonya Marmeladova (“Crime and Punishment”). Dostoevsky shows that in any person good and evil fight to the end, as long as the person is alive. A clear example of this is Rodion Raskolnikov, who “resurrected” from moral oblivion. Dostoevsky believed in the possibility changes person's ideas, in his moral transformation.
The idea of a man-god. The idea of a man-god is considered by Dostoevsky several times - in “The Demons,” in “Crime and Punishment,” in “The Brothers Karamazov.” This was the reason for L. Shestov to call Dostoevsky a Nietzschean before Nietzsche. In terms of subject matter, Dostoevsky was indeed in many ways a predecessor of Nietzsche (it is no coincidence that the latter carefully read Dostoevsky), but in terms of the meaning of his searches, he is rather a Russian anti-Nietzsche, since Dostoevsky was the singer not of the man-god, but of the god-man.
Discrimination and change of the human idea. Distinguish which of the two types of ideas grows in a person, and changing a human idea is possible only on the paths of human freedom. People living with a positive idea know that freedom is inseparable from Truth, because real Freedom is given only by Truth, the visible embodiment of which on earth was Christ. A person living with a negative idea himself wants to be the truth, to become like God.
Freedom is not identical with truth or goodness and presupposes choice on the part of a person, the choice of which of the ideas brought from the other world will be cultivated and nurtured by him, and which ones he will fight as weeds of his soul. The ability to use freedom helps a person in his choice. The correct choice, from Dostoevsky’s point of view, leads a person not just to God, but also to personal immortality, to eternal life in the Kingdom of God. That is, a person acquires absolute values. The paradox is that freedom can be learned, but this can only be done by already being free.
Ideas of nations and the Russian idea. According to Dostoevsky, not only every person, but also every nation, like all humanity as a whole, has its own idea. Exactly ideas make history. Each person is like a “garden” in which these ideas sprout and grow. The task of the individual is to help, by example, to recognize the ideas that others have, to help them with their choice and cultivation. Just like what happens to an individual, it also happens to entire nations, who also have within themselves the ideas of “divine” and “diabolical”. To the category of the latter, Dostoevsky included, for example, Catholic and communist ideas.
Dostoevsky believes that the ideas embedded in the people, in humanity, can be revealed to selected people, who must convey them to others. This idea that was revealed to him is “idea of the Russian people*. Every people must nurture your idea, but not everyone nurtures and develops a “divine” idea. Thus, many peoples of Europe, according to Dostoevsky, have lost their “divine” ideas and are going the wrong way.
However, they have a chance to get on the right road if they receive help from other nations. This can be done by the Russian people, who have retained the “divine” seeds within themselves, but have not yet fully cultivated them. The universal “divine” idea lies in the establishment on earth Kingdom of God expressed primarily in fraternal relations between all members of society, in the relationship of love from each to each.
Self-test questions
1. Why do you think Dostoevsky paid so much attention to the study of man in his work? What tasks did he set?
2. How does Dostoevsky resolve the antinomy of human freedom, which, on the one hand, must be subordinated to moral values, and on the other, include the possibility of arbitrariness in relation to these values?
How do you solve it?
3. Do you agree with the concept of S. Fourier that: “A reasonable attitude towards humanity is also my benefit”? What did Dostoevsky think about this?
4. Do you think it is good or evil that a person is endowed with the ability to self-will? Give some examples of irrationality in human behavior.
5. Explain what personality is according to the concept of Dostoevsky’s ideas?
6. According to Dostoevsky, can any one idea prevail in a person? How can a change in a person’s ideas and his moral “recovery” occur?
7. What is the fundamental difference between a man-god and a god-man?
8. In the novel “Teenager,” Arkady Dolgoruky deduces a “law for ideas,” which states that the simplest ideas are understood and presented with the most difficulty, but: “There is also an inverse law for ideas: vulgar ideas, fast ones, are understood unusually quickly , and certainly in a crowd, certainly along the whole street; Moreover, they are considered the greatest and most brilliant, but only on the day of their appearance.” Do you agree with these statements? If yes, then try to give your explanation why this happens. If not, then justify your opinion.
9. What, according to Dostoevsky, is the essence of the Russian idea and what are the ways of its implementation? Express your attitude to the Russian idea of a writer.
10. According to the Grand Inquisitor (“The Brothers Karamazov”), freedom brings not happiness, but suffering. A person is ready to give up his freedom for bread and be submissive to the one who feeds him. When meeting Christ, the Grand Inquisitor tells him: “You want to go into the world and you go with your bare hands, with some kind of vow of freedom, which in their simplicity and in their innate disorder they cannot even comprehend, which they are afraid of and afraid of.” - they shake - because nothing has ever been unbearable for human society than freedom! Do you see these stones in this naked, hot desert? Turn them into bread, and humanity will run after you like a herd, grateful and obedient, although always trembling that you will “withdraw your hand and your bread will cease.” What can you say to the Grand Inquisitor?
Literature
1. Berdyaev N.A. Worldview of Dostoevsky // N.A. Berdyaev about Russian philosophy / Comp. B.V. Emelyanova, A.I. Novikova. Part 1. Sverdlovsk, 1991.
2. Dostoevsky F.M. Complete works: In 30 volumes, L., 1972-1988.
3. Laut R. Dostoevsky's philosophy in a systematic presentation. M., 1996.
4. About Dostoevsky. The work of Dostoevsky in Russian thought 1881-1931. / Comp. V.M. Borisov, A.B. Roginsky. M., 1990.
5. SizovV.S . Russian idea in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky. Kirov, 2001.
6. Stepun F.A. Worldview of Dostoevsky // F.A. Stepun. Meetings. Comp. S.V. Stakhorsky. M., 1998.
7. Shestob L. Dostoevsky and Nietzsche (Philosophy of Tragedy) // Shestov L. Works. M., 1995.
8. Sheshberg A.Z. Freedom system F.M. Dostoevsky // Russian emigration grants about Dostoevsky / Intro. and note. S.V. Belova. St. Petersburg, 1994.