Fyodor Dostoevsky.
-(1821 – 1881)
-Russian author and philosopher
-Russian Orthodox
Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in Moscow, Russia. His father died when he was 15, he suffered from recurring illnesses and health problems throughout his life, was arrested and almost killed, and his son died. Enduring these hard things helped to form the great works of literature he created. In 1845, he wrote his novel Poor Folk, which became an immediate success and began his writing career. At this time, he believed life was a movement from a backward past to a better future, so in 1847, he joined a socialist group called the Petrashevsky Circlehuman. However, in 1849, he was arrested, and after eight months in prison, Dostoevsky was sentenced to death, which was a psychological maneuver that was meant to scare him. Although his life was spared, he believed he had only moments to live. He never forgot the feelings of that experience and wrote about it in the book The Idiot. He then spent four years in a Siberian prison camp and six years of military service in exile. In 1866, he began writing what would become Crime and Punishment, his most famous work and continued a successful writing career until he died of heart issues.
Fyodor Dostoevsky is considered one of the greatest psychological novelists in world literature. His works often explore human nature and the spiritual implications of human choices. His writings are prophetic because he accurately predicted how Russia’s revolutionaries would behave if they came to power. His writing is dark, violent, and tragic, and, in this way, is much like Flannery O’Connor’s writings. Dostoyevsky is best known for his long novels Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, Notes from the Underground, and The Idiot. These significant works are renowned novels that address timeless and timely issues in philosophy and politics.
His most notable novels include the following themes:
Notes from the Underground (1864) is a dark, insightful counter-point to modern liberalism and attacks technical or social progress ideologies. If only this or that were better in our lives (via technology, improving the government, getting a better job, marrying that perfect person), then all would go well, and we could leave suffering behind. Dostoevsky argues this is a delusion. Things we do can change the focus of pain but never remove it.
In Crime and Punishment (1866) - Dostoevsky’s goal is to get us to disentangle ourselves from what we think we’re like to discover our true nature. He wants to reveal that beneath the so-called monsters we are, there can be a far more interesting, tenderhearted character - a nice but deluded, intelligent but frightened and panicked person. The idea that you can be a good person, do something terrible, and still deserve some compassion seems evident until one needs forgiveness. The lesson: no one is outside the circle of God’s love and understanding.
In The Idiot (1868) - Dostoevsky shows us that we’re continually surrounded by things that could delight us if only we saw them correctly and learned to appreciate them. He is trying to communicate the value of existence.
In The Brothers Karamazov (1880) -he helps us know that we will always run up against our limitations as deeply flawed, muddled creatures. Science cannot save us, and technology cannot make us perfect. Life is and always will be suffering, yet great redemption is available.
Biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian Novelist by Amanda Prahl (article)
A Point of View: The Writer Who Foresaw the Rise of the Totalitarian State by John Gray (article) - when Fyodor Dostoyevsky described in his novels how ideas have the power to change human lives, he suggested that abandoning morality for the sake of an idea of freedom would result in a type of tyranny more extreme than any in the past. When he writes of the demonic power of ideas, he has fastened on a genuine human disorder.
Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: Lessons from the Russian Classics by Hillsdale College (video) - Since the time of Peter the Great, Russia has been a force in the world, both politically and culturally. It remains so today, even though many dismissed it after the fall of the Soviet Union. This video series explores Russian history, literature, music, current Russian politics, and foreign policy.
The Devils: Dostoevsky’s Novel of Political Evil by BBC (audio) - Dostoevsky’s most political novel. It tells the story of a group of young revolutionaries who run riot in a small provincial town in Russia, all under the indulgent eye of their elders, the liberal and progressively minded elite. It is a grim prophecy of totalitarian rule in the 20th century in a penetrating psychological study of the human consequences of extreme philosophical ideas.
Perspective: What Dostoevsky Can Teach Us About Suffering and Faith by Scott Raines (article) - Dostoevsky found himself standing before a painting entitled The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb painted by Hans Holbein, and the experience bled into Dostoevsky’s book, The Idiot.
Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: Lessons from the Russian Classics by Hillsdale College (video series) - Since the time of Peter the Great, Russia has been a force in the world, both politically and culturally. It remains so today, even though many dismissed it after the fall of the Soviet Union. This first CCA of the 2022-23 academic year will explore Russian history, literature, music, and current Russian politics and foreign policy.
The Philosophy and Theology of Fyodor Dostoevsky by David Leigh (free pdf download) - this essay seeks to affirm Dostoevsky’s belief in the divinity of Christ, the Son’s oneness with the Father, the self-description by Christ as the way, the truth, and the life, the resurrection of Christ, and Christ as “My Lord and my God.”
Dostoevsky’s Critique of Socialism by Daniel Lattier (article) - The novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was known as a voice for the poor and oppressed in Russian society and an advocate of social justice. Yet simultaneously, he was a strong opponent of socialism and its presuppositions. Dostoevsky’s critique of socialism, then, begins with its atheism. Dismissing the essential spiritual nature of human beings, socialists can only concern themselves with man’s material needs. Lacking any spiritual basis for human brotherhood, the socialists must resort to compulsion to establish it.
Nobel Lecture in Literature 1970 by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (article) - Solzhenitsyn refers to Dostoevsky four times in his speech. Here is a portion of that speech:
One day, Fyodor Dostoevsky made the puzzling remark: “Beauty will save the world.” What sort of a statement is that? How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything?
There is, however, a certain peculiarity in the essence of beauty, a peculiarity in the status of art: namely, the convincingness of a true work of art is entirely irrefutable, and it forces even an opposing heart to surrender. Those works of art that have scooped up the Truth and presented it to us as a living force – they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them.
So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought. If the tops of these three trees converge, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through – then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar.....and in so doing will fulfill the work of all three?
In that case, Dostoevsky’s remark, “Beauty will save the world,” was not a careless phrase but a prophecy. In that case, might art and literature really be able to help the world today?
Dostoevsky's literary works explore the human condition in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia and engage with various philosophical and religious themes. Watch this brief biography to learn more about him.
Dostoevsky by Jash Dholani
He was a literary rockstar at 24, almost executed by a firing squad at 28, and exiled to Siberia. He returned to write some of the greatest books ever.
In his lesser-known letters and essays, we get a more intimate look at what he loved, hated, fiercely believed in…
1/ Dostoevsky believed life is only possible when you have a philosophical north star you swear by:
"Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea."
Dostoevsky: "To maintain itself and live, every society must respect someone & something."
2/ In his essay against Environmental determinism, Dostoevsky writes:
"The doctrine of the environment reduces man to an absolute nonentity, exempts him totally from every personal moral duty and all independence, reduces him to the lowest form of slavery imaginable."
3/ In a letter, Dostoevsky revealed the mystery he wanted to solve:
“I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, do not say you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery because I want to be a man."
4/ Dostoevsky needed only three things: “I need nothing but books, the possibility of writing, and being daily for a few hours alone. To be alone is a natural need, like eating and drinking." Certain spiritual and intellectual problems demand solitude.
5/ BUT Dostoevsky also warned against introversion:
"Lacking external experiences, those of the inward life will gain the upper hand. The nerves and the fancy then take up too much room. Every external happening seems colossal and frightens us. We begin to fear life.”
6/ Dostoevsky lists important questions all societies must ask:
"Whom can we now consider our best people? Most important, where shall we find them? Who will be responsible for proclaiming them the best, and on what basis? Does someone need to take this responsibility?"
7/ Do we possess talent, or does talent possess us?
Dostoevsky: “It's very rare to find a person capable of handling his gift. The talent almost always enslaves its possessor, taking him, as it were, by the scruff of the neck & carrying him off far away from his proper path.”
8/ Dostoevsky hated the "small-souled" people who preach "contentment with one's destiny” and "modest demands from life."
Dostoevsky: "Their contentment is that of cloistered self-castration." All vital souls will instinctively reject such an "insipid" existence.
9/ Dostoevsky on the measure of great art:
“Art is always true to reality in the highest degree…it cannot be unfaithful to contemporary reality. Otherwise, it would not be art. It is the measure of true art that is always contemporary, urgent, and useful.”
10/ Art becomes abnormal when we become abnormal: “During his life, man may deviate from normality, from the laws of nature; in this case, art will deviate with him. But this shows art’s close and indissoluble link with man, its constant loyalty to man and his interests.”
11/ Dostoevsky against censorship:
"It is of primary importance not to hinder art with various aims, not to prescribe laws for it…for even without this, it is already confronted by many submerged rocks, many temptations and deviations inseparable from man’s existence."
12/ For Dostoevsky, beauty is synonymous with health and ascending life:
“Beauty is useful because man has a constant need for (his) highest ideal. If a people preserve an ideal of beauty and a need for it, it means that the need for health and normality is also there."
As a philosopher, Fyodor Dostoevsky is most popularly known as a Russian novelist. His works explore human psychology in the troubled socio-political atmosphere of 19th-century Russia. His novels had a significant impact on psychology, especially on people who lose their reason, become nihilistic, become insane, or commit murder.
This episode discusses the profound influence of storytelling, drawing from the Chronicles of Narnia and the life-altering example of Eustace Clarence Scrubb, a character ill-equipped to face life's realities due to the wrong stories he was told as a child. Through the lens of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, we delve into the moral complexities and the human conscience. This episode also features riveting explorations of the works of Wilson Rawls, Steven Pressfield, and others, showcasing the thrilling adventures and stimulating imagination these stories ignite.
Fyodor Dostoevsky was, in the estimation of James Joyce, “the man more than any other who has created modern prose.” “Outside Shakespeare,” Virginia Woolf wrote, “there is no more exciting reading.” His influence is as impossible to understand as it is to overstate: he is widely credited as the forerunner of modern psychology, existentialist philosophy, the detective novel, and the prison memoir - and is, by any measure, one of the pinnacles of Russian literature. In this episode, we consider the life and works of one of the greatest novelists the world has ever known.
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
Flannery O'Connor and Fyodor Dostoevsky shared a deep faith in Christ, which compelled them to tell stories that forced readers to choose between eternal life and demonic possession. Their either-or extremism has not become more popular in the last fifty to a hundred years since these stories were first published. Still, it has become more relevant to a twenty-first-century culture where the lukewarm middle ground seems the most comfortable place to dwell. Giving the Devil His Due walks through all of O'Connor's stories and looks closely at Dostoevsky's magnum opus, The Brothers Karamazov, to show that when the devil rules, all hell breaks loose. Instead of this kingdom of violence, O'Connor and Dostoevsky propose a kingdom of love that is only possible when the Lord is king again.
When brutal landowner Fyodor Karamazov is murdered, the lives of his sons are changed irrevocably: Mitya, whose bitter rivalry with his father immediately places him under suspicion for murder; Ivan, the intellectual, whose mental tortures drive him to breakdown; the spiritual Alyosha, who tries to heal the family's rifts; and the shadowy figure of their bastard half-brother Smerdyakov. As the ensuing investigation and trial reveal the true identity of the murderer, Dostoyevsky's dark masterpiece evokes a world where the lines between innocence and corruption, good and evil, blur, and everyone's faith in humanity is tested. Explore Dostoyevsky's recurrent themes of guilt and salvation.
In Crime and Punishment, when Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in St. Petersburg of the tsars, commits an act of murder and theft, he sets into motion a story that is almost unequaled in world literature for its excruciating suspense, atmospheric vividness, and depth of characterization and vision. Dostoevsky’s drama of sin, guilt, and redemption transforms the sordid story of an old woman’s murder into the nineteenth century’s most profound and compelling philosophical novel.
Returning to St Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naïve epileptic Prince Myshkin, known as the “idiot,” visits his distant relative General Yepanchin and proceeds to charm the General and his family. But his life is thrown into turmoil when he chanced upon a photograph of the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna. Utterly infatuated, he soon finds himself caught up in a love triangle and drawn into a web of blackmail, betrayal, and, finally, murder. In Prince Myshkin, Dostoyevsky portrays the purity of “a lovely soul” and explores the perils that innocence and goodness face in a corrupt world.
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