One-paragraph summary
In this paper, I want to examine how Dostoevsky utilizes entities of Christian ecopoetics in an increasingly modern way, in which he expands them to question the essence of morality and faith, but also compares them to the living situation in Russia as opposed to the West. I will look at four of these: faith and reason, innocence and guilt, virtue and envy, and redemption and suffering. The former (faith, innocence, virtue, and redemption) are various qualities and teachings of Christianity. The novel, The Brothers Karamazov, puts these Western qualities in competition with modern Russian values, such as reason, guilt, envy, and suffering. I will compare this with Alexander Dugin’s Hiedegger account, specifically “I: An Invitation to a Journey”. This is because this section discusses how Western philosophy merges with Russian philosophy, and I will use this to facilitate my argument on how Dostoevsky’s novel shows the balance scale of Christian ideals and modernity.
Sources
Lambert, Sara. Illness, Guilt, Conscience, and Responsibility in The …, digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1082&context=fypapers. Accessed 21 Apr. 2024.
Namli, E. The Brothers Karamazov and the theology of suffering. Stud East Eur Thought 74, 19–36 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-021-09454-x
Quotes
- “Freedom, free reason, and science will lead them into such a maze, and confront them with such miracles and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, unruly and ferocious, will exterminate themselves; others, unruly but feeble, will exterminate each other; and the remaining third, feeble and wretched, will crawl to our feet and cry out to us: ‘Yes, you were right, you alone possess his mystery, and we are coming back to you—save us from ourselves’….But the flock will gather again, and again submit, and this time once and for all.” (Dostoevsky 258)
- “You know, with us it’s beating, the birch and the lash, that’s our national way…I know for certain that there are floggers who get more excited with every stroke, to the point of sensuality, literal sensuality…I’ve collected a great, great deal about Russian children, Alyosha.” (Dostoevsky 239)
- In Europe, the people are rising up against the rich with force, and popular leaders everywhere are leading them to bloodshed and teaching them that their wrath is righteous…Yet the Lord will save Russia, as he has saved her many times before.” (Dostoevsky 315-316)
Introductory Paragraph (Draft)
Fyodor Dostoevsky, an eminent Russian novelist of the 19th century spent much of his life asking himself a question most people obsessed with Western philosophy in the that region tend to ponder: If God does exist, what is the moral meaning of this fact in a society that has increasingly less interest in religious faith? During his lifetime, Dostoevsky witnessed Russia veering toward socialism and worried that the political ideology’s rejection of divine faith would lead to moral decay and a rationalization of immortality. He settled his thoughts through writing one of the most famous novels in Russian literature, The Brothers Karamazov. It is evident that the author utilizes the themes of Christian ecopoetics, the concepts of faith, innocence, virtue, and redemption come into contact with the new, modern religious aspects of Russian society, reason, guilt, envy, and suffering. Through this analysis, one can understand how Russia’s urge to modernize and adopt more Western values, made it vulnerable to ideas that compromise its moral character and weakened its defenses against human corruption and sin. In concluding this, Alexander Dugin’s philosophical account Martin Heidegger, explains how philosophy in the West manifested its way into Russian culture and life, describing how identity and individualism are in connection with this change in social order. The reason people should be concerned about this topic is its profound and intricate exploration of fundamental philosophical inquiries into human existence reaches its zenith in The Brothers Karamazov. And though written over a century ago, tension between faith and doubt, the enigma of free will, and the complexities surrounding moral accountability are still relevant today, and philosophers are still drumming up answer to.
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