The economic crisis has created a basically new situation. Russia should reduce its geopolitical ambitions, which have emerged in the last few years, as well as its national budget. The illusions of might, based on the possession of expensive commodities that everyone needs, are fading. There is no doubt that in a couple of years the demand for energy resources will grow again. But until then, Russia will have to go through another period of difficulties, whose outcome is not clear. (...) Depending on its outcome, Putin's epoch will be viewed either as a time of lost opportunities, or as the eve of a real revival of Russia as a modern great power. (shrink)

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

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

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

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

Fyodor Avgustovich Stepun was one of the involuntary emigrants of 1922.1 He became particularly well known in the Federal Republic of Germany through his autobiographical writings, which for him were a form not only of remembering, but also of philosophizing. The first section of this article is devoted to the topic of “Community and totalitarianism.” In various works in the 1920s and 1930s Stepun sought to identify the mental causes of Europe and Russia’s precipitous decent into totalitarianism. He saw (...) these in the demonic absolutizing of one-sided worldviews as a primary factor. The counter-model for him was the concept of “all-unity,” as can already be found in Vladimir Solovyov. The second section is dedicated to the context of “Dialogue and culture.” Dialogicity is always the opposite of totalitarianism and is also founded in the concept of “all-unity.” The concluding section, entitled “Experiencing and remembering,” is devoted to Stepun’s autobiographical writings and his notion of “experiencing” (perezhivanie). (shrink)

The article examines the historiosophical reflections of F. I. Tyutchev, presented in his treatises, letters, poems, and substantiates the idea that Tyutchev does not proclaim slogans of either Slavophil or Westernist doctrines, but creates an original imperial ideology. Tyutchev views Russia as an equal and integral part of Europe, linking the existence of the empire with the development of the European spirit in Russia. The main criterion for the existence of the empire is unity. If it does not exist, then (...) the state as an empire cannot exist. Tyutchev treated Orthodoxy as a historiosophical category. He bases his concept of the historical process on the traditions of Eastern Christianity and the legacy of the Byzantine Empire. In the idea of an empire based on Christian principles, Tyutchev sees the best system of statehood. For Tyutchev, the Russian people and Orthodoxy play a major role in the transformation of the world. In the concept of state and power, the categories of Christian ethics are especially important for Tyutchev, which, in his opinion, were not really relevant for the upper strata of society and representatives of the Russian government. The poet calls power "godless", claiming that it does not come from God, but is based on its material power, without recognizing a higher Divine authority over itself. The reason for the "godlessness" of the authorities was the separation from the Russian people and their national traditions and the departure from the historical past of "Holy Russia". This, from Tyutchev's point of view, is the main existential problem of Russia. Tyutchev's concept of empire was not a reproduction of the realities of the political life of Russia in the XIX century, but was an attempt to answer how the state should be built. Tyutchev's ideal of the Russian state is based on a society united by a single Christian faith. (shrink)

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

This article demonstrates the unique role of the Russian philosophical tradition in the formation of an individual’s self-consciousness and attempts to overcome the limitati...

The article discusses the characterization of the visualization of visible reality in Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The author suggests that semiotic and legal analysis should be used to understand the meaning of the color code of the novel. Semiotic discourse reduces the ambiguity, uncertainty, and expression of the color code to a conscious, discrete, and conditioned meaning of individual colors. Legal analysis helps to better understand the main idea and other aspects of the novel, encoded in colors. (...) Psychological, personal associations, and symbolic methods are used to reveal direct and indirect meaning of the colors used by Dostoyevsky. The basic characterization of colors proposed by Goethe is employed as a key for color decoding. The article also establishes the correlation of the color code of the novel with the colors of the flags of the Russian Empire and the German Confederation. The message and meaning of the same colors of these national flags are contrasted. The interpretation is complemented by the author’s drawings, which enable to visualize the color code that stores and transmits information about national identity. (shrink)

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

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

In this article, the author examines the work of Boris Pasternak, primarily his novel Doctor Zhivago, in the context of his Marburg experience and Kantian ideas as the basis of his moral-aesthetic...

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

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

SUFFERING, ANUISH, DISTRESS: THE DESTRUCTIVE EROS IN THE WORK OF FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY My paper discusses the idea of destructive eroticism in the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Eros is posited here as manifesting in two, opposite forms: the Christian virtue of agape consisting in a humble service to a beloved person, and the Greek eros which in Dostoevsky is transformed into destructive love, one steeped in egoism and sadistic-masochistic impulses. I want to argue that destructive eroticism is for Dostoevsky (...) of greatest interest, while love conceived as agape serves in his work only as a minor, normative projection, a tribute paid to the Russian Orthodox worldview. In my analysis I refer to Georges Bataille’s philosophical thought to combine the pattern of unfulfilled and ruinous love in Dostoevsky with his conviction that irrational aspects of man, his penchant to evil and transgression can be seen as a measure of the intensity and authenticity of one’s spiritual life. Contrary to religious interpretations of Dostoevsky, I argue that the author of Crime and Punishment prefers to cast his protagonists into the limbo of suffering, anguish and distress and therefore he ultimately rejects the possibility that human beings can content themselves with a mediocre life in which existential complacency is bought at a price of resignation from dangerous passions of which one could say that were “worth a life”. (shrink)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky expressed a strange and surprising sentiment through one of the characters of The Brothers Karamazov. A dying young man named Markel declares: Every one of us has sinned against all men, and I more than others." He later says: "...every one of us is answerable for everyone else and for everything." Markel's absurd claims have engendered many reflections on the nature of suffering and what it means to be responsible for someone else's suffering. The world has no (...) shortage of pain and evil; what exactly is the relationship between suffering and responsibility? Markel's declarations press forward a question that drives this essay collection: how responsible should we consider ourselves for the suffering of the world? This volume is a collection of essays that struggle in various ways to understand and respond to several philosophical, theological and practical problems. In each case the authors grapple with issues surrounding suffering, immorality, evil, exploitation and oppression. The contributors share a clear concern for the ways that philosophers and theologians should respond to the problems of suffering and evil. They also share a conviction that these remain intense and central problems for philosophy and theology. Evil is an obstacle for belief, for morality, for hospitality, and for hope. This book struggles to address the particular and strong sense of responsibility that falls on Christians when it comes to understanding and, more importantly, responding to the problems of suffering and evil in the world. (shrink)

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

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

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

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

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

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

When discussing one of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novels, Mikhail Bakhtin ruminates on the poietic power of dialogue: in dialogue a person not only shows himself outwardly, but he becomes for the first time that which he is—and […] not only for others but for himself as well. To be means to communicate dialogically. When dialogue ends, everything ends. […] At the level of his religious-utopian worldview Dostoyevsky carries dialogue into eternity, conceiving of it as eternal co-rejoicing, co-admiration, concord. […] Two (...) voices is the minimum for life.1 Notably, Bakhtin's commendation of dialogue as a sine qua non ontological condition communicates both necessity and hope, implying the indispensability of an encounter... (shrink)

Buried within Fyodor Dostoevsky's works are glimpses of corrupt individuals who rise to the fore every now and then. Without these occasional revelations, not many would notice how diabolical an ordinary person really is. Although Dostoevsky does generalize that human nature can be quite vile, a character like the mysterious visitor from The Brothers Karamazov displays that nature without striving to be extraordinary as Dostoevsky's other prolific characters. Something troubling still lurks within this mundane type. Relying on moral dilemmas (...) presented by ancient thinkers will help this project expose and elaborate on the unsavouriness behind the activities and dispositions of Dostoevsky's minute character. With the mysterious visitor as the prime focus, we discover how an individual distorts one's personal development and decent relations with other humane beings. (shrink)

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

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

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

The worst of all possible worlds: Arthur Schopenhauer -- The despair of not being oneself: Soren Kierkegaard -- The interlinked terrors and wonders of God: Herman Melville -- The hell of no longer being able to love: Fyodor Dostoyevsky -- The inevitable end of everything: Leo Tolstoy -- The joy of living dangerously: Friedrich Nietzsche -- The dramatic richness of the concrete world: William James -- The only life that is really lived: Marcel Proust -- Our hopeless battle against (...) the boundaries of language: Ludwig Wittgenstein -- The benign indifference of the world: Albert Camus. (shrink)

The paper is primarily devoted to Nietzsche’s account of cruelty, which represents an indispensable key to understanding Nietzsche’s genealogical project in many of its essential aspects. This study is complemented by parallels with two other outstanding intellectual figures of the late nineteenth century: Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Dostoevsky wrote that “civilisation has made mankind if not more bloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely bloodthirsty.” Nietzsche went a step further in this assessment: not only does civilisation (...) not make us immune to cruelty, but it must itself be seen to emerge directly from cruelty at every significant step it has taken. What brings Nietzsche close to Masoch, on the other hand, is the fact that these historical or even prehistorical developments that have shaped humankind and civilisation are not only related to cruelty, but must be observed as various forms of the internalisation (“spiritualisation”, “deification”) of cruelty. The core of the study is devoted to analyses of different forms and aspects of Nietzsche’s concept of the internalisation of cruelty (in relation to power-relations, subject-object relations, mutations of pleasure, and perversions). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Evgeny Zamiatin's "The Cave"Timothy LangenEvgeny Zamiatin's short story "The Cave," like Fyodor Dosto- evsky's novel Crime and Punishment, has at its dramatic center a single criminal act, and as its philosophical preoccupation the reasons for and the results of that act. The act in "The Cave" is not murder but theft, the theft of scarce firewood from a downstairs neighbor. The result, unlike Dostoevsky's, is rapid detection, confrontation, (...) and then suicide. The reasons, however, are somewhat more complex, and as with Dostoevsky they reach beyond merely topical sensation to touch a paradox that lies close to the heart of human civilization.The immediate reasons are topical and simple enough. Martin Martinych and Masha live together on the brink of hypothermic death during the predictable cruelty of a Petrograd winter and the exceptional horror of the Russian Civil War. Nearly everyone in the city is freezing and starving, and the precariousness of existence has led people to trade the luxuries of civilized life for the barest essentials of physical survival. Books and sheet music shift imperceptibly from repositories of memory and culture into combustible objects good for a few more minutes of life-saving warmth. Favorite rooms are abandoned as not worth the cost of heating, and Martin Martinych sacrifices his conscience for a few scraps of wood. Indeed, Zamiatin prepares the crime at least as sympathetically as does Dostoevsky: the victim, Obertyshev, is every bit as dislikable as Dostoevsky's pawnbroker; he hoards his considerable supply of wood in total indifference to the suffering of his neighbors. Moreover, Mart's crime, unlike Raskolnikov's [End Page 209] in Crime and Punishment, hardly injures the victim, who seems to suffer a purely mental affront when some of his stash has been stolen. We would like to think that in Raskolnikov's place we would not commit his crime; in Mart's place, however, we might well be excused for following his example and filching a few sticks of wood from a man who doesn't need them.However, it is not an easy decision for Mart, and Zamiatin describes it as a battle between two Marts, bifurcated by the extreme deprivation of his circumstances into a purely animal Mart, a "caveman" who says only "I must," and another Mart clinging tenaciously in memory, a Mart who used to love the music of Scriabin and who now, standing before Obertyshev's ample woodpile, says "I may not." The caveman prevails, Mart brings the wood upstairs, and he and Masha enjoy a day of warmth. At the end of the day, the chairman of the housing committee confronts Mart, assuring him that he too detests Obertyshev, but advising Mart to return the wood or else face legal consequences. Alas, there is none to return. In despair Mart reaches for a vial of poison that he has apparently reserved for that moment when the suffering of life outweighs the hope—but Masha, who is further gone than he, insists on taking the single portion herself. She instructs Mart to go outside for a little walk while she does the deed. He does so, and here the story ends.Zamiatin was trained as an engineer and early in his career he worked both as a technical writer and as a writer of fiction, and so it is tempting see behind this story a mechanical vision of human existence that is something like a physical structure. The structure of human civilization, according to this view, is built on an essential framework without which the entire thing would collapse, and to which every other part of the structure must be sacrificed if need be. Physical existence is part of this framework: it is the precondition of any human civilization, and the ornaments of that civilization must when necessary be devoured to ensure the continued survival of human beings. The burning thirst of physical necessity must be slaked before we can irrigate the lush fields of beauty, kindness, and imagination. Books are for reading, but in some circumstances they are more valuable as kindling.In the writing of some psychologists—most notably Abraham Maslow—there appears a "hierarchy of human needs" that... (shrink)

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

This essay examines the political implications of Edo (present-day Tokyo) popular culture in early modern Japan by focusing on the interface between distinct forms of literary and visual representation and the configuration of social order (the status hierarchy and the division of labor), as well as moral and ideological discourses that were conducive to the reproduction of the order. Central to the forms of representation in Edo popular culture was the overarching literary and artistic principle, which I call a phrase (...) adapted from M.M. Bakhtin's work on Fyodor Dostoevsky. By creating a dialogical interaction of divergent voices and perspectives, Edo popular culture created pluralized, contentious images of Tokugawa society, images that underlined contradictory realities that had become widely discernible around the turn of the eighteenth century. The most salient of all the contradictions was the growing disjuncture between the ideological premise of social and economic hierarchies and their actual reversals. The dialogic imagination captured and accentuated the fluid and dynamic social interactions that threw the formal arrangements of social order into disarray, as well as the widely perceived tensions originating from these interactions, by supplying images that sharply contrasted with those that the Tokugawa authorities worked hard to foster and defend: of a harmonious, self-contained, and perfectly functioning society. (shrink)

Why do we enjoy artworks that depict disasters and suffering? Is this a hangover from the Modernist impulse to break the rules of harmony? Is there actually a proper way to perform negativity in art without resorting to nihilism? The Temptation of Non-Being uses these fundamental questions to paint a picture of contemporary art as beset by an outbreak of the negative, and to construct a new theory of art as a medium of complex negativity. Charting the depth of these (...) negative practices, Artemy Magun shows how they become progressively more complex and explicit, illustrating them with examples from Lars von Trier, Jacek Malczewski, Andrei Platonov and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. (shrink)