The Philosophy of Fyodor Dostoevsky

Poor Folk → Crime and Punishment → Brothers Karamazov

J.A. McCreery

DOSTOEVSKY IS CONSIDERED AMONGST THE GREATEST RUSSIAN NOVELISTS OF ALL TIME. HIS WORKS PRY DEEP INTO THE HUMAN PSYCHE AND ITS INTERPLAY WITH VARIOUS CONTEXTUAL DRIVERS, ULTIMATELY EXAMINING HOW WELL WE TRULY KNOW OURSELVES, WHAT WE REALLY WANT AND HOW WE GO ABOUT CONSIDERING AND ATTAINING SUCH THINGS IN THE TURBULENT MODERN WORLD.

A religious yet troubled upbringing beseeched Dostoevsky, who was born in Moscow in 1821. The son of a successful doctor, he grew up on the hospital grounds where his father worked and was raised generally ‘well-off’ under the Russian Orthodox Church. Nevertheless, tuberculosis took Dostoevsky’s mother in his teen years, and, while Dostoevsky was away studying, his father died without definitive cause – although it was speculated that he was murdered by his own serfs in an act of vengeance. An early life surrounded by the sickness and death of a 19th-century hospital, a strong faith upbringing and the early deaths of both parents, punctuated by the “mysterious, possible murder of his father, likely all culminated into some amount of the early foundation of what would go on to become his unique but tragic voice as a writer.” (Robert Pantano)

As a disillusioned young adult, Doestevsky drifted away from his pious Christian practises as he became involved with the Petrashevsky Circle, a political and cultural group of rebels. His first work was published during this period (1846), receiving widespread critical and commercial success, titled ‘Poor Folk’, it was deemed as Russia’s first social novel. Subsequent novels did not garner such success, and this was partially a cause for his deeper involvement in radical groups of writers and intellectuals, focused on socialist utopianism. Captured in 1849 for such activities, Dostoevsky faced mock execution – a psychological tactic to instill fear in prisoners – and an experience which he later considered seminal for his future works. 

Dostoevsky was thus turned away from utopian ideals, voicing pessimism and realism. His novel ‘Crime and Punishment’ (1866) captures such sentiment, attacking scientific determinism and rationalist utilitarianism. The focalised character Raskolnikov ‘robs’ two old cruel, yet helpless, women under the belief of utilitarianism – that denies the right of useless people to live – and a Nietzschean superman philosophy that affirms the rights of certain exceptional persons to live beyond the limits of traditional ethics. “In either case, the hero discovers that the result of his action is not a peaceful proof of the truth of these philosophies but a profound restless guilt for destroying the two women and a desire for confession and change of life.” (D. Leigh)

The final novel Dostoevsky produced was The ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ (1880), written over the course of two years, it is arguably his crowning achievement and definitely his deepest and most complex examination of human existence. The novel is a murder mystery and a courtroom drama, the action is but a backdrop and beautiful way of imposing the philosophical message of the writer; “the novel argues forcefully that people have free will, whether they wish to or not. That is, every individual is free to choose whether to believe or disbelieve in God, whether to accept or reject morality, and whether to pursue good or evil.” (SN. Guide) 

The depth of Dostoevsky’s work is inextricable from his style. As a novelist, there was no propositionalist burden to work through, you can, in many cases, not scientifically examine existential workings, but you can characterise them, as Dostoevsky did to great effect.