At the core of Dostoevskij's philosophy and theology lies a concept according to which the Truth is antinomical: it contains both a thesis and its antithesis without expectation of synthesis. This concept can be traced to Eastern Patristics. After Dostoevskij, the theory of antinomies was elaborated by 20th century Russian religious thinkers such as Pavel Florenskij, Sergej Bulgakov, Nikolaj Berdjaev, Semën Frank, and Vladimir Losskij. Their ideas help us to understand that Dostoevskij's dialogism, made famous in its secular guise by (...) Bakhtin, has a theological underpinning. Dostoevskij's exposition of conflicting truths should therefore be seen not as a case of irresolvable contradiction or paradox but as an organic wholeness. (shrink)

At the core of Dostoevskij's philosophy and theology lies a concept according to which the Truth (Istina) is antinomical: it contains both a thesis and its antithesis without expectation of synthesis. This concept can be traced to Eastern Patristics. After Dostoevskij, the theory of antinomies was elaborated by 20th century Russian religious thinkers such as Pavel Florenskij, Sergej Bulgakov, Nikolaj Berdjaev, Semën Frank, and Vladimir Losskij. Their ideas help us to understand that Dostoevskij's dialogism, made famous in its secular guise (...) by Bakhtin, has a theological underpinning. Dostoevskij's exposition of conflicting truths should therefore be seen not as a case of irresolvable contradiction or paradox but as an organic wholeness. (shrink)

This is a review essay of Lagasnerie, Judge and Punish and Fassin, The Will to Punish. It explores the way that these two books challenge conventional thinking about the relationship between crime and punishment.

This book is not only a major twentieth-century contribution to Dostoevsky’s studies, but also one of the most important theories of the novel produced in our century. As a modern reinterpretation of poetics, it bears comparison with Aristotle.“Bakhtin’s statement on the dialogical nature of artistic creation, and his differentiation of this from a history of monological commentary, is profoundly original and illuminating. This is a classic work on Dostoevsky and a statement of importance to critical theory.” Edward Wasiolek“Concentrating on the (...) particular features of ‘Dostoevskian discourse,’ how Dostoevsky structures a hero and a plot, and what it means to write dialogically, Bakhtin concludes with a major theoretical statement on dialogue as a category of language. One of the most important theories of the novel in this century.” The Bloomsbury Review. (shrink)

Malcolm Jones, the author of an earlier, widely read book on Dostoyevsky, here approaches his subject afresh in the light of recent developments in Dostoyevsky studies and in critical theory. He takes as his starting point the vexed question of Dostoyevsky's 'fantastic realism', which he attempts to redefine. Accepting Bakhtin's reading of Dostoyevsky in its essentials, he seeks out its weaknesses and develops it in new directions. Taking well-known texts by Dostoyevsky in turn, Professor Jones illustrates aspects of their multivoicedness. (...) In Part 1, he concentrates on the internal, emotional and intellectual, reversals of 'the underground'. In Part 2, he focuses on the disruptive and subversive aspects of the relationships between characters and between text and reader. In Part 3 he examines textual multivoicedness in its diachronic aspect, showing some of the ways in which Dostoyevsky's texts echo and exploit the voices of precursors. (shrink)

The theme "Dostoevsky and Nietzsche" is one of the most important for understanding the meaning of the abrupt changes that took place in European philosophy and culture at the turn of the nineteenth century. This epoch is still a puzzle: it was a flourishing period for the creative powers of European humanity and at the same time the beginning of the tragic "breakdown" of history that gave birth to two world wars and unprecedented calamities, the consequences of which Europe has (...) been unable to overcome, as shown by the uninterrupted decline of traditional culture, which began at the end of World War II and still continues today. In this epoch, as in the eighteenth century, which culminated in the Great French Revolution, philosophy came out of the study onto the street and became a practical force that steadily undermines the existing order of things; in a certain sense it was precisely philosophy that called forth the catastrophic events of the first half of the twentieth century, which had as never before a metaphysical subtext. At the center of the upheaval that engulfed absolutely all forms of European civilization and culminated, at the beginning of the twentieth century, with the rise of nonclassical science, "nonclassical" art, and "nonclassical" philosophy, was the problem of man, his essence, the meaning of his existence, and the problem of man's relations with society, the world, and the Absolute. It is no coincidence that M. Scheler used the term "anthropological turn" to describe the changes that occurred in philosophy in this epoch; what had long been implicit in philosophy and art and in paradoxical fashion had become apparent even in the new scientific theories, was now made clear: man is not a tiny "atom" in boundless and alien being, but the starting point for all suppositions, the primary field of meanings from which any philosophical or scientific "questioning" must depart. (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)