The battle lines in the supposed war between reason and tradition, science and faith, in the 18th and 19th centuries are a fitting entry point into the life and work of Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Russian novelist viewed the world in cosmic terms. Philosophical irrationalism plays a vital role in most of his novels, as does an ongoing ideological showdown between reason and faith. For Dostoevsky, reason could never fully explain human existence. In a letter to his brother Mikhail in 1838, Dostoevsky claimed that “To know nature, the soul, God, love…These things are known by the heart, not by the mind.” The “mind is material faculty.”
Dostoevsky published his debut novel, Poor Folk, in 1846. The tension in his writing between the spiritual and the material was still in flux at this early stage of his career. He was still gleaning ideas from friends and foes in the St Petersburg literati, especially the Petrashevsky Circle. This was a small gathering of enthusiastic writers and critics who met weekly to debate literature, philosophy, politics, and social equality.
A point the late Joseph Frank continually stresses in Lectures on Dostoevsky is that early Russian literature was mostly theological—controlled by religious ideals derived from Byzantine Christianity. That changed in the late 17th century with Peter the Great. As part of a modernizing project for the Russian empire, the Tsar believed the Russian nobility and literate class should reeducate themselves according to Western standards. A split thus occurred in Russian society between the secular literary ruling class and God-fearing illiterate peasants.
This caused a schism within the Russian intelligentsia, too. The rational materialists became known as Westernizers. They mainly spoke French, held their own language and traditions in contempt, and worshiped at the altar of European culture. The Slavophils sought to link Russia’s future with its early historical values. Namely: its Christian faith. They believed Europe was another fallen Rome and noted the glaring similarities: spiritual unity being sacrificed for self-interested ego-centric decadence, moral disorder, and perverted sensuality. Dostoevsky began his career as a skeptical Westernizer. But he eventually became a committed Slavophil.
That spiritual and cultural identity was solidified in a road-to-Damascus moment, which arrived suddenly in 1849. Along with the rest of the Petrashevsky Circle, Dostoevsky was arrested. This was part of a larger plan by Nicholas I to suppress intellectual freedom across Russian society, which he feared would threaten the social order.
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