The novel The Brothers Karamazov shows the spiritual rebirth of man and society. At first the world of the town Skotoprigon'evsk is depicted as heathen and even demonic, where everyone is in search of earthly justice, forgetting about love and losing a connection to God; here the theme of orphanhood is dominant. The second half of the novel is dominated by the image of the Holy Trinity, the symbol of mutual love and unity. The human world, according to (...) Dostoevskij, cannot be divided into adults and children, the guilty and the innocent, insofar as all can freely participate in the redemption of humanity's sin (like Christ, the paragon of innocence). If all people are God's children, death does not have power over them. Upon completing his final novel Dostoevkskij wrote: "my Hosanna has passed through a big crucible of doubt." "The Brothers Karamazov" is Dostoevskij's Hosanna. (shrink)

The novel The Brothers Karamazov shows the spiritual rebirth of man and society. At first the world of the town Skotoprigon'evsk is depicted as heathen and even demonic, where everyone is in search of earthly justice, forgetting about love and losing a connection to God; here the theme of orphanhood is dominant. The second half of the novel is dominated by the image of the Holy Trinity, the symbol of mutual love and unity. The human world, according to (...) Dostoevskij, cannot be divided into adults and children, the guilty and the innocent, insofar as all can freely participate in the redemption of humanity's sin. If all people are God's children, death does not have power over them. Upon completing his final novel Dostoevkskij wrote: "my Hosanna has passed through a big crucible of doubt." "The Brothers Karamazov" is Dostoevskij's Hosanna. (shrink)

This article offers a reflection upon The Brothers Karamazov, interpreted as a theological and philosophical contribution to the debate over humanity’s practical relationship to suffering and vulnerability. The relationship is practical insofar as the questions with which Dostoevsky struggles all relate to human agency: How should we live in the continual presence of suffering? The article reconstructs a theology of suffering in The Brothers Karamazov as a form of anti-theodicy. Further, the theology of suffering in The (...) Brothers Karamazov is counterposed to Leo Tolstoy’s novella Hadji Murat. How does Dostoevsky’s “theology of suffering” fare in a comparison with one of the most perceptive portraits of power and powerlessness in world literature? In the proposed reading of the story, the elderly Tolstoy seeks to challenge the Christian theology that views responsibility for suffering and injustice primarily as an individual struggle with the metaphysical conditions of existence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:MONADOLOGY OF 7HE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Michael Wreen THE WORLD AND THOUGHT of Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov are not easily entered into. There is something, some barrier, which seems to hinder, if not prevent, a feeling of belonging, a feeling of ease, citizenship, and camaraderie. What is it diat holds die reader back, what makes him feel particularly Ul-at-ease in the world of The (...) class='Hi'>Brothers Karamazov, and especially in die presence of the Karamazovs? The answer is that the world of the novel resembles the world of Leibniz's Monadology, a world so different from the world of our everyday conceptions, and so different from the world of most novels, that the reader is left "freefloating," so to speak, until he, as a spirit, has been accommodated and then assimilated by it. To begin with, there is the matter of setting. There are practically no landscapes in The Brothers Karamazov and no extended descriptions of nature. Secondly, buildings, both their interiors and exteriors, are barely sketched, and when described at all, it is usually the psychological state that the human design excites ("It was an odd arrangement ofrooms") that is important, and not the design or structure itself. Objects existing in their own right and "pure surfaces" are not to be found. The one building (with grounds) that is described at length is the monastery, but even here description is used symbolically, as a reflection ofthe spiritual states ofthe monks and The Elder. Similarly, clothing exists only as a clue to the psychological or spiritual state of its wearer. Dmitri's rag with the 1,500 roubles is the analogue of his condition, just as Smerdyakov's hoped-for foppish apparel is of his. 318 Michael Wreen319 Still more unusual is the infrequent mention of two of the biological necessities of life, food and sleep. Food seems to be something that the characters can take or leave, but more often than not, simply forget about; the stomach does not seem to exist for any except one of them. Once or twice the characters do eat, but eating seems to be an accidental side-effect of spending time with, a spiritual infection caught from, the thoroughly carnal Fyodor. The monks, it must be admitted, are concerned with food — though it would be more accurate to say diat they are concerned with die lack of it, or even more strongly, widi maintaining the lack of it. As for sleep, collapse from complete exhaustion (from sustained physical exertion and/or emotional excitement, or from orgiastic debauchery), sickness, and brain fever seem to be preferred to normal sleep. Days are long— so long, in fact, that night is more like an extension of day dian night. Another descriptive element which warrants notice is the physical appearances and personal histories of die dramatic personae. The truth, as far as physical appearances are concerned, is clear and simple: everyone, with the exception ofIvan, is described once and briefly. In the first thirtyfive pages or so, most of the major personages are introduced, "outfitted" with noses, eyes, ears, bearings, statures, mannerisms, traits, etc., and — here we come to the second aspect noted above — then given summary histories. After that, diey are set in dramatic motion. The opening chapters are descriptive and expository, a report of what was and is the case as far as mise en scene and physical equipage are concerned; and except for brief moments when the never-named narrator indulges in short "sermons" about man or God, the mode of narration never returns to descriptive exposition, but remains dramatic and focused on the interplay and clash of personality. Characters do act and think for themselves, and we see diem directly in the acting out of dieir lives. A bit of background information having been provided, we don't have to be told anydiing more; we can observe for ourselves, from the inside. The catalogue offacts is discarded, and in its place is put the experience of events and feelings. The objective, external perspective yields to the internal, subjective perspective, and the reader crosses over from the familiar and cozy world of Dickensian externality to the strange and disconcerting world ofDostoyevskian intemality... (shrink)

The essay examines the three main epiphanic experiences in The Brothers Karamazov and shows how Dostoevskij's treatment of these experiences may offer a guide to spiritual renewal. The three experiences are Alësha's vision of the resurrected Zosima and transfigured Christ, Dmitrij's vision of the suffering babe, and Ivan's vision of the devil (which serves as a counter example to the first two). By examining the content of each of these visions, as well as the parallels and variations in (...) the scenes leading up to these visions, this essay seeks to explore Dostoevskij's understanding of transformational revelatory experience. (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 (...) class='Hi'>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)

The essay examines the three main epiphanic experiences in The Brothers Karamazov and shows how Dostoevskij’s treatment of these experiences may offer a guide to spiritual renewal. The three experiences are Alësha’s vision of the resurrected Zosima and transfigured Christ, Dmitrij’s vision of the suffering babe, and Ivan’s vision of the devil (which serves as a counter example to the first two). By examining the content of each of these visions, as well as the parallels and variations in (...) the scenes leading up to these visions, this essay seeks to explore Dostoevskij’s understanding of transformational revelatory experience. (shrink)

For Sergey Khoruzhy, Russian philosophy, which is characterized by religiosity, takes the perfect expression of the Orthodox truth as the ultimate pursuit. He believes that the Russian philosophy that truly embodies the “Russian mind” is hidden in the practice of the Russian Orthodox ascetic tradition, which contains not only the image of an ascetic Christian but also reflects the ontological state of being and the ontological intuition of being human in a universal sense. On the basis of the ascetic practice, (...) Khoruzhy constructs three anthropological forms shaped by different forces at different levels: 1) the person who unfolds to another being (God), the ascetic, 2) the “average” person who unfolds in the unconsciousness (the Freudian person), 3) the person who is shaped by modern technological trends such as computer technology, genetic engineering, and other technologies. Such a unique anthropological framework also offers the possibility of reinterpreting and analyzing the role of Elder Zossima, a typical figure in Dostoevsky’s masterpiece “The Brothers Karamazov”. (shrink)

This new edition presents _The Grand Inquisitor_ together with the preceding chapter, _Rebellion,_ and the extended reply offered by Dostoevsky in the following sections, entitled _The Russian Monk._ By showing how Dostoevsky frames the Grand Inquisitor story in the wider context of the novel, this edition captures the subtlety and power of Dostoevsky's critique of modernity as well as his alternative vision of human fulfillment.

Ivan Karamazov is frequently used, and misused, in discussions concerning the problem of evil. The purpose of this article is to correct some pervasive misinterpretations of Ivan’s statement, as found in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. I criticise some common misinterpretations, as exemplified in the theodical work of Marilyn Adams and John Hick, as well as the more nuanced interpretation of Stewart Sutherland. Though Sutherland’s interpretation is the strongest, it nevertheless misses the mark in identifying Ivan as a (...) positivist. I argue that Ivan Karamazov is not a positivist, but a romantic, and a hopeless one at that. We should, therefore, not read Ivan as stating an argument for the non-existence of God, but instead see him as a representative of a very particular and robust form of non-cognitive atheism. (shrink)

I interpret Dostoevskij’s religious concepts in terms of mythogenesis and mythopoesis. Dostoevskij’s religious concepts arose on the basis both of his personal emotional experience and of the discourse of popular Orthodoxy. They demonstrate the antinomial nature of Russian spirituality, and are typified by his conception of the family, which illustrates the communal basis of the individual personality. The antimomial idea of the family is most fully developed in Dostoevskij’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, in which the four models of (...) fatherhood correspond to Isaac the Syrian’s concepts of physical, spiritual, mental and divine fatherhood. (shrink)

In The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan is said to have held the view, at least at one time, that there is no God, and that, as a result, morality as it existed before this knowledge was achieved no longer has any force or authority. Ivan believed that God or the belief in God was the source of authority for the “old morality” and that the man who recognizes that there is no God “may lightheartedly overstep all the barriers” of (...) that morality and construct a new one. The question in which I am interested is concerned with the sense or senses in which God might be considered to be the source of the authority of morality. In considering this question, I will consider three related views: the view that God is the criterion of moral goodness and makes certain character traits and qualities good by being himself the exemplar of goodness and by esteeming certain character traits and qualities; and that God is the criterion of moral rightness and makes certain actions right by commanding or desiring us to do them, and others wrong by commanding us not to do them; or, alternatively, that the criterion of moral rightness is what God would command or desire us to do; the view that God’s existence is necessary for moral utterances to make proper sense; and the view that the assumption of God’s existence is necessary for moral arguments to have any power to move those to whom they are addressed. I will argue that each of these is incorrect. (shrink)

In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky illustrates that encounters with evil do not solely impact agents’ beliefs about God (or God’s existence). Evil impacts people on an emotional level as well. Authors like Hasker and van Inwagen sometimes identify the emotional impact of evil with the “existential” problem of evil. For better or worse, the existential version of the problem is often set aside in contemporary philosophical discussions. In this essay, I rely on Robert Roberts’ account of emotions as (...) “concern-based construals” to show that theistic philosophers can effectively address the existential problem (and so, the problem should not be set aside). In fact, addressing the emotional impact of evil is crucial, I argue, given that resolving just the impact of evil on agents’ beliefs about God constitutes an incomplete response to the problem of evil. (shrink)

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)

Anticipating Mikhail Bakhtin’s appreciation for the unfinalizability of Fedor Dostoevskij’s universe, prominent Protestant theologian Karl Barth celebrates the Russian novelist’s presentation of “the impenetrable ambiguity of human life” characteristic of both the ending of Dostoevsky’s novels and Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Barth’s unique reading of The Brothers Karamazov not only demonstrates the barrenness of the “theocratic dream” but also complements Bakhtin’s discussion of polyphony with an explicitly theological dimension by focusing on the dialogue between Creator and the (...) created. Dostoevsky’s prophetic voice provides Barth with a poetic expression of the divine command that highlights the ethical dimension inherent in every theological choice. (shrink)

Troubling Reason: Notes from Underground Revisited -- Love, Attention and Teaching: The Brothers Karamazov -- Passion as a Quality of Education: The Death of Ivan Ilyich -- Education, Rationality and the Meaning of Life: Tolstoy's Confession -- Pedagogy of the Gaze: An Educational Reading of Lolita -- Education Arrayed in Time: Nabokov and the Problem of Time and Space -- Conclusion: Literature, Philosophy and Education.

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)

The goal of this essay is to show the compatibility between two currents in Dostoevsky's world, namely, the religious and the nihilistic. Based on Nietzsche's theory of nihilism and Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche, I introduce a dynamic model – reactive nihilism – a destructive force that annihilates fading values to clear the way for the advent of a new value. Through the textual analysis, primarily focusing on the religious dimension presented by saintly characters and biblical intertextuality in The Brothers (...) Karamazov, this essay argues that Dostoevsky's two trends do not conflict at all, but express in a common dynamic model, that is reactive nihilism. (shrink)

Hegel and Nietzsche stood opposed to the monastic tradition which they saw as based upon a denial of the intrinsic value of this life. Both sought to install eternity in this life and not seek for it in an afterlife. Central to both, and contrary to common caricatures of Hegel, is the notion of the heart, the aspect of total subjective participation, which is the locus of a fully concrete reason understood in Hegel’s sense. It is also central to Dostoevsky’s (...) Brothers Karamazov where the heart of Fr. Zosima, while yet rooted in the encompassing eternality of God, overcomes the contempt for the earth of Fr. Ferapont and leads Alyosha to embrace his vocation in the world. Hegel developed the fundamental categories that allows us to comprehend the situation. (shrink)

Hegel and Nietzsche stood opposed to the monastic tradition which they saw as based upon a denial of the intrinsic value of this life. Both sought to install eternity in this life and not seek for it in an afterlife. Central to both, and contrary to common caricatures of Hegel, is the notion of the heart, the aspect of total subjective participation, which is the locus of a fully concrete reason understood in Hegel’s sense. It is also central to Dostoevsky’s (...) Brothers Karamazov where the heart of Fr. Zosima, while yet rooted in the encompassing eternality of God, overcomes the contempt for the earth of Fr. Ferapont and leads Alyosha to embrace his vocation in the world. Hegel developed the fundamental categories that allows us to comprehend the situation. (shrink)

The article aims to provide a semiotic interpretation of the sign of the Ecclesiastical Court within the legal framework from temporal and spatial perspectives. The starting point of the research is the idea that the history of the Russian Ecclesiastical Court is inextricably linked to the history of Russian society and secular court. Consideration of the pre-revolutionary ecclesiastical and secular law helps us explore principles of the ecclesiastical proceedings and organization, identify contradictions in understanding modern Ecclesiastical Court. Its sign is (...) not only limited to the legal interpretation. In his novel The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky F. M. gave the sign of the Ecclesiastical Court symbolic meaning and, thus, expanded it beyond the existing legal framework. The Ecclesiastical Court is one of the symbols of Russian spirituality which is reflected in the concept of “Russian soul”. Rational elements of the sign of Ecclesiastical Court as well as its sensual and metaphorical components, are analyzed using the category of Truth. Clearly, the Cross is sign-symbol for Christianity. But if applied to the concept of Ecclesiastical Court, the Orthodox Cross becomes a sign-index. As a result, several semantically heterogeneous meanings of the sign of Ecclesiastical Court are revealed and described. (shrink)

A MAN IS FREE AS HE IS THE IMAGE OF GODLY FREEDOM. FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY’S FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT FREEDOM. The article presents Fyodor Dostoevsky’s considerations of freedom based on both The Brothers Karamazov and The Idiot. The writer shows, that dealing with own freedom is one of the greatest tasks in human life and man's future fate depends wholly on how he copes with this task. Freedom is a fundamental concept in a philosophical anthropology of the Russian novelist. According (...) to his grasp of the problem of evil this is a man, who appears the source of all misery, which he brings upon himself, among which not atheism but false understanding of God is the greatest one. (shrink)

The essay examines the Underground Man's ambivalent position in Dostoevskij's hierarchy of values in light of the Nietzschean concept of ressentiment To elucidate the problem of free will in Notes from Underground, I propose to supplement Nietzsche's theory with the concept of ressentiment as developed by Max Scheler, whose endorsement of Christian love as a means of overcoming ressentiment suggests an affinity with Dostoevskij's own deeply religious worldview. With the help of Schelerian phenomenology, I read the novel as an early (...) statement of the problem of Christian freedom in Dostoevskij's oeuvre. Like the "Pro and Contra" section of The Brothers Karamazov, Notes from Underground turns our attention to the "costs" of the Christian ideal: in a world exposed to the ultimate horizon of desire through Christ, those lacking the serenity of faith may be doomed to the merciless torment of ressentiment. (shrink)

Analyzing the content of the parable of the Grand Inquisitor from Fyodor M. Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov allows us to identify the root ideas and consequences of a program for reorgani...

Dostoevsky is one of Russia's greatest novelists and a major influence in modern debates about religion, both in Russia and the West. This collection brings together Western and Russian perspectives on the issues raised by the religious element in his work. The aim of this collection is not to abstract Dostoevsky's religious 'teaching' from his literary works, but to explore the interaction between his Christian faith and his writing. The essays cover such topics as temptation, grace and law, Dostoevsky's use (...) of the gospels and hagiography, Trinitarianism, and the Russian tradition of the veneration of icons, as well as reading aloud, and dialogism. In addition to an exploration of the impact of the Christian tradition on Dostoevsky's major novels, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov, there are also discussions of lesser-known works such as The Landlady and A Little Boy at Christ's Christmas Tree. (shrink)

Wittgenstein and Dostoevsky both ridicule a hypostasizing and fetishizing picture of interiority: viewing sensations and intentions like discrete material objects. The symbols for this misleading view in their respective works are a beetle and a sachet containing thousand five hundred roubles. The beetle in the box passage in the Philosophical Investigations discredits a Cartesian picture of pain as akin to a thing-like entity. The sachet in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov represents Dmitry’s intention to be honourable. Dostoevsky achieves a (...) perspicuous view of entangled webs of intentions, as opposed to labelling them like object-like entities. I show that Wittgenstein’ account of first-personal thought, including intentions, is not based on the Cartesian dualism of the inner and the outer, the mind and the body. To underscore my argumentation, I refer to The Brothers Karamazov, one of Wittgenstein’s favourite novels. I especially focus on Dmitry’s sachet, which inspired Wittgenstein’s beetle in the box example. I show parallels both in content and in form of Wittgenstein’s and Dostoevsky’s approach to intention as a species of first-personal thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dostoevsky and Schiller:National Renewal Through Aesthetic EducationSusan McReynoldsDostoevsky's novels pivot upon scenes of spiritual transformation, moments of revelation that resolve dilemmas for which no logical solution can be found. Raskolnikov, for example, analyzes his crime from philosophical and sociological angles until he almost dies; he is saved by his dream of the plague and by the image of Sonia's face. When insight and progress come to Dostoevsky's fictional characters, (...) they come as dream, memory, and rapture before images of beauty and suffering. The choice between spiritual and logical solutions confronting Dostoevsky's characters is also a choice between Russia and the West. The rationalism and corollary doctrine of egoism that drives characters like Svidrigailov, Stavrogin, and Ivan Karamazov to madness and death are clearly associated in Dostoevsky's novels with Western philosophy. The ability to surrender to the beneficial power of images is associated with characters like Dmitry Karamazov, who is able to accept the primacy of spiritual truth—the truth of his need for expiation—over the fact of his legal innocence of his father's murder. The breadth of spirit that renders Dmitry receptive to the truth revealed in his dream image of the suffering child is clearly identified in The Brothers Karamazov as a distinctively Russian national trait.The contrast between reason, death, and the West, on the one hand, and receptiveness to imagistic truth, salvation, and Russia, on the other, [End Page 353] drives the plots of Dostoevsky's novels. This familiar feature of Dostoevsky's art is first articulated in texts unfamiliar to most readers; the historical essays of the early 1860s that were among his first published works after his return from exile. In 1849, Dostoevsky was arrested as a member of the Petrashevsky Circle, an association dedicated to disseminating the tenets of Western socialism in Russia. For his participation in the Circle, Dostoevsky was initially condemned to death; the sentence was commuted to four years of hard labor in Siberian prison camp, to be followed by an indefinite period of military service in Siberian exile.When Dostoevsky returned to St. Petersburg and public life in 1860, he and his older brother Mikhail launched the journal Time. Mikhail served as editor. Dostoevsky would publish The Insulted and Injured and Notes from the House of the Dead in its pages, in addition to numerous essays dedicated to contemporary literature and events. The essays on Russia and Europe published in Time were a creative workshop in which some basic features of his later novels—most notably the contrast between Western positivism and Russian spirituality, conceived as the capacity to embrace imagistic revelations of the truth—were first developed. The pressure of Dostoevsky's developing artistic craft is clearly apparent in these non-fictional texts from the early 1860s, which narrate modern Russian and European history as a story structured by a dual plot of death and redemption.Before Dostoevsky wrote novels structured around the contrast between characters like Dmitry and Ivan Karamazov, he wrote essays structured around the contrast between Russia and Western nations like France and England. Before Crime and Punishment portrayed Raskolnikov's resurrection as the surrender to images offering glimpses of something that eludes rational analysis, Dostoevsky's essays in Time predicted national renewal for Russia through her embrace of the truths conveyed by the images of fine art. Some essays in Time compose a plot of national rebirth through the effects of artistic images for Russia, but others admonish readers with what Dostoevsky believed would be the terrible consequences of positivism for the West. Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, published in Time in 1863, casts France and England as mortally ill victims of a materialist worldview that can only grasp the challenges of modernity as scientific and political problems. The spiritual solutions that will be revealed to Russia through images of beauty, Dostoevsky warns, will elude nations ensnared in rational approaches to their problems. [End Page 354]Throughout his post-exile life, Dostoevsky believed that political improvement results from changes in the moral condition of individuals, inner changes that are catalyzed by images, not reached through rational deliberation. In 1861, he writes of the Imperial edict... (shrink)

Part of the greatness of great literature consists in the profound, philosophic ideas the works contain. These ideas may not be unknown to philosophy but, when rendered in literary form, they gain an aesthetic force often lacking in the philosophic treatise with its careful train of reasoning.In this insightful study, Burton Porter explores the philosophic content of some outstanding literary works, analyzing and evaluating the ideas that drive the narrative.Porter first examines the concept of free will and determinism in Melville's (...) Moby Dick, placing the quest for the white whale within the context of foreordination, hubris, prophecy, and defiance of divine power. Connections are also drawn to Euripides' Medea and Shakespeare's King Lear as well as the Old Testament.The good and the right are traced in Anouilh's Antigone and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, showing the philosophic antagonisms in the literature and in the conflicted minds of the authors.Voltaire' Candide and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov are then explored insofar as they express the problem of evil--the tension between human suffering on earth and belief in a benevolent, wise, almighty God.Finally, the nature of the self is investigated in Rilke's The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge and Kafka's The Metamorphosis, focusing on identity and the mind-body problem.Porter makes philosophy come alive by showing its expression in art and revealing the depth of ideas that make literature compelling.Burton Porter (Springfield, MA) is currently professor of philosophy at Western New England College and a visiting professor of philosophy at Mt. Holyoke College. He is the author or editor of numerous books including Philosophy Through Fiction and Film, The Voice of Reason, and Reasons For Living. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Walter Glannon WHAT LITERARY THEORY MISSES IN WITTGENSTEIN Wittgenstein's stock is rising in literary criticism. The market value of expressions such as "language games" and "form oflife" is increasing in that they seem to lend themselves to the notion of interpretive communities endorsed by diose of reader-response persuasion.1 Wittgenstein's style is also apparently at a premium, in light of a recent attempt by a proponent of deconstruction to relate (...) the philosopher's writing to that movement's use of rhetorical strategies in dealing with texts.2 There are affinities between Wittgenstein's repudiation (in the Investigations and the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics) of the metaphysical realism in the Tractatus and die arguments from reader-response critics against the notion of unmediated facts, as well as the rejection of the metaphysics of presence by deconstructionists. All diree oppose the idea that truth and falsity are conferred on our statements about the world by properties independent of diese statements. Insofar as these two critical schools are concerned primarily with language, they share Wittgenstein's aspiration to "bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use" (PI, I, § 116), for we can arrest the tendency to postulate objective, unmediated facts by "looking into the workings of our language" (PI, I, § 109). Moreover, Wittgenstein avoids psychology which involves the mental faculties. Presumably, this puts him at one with die concerted effort of many critics to rid texts of die author and with it the problem of intentionality. At first blush, then, the relation between Wittgenstein and literary criticism appears to be an attractive one. Yet Wittgenstein's antirealism does not militate against his passion for truth, that is, his intense desire to achieve complete understanding in the areas ofphilosophy that vexed him most.3 Nor does it debar him from thinking about the inexpressible realm 263 264Philosophy and Literature of the mystical, since, despite his concern for language, Wittgenstein never ceased being attracted to "things that cannot be put into words" (TLP, 6.522). This is not at all congenial to die purpose ofliterary theory, which admits ofno such shadowy domain beyond words and our linguistic practices. Indeed, I shall illustrate that Wittgenstein's resdess search for truth, spiritual concerns, and the dialectical structure of his works for the most part put him radically at odds with a critical enterprise whose aversion to truth and penchant for rhetorical analysis and conventions blinds it to both his view of literature and his aim in doing philosophy. I Since die advent of the New Criticism, literary theory has in great measure addressed itself to die discourse ramer than the story in texts. With the focus on literature as a rhetorical construct, more traditional humanistic interpretations have been excised. A more recent development of this shift to the discursive side of diings has been the effort to blur the distinction between literature and philosophy.4 With neidier discipline having a privileged status, both have been reduced to a textual discourse with no lines ofdemarcation, a reduction diat is at variance with Wittgenstein on two counts. First, he compartmentalized literature and philosophy as having distinct purposes: the literary works that interested him were stories ofmoral import; philosophy was to be practiced for the sake of clarity in thought. To the extent diat such clarity, if attainable, pointed toward an ethical dimension that lay beyond the bounds of language, literature and philosophy for him did have a common goal; but the paths leading to it were distinct. Second, and more importantly, Wittgenstein had no concern for the discourse of the literature diat he read. Rather, it was the moral import of the stories that attracted him. Most noteworthy on this score were the writings of Tolstoy, who had a profound influence on Wittgenstein's view oflife, and Dostoevsky.5 Wittgenstein often recommended Tolstoy's Twenty-three Tales to his friends, and while a schoolmaster in Lower Austria from 1920 to 1926, he constantly read The Brothers Karamazov, doing so aloud on one occasion in die presence of the village priest. He was especially impressed with Dostoevsky's character the Elder Zossima, "who could see into people's hearts and direct diem" (Rhees... (shrink)