The following is an essay I wrote for a class on Dostoevsky and “Russia and the West” and which I wanted to share here since I have not been writing much else and I am proud of the level of work I put into this thing.

Dostoevsky is considered the eminent Russian Christian author of the 19^th century and among the greats of 19^th century authors generally. What distinguishes Dostoevsky’s Christianity in the hearts and minds of many is how true it seems to the command to be “not of the world” and the theme within his specific sect’s tradition of resisting the “spirit of the age”. This stands in contrast with the religion of Tolstoy who, while remembered by virtually all as a giant of Russian literature, at times even above Fyodor Mikhailovich, yet who’s religious ideas don’t resonate with many mainstream Russian Orthodox thinkers or clergy. To further dig in this idea, I would like to point out that recently glorified Saint Justin Popovich wrote his first doctoral dissertation on “The Philosophy and Religion of Dostoevsky”. In other words, Tolstoy is not considered primarily a religious thinker whereas this is Dostoevsky’s defining trait in the eyes of many.

            Fyodor Mikhailovich is also deeply concerned with how Russia relates to the west, especially in the realm of philosophy. In particular it appears the bulk of his philosophical writings tackle two questions: that of materialist utopianism, and the inherent goodness of man. What is the West’s position on these issues, at least insofar as Dostoevsky perceives them? Firstly, that man is inherently good, and that a utopia can be achieved by solving the material needs of mankind, the later conclusion being derived from the former. Throughout his works, Fyodor works to dismantle these ideas either directly or indirectly primarily through his characters. It is for good reason that some speak of a “walking talking Dostoevsky villain” when poking fun at someone acting in an exaggeratedly evil or despicable manner. Yet in another sense if we take that at face value we may be surprised when we see characters like Demons’s Stavrogin and Crime and Punishment’s Raskolnikov being written as essentially good characters who despite this commit evil acts, even without having anything to gain by it as is the main theme in the later case.

            In fact, we can take these two characters as representing arguments against the two facets of Western Philosophy as Dostoevsky sees it mentioned above. Stavrogin is the answer to the idea that man will be good if he is free of want for food shelter and other necessities of life, since he is the son of a wealthy woman, and is universally loved, thus should theoretically be free from the want that drives people to evil deeds. In Raskolnikov’s case we find someone who is even someone extraordinarily good-natured and likable brutally killing an elderly woman simply to prove to himself that he could do it. This last part is probably the most pervasive among his works, that is the innate human aim for freedom of will, which Dostoevsky identifies as the aim that can drive someone to forsake all his other self-interest.

            In fact, it may be better to word the first question a little bit differently, rather than “is man good?” it is better to ask “is man rational?” Its basically the consensus of western philosophy that man is at least capable of rationality in theory and that if he attains to reason then most if not all of his problems (at least morally) may be solved. By western philosophy I don’t just mean Dostoevsky’s contemporaries either, though certainly people like the utopianists were in his sights, he cuts the tree at the base so to speak when the narrator of Notes from Underground asks in jest, “who was the first to proclaim that man does dirty only because he does not know his real interests?” (Notes From Underground, pg. 20) which directly references Socrates who is recorded by Plato as saying, “No one willingly pursues evil, or at least what he takes to be evil; human nature forbids that; furthermore, faced with the choice of two evils, no one will choose the greater if he can choose the lesser.”

            This question over the root of evil, and whether man would choose it if he knew better, is also a point of contention between the Eastern and Western religious and moral philosophies of the time. I say this in particular respect to Thomism, at the time the supreme view of the Roman Catholic Church, seen by Dostoevsky as the main rival to Orthodoxy globally. Aquinas, in the Summa Theologica says in particular, “For evil is the absence of the good, which is natural and due to a thing. But that anything fail from its natural and due disposition can come only from some cause drawing it out of its proper disposition…But only good can be a cause; because nothing can be a cause except inasmuch as it is a being, and every being, as such, is good,” (I.49) what is being implied here is that evil is the lack of good and not a thing in and of itself. In a sense this “evil as lack” can be seen as aligning with Socrates on this subject. Yet through the underground man Dostoevsky proposes what I’ll call “positive evil” or evil as positively defined. Throughout the first part, the underground man attributes many of his actions as being merely out of wickedness, and “fully understanding their real profit, would put it second place” (NfU pg. 20) thus willing evil even should they know intellectually that what is righteous is their profit (as is the common view of all Christian sects). Why is this basic conception so important to how one renders the Christian faith? Because the first few pages of any bible will explain that man fell from grace not through ignorance but through irresponsible gain of knowledge, specifically knowledge over what is good and evil. Thus, we can see Dostoevsky here as an apologist arguing for what he sees as the biblical view that man fell because he gained the ability to, seeing what is good and evil, willingly choose the evil. Here a good question for further searching (which I have not time to do) would be whether Dostoevsky’s conception of “Positivistic Evil” has its roots in the Eastern Fathers or whether this is his own invention whether based on his interpretation of Scripture or something else.

            Dostoevsky’s second grand grievance with Western Christianity is what he perceives as rampant worldliness. Here we see his criticism strikes out at both Catholicism and Protestantism. St Justin Popovich in his article entitled “Достоевкий о Европе и славянстве” says, “Проблема Европы, по сути – проблема римокатолицизма;” then he goes on to quote Prince Mishkin’s long monologue from The Idiot which he argues is a vehicle for Dostoevsky’s own thoughts on the matter, “Католичество – все равно, что вера нехристианская,…Да, нехристианская, – это во-первых. А во-вторых, католичество римское даже хуже самого атеизма. Атеизм только проповедует нуль, а католицизм идет дальше: он искаженного Христа проповедует… По-моему, римский католицизм даже и не вера, а решительно продолжение западной Римской империи, и в нем все подчинено этой мысли, начиная с веры. Папа захватил землю, земной престол и взял меч” (Popovich, Ch. 11 Par. 6). In Winter Notes on Summer Impressions a similar charge is leveled against Anglicanism in short order, “…an Anglican minister would never visit a poor man…It is a religion of the rich and undisguised at that.” (Winter N. Pg. 51) therein saying Anglicanism is much the same except it is worldly mostly in the sense of money matters.

            All this is but a single angle by which Dostoevsky attacks the notion of the West. People will necessarily become like what they worship, so if they worship Christ then they should at least in some sense become like Christ. From this angle we can see why Fyodor is so extreme in his criticism of the Western religions, going so far as to call even the most similar to Orthodoxy among them plainly a non-Christian faith. It is because in his view the collective western archetypal man worships money and earthly power. He puts it so plainly as to say they literally worship Baal, a biblical pagan god which he associates with money. He was not alone in his parallels to non-Christian religions as his contemporary, St Theophan the Recluse, calls Roman Catholicism, “восстановление язычества наперекор христианству”, since, “На Западе Папа, отпав от Церкви, первый принял корень языческой жизни – гордыню” (Феофан Затворник, свт. Созерцание и размышление: Краткие поучения. М.: Правило веры pg. 282,283). All this is to say that there is, in the minds of Dostoevsky and his contemporaries, a fundamental issue with Western thought that prevents their faiths from approaching true Christianity, and one that isn’t necessarily defined by how they understand the procession of the Holy Spirit or the use of azymes vs leavened bread in the Eucharist. That is to say this issue is, in their minds, deeper than the canons and the theological texts.

            But what is Dostoevsky’s idea of correct Christianity? We see what he hates about the rivals to his native religion of Eastern Orthodoxy, but he speaks very little about how he understands his own faith in contrast, at least in the areas that we generally think of as points of division between Eastern and Western sects. Dostoevsky almost completely avoids the problems of actual theology, never the word filioque slipping from his pen even to lambast it as far as I know. Yet there is one issue on which he sees Russian Orthodoxy as distinct from the other forms of religious thought, “I believe that the most fundamental spiritual quest of the Russian people is their craving for suffering,” (Diary of a Writer, pg. 36). To Dostoevsky the image of Christ is two-fold: the cross and the tomb. Christians regardless of creed all desire the empty tomb, to be resurrected and renewed, to avoid death, that ancient enemy of mankind that Christ is depicted as trampling underfoot in the icon of the Harrowing of Hades. What Dostoevsky wants to emphasize, I think, is the Cross, not as a single past event, but as a signpost showing how we attain to the resurrection that follows, that is by suffering. Indeed, this is plainly biblical, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it,” (Matthew 16:24-25 ESV) and likely the result of his only access to literature being the Russian New Testament during his time in Siberia. To alleviate material suffering is the chief aim of all western philosophy of the time, especially those of the utopian socialists and of the capitalists that would dominate the globe in the following century, a principal problem of western thought to Dostoevsky.

            How this fits into the religious issue is complicated and somewhat uneven. For with Catholicism its not really ingenuous to say that there is no room for suffering or even sanctifying suffering as is central to Dostoevsky’s train of thought. One cannot read John of the Cross, for example, and come away with the impression that the Roman Church only cares about being comfortable and avoiding suffering. This accusation is perhaps more appropriate for certain of the protestants who, to an Orthodox eye, appear to have completely stripped their faith of the ascetic rigor inherent to the ancient church and, if we take a perhaps less charitable interpretation of the Solas, embrace doctrines which require no action at all from them besides mental acknowledgment of God, thus enabling these sort of materialist tendencies. What I have just said is uncharitable and is not a legitimate attack on protestant theology really, but it highlights a certain train of thought I think Dostoevsky engages in frequently. That is to say he speaks of Protestantism and Catholicism not in their “de Jure” state, that is their canons and confessions or official theological positions on issues, but in how they actually operate in the societies of which they are a constituent part, in other words its “de Facto” state. Nothing in the Articles of Faith need to say anything related to the topic for Dostoevsky to plainly call Anglicanism the religion of the rich, because it in his view confesses this by the actions of its ministers and as it serves in its function as practically a religious branch of government in the Empire that worships Baal.

            Actually, this last point is interesting to note with regards to how Dostoevsky uses religion in an extremely broad sense. In Winter Notes on Summer Impressions Dostoevsky basically talks about Anglicanism and the Englishmen as interchangeable pieces, or rather as sides to the same coin. His critiques of Anglican ministers are immediately followed by a jab at England itself, wrapped in all the apocalyptic melodrama of Baal not even demanding worship since he expects it of them regardless (pg. 52). This betrays what I’ll call a “Civilizational View” after Sam Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order from which I get this notion. This sort of view draws up and divides the world along grand multistate groupings called “Civilizations”, that according to Huntington are to a greater or lesser degree identified along broad cultural and especially religious lines. I think that Dostoevsky treats the religions of Protestantism and Catholicism as mere aspects of a greater entity called Western Civilization and indeed, though this has been previously quoted from St Justin’s essay I will reiterate this sentence from The Idiot, “римский католицизм даже и не вера, а решительно продолжение западной Римской империи” here we can read “Western Roman Empire” as being a dramatized reference to the modern West. A rational question would now be “then what of Protestants?” well he addresses this himself in Diary of a Writer where he argues that the Protestants are existentially attached to Catholicism, “were…Catholicism to come to an end, the protestant sects would of necessity be destroyed,” (pg. 193). Thus, it may be more helpful, rather than tackling them as separate with regards to how they relate to Dostoevsky, to say that Dostoevsky is more concerned with they’re being of a holistic “Western Christianity”.

            But does Dostoevsky also treat his own Orthodox Church in this way? By this I mean: does Fyodor think about Orthodoxy, not as positively defined by what it believes about the person of Jesus Christ and the Church as the body thereof, but as a constituent part of an “Orthodox Civilization” centered on Russia that opposes those forces he hates coming from the Occident? Certainly, its conspicuous that when he talks of the spiritual quest of the Russian people, he doesn’t mention Orthodoxy as was quoted before, as though Orthodoxy is somehow just a piece in this network of moving parts defining Russia’s path forward. There’s no mention even of the other Orthodox lands which, being of one church with Russia, should theoretically share a spiritual quest. What of Greece? These are really all just questions for the time being as I’m not prepared to answer, and Dostoevsky speaks little of the Church as an institution regardless. However, I still think it worth recognizing that when he talks of Orthodoxy by name its usually to smugly compare it with the great enemy and precursor to the antichrist Western Christendom, “But does our calm, humble Orthodoxy resemble the judicial, gloomy, plotting, intriguing and cruel clericalism of Europe?” (Diary of a Writer pg. 453). In the previous we see both points I have been expounding regarding the lack of doctrinal comparison and the broad identification between religion and region in the mind of Dostoevsky, which I think is a subject worthy of far greater analysis than I’m able to perform.

            Here I think is a proper point to conclude my musings, as I’ve exhausted already what I am able to definitively say on the matter and am already delving into the realm of speculation. As for what I’d like to pursue going beyond what I have mentioned in this paper is to explore what type of religious genealogy Dostoevsky may have. Are his ideas concerning suffering present in the Russian religious tradition? Maybe even in the Eastern Christian inheritance generally? We can say that probably his cynical views about the inherent badness of the west would be in great contrast to the Eastern Fathers of old, ironically especially around the era of the schism, as the division then was primarily one of pure doctrine and liturgics. About the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father, about the use of azymes in the Eucharist or the forbiddances thereof, etc. Thus, it is certainly worth investigating this: to what extent Dostoevsky’s religious views attempt speak for Orthodoxy at large or whether they are his invention.