Dostoevsky the Thinker
Language: English
Published by Cornell University Press May 2002, 2002
- Hardcover
- Used
Seller: Eighth Day Books, LLC, Wichita, KS, U.S.A.Eighth Day Books, LLC
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Condition: Used - Good
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Most Dostoevsky criticism proceeds from Dostoevsky the great literary artist to the great philosophical insights that spun out of his creations. James Scanlan has chosen to reverse this sequence and examine Dostoevsky the great thinker whose philosophical insights were expressed in literary modes (''his novels were about ideas as much as about people'' said Victor Terras). Paying special attention not only to the novels but also to Dostoevsky's notebooks and journals, Scanlan formulates the principle focus of his philosophy as ''anthropomorphic, prompted not by abstract cosmological and epistemological concerns but by an obsession with humanity.wthat it means to be a human being.'' Against the rational materialism burgeoning in late nineteenth-century Russia, Dostoevsky posited human beings as ''moral creatures whose standards of both personal conduct and social relationships were provided by the New Testament image of Jesus Christ.'' Scanlan is a fine guide, thoroughly conversant in all the literature, primary and secondary, English and Russian. And he is not uniformly laudatory; Dostoevsky's reactionary and autocratic political views, and especially his Russian messianism, come in for devastating critique. But ultimately Dostoevsky emerges as one who could philosophically and artistically connect the possibility of faith in God with love of the neighbor, and do so in a way that makes his shortcomings an eccentric oddity and his central insights perennially relevant . Binding firm. Inked underlining throughout first 40 pages. Cover shows minimal shelfwear - NO DUST JACKET.…
Seller Inventory # 245583
- Title
- Dostoevsky the Thinker
- Author
- JAMES P. SCANLAN
- Publisher
- Cornell University Press May 2002
- Publication year
- 2002
- Condition
- Good
- Dust jacket
- No Jacket
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0801439949
- ISBN 13
- 9780801439940
- Seller catalogs
- Essays, Criticism & Memoir
For all his distance from formal philosophy, Fyodor Dostoevsky was one of the most philosophical of writers. In works from fictional masterpieces to little-known nonfiction prose, he grappled with the ultimate questions about the nature of humankind. His novels are peopled by characters who dramatize the fierce debates that preoccupied the Russian intelligentsia during the second half of the nineteenth century.
What was the philosophy of Dostoevsky? How does reading this literary giant from a new perspective add to our understanding of him and of Russian culture? In this remarkable book, a leading authority on Russian thought presents the first comprehensive account of Dostoevsky's philosophical outlook.
Drawing on the writer's novels and, more so than other scholars, on his essays, letters, and notebooks, James P. Scanlan examines Dostoevsky's beliefs. The nonfiction pieces make possible new interpretations of some of the author's most controversial works of fiction, including Notes from Underground.
Dostoevsky's thought, Scanlan explains, was shaped above all by its anthropocentrism, its struggle to define the essence of humanity. All of the subjects the writer addressed―including religion, ethics, aesthetics, history, the state, and the Russian nation―provided clues to the mystery of what it means to be human. Scanlan demonstrates conclusively that Dostoevsky's philosophical views were more solidly grounded and systematic than have been imagined and cannot be dismissed as the notions of an irrationalist.
Scanlan also discusses the flaws and weaknesses in Dostoevsky's thought, in particular his controversial notion that Russia is the one "God-bearing" nation. This belief―that Russia has a messianic role to play in world history―has gained renewed popularity among its citizens, for whom Dostoevsky has long been regarded as a thinker of supreme importance.
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About the Author
James P. Scanlan is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at The Ohio State University. He is author of Marxism in the USSR: A Critical Survey of Current Soviet Thought and editor most recently of Russian Thought after Communism: The Recovery of a Philosophical Heritage.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
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