Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

Archive

Volume 4 Number 3, December 2003

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Scanlan, James P., Dostoyevsky: The Thinker. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2002.  251 pp., ISBN: 0-8014-3994-9. $29.95 cloth.

Reviewed by

Sarah B. Cunningham

 

Scanlan’s study of Dostoyevsky examines all aspects of Dostoyevsky’s thought, exploring the immortality of the soul, an objection to rational egoism, ethics and altruism, aesthetics, advocacy of a Christian utopia and, finally, a powerful nationalism. Scanlan praises the dialectical method that allows Dostoyevsky to develop complex, original responses to the age-old question “what is man?”  For example, Dostoyevsky’s rejection of Western individualism creates an impassioned nationalist position.  As a result, Scanlan argues for Dostoyevsky as a dynamic thinker intrinsically linked to the political, religious, ethical and aesthetic debates raging in late nineteenth century Russia. 

 

This book will serve as a valuable, if not, indispensable resource for scholars in literature, philosophy, history and political science by providing a portrait of Dostoyevsky’s philosophical strengths and weaknesses.  Given the philosophy profession’s affection toward Dostoyevsky’s works, it is rather amazing that such a study has not yet been undertaken.  We should thank Scanlan not only for following through on this endeavor, but also for doing so with extensive references to Dostoyevsky’s notebooks and letters.  Scanlan, a force in Russian studies, co-editor of the expansive, three-volume work on Russian Philosophy, writes with extensive knowledge of Russian intellectual movements. Delightfully, however, Scanlan’s book will also be accessible to the generalist and the Dostoyevsky buff seeking more information. 

Scanlan openly confronts the challenge of compiling the philosophical views of a writer by recognizing that this text may be “unsettling to both writers and philosophers.” Scanlan’s reading is not literary and he does not interpret symbols and metaphors.  Rather, he sticks to the philosophical tenets presented by the main characters and the supporting material in Dostoyevsky’s “capacious notebooks.” (3) While the typical reader of this text may be familiar with the novels, the material Scanlan collects from Dostoyevsky’s notebooks provides us with direct insight into the author’s belief system. Organized philosophically, the text includes chapters on matter and spirit, rational egoism, altruism, aesthetics, utopianism and “the Russian idea.” Scanlan does not hesitate, however, to recognize where Dostoyevsky has contradicted himself or changed his views.  Such unbiased reading makes this work even more useful as a scholarly tool. We can no longer read Dostoyevsky reductively: as exemplified by the existential, “irrationalist” protagonist in The Notes from the Underground or as a proponent of evil in human nature by examining The Brothers Karamazov.  For, as Scanlan shows, Dostoyevsky cannot be reduced to one of his tenets, nor can we ignore some of the unsettling nationalistic beliefs he holds later in life.

 

Scanlan begins his study by responding to philosophers who have long valued Dostoyevsky as an irrationalist. He realizes that he must clarify this distinction in order to go on to explore Dostoyevsky’s logical-philosophical structures. Scanlan does not often linger on issues of translation but does note, in his introduction, when the two Russian terms, razum and rassudok, are both translated as “reason,” they fail to grasp the Russian distinction between higher and lower reason. Therefore, when English readers acknowledge Dostoyevsky’s critique of reason (rassudok), we cannot account for the fact that Dostoyevsky criticizes only one form of reason, not all forms. As a result, Scanlan claims, while Dostoyevsky exhibits some irrationationalist views, he cannot be reduced to the existentialist’s irrationalist who criticizes only one form of reason.

 

Dostoyevsky’s views on matter and spirit reflect his views on immortality, the soul, faith and reason, and the existence of God.  He separates reality into higher and lower domains, characterized by Christian beliefs that associate the higher with spirituality and the lower with material needs.  Dostoyevsky revises this dualism by embracing the human dilemma of being stuck in both worlds at once.  As Scanlan describes: “a spiritual soul immersed in matter, a disjointed creature with roots in one world but stranded in another.” (53) To comprehend the spiritual world, Dostoyevsky sought his own definitions for the immortality for the soul and the existence of God.  To comprehend the material world, Dostoyevsky resigned himself to acknowledge the objective reality of this world, even as it posed challenges to spiritual understanding and fulfillment.  To this end, Dostoyevsky mixes rational arguments for the existence of God with the necessity of personal revelation and subjective experiences enhanced by faith. Scanlan concludes:

 

Critics have tried to make Dostoyevsky an irrationalist in metaphysics by suggesting that he believed reason to be on the side of atheism and materialism, both of which he detested, and to be antithetical to faith.  In fact he believed that reason, too, is on the side of God and immorality, but that it is not immune to question and cannot provide certainty.  God and immortality can be supported by reasons but the reasons are not unassailable. (55-6)

 

A turning point in the development of Dostoyevsky’s idea occurs at the death of his first wife.  In notebook entries that follow her death, Dostoyevsky reflects on the relation between the faulty self and the ideal self.  Dostoyevsky is troubled over the difficult dialectic within the search for moral perfection given by the possibility of an immortal soul.  Later, Dostoyevsky implies that our just reward for Christian purity is immortality of the soul. Even later, Dostoyevsky suggests that immortality provides our material lives with an essential “higher” meaning, which saves us from suicide.  He also suggests that immortality and the ability to love are precisely what distinguish humans from beasts.  The novelist contemplates God’s existence only according to the “argument by design,” a being accessible through reason as a “full synthesis of being” (50), while also a being that requires spiritual comprehension (through faith) as benevolent. Perhaps one of the strengths of Dostoyevsky as a writer is that he can linger over difficult questions, playing them out through various protagonists, without the (philosopher’s) obligation to come to some final postulate or formula regarding these matters.

 

In the chapter on rational egoism, Scanlan asks whether or not the character of the underground man, who appears to be a rational egoist, actually reflects a rejection of rational egoism.  In others words, Notes from The Underground must be read ironically.  Scanlan shows Dostoyevsky to reject actions based from securing one’s own “best interests.”  Dostoyevsky’s case is based on recognizing that human needs exceed the “needs of the belly” and include intellectual, emotional and aesthetic needs.  Ignoring these latter needs serves to distort human possibility.  While physical needs are real, a need for free expression cultivates other needs that are required, not just for individual welfare but, rather, for social welfare.  Therefore, the rational egoist view is empirically false and contradictory.  These thinkers need to recognize the multiple needs that fulfill and motivate the human subject, driven by an essentially free will.  Further, Dostoyevsky presents a positive view of the human subject as a moral creature.  These presentations further support an ironic reading of the underground man. 

 

This, however, is Scanlan as his most creative: piecing together elements from a variety of texts in order to develop a coherent theory that is not presented systematically by Dostoyevsky himself.  Drawing from the “saints and sinners” in the novels, Scanlan draws a picture of Dostoyevsky’s “ethical universe,” dealing with free will, suffering, love, good and evil, conscience and religion. (82) Dostoyevsky’s ethical universe is constituted, according to Scanlan, by: the law of love, the law of personality, the epistemology of conscience and faith, moral responsibility and the significance of suffering. The “absolute moral good” for humans is a selfless, Christian love for others, which is challenged, for each of us, by our particular blend of material and personal characteristics.  Human beings, as both good and evil, as a combination of divine and vulgar elements, must employ their conscience in order to aspire toward greater goodness.  Such an endeavor can be furthered by one’s faith or through a devotion to Christ.  One’s faith, further, takes priority to and guides one’s conscience.  As a result, we also have a “universal responsibility,” which includes taking on the sins of one’s ancestors.  Finally, the ethical universe rests on the reality of suffering that challenges and humbles the egoist.  In the Christian spirit, suffering becomes an opportunity to demonstrate one’s love for others, one’s conscience, one’s faith and moral responsibility. 

 

The final three chapters, excluding the conclusion, present a coherent picture of Dostoyevsky’s aesthetics, utopianism and his nationalism.  As a result, we begin to see how Dostoyevsky’s epistemology, ontology and theology are linked to writing in a heated political climate.  Scanlan must address aesthetics insofar as expression and art have been identified, earlier in this text, as fundamental human needs and, in deed, the need Dostoyevsky must fulfill as his writing develops. 

 

The aesthetic that Dostoyevsky develops responds to the utilitarian aesthetic put forth by the Chernyshevsky school.  This school advocated that aesthetics was a purely supplementary human need, trivial in relation to the fundamental needs of food, shelter and physical survival.  According to this school, art serves simply to “represent nature and life.”  In so doing, art does not “embellish” reality but only aids us when we need a representation. Dostoyevsky, however, objects to this view on the basis that it neglects our spiritual needs, need that might be addressed in aesthetic experience.  As Dostoyevsky explains:

 

The need for beauty develops most when people are in discord with reality, in disharmony, in conflict, that is, when they are most alive, for people are most alive when they are searching for something and trying to obtain it; it is then that there arises in them the most natural desire for everything harmonious, for tranquility, and in beauty there is both harmony and tranquility. (128)

 

One’s discovery of beauty, moreover, links one to the “moral ideal” within humanity and, therefore, serves an ethical purpose.  As a result, Dostoyevsky holds that
“beauty can save the world.”  Such art, however, cannot be measured in relation to utilitarian goals but must, rather, be evaluated in terms of “artistry” or harmony. 

 

While Scanlan ends the text with Dostoyevsky’s views of utopia and nationalism, these ideals are inextricably linked.  Russia provides the possibility for realizing Dostoyevsky’s utopia as the nation most likely to realize a “panhuman ideal.”  At this point, Scanlan recognizes that Dostoyevsky’s nationalist rhetoric becomes somewhat irrational.  Russia should lead humanity insofar as Russian citizens demonstrate more universal characters.  In this view, Russia will “understand the requirements of every other nation better than that nation itself does.” (228) This extreme nationalism, Scanlan acknowledges, becomes difficult for Dostoyevsky to defend and untenable in practice. However, the novelist will continue to argue that Russian nationalism will make possible the “Christian utopia” which is the “full kingdom of Christ.”

 

Dostoyevsky The Thinker shows the full scope of Dostoyevsky’s struggles with epistemology, theology, aesthetics, ethics and politics.  Throughout this account, Scanlan provides a historical account Dostoyevsky’s evolving thought, as reflected in his novels and notebooks.  While the novelist may not have been a flawlessly systematic thinker, Scanlan demonstrates how Dostoyevsky’s works reflect coherent philosophies, philosophies deeply linked to theological and political debates taking place in nineteenth century Russia.

 

To Scanlan’s credit, this was a difficult review to write.  At every re-read of the material, I made new discoveries and established a deepened appreciation for the depth of analysis and research invested in this project.  I will certainly use this text as a teaching and research tool in the future.