Fyodor Dostoevsky: philosopher of freedom

The New Criterion ^ | January 2021 | Gary Saul Morson

[karpov]

...

People do not live by bread—or, what philosophers called the maximalization of “advantage”—alone. All utopian ideologies presuppose that human nature is fundamentally good and simple: evil and apparent complexity result from a corrupt social order. Eliminate want and you eliminate crime. For many intellectuals, science itself had proven these contentions and indicated the way to the best of all possible worlds. Dostoevsky rejected all these ideas as pernicious nonsense. “It is clear and intelligible to the point of obviousness,” he wrote in a review of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, “that evil lies deeper in human beings than our social-physicians suppose; that no social structure will eliminate evil; that the human soul will remain as it always has been . . . and, finally, that the laws of the human soul are still so little known, so obscure to science, so undefined, and so mysterious, that there are not and cannot be either physicians or final judges” except God Himself.

Dostoevsky’s characters astonish by their complexity. Their unpredictable but believable behavior reminds us of experiences beyond the reach of “scientific” theories. We appreciate that people, far from maximizing their own advantage, sometimes deliberately make victims of themselves in order, for example, to feel morally superior. In The Brothers Karamazov (1880), Father Zosima observes that it can be very pleasant to take offense, and Fyodor Pavlovich replies that it can even be positively distinguished.

[GOPJ]

It’s the double edged sword of a need for virtuous leaders vs every man’s innate need to be led.

I've come to believe the allure of socialism isn't the philosopher king so much as the 'good father'... It's not a desire to be led as much as a desire to regress into a safe childhood. The problem is lots of us might want to eternally 'get Christmas Presents (be the safe child) but that few of us want to be eternally responsible giving parent...

[GOPJ]

It’s the double edged sword of a need for virtuous leaders vs every man’s innate need to be led.

I've come to believe the allure of socialism isn't the philosopher king so much as the 'good father'... It's not a desire to be led as much as a desire to regress into a safe childhood. The problem is lots of us might want to eternally 'get Christmas Presents (be the safe child) but that few of us want to be the eternally responsible giving parent...