Research Paper On Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky was a famous Russian writer who influenced countless literary writers. A considerable amount of his work focuses on suffering in a psychological context with focuses on politics, spirituality, and social aspects of 19th century Russia (Martin et al). Dostoevsky’s work had a profound influence on philosophy. A great deal of scholars consider him to be the father of existentialism, even though he is not considered to be a philosopher. Books on Russian and existential philosophers have devoted entire chapters to Dostoevsky. Walter Kaufmann devotes an entire chapter to Dostoevsky is his book titled Existentialism: From Dostoevsky to Sartre and Fredrick Copleston devoted an entire chapter to Dostoevsky in his book titled

They believe that we should see Dostoevsky as a psychologist because of the way he understands human emotions. They think of him as somebody who has insight into how people react to uncomfortable situations. They tend look at the way that the characters are portrayed. His characters are known to be prone to psychological problems. They suggest that Dostoevsky’s works are a reflection of his own life. Suffering, like the character in his literature have plagued Dostoevsky. According to the proprietor of the Dostoevsky as the educator, “Dostoevsky would not have been the writer he was without the extreme challenges he faced” (Roberts 376). He grew up in a very strict household, near a lunatic asylum (Pavlovic). During his school years, he had the reputation of being an outsider while enrolled at a military engineering institute. He showed bravery and a strong sense of justice, protected newcomers, aligned himself with teachers, criticized corruption among officers and helped poor farmers. He suffered from epileptic seizures. He was sent to be executed, when at the last minute, the authorities changed his sentence. He was forced to work at a prison camp in Siberia. He battled a gambling addiction, which once led him to gamble his wife’s wedding ring. This theory can be supported by the fact that he wrote novella titled The Gambler, which is a psychological portrait of a young man’s destructive gambling

He uses the underground man from Notes from the Underground as an example again. One of Dostoevsky’s central ideas is good and evil, believing that humanity is “an endless dialectic between good and evil” (Scalen 83). The question of moral epistemology also comes up with Dostoevsky’s ethics. We must look at Conscience and faith. Lastly, Scalen writes about the ethical significance of suffering. One of Dostoevsky’s first novels, the insulted and the injured, suggests that suffering is a way of moral cleansing. Like Sajkovic, Scalen writes that Dostoevsky’s suffering is closely associated with Russian Orthodox Christianity. Scalen goes against other scholars by stating that not all of Dostoevsky’s suffering is considered beneficial. In fact, Dostoevsky writes about characters who find suffering pleasurable. Overall, Dostoevsky believed that God gave humans with a flawed nature, making suffering inevitable due to the responsibility of conscious free choice (Scalen 111,112). It is not only God that contributes to suffering. Dostoevsky believed in the morally of suffering as it applies to society. Dostoevsky’s characters, mostly being outcasts, are unable to contribute to society. They cause disturbances in the people whom they interact with, which affects society as a whole (Scalen