Episode 221 - Transcript

So there’s a story from Dostoevsky’s life… that’s usually one of the FIRST things you hear about him when you start looking into his work. I personally think the story hits a bit better… when you already know a little about what he was GOING for in his work, which at this point we do, this episode being part FOUR in this series we’ve been doing.

That said the story’s about the time in Dostoevsky’s life… that he almost got shot by a firing squad. CLASSIC story I’m sure he used to tell around the campfire to all the kids. 

And one VERSION of this story that we have comes from the main character of the book we’re talking about today, ANOTHER one of the five great novels of Dostoevsky– it’s called the IDIOT. 

We’ll talk more about the book here in a second, but first let’s hear this STORY though… and understand: how some of the intense experiences that Doestoevsky HAD in his life…LED to the conclusions in the rest of his work…to what he thinks a good life is, to his views on beauty and love and more SPECIFICALLY what he MEANS when he says…a now FAMOUS quote that’s been associated with this book, the idiot: what did he MEAN when he said that he thought that beauty…will save the world? 

There’s been a LOT of DISCUSSION surrounding this quote…and we’ll be a lot CLOSER to understanding it… by the end of the episode here today.

See when Dostoevsky’s writing the book DEMONS we just talked about… and when he TALKS about a revolutionary CELL that’s planning stuff to potentially bring down the government in the book…that’s NOT him just sitting around, you know, METHOD acting what it would BE like to be a revolutionary…no Dostoevsky… EARLY in his writing career…REALLY was a MEMBER of what’s now known as the Petrashevsky circle. 

Meaning he was PART OF one of these revolutionary GROUPS…which is part of what GIVES him so much INSIGHT into the PSYCHOLOGY of these kinds of people, multiple of which, the characters in the book DEMONS… are BASED on people FROM this Petrashevsky circle that he knew. 

So…like ANY revolutionary at the time…that’s living in Tsarist Russia…a Russia that’s trying to maintain the status quo for people as much as they can…yeah, turns out… they don’t take too KINDLY to you…if you’re plotting to overthrow the government everyday. 

So Dostoevsky gets arrested… he gets processed, charged, and sentenced to DEATH…then he gets led out to a field…there’s stakes driven into the ground, the kinds of stakes they tie you to when you’re about to get shot by a firing squad. And he and his friends have been DRESSED up by them…in the sort of white uniform that they put people in right before they shoot them. The bags are ready to go over their heads.

And AS the VERSION of this story goes that’s in the BOOK…Dostoevsky is apparently told in this moment by the people with the guns…that he has five minutes left to live. So, go ahead, make your peace, say a prayer, DO whatever it is you’re gonna do. 

And he says when you’re IN this kind of moment…your whole relationship to TIME… starts to change. Like that five minutes that he was given…felt to him… like it was actually an ENORMOUS amount of time. 

Like each minute FELT to him…like it was a different LIFETIME that he was living… and much like we NORMALLY do in life, when you always feel like you HAVE all the time in the world to DO the stuff you wanna do…he said that in THAT moment… he came up with a PLAN for how he was going to USE each of these five minutes that he had left. 

First couple minutes were gonna be for saying goodbye to his friends around him. The two minutes after THAT were going to be for going over his life, thinking about what he DID while he was here on this planet. And then the last minute he says… he’s going to dedicate it to looking around him, and taking in a GLIMPSE of the world for one last time– these last THREE minutes he says he’s going to REALLY think about it…and he’s going to finally come to a decision… as to what his whole life has been for up until this point.

And WHILE he’s DOING this… he looks off into the distance a little bit, he’s taking the world in as part of his plan… and he sees a church, a little ways off just sitting there. Now this church had a spire on top of it… and he remembers the light from the sun was bouncing off the spire, just shooting off in all directions, it was BEAUTIFUL to him…and Dostoevsky thinks in that moment hmm. In about two minutes…I am essentially going to BECOME one of these rays of light that I’m looking at. I mean I certainly won’t be a thinking, feeling person anymore. What WILL I be, if ANYTHING at that point?

But then THIS question leads to ANOTHER question for him…and any TIME that he might have been able to spend MARVELING at the light show that was going on…well that came to an end real quick because he all of a sudden becomes CONSUMED by the FOLLOW up question: what if…I WASN’T going to die right now? 

What would I DO with my life if somehow I were able to keep on living? 

And he says he COULDN’T stop THINKING about it, he becomes overwhelmed by just the ETERNITY of DAYS that would be ahead of him…ALL that he could DO with that time… if he took it as seriously as he was taking time right now. 

He says in that moment he KNEW… that he would count up every MINUTE of it. He wouldn’t WASTE a SINGLE SECOND of it.

And eventually…this thought, that STARTED as a very NICE thought…at some point it just starts to WEIGH on him. You can imagine why: the number of seconds he’s WASTED UP until this point…the fact he’s HAVING this insight just right NOW when he’s about to die. He says the feeling that comes over him eventually… is that WISHES that they’d just hurry up and SHOOT him…so he doesn’t have to FEEL the WEIGHT of this thought any more.

At which point in what he thinks are the final seconds of his life…person rides up on a horse carrying a piece of paper, it’s a stay of execution from Tsar Nicholas I.

The WHOLE thing it turns out… was setup…STAGED as a mock execution…and they DID this for a couple different reasons: one to psychologically torture the people like Dostoevsky…and two as a political maneuvre… to make the king look like he’s a really decent guy, oh look at ‘em isn’t he so benevolent…that he lets them LIVE even despite their treason. 

Now FROM the firing squad… it’s not like they’re just gonna take off his handcuffs and let him go FREE. Dostoevsky gets sentenced to four years in a Siberian prison… and then is required for five years after THAT to serve in the Russian military. 

And you can imagine…what kind of an IMPACT this event has on him and his writing that comes AFTER this. 

Just as some TIME context here: I mean he gets done serving his prison sentence and gets OUT of the military in 1859…and he comes out with Notes From Underground just five years LATER in 1864. 

Now it’s not a coincidence that this STORY… is one that he wanted to tell in THIS book in particular, the IDIOT. And it’s not a COINCIDENCE…that this story is told by the main character of the book, a guy named Prince Myshkin.

Because to understand why this story MEANS so much to him, the philosophy BEHIND it…we have to understand what Dostoevsky was GOING for in the CHARACTER of Prince Myshkin.

First of all, just for clarity: LOT of modern readers might expect that someone we’re calling Prince Myshkin…would HAVE to be a prince that’s part of a royal family, living in a castle somewhere. 

But that’s NOT the case when it comes to THIS prince Myshkin: in Russian society at the time, a person could theoretically COME from a family that HAS a kind of “royal” status in terms of respect, BECAUSE of what their family USED to be back during the feudal system but isn’t anymore. What I mean is: to be called a prince like this…yeah this DOES mean you’re a part of SOME kind of aristocratic family from the past…it just doesn’t mean your lifestyle TODAY looks ANYTHING like what we’d typically think of as royalty. 

And Prince Myshkin in the book… is a great example of this sort of person…he STARTS the book…almost completely broke, sitting on a train, returning from YEARS that he had just spent getting TREATMENT from what somebody today might call a mental hospital.

But even THESE details about Prince Myshkin, his health, his finances, this is ALL me getting ahead of myself here. 

Because the REAL thing we need to understand about Myshkin as a character is what Dostoevsky was GOING for when he WROTE him. Which to put it simply: he was trying to create a CHRIST-LIKE FIGURE…that was LIVING on planet earth among all the humans. Or as he wrote to his NIECE in a letter later on ABOUT Myshkin: he was trying to create in this character an EXAMPLE of the “positively beautiful man”. 

In fact since we’re talking about his notes and letters ABOUT this book…he told a couple OTHER people at ANOTHER point in the letters about his mindset when he was getting read to WRITE this book: that there’s a LOT of ATTEMPTS he sees out there… where GREAT authors will try to bring a Christ-like figure to LIFE in one of their novels. 

He cites Don Quixote as an example of this, Pickwick from the Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, Jean Valjean from Les Miserables…he gives SEVERAL other examples other than THIS the POINT is…to Dostoevsky…every ONE of these attempts by these other authors… comes up short for him in some crucial way at DEPICTING a Christ like figure.  

Because knowing what we know about Dostoevsky so far with his work: think of what is UNIQUELY interesting about him exploring a CHARACTER like this…what is it that he’s so good at as an AUTHOR? Well for the 1860’s…it’s his REALISM that sets him apart. As we KNOW: he’s always trying to genuinely explore the complexity and the messiness of the internal human experience. 

Well, how could that ever work…if you have someone like CHRIST as a character? I mean that might be one of the most IDEALISTIC characters you could possibly try to create! What would HAPPEN…if you dropped someone like JESUS…into the middle of ACTUAL, messy, human relationships, psychology, and society?

Well hence the TITLE of the book: Dostoevksy thinks MOST PEOPLE in the KIND of modern society we live in…from the OUTSIDE at least…they’d probably look at how a truly CHRIST like person is acting…and they’d probably think they’re just an IDIOT. 

And not only is this a funny idea…but if you think about it this is actually an incredibly HONEST thing for Dostoevsky to do as a thinker as well. Remember towards the end of LAST episode how we were talking about people who have given COMMENTARY on his work…and how they typically break the characters in his books down into two different categories: they’re either the madman or the saint.

The madman being people like Raskolnikov, The Underground Man, Stavrogin…the Saint being people like Liza, Sonya and now Prince Myshkin. Well no doubt you can HEAR this and think oh well obviously Dosotevsky thinks we should all be SAINTS right? He’s probably got an online course. FIVE ways to be more SAINTLY in your morning ROUTINE or something. 

But no Dostoevksy’s NOT just gonna say that the MADMAN is EVIL…and the SAINTLY way is ALWAYS the right way to LIVE…no there’s actually DOWNSIDES to being a SAINT sometimes he thinks… where even if you COULD be some sort of morally ideal FIGURE that’s FLOATING AROUND as everyone else is deeply flawed– there’d STILL be this “curse of sainthood” as it’s called that is CRUCIAL for a thinking person to understand...and this was a BIG part of what Dostoevsky wanted to get ACROSS in this book. 

To put this another way, and to connect the episodes of this series together a bit: if Crime and Punishment was Dostoevsky testing the ideals of Raskonikov and showing where they come up short… and if Demons was him testing the ideals of western liberalism and the idea of building our LIVES around these ISMs…then in THIS book, the Idiot…the ideal he’s testing and finding the limitations of HERE…is his OWN ideal…the ideal of sainthood. 

This is what makes it a very HONEST book I think…and I mean you ever had a similar thought along these lines he’s getting into? You ever thought about an example of some moral sage…like a monk or Jesus or something. And you ever wondered… how they would act… if you planted them NOT in some STORY that’s designed to show  how MORAL they are…but in an ACTUAL scenario that’s annoying to them? 

Like what does the Christ like figure do…when someone is just harassing them at the mall…and WON’T leave them alone? Like trying to MANIPULATE them, take advantage of them…and they literally will never stop? Picture someone harassing a monk…and this is the kind of person that SEES they’re someone who can be abused and they’re not gonna DO anything about it…so they keep GOING, they camp out on your front lawn, send you 800 text messages, what would a moral sage DO in this situation?

And the point is NOT that you COULDN’T come up with an answer as to what would Jesus do…the point for Dostoevsky is: how HELPFUL or how tenable IS that kind of Jesus response…if you actually ACTED that way in the REAL world?

Because Prince Myshkin in the book, as the resident Christ like figure…he doesn’t end up making the world around him…a better place at ALL. As we’ll end up seeing. 

In fact, what Dosoevsky wants to get across is that sometimes the kind of religious, self-sacrifice…the humiliation that someone like Christ endures for the sake of helping other people…sometimes in the real world…when you’re dealing with insecure people, or severely DAMAGED people or SICK people even, the true COMPLEXITY of human life…sometimes this approach can ACTUALLY end up just making their lives even WORSE than they were before they met you. 

So real quick: in the CONTEXT of this ARC of the SHOW we’ve been on since episode 211…it can sound GREAT that we’re gonna move AWAY from the ego driven projects, the technological framing of the world…and that we’re gonna move MORE towards a RELIGIOUS orientation of our place within the network, that we’re always, already embedded in, that can SOUND great…but here’s Dostoevsky saying man…it is NOT as SIMPLE… as just GIVING yourself OVER to THAT way of framing the world entirely…because even if you did it in the most IDEAL, CHRIST-like way IMAGINABLE…you’d STILL probably end up causing a LOT of problems for all the people AROUND you. 

To ENGAGE with life for him…is ALWAYS going to be to navigate TENSIONS like this, FAITH is an iterative, uncomfortable PROCESS to be in for Dostoevksy.  

So let’s talk about some EXAMPLES of this curse of saintliness that go DOWN in the book…and let’s at the SAME time talk about the OTHER main subject he wants to explore here at a deep level: Beauty. 

See, Prince Myshkin's ENTIRE journey that he goes on throughout this book…has been described by SOME people… as ONE giant conversation about BEAUTY…that’s going on at multiple different covert levels. It’s been said that every main character in this book… has a DIFFERENT way that they think about BEAUTY…that then DETERMINES a lot about how they’re different as PEOPLE. 

The story begins with Prince Myshkin on a train. Again he’s returning from the last couple years he’s just spent in a hospital where he’s been getting treatment for epilepsy, a parallel to Dostoevsky HIMSELF by the way who ALSO suffered from epilepsy. 

But Myshkin is sitting on this train… and he runs into a guy that’s going to be one of the CENTRAL characters for the REST of the book…he runs into a guy named Rogozhin. If Prince Myshkin is the resident Christ-like figure in this book…then Rogozhin is going to be the resident shallow, SELFISH, kind of CRINGE character of this book. 

Because from the moment Prince Myshkin meets him…he is the DEFINITION of someone that is ONLY really thinking about himself. He speaks very loudly on the train. He’ll have emotional ups and downs. One sentence he’ll say in a calm way…and the next sentence he will say something that NEEDS to be HEARD! And what this comes OFF as to people then… is that he’s a very INTENSE…kind of person. He’s strong willed. He’s the kind of person where if he WANTS something…it doesn’t really feel like there’s gonna be too many moral hangups that’ll STOP him from trying to get what it is he wants. 

And if you wanted some EVIDENCE for this…he TELLS Myshkin not long after meeting him… that he’s ON the train that day…because he just inherited a ton of money from his FATHER…and NOW what he wants to DO with it is to go and USE the money…to try to impress this WOMAN he’s met through social circles that’s named Nastasya. 

And Nastasya… is going to be ANOTHER…one of the main characters for the rest of the book.

Roghozin shows Myshkin a picture of Nastasya. He talks for a while about how BEAUTIFUL…she is to him. He says that he wants to MARRY this woman. And strong willed as he is and with a bunch of money burning a hole in his pocket…there’s NOTHING that he wants in this ENTIRE world more…than for THIS woman right here in this picture to be HIS.

Now Nastasya in the book…is MUCH MORE than just this PICTURE…and she’s MUCH MORE than an idea in Rogozhin’s head as to how he wants to POSSESS her and CLAIM her as his OWN. 

Through conversations about her we find out that Nastasya…lost her parents at a very early age. She was taken in… by a man named Totsky… who from the day he took her in…has been grooming her to become his mistress, which she now is. The even MORE messed up part about it is that even though SHE’S the one that’s being taken advantage of and really has no choice but to go along with it…the society around her JUDGES HER as the one that’s been TAINTED by this whole situation.

But still… EVEN in SPITE of this unfair judgement from people…Nastasya, just as a person…turns out to be a force of nature: she comes off as so smart and charismatic…that she STILL has guys that are lining down the BLOCK to try to BE with her. 

In other words this Rogozhin guy on the train…he has some competition…and he KNOWS this fact. 

For example there’s this other guy named Ganya that wants to marry Nastasya. But HE wants to marry her… because her FATHER, you know the one that took her in and abused her, he has a ton of SOCIAL connections that Ganya thinks would be really good for HIM. 

See, for Ganya, the way HE sees marriage and love…marriage is MORE about social mobility than it is about romance or a commitment to someone else…and to HAVE someone, at SOCIAL events, that is so beautiful and good at speaking; to HAVE someone who’s so well connected, to HAVE a woman that CHECKS all the BOXES on MY list of things that I WANT her to BE…well this makes her seem like a PERFECT CANDIDATE for what HE wants from a relationship.

And if THESE two weren’t enough to deal with…and of course EACH of these when we break them down are going to represent problematic ways of viewing beauty and love that Dostoevsky wants to critique in the book…if THESE two weren’t enough…well NOW we got Prince Myshkin throwing his hat into the ring because HE starts to feel love for Nastasya as well.

Because when he SEES the picture of her from Rogozhin. When he HEARS about her past. He can’t help but start to see an INCREDIBLE amount of BEAUTY in this person…that goes FAR BEYOND anything these other two guys are looking at her as. 

So just to recap here: if a love TRIANGLE… can be something that’s hard for people to deal with. Then what we have HERE folks…is a love quadrilateral…with a Jesus like figure named Myshkin being one of the POINTS of this love quadrilateral. And in TRUE Dostoevsky fashion, as CHAOTIC as this can all SEEM…for him it is going to be a PERFECT setting… to EXPLORE things like beauty and love…at a DEEPER level than he EVER HAS in any other book. And for clarity: this conversation he’s having goes BEYOND just how we view PEOPLE as beautiful, it applies to EVERYTHING in the world… it’s just in a book, a love interest like Nastasya is the example he uses to get this all across. 

See to Dostoevsky…when someone says that something is beautiful to them…and then you look at it and you say oh yeah I think that thing is beautiful too…you can THINK that the two of you… are talking about the exact SAME FEELING that’s JUST as deep…but in reality:

Words can be VERY misleading… when we’re trying to sync up our experiences of the world. And what ONE person calls BEAUTIFUL…or one person describes as LOVE… no matter HOW PASSIONATE their behavior may look AROUND that thing…it could actually be based on things that are SURPRISINGLY… shallow.

Take Rogozhin as an example of this. Rogozhin is an intense dude, for sure. But EVERYTHING that he thinks is BEAUTIFUL about Nastasya…is based on having NO understanding as to who she is more FULLY as a person. Think of what he knows about her: she’s a well formed molecule to him. And now he wants to OWN her. He couldn’t care LESS about her inner complexity…how she connects to the network around her, what SHE loves and cares about. He doesn’t CARE about any of that.

No, to Rogozhin… he has a SUPERFICIAL understanding of her…which for Dostoevsky leads to a SUPERFICIAL way of describing his feelings as “love”. 

It really is a superficial connection to reality overall: she is a THING to him. A shiny THING that he wants to POSSESS. 

So what naturally happens when THIS level of connection is what grounds your relationships? Well, jealousy…possessiveness…angry, passionate outbursts of ENTITLEMENT for how this person is OWED to you in some way— THATS what happens. 

And usually this kind of person calls these sorts of outbursts…oh it’s just how PASSIONATE I am about you… it’s how much I LOVE you is the reason I do this. Well THIS is the kind of behavior that we SEE out of Rogozhin for the entire book.

Take Ganya, next, as ANOTHER example of a perspective on beauty and love. Ganya thinks Nastasya is beautiful…but ONLY as much as it helps him CHECK THE BOXES on this LIST of things he WANTS from his wife SOCIALLY. I mean, SURE she’s beautiful NOW and is great at parties…but what happens if she’s NOT? What happens if she can’t be ON all the time…she goes through a period of her life where she’s feeling sad and NOT very social. What happens if her father gets CAUGHT for sexually abusing his daughter, becomes disgraced… and NOW being connected to this family…becomes a liability for you? What happens with LOVE like this when it’s so conditional? Is this even LOVE? Ganya would certainly say it is. 

The same way you might be standing in line somewhere, talk to someone next to you and say hey this is my friend John that I just met! But is that really a friend?

See we can THROW these WORDS around so CASUALLY in everyday conversation. But to Dostoevsky: to TRULY RESPECT something like love or beauty is to critically examine it and get to a better understanding of what SPECIFIC people are MEANING when they SAY it. 

And Rogozhin, CLEARLY, to dostoevsky, when he says he LOVES Nastasya…all that means is that he wants to POSSESS her. And Ganya, CLEARLY, when he says Nastasya’s BEAUTIFUL…all that means is that he sees her as one piece of a PROJECT that fuels his own ego.

But when Prince Myshkin…says that he finds Nastasya beautiful…THIS is something that’s coming from a TOTALLY different place. He DIDN’T fall in love with her picture on the train. He DIDN’T fall in love with how good she is at social events. 

The place HE’S coming from…is more of a tragic perspective…where he acknowledges the good AND the bad about her, and tries to understand her more FULLY as a person, ON her own terms. 

YES she’s strong and charismatic on the surface…but he ALSO realizes that shes emotionally WOUNDED from all the things she’s BEEN through. YES she’s great in conversations a lot of the time and that’s something to admire…but she ALSO DOES stuff sometimes…that hurts the people AROUND her because her INNER experience is actually very conflicted, she has lower self-esteem, she’s confused as to how to act sometimes.

Now NONE of these things to Myshkin are seen as BLACK marks on her record. None of these are CAVEATS NEXT to the person that he chooses to love. No, LOVING someone, in a more Christ-like way…IS to AFFIRM these things ABOUT them… and to NOT just to see them in terms of how they benefit you and your own immediate PROJECTS. 

Prince Myshkin then is able to find her beautiful AT this deeper LEVEL…because he’s done the work to understand who she truly is, AT a deeper LEVEL, on her own terms. 

Now… part of LOVING her in this way… is that he SEES the situation that she’s in. 

He SEES how she has multiple people trying to marry her… based on stuff that’s going to end up poorly for her AND whoever she decides to marry. So what this LEADS Myshkin to do in the book…is to offer to marry her HIMSELF.

I mean, from HIS perspective: here is a beautiful person, whose in a BAD situation with her fake father, who is going to marry someone BAD for her, simply because they’re a little LESS bad than her CURRENT situation. 

But NOBODY should have to marry for THOSE kinds of reasons…and Myshkin, who it turns out is getting an inheritance soon himself in the book… he offers this money TO her, as an act of self-sacrifice and self-humiliation. Meaning he DOESN’T want to tie this woman down, have kids with her, and make her his wife in THAT sense…no in a very Christ like way… he wants to sacrifice his OWN finances, so that this beautiful person… doesn’t have to sacrifice her own LIFE. 

Now some modern readers may HEAR about this move from Prince Myshkin. And they MIGHT say wow. Rogozhin sounds like an incel…and that Prince Myshkin guy just sounds like a total SIMP. This guy isn’t a great human being…this guy is just an IDIOT. Well, hence the TITLE of the book, again.

See from the OUTSIDE: WHY would anyone EVER…SACRIFICE themselves in this way for someone? It’s not healthy, they would say! It’s not setting good BOUNDARIES! He’s just gonna LOSE all his MATERIAL STUFF that he’s worked so hard to COLLECT over the years!

But for Prince Myshkin…that sort of utilitarian calculation when it comes to people…just ISN’T the way he’s looking at the world. 

But what if somebody said okay myshkin.. I give you a pass on bailing out Nastasya, but I disagree with you and your take on beauty. 

Because isn’t beauty when it comes DOWN to it…ultimately, just subjective? 

I mean I get that everyone’s not talking about the exact same thing when they say something’s beautiful. And I get that some people put more thought into it than others. But no matter HOW much thought someone’s put into it…when someone looks at a painting, or a view from the top of a mountain, or a person and when they say that thing is BEAUTIFUL…look all that IS, is a subjective, aesthetic PREFERENCE of that person, nothing MORE…how can Dostoevsky talk about BEAUTY…as though it’s ANYTHING other than an aesthetic PREFERENCE? Rogozhin may be shallow…but his view of beauty is JUST as valid as Prince Myshkin’s. 

Well here’s the thing: Dostoevsky doesn’t see BEAUTY…as simply an AESTHETIC judgment that someone is MAKING about the world. It’s PARTLY aesthetic. But whenever someone says that something is beautiful…whether they’re aware of it or not…to him they are ALSO making an implicit MORAL judgment about the thing, right along with the aesthetic judgment. 

This is sometimes called by people who analyze Dostoevsky’s work… his moral-aesthetic SPECTRUM of beauty. 

To him: when we SAY something’s beautiful…we’re NOT JUST SAYING that we like the PHOTONS or the sound waves and how they’re being PROCESSED by our EYES right now. We are always noticing something DEEPER about the THING…that CONNECTS to some set of HIGHER IDEALS, embedded in a network, that WE are a part of as a person.

Notice how a new born baby…if you looked at it PURELY from an AESTHETIC perspective…it’s often times something that’s very UGLY, sorry newborns if you’re listening…and yet we find them BEAUTIFUL… for what they represent to us at a HIGHER level. 

Notice how something aesthetically BEAUTIFUL can be seen as ugly: Triumph of the Will…it’s a movie from the 1930’s, made in Nazi Germany, influenced heavily by Nazi propaganda, pretty WIDELY considered to be a breakthrough moment for cinema in terms of the stuff it did…but for SO many people…they would have a really hard time ever seeing it as BEAUTIFUL…BECAUSE of what it represents and CONNECTS to BEYOND just the mere aesthetic APPEARANCE of the thing. 

To Dostoevsky: Beauty and morality…. are inseparable, no matter HOW many people may throw around the word BEAUTIFUL in a surface level way. Think of how this applies to Rogozhin and Ganya and their relationship to Nastasya. Does Rogozhin think that Nastasya is beautiful? Or is he REALLY just talking about something like the form and symmetry of her face? Does Ganya really think she’s beautiful? Or is he more talking about something like she’s USEFUL to me right now, or she makes me FEEL good about myself?

See once we get BEYOND the superficial engagement with the world: because things we think are beautiful…are always connected to something we see as ETHICAL…then it stands to reason for Dostoevsky that the ethical goals that we set for ourselves…ONE way to think of that process… is that it’s a type of BEAUTY that we’re striving for internally. 

Beauty and ethics are FAR more connected than most modern people REALIZE. And what this MEANS for him, an interesting conclusion he draws: is that someone’s ability to SPOT beauty in the world, and their ability to STRIVE for beauty in their own character…these are really two SKILLS that for Dostoevsky…are incredibly LINKED together. 

And this is why when Dostoevsky’s creating a character that is MORALLY a bad person…he will often make them INCAPABLE of seeing BEAUTY in the world around them, the two often go hand in hand for him. 

See IF Roghozhin and Ganya in the book… represent this SUPERFICIAL framing of beauty. This egoist, utilitarian, rational framing of the world… that LIMITS our understanding of things to how they can be manipulated to benefit ME and my own PROJECTS. 

Then BEING able to see the BEAUTY in the things and people around you…to PRACTICE seeing a more FULL picture of what they are and how they co-CONSTITUTE the world you’re in…well for Dostoevsky: THAT becomes a GATEWAY…INTO this more IMMEDIATE connection with BEING that we’ve been TALKING about for quite a while on this show.

What I’m saying is: for Dostoevsky…JUST like Prince Myshkin did with Nastasya…doing the work to uncover the BEAUTY that’s IN the world around you…becomes ANOTHER one of these EXERCISES that is BUILT around… self-emptying. 

THINK about this point in the context of everything ELSE he’s been going for in his work.

Remember Crime and Punishment was about the power of confession…how to CONFESS to something is to ACKNOWLEDGE the limitations of your own EGO and CONSENT to your place in a higher network. Self-emptying. 

Notes From UNDERGROUND among other things talked about LOVE…and how Liza’s unconditional embracing of the underground man and all his flaws, her LOVE…this self-emptying became a direct ATTACK on his whole EXISTENCE and all the barriers he puts up to keep every relationship he HAS transactional. 

DEMONS was about the self-emptying process of taking true responsibility for ourselves…of not just OUTSOURCING who we ARE to a set of ISMs that can demonically POSSESS us. 

Well here we are reading the idiot…and Dostoevsky is saying that BEAUTY…or the ability to uncover the BEAUTY in things, REQUIRES a similar type of self-emptying. That to SEE beauty, is to have the ability to self-empty, take a step back, and SEE the thing you’re looking at on it’s own home ground.

And again it’s in THIS WAY…that for Dostoevsky…someone’s ability to see BEAUTY in the world…has a DIRECT relationship to their level of moral development. 

I mean NO PERSON…that is OBSESSED with THEMSELVES all day long…can EVER step OUTSIDE of themselves LONG enough to see the BEAUTY in the world around them. They’ll often just think the world is BORING… or HORRIFIC. 

More than that: is it possible to be a passive nihilist, thinking everything around you is completely meaningless, but STILL be someone who sees immense beauty in everything?

Dostoevsky would say no. And steering IN to seeing the beauty of things in their full complexity…again this becomes an exercise that he thinks is worth spending a lot of time on.

See BEAUTY for Dostoevksy… is something that is ALWAYS connected to truth… and goodness. That beauty, truth and goodness… co-inhere each other as it’s said. 

That these three things, while they may SEEM like they’re very DIFFERENT things…they’re ALL actually pointing you towards the SAME thing, that same THING in this case being…God.

Now, on the SURFACE that may sound like the biggest load of BS you’ve ever heard in your LIFE. 

Like from an Atheist perspective…that could sound like the PASTOR down at your local church, who has NO IDEA what he’s TALKING about…just taking three words that SOUND really religious and wonderful that everybody approves of…and then trying to get a monopoly over them by saying they’re all really just GOD.

But Dostoevsky’s not the FIRST guy to be SAYING this kind of stuff. He’s continuing a LONG TRADITION in Christian theology and philosophy SPECIFICALLY in the Russian Orthodox variety that he’s a part of…and it’s a tradition that for MANY reasons will GROUP these three things into a trio: beauty, truth and goodness. 

Which brings us to the quote that’s often associated with this book: that beauty will save the world.

IF beauty, truth and goodness are all things that Co-inhere each other…then you might think well, can’t we just interchange the words there in that quote of his? If beauty will save the world…then couldn’t we ALSO just say that TRUTH will save the world. Or GOODNESS will save the world. Why does Dostoevsky think BEAUTY…holds a special place here?

Well think about what truth and goodness do that beauty doesn’t. You try to show somebody the truth…and if the truth is inconvenient to them or uncomfortable…they’re likely to just DENY the truth. The truth becomes antagonistic. Similarly, when it comes to goodness: to show someone GOODNESS…and to have it SHOW them that some way they’re behaving is not GOOD…well that becomes antagonistic as well like you’re just going around MORALIZING at people. 

But if BEAUTY…is something that’s ultimately CONNECTED to these other two…beauty isn’t abstract OR moralizing. Nobody feels ATTACKED when they’re told they can see more beauty in the world. And more than that: beauty is something that just HITS you, viscerally. It has the power to make you feel LOVE or AWE towards people and things around you. It has the power to CAPTIVATE someone at that immediate experiential level, EVEN when they’re about to be put to DEATH.

Meaning beauty is NOT something that’s theoretical, beauty is phenomenological. Beauty has the power to CHANGE you…it has the power to DIRECT you towards a FULLER understanding of how the world is connected, and it’s IN THIS sort of UNIQUE accessibility and redemptive POWER…it’s in this way that Dostoevsky believes that BEAUTY…can save the world. ESPECIALLY considering for him, the specific KIND of world we’re in, a very superficial world…that HE thinks needs saving.

This is why Prince Myshkin in the book is meant to embody the positively beautiful man. And it’s the reason why his ACTIONS, as in touch with true beauty and love as they may BE…his ACTIONS just make him look like an IDIOT to the people in the world he’s in. But to be called an IDIOT by a society that’s fundamentally sick…may in fact be the greatest compliment that ANYONE could ever get.

We can definitely see how BEAUTY…may have had a redemptive effect on some of the characters of this story. And to return back to the events of the book, we’re hit by the complexity of the point that Dostoevsky is GOING for in it: 

Yes, there are the superficial versions of beauty… that LEAD people in their lives to have superficial connections with the people around them. And then there is this deeper understanding of beauty and love that’s possible, that LEADS to a deeper connection. 

But EVEN when it is done with this level of depth…there STILL is no guarantee… that you’re ever helping ANYONE in the world…while you’re DOING it. Consider a couple other classic moments where Prince Myshkin feels the curse of sainthood living in the real world.

So when he offers to marry Nastasya and he tells her the loving, kind intentions behind why he’s doing it…well this should make pretty much ANYBODY just JUMP for JOY at how NICE he is! 

But when NASTASYA…a REAL person, with a history that makes her QUESTION her own worth…when SHE hears about what he wants to do…she doesn’t feel WORTHY of love like this. Truth be told she kind of thinks this guy’s an idiot if he wants to do something like this…but EVEN if he’s coming from a totally good place…well she WANTS to take the money…but at ANOTHER level: this kind of love is something she’s never experienced before and it’s something she has a hard time shoring up with everything ELSE she knows about the world. 

So FAR FROM this being something that makes her feel happy and calm…this marriage proposal sends her into a tailspin. She accepts the proposal, then she goes back on it and decides she wants to be with Rogozhin instead, then she thinks about it and goes BACK to Myshkin, then goes BACK to Rogozhin. This doesn’t end up making the world a better place at ALL…it JUST ends up CREATING more problems. And this gets deeper. 

Rogozhin…BEING in the PRESENCE of a Christ-like figure…BEING such a morally shallow person HIMSELF…and then BEING one person COMPETING with Prince Myshkin for Nastasya’s attention…well all these things combine together in his OWN psychology…and it breeds RESENTMENT towards Myshkin as a person. Jesus’s presence…in the REAL world…wouldn’t all be performing miracles and making people start singing the gospel. 

Yeah, Rogozhin’s not GRATEFUL… to be around a walking talking Jesus figure. He HATES this goody two-shoes guy that in HIS mind is trying to steal his POSSESSION in Nastasya. Being around moral strength…to a deeply INSECURE person…just ends up making him ANGRY…and when you COMBINE that with his strong will and lack of moral hangups…Rogozhin just tries to KILL Prince Myshkin. 

Now IN the story Myshkin has an epileptic seizure right before Rogozhin can DO it. Rogozhin gets scared and runs away. And on the other side of waking up…Prince Myshkin…BEING a saintly kind of person…treats Rogozhin with FORGIVENESS and LOVE and there’s no need to report you to the police. I forgive you for what you have done here, my child. Says Jesus.

Fast forward to LATER in the book. Spoiler alert, but this same Rogozhin guy that may have been picked up by the police if Myshkin wasn’t so forgiving…when Nastasya for the 12th time has gone back and forth between him and Myshkin, when his possessiveness takes over and he can’t stand LOSING this shiny object yet again…well he KILLS Nastasya. To him the ULTIMATE expression of possessing her. 

Dostoevsky ultimately thought that he FAILED at presenting the positively beautiful man. And if you read his accounts of what it was like to WRITE this book…he was under a TON of financial pressure at the time, most of it he was traveling around Europe trying to pick up the pieces for his family after his brother died. He actually had two epileptic seizures… in the process of writing the last couple chapters of the book with Rogozhin and Nastasya. 

I guess one way of measuring the intensity of a book is how many epileptic seizures you have while writing it. 

That said one thing I think most people agree he SUCCEEDED at…is in showing how the IDEAL of SAINTHOOD…when we TRY to live in a way that EXPERIENCES things on their own home ground…it’s not JUST that these ideals come up short in the real world sometimes…it’s that if we don’t have a vigilant, tragic perspective towards the things in the world that matter to us…then even something done out of genuine love or generosity…can be something that destroys us or other people. 

What I also think he does is show that beauty…is a GATEWAY towards understanding how connected things are…and is thus a way that LEADS people towards COMPASSION for the things around them, things they increasingly realize co-constitute them. 

BOTH of these points…are going to be crucial to talk about the LAST of the five great novels by Dostoevsky. It’s the book MOST requested out of any of them. It’s a book that’s considered to be the culmination of his work. It’s also the last book he wrote before he died. It’s called the Brothers Karamozov. And we’ll be talking about it next episode.

Patreon.com/philosophizethis if you value the show as a resource and want to help make it available for everybody. 

Thank you for listening. Talk to you next time.