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Any reader of Dostoevsky is immediately struck by the importance of religion within the world of his fiction. That said, it is very difficult to locate a coherent set of religious beliefs within Dostoevsky’s works, and to argue that the writer embraced these beliefs. This book provides a trenchant reassessment of his religion by showing how Dostoevsky used his writings as the vehicle for an intense probing of the nature of Christianity, of the individual meaning of belief and doubt, and of the problems of ethical behavior that arise from these questions. The author argues that religion represented for Dostoevsky a welter of conflicting views and stances, from philosophical idealism to nationalist messianism. The strength of this study lies in its recognition of the absence of a single religious prescription in Dostoevsky's works, as well as in its success in tracing the background of the ideas animating Dostoevsky’s religious probing.
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Dostoevsky’s Religion
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Dostoevsky’s Religion
Steven Cassedy
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Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2005 by Steven Cassedy. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cassedy, Steven. Dostoevsky’s religion / Steven Cassedy. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8047-5137-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821–1881—Religion. I. Title. pg3328.z7r42247 2005 891.73'3—dc22 2004028724 Original Printing 2005 Last figure below indicates year of this printing: 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 Typeset by Classic Typography in 11/14 Adobe Garamond
For Patrice, Mike, and Eva
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Contents
Preface
ix
1.
Historical Problems of Understanding
1
2.
Dostoevsky and Religion: The Context
26
3.
Belief Is Contextual
64
4.
Belief Is Expressed in Antinomies
87
5.
Belief Is Ideal
114
6.
“Bathe the Earth with the Tears of Thy Joy”
149
Conclusion
174
Notes
185
Index
199
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Preface
To judge from the past, there is a natural and powerful impulse to characterize the “religion” in Dostoevsky’s writings as a set of beliefs (which we may list and describe) and then to attribute them all to the author, or to identify a subset that we may attribute to the author, or to state that the author repudiated all the beliefs we’ve listed. In any case, it always seems to boil down to the question, “What did Dostoevsky himself really believe?” That’s where the trouble begins. People who pose this question don’t expect an answer like “Dostoevsky believed that all religion is essentially a product of our tendency to produce myths” or “Dostoevsky believed that religion serves a socializing function in human civilization.” They expect an answer like “Dostoevsky was a devout Christian and believed in personal immortality,” or the opposite, “Dostoevsky was a tried-and-true atheist and did not believe in much of anything at all.” If they decide that he was a religious (specifically Christian) person and not an atheist, they expect further details about what, in his view, good Christians should believe and how they should behav