>liberalism is full of vultures
>conservatives either become tyrannical or get shot in the face by radicals
>trying to exist outside the spectrum leads to amorality and suicide
What a bleak fucking read. Is there even room for hope in Dostoyevsky's viewpoint? Myshkin in The Idiot might be his most moral character and he ends up in a goddamn madhouse.
If you can't figure it out, Dostoyevsky is strongly against the bourgeois atheism. In that world is there is no room for Christianity and the morality that comes with it. And it has become sadly somewhat true. Atheism is on the rise and Christians are looked at as insane radicals of a bygone era. Atheists proclaim virtue without Christ, but truly there can be no virtue without Christ.
Alyosha turned out okay.
Stop worshipping foreign religions, the "christian" metaphysics are stolen from plato and overall pagan thought
>You'll never be an Alyosha
>You wish you were an Ivan
>You're just a Dimitri
Don't lie to yourself, user. You are a Smerdyakov at best.
Was gonna say this, or Rakitin
Underground Man, reporting in.
I think that's taking it too far; if there can be no virtue without Christ then either you must say that there have been Christians longer than there has been the knowledge of Christ, or that virtue is impossible for most of humanity.
What I think is true is that virtue requires real dedication to something outside yourself. For most people, you need a religious framework to give that idea meaning. Otherwise you wind up with people who only care, beyond themselves, about their friends and family. Worse, you get the conspirators in the novel, who care about the approval of their own little mob. Both of them are a recipe for the kind of regressive tribalism we see everywhere.
Stop looking for deliverance in politics. "Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help."
But without christ it just doesn't work.
>Myshkin in The Idiot might be his most moral character and he ends up in a goddamn madhouse.
nice spoiler asshole
The concept of morality cannot exist without the idea of religion. Morality originated from religion, and there is no other way it could. I mean, you *can* have virtue without religion in the today's world, but you have to concede the fact these virtues have a foundation in Christianity.
>no one had virtue before Christianity
Then what the fuck was Plato writing about? Fucking retard
Let me clarify, the idea of religion itself must be conceptualized before virtue/morality itself can be conceptualized since the latter originates from the former. I never said virtue didn't exist before Christianity. What I was implying was the dominance of Christianity for the past two millenia has shaped our values to what they are today. There has been some Platonic and Aristotelian influence on Christianity, but where did Platonic virtue originate? Where did Egyptian virtues originate? What about Hebrew virtues, or those from Indian, Mesopotamian, or African tribes?
Well that's the question. Is it possible to have virtue without a common belief? Starting from an individual, neither virtue nor evil is really possible because there's no-one else to act upon. Certainly he or she can spend their time mutilating small defenseless animals, but a human alone is dead and can transmit nothing meaningful into the future. So arguably they fall outside virtue. If then virtue only has meaning where people can act on each other, and create something that can endure beyond themselves, does virtue require a shared belief? Or can you have two people, alien in their understanding of the world, who nonetheless agree to a common set of virtuous behaviors?
Really it's one of several interesting experiments were trying. Can you secularize virtue? Can you say as long as your behavior appears virtuous we don't care what motivates it, and get good results?
Like all of our experiments my thoughts are "Maybe, but I hope I'm dead before we find out one way or the other".
>does virtue require a shared belief?
Yes
>Or can you have two people, alien in their understanding of the world, who nonetheless agree to a common set of virtuous behaviors?
Do these two individuals have their own conceived virtues before meeting each other, or are they complete blank slates?
>Can you secularize virtue?
It can be secularIZED, but the ideal of virtue itself cannot have a secular origin.
>Can you say as long as your behavior appears virtuous we don't care what motivates it, and get good results?
If you live in a society whose virtues are the same as your, likely. If you live in a society which shares few of your virtues, probably not. Of course, I am only speaking of results in the material world. As for the result after death, that's unknown, which brings me to:
>"Maybe, but I hope I'm dead before we find out one way or the other".
When you are dead, it is already too late for you. You will know for sure whether there are metaphysical consequences for your moral actions or not right after you die.
Look past the external object of a (holy) man. It's your spirit wearing a playful mask. He is You. You are He. It's not vanity, it's the truth.
>I think that's taking it too far
That's literally what BK is about. It's Dostoevsky's favorite philosophical question to write about.
> Is there even room for hope in Dostoyevsky's viewpoint?
If you believe the source of bleakness is just in his own view, you can probably achieve happiness by switching to Disneyland's viewpoint, or something like that. Also,
> Dostoyevsky
> no hope
I guess you miss his points entirely.
> conservatives either become tyrannical or get shot in the face by radicals
Given that liberal tsar Alexander II who ended the serfdom was being hunted (and was finally killed) by radicals who held him responsible for all Russian problems…
It was all a dream, a fantasy. He never left the madhouse.
This is just nonsense LARPing.
Wouldn’t that make it unforeign you retard
>stop following Christianity because it's not European
>by the way Christianity is really just ripped off from European paganism
Choose one.
S A S S Y
Most people aren't capable of virtue.
>was going to post a Dostoevsky thread
>this is one of the top threads
Why do people consider Dostoevsky a tough read? I've been reading contemporary translations and it's a real page turners. I don't have to constantly flip back and forth to sources and definitions to find out what a particular word means, the syntax flows smoothly, the plot is always full of intrigue.
It's almost Stephen King-tier in the sense of it being a page turner.
I think the general consensus is that his prose can be pretty dry and most people read him for his ideas than his abilities as a writer.
That said, I'm with you because I must have finished C&P in two or three sittings.