How the hell can Dostoyevsky say that we can achieve redemption through our suffering? Who the does he think he is...

How the hell can Dostoyevsky say that we can achieve redemption through our suffering? Who the does he think he is? This is probably the one thing that I don't get about him, I think it's shitty to try and romanticize suffering.

Jesus suffered

You gotta think about the cultural context in which he lived, user.

This was Dostoevsky trying to be deep, he was very bad at it. His best books are satirical.

The Possessed is both, point in case

That's not romanticizing suffering.

What the fuck do you want him to do for a sufferer? What do you want anyone to do for someone who suffers? What CAN you do for someone who suffers? You want him to bake you a cake or some shit?

The idea that there is a certain redemption in suffering is an extremely powerful one. It occupies an important spot in western cultural history. Why not fucking think about it for a little bit? y'all too, clearly

Life's a comedy, friend. All the greats knew it.

This. You have to keep in mind, OP, that Dosto is a sincere Christian. He believes that in the end, both after we die and at the end of the world, there will be a true end to suffering, and we'll find genuine joy and bliss. There's no point in romanticizing suffering if this life is all there is, but that's not what Dostoevsky believes.

Im gonna continue because OP's sensibilities are so upsetting to me

You sound like a wallower. It seems like Dostoevsky had the sort of insight to entertain the possibility that maybe wallowing isnt the end of suffering, and suffering isnt the end of experience.

This question is fucking central to experience, I recommend you stop overlooking it just for the sake of indulging in self-pity

>I think it's shitty to try and romanticize suffering.

Agreed.

Yeah, I can understand where Dostoyevsky is coming from, but I just can't apply this to reality. When i see shitty things happen to people, how can it be a good thing? How can you look someone that's, like, paralyzed from birth, or suffering from a terminal illness about to die in a couple of months, and be like, "Hey, man, suffering brings us closer to God :^)"

>achieving anything through suffering

Slaves of the Demiurge.

Suffering is the flame, reality is the kiln, and we are the material. Enough suffering tempers us and expells impurities, too much makes us brittle and lowers our potential.

Why is this hard?

NO

slavic culture of gulag
you arent understand

Upon inspection, I don't believe I subscribe to any of the strawmen from your image. Glad to provide a tenuous point from which you can springboard your laboured views, I guess.

Imagine being so cucked by reality you invent a whole metaphysical system to rationalise your shitty life. Dostoyevski should've taken some zinc + fish oil + vitamin D.

Read Seneca or other stoics to understand the logic. I don't agree with them, but I understand the cultural context and essential reasoning behind the view

>someone managed to misread a famous Russian novelist from over a hundred years a go
Imagine that, you failed to extract subtle and complex meaning from a context largely alien to your own.

>How the hell can Dostoyevsky say that we can achieve redemption through our suffering?
That's literally the point of life senpai. So we can be more like God through our suffering.

That's Christianity 101, the world is full of suffering but redemption is available through Jesus.

It is a psychological tool to make people accept suffering.

Especially in such a shit hole as Russia.

"I can say, SUFFERING GIVES REDEMPTION" and continue living in misery and inaction instead of actually fucking doing something.

Tacking it on to the Bible makes it even more powerful mind control against population that's christian.

+

>continue living in misery and inaction
Confirmed for not ever having read Dostoevsky.

I have read him twice over and he is fucking shit. Gogol and Šolohov are great.

His work in no way hinges on perpetual inaction.

If you read that in his work, it might have been something in your acquired worldview that makes it seem that way. Probably related to the element(s) that caused such a visceral reaction to his work.

I like Gogol, Sholokhov less so. Do you like Pushkin, Nabokov, Artsybashev?

bloody idealists

>fucking doing something.

if you do something the suffering just change his form to another kind of suffering.

Not all suffering is equal in all ways.

that is what im trying to say. with actions you normally change the most superficial trait of suffering. the people who "do something" not overcome suffering.
and im not saying there is a pure form to overcome suffering.

fpbp

suffering is the glory of man. it is what keeps us alive. that suffering should be properly adored in a work of art should not come as a surprise.

this is for

what you are saying is "ablooabloo".

imagine someone shitting over you. physically.
you wont change this because you wont change the fact that you die anyway, analogically death shitting on you.
so you sit in a shit shower all your life.

congfuckignratluzlations

Start by refuting something.

I am saying that not all suffering is equal in all ways. You can choose between unequal sufferings to find what is best.

if you really accept someone shitting over you, then, the result of ending of suffering is the same that if you go back and do something about it. and then maybe someone shit over you again.
anyway, this kind of examples are weak.

...

what exactly are you trying to say?. im sorry i dont understand you.

Since I hold none of those views in the first place, refutations thereof have no value to me. There is nothing to salvage for me in the image, since the image is refuting a position with no relation to mine.

Not him but, "I disagree"

I don't know why people assert their weird thoughts as some sort of scientific fact and then expect others to entertain it, to validate it by "offering counter-arguments." They don't recognize howobnoxious that is.

SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES

I sometimes wonder if his Christian books aren't a sort of satire as well.

It's only obnoxious when there's little or no substance to their thought.

This pic will help you understand

We're talking about a man who got mock executed and then sent to Siberia for 6 years, I think he knows more about suffering than the average white middle clays boi you probably are

What is your position and its relation to that in the image?

>i could refute it if i wanted to i just DON'T XDDDD

But Dostoyevsky clearly romanticized suffering in TBK, this isn't even an argument. Just look at Dmitri's character for example and how at the end of the book he's talking about how he wants to suffer.

I'll put this here because there's no other Dosto topic.

I finished his 1848 novelette/novella White Nights, one of his early writings before his exile. It's recognisably Dostoevsky, what with being an anxious first person account with lots of page lengthy, feverish dialogue exchanges. It's also about the pitfalls of dreaming too much, and isolating yourself from others by living too much of an imaginary life.

However, it's also more sentimental than his other writings, and has many aspects of a modern day romantic film or chick flick (there is a chad), and in this way it still feels very contemporary.

I enjoyed it, and so it has made me more receptive towards reading more of his early writing.

Maybe his idea is to feel so much suffering so that you become immune to suffering and the trivial problems in life don't bother you anymore? Like since there's no way out of suffering maybe one should embrace it instead of trying in vain to run away from it?

Any idea how Dostos idea of suffering would contrast with the buddhist conception of it>?

I think the Buddhist conception is similar to Schopenhauer's -- that suffering arises from attachment to desires.
Dostoevsky is quite different in that he believes suffering is required to achieve atonement for our sins.

Buddhists believe you can rid yourself of suffering by ridding yourself of desire.
Dostoevsky believes suffering is necessary (on earth).

>on our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering. We cannot love otherwise, and we know if no other sort of love.

>That from which we suffer most profoundly and personally is almost incomprehensible and inaccessible to every one else: in this matter we are hidden from our neighbour even when he eats at the same table with us. Everywhere, however, where we are noticed as sufferers, our suffering is interpreted in a shallow way; it belongs to the nature of the emotion of pity to divest unfamiliar suffering of its properly personal character: our “benefactors” lower our value and volition more than our enemies. In most benefits which are conferred on the unfortunate there is something shocking in the intellectual levity with which the compassionate person plays the role of fate: he knows nothing of all the inner consequences and complications which are called misfortune for me or for you! The entire economy of my soul and its adjustment by “misfortune,” the uprising of new sources and needs, the closing up of old wounds, the repudiation of whole periods of the past none of these things which may be connected with misfortune preoccupy the dear sympathiser. He wishes to succour, and does not reflect that there is a personal necessity for misfortune; that terror, want, impoverishment, midnight watches, adventures, hazards and mistakes are as necessary to me and to you as their opposites, yea, that, to speak mystically, the path to one’s own heaven always leads through the voluptuousness of one’s own hell. No, he knows nothing thereof. The “religion of compassion ” (or “the heart ”) bids him help, and he thinks he has helped best when he has helped most speedily! If you adherents of this religion actually have the same sentiments towards yourselves which you have towards your fellows, if you are unwilling to endure your own suffering even for an hour, and continually forestall all possible misfortune, if you regard suffering and pain generally as evil, as detestable, as deserving of annihilation, and as blots on existence, well, you have then, besides your religion of compassion, yet another religion in your heart (and this is perhaps the mother of the former) the religion of smug ease.
Have you read about his life? Suffering "transfigured" the world for him. Also:

Dusty is bluepilled.

>the path to one’s own heaven always leads through the voluptuousness of one’s own hell.

NEETzsche had no experience with suffering past occasional diarrhea.

If this is bait I will bite.
Besides diarrhea, Nietzsche had a brain cancer that disturbed an optical nerve and was almost blind in later years of his life. Some days he wasn't even able to sleep without drugs, because of headaches, which were chronic. There's a letter in which he said everytime he closed his eyes he saw "flowers", and that there was not a single moment in his life in which he could be at peace.

Why didn't he just kill himself if he was such a genetic untermensch?

Way to prove the point that this whole "suffering is beneficial to mankind" bullshit is just a cheap way of coping with the fact that your life is garbage. Much like Neetshits hated Christianity in that respect.

It means you need to accept suffering.

It's not like you can reject it in the first place anyway.

Not me, by the way. So where was his triumph, his glory, his payoff? He died soaked in piss and barely verbal. Did he conclude that he had suffered enough to experience his metaphysical redemption or at the very least a proportional part of one? Do you?

You've showed you're not interested in knowing Nietzsche and probably have a poor grasp in philosophy in general. So talking with you will be a waste of time.

Suffering is a means of transcendence. Happiness is in overcoming, so there can be no happiness without suffering. Nietzsche's philosophy would be a cheap excuse if he were a lazy fuck, if rationalising his suffering were the only thing he did, but on the contrary he was pretty active for a gravely sick person.

>So where was his triumph, his glory, his payoff? He died soaked in piss and barely verbal. Did he conclude that he had suffered enough to experience his metaphysical redemption or at the very least a proportional part of one? Do you?
The problem is you can only conceive of glory in a slavish way, as some kind of public recognition. A "triumph" in the Nietzschean sense would be living your live according to his idea of eternal return. But I don't really get your point, you think he choose to become an invalid? He had no control over his brain cancer, it was a fatality.

Not at all, I was asking about transcendence, the Spiritual, etc. YOU (and Nietzsche) seem to be conceiving of it in a vulgar way what with eternal return and its implication of simply spinning the hamster wheel forever.

Scientism is a shadow of Christianity. Definitely different. Recently I've been comparing it to what Sadducees were to early Christianity.

Could elaborate? I don't understand what you're trying to say.

What is the point of suffering according to Nietzsche? Returning to the Material world forever so you can suffer again, forever?

There's no point. His earlier philosophy talks about the "aesthetical redemption" of the world through tragedy, though. His later philosophy is more about how far can you go in a meaningless void. He conceives will as a creative force, not as something that desires something that it lacks (like a "redemption"); "will to power" is an expression of his, but a bit misleading as it gives the idea of a will that is a desire something lacking instead of a will that express itself as power. So, basically, redemption and the "meaning" of suffering is irrelevant to such a will, and removing every meaningfulness of the universe is a way of "purifying" will's expression. Eternal return is a way of testing the way you're living, but I find some flaws in it, like, what if the person simply doesn't care? Also, it's pretty difficult to imagine your life returning for eternity, so it's hard to make the idea have any effect.

I can't help but hear the Archons' laughter reading this. It's too much...

Wait, I was talking with the gnosticfag? If only I knew it earlier...

>the philosophical message of Dostoyevsky's magnum opus literally boils down to 'God works in mysterious ways'
Holy....I want more.....

Git gud.

"...suffering deciphers the sublime language through which the poor victim addresses God." Suffering is the only way to scorch false belief from your being. To suffer is be attached to false belief. A life without suffering does not exist, it is an integral part of being. Suffering is absolutely essential to life, and to deny it its importance is both futile and foolish.

Like clockwork.

Pretending to be right is suffering in disguise.

You're only saying that because suffering exists, though. Isn't this just a shitty excuse to rationalize your suffering? You're only able to say this because a life with suffering is the only life you know.

So instead of overcoming suffering we should rage against the universe? That's pretty pathetic. If I misunderstood your idea, enlighten me, show me your gnosticism isn't just resentment.

How would you overcome (your) suffering?

>The material world is not good, it's cursed
>The subject damns itself - often, but is also cursed
>Suffering is a process that started when we got consciousness, my guess is 'too early in development'
>Active love - you don't and can't reactively love your enemies
>proactive love won't prevent suffering
>suffering is not wholly redemptive unless you walk out of hell by standing still

>have life-long medical ailments causing me to experience seizures literally nonstop
>be sentenced to death for reading forbidden lit
>make peace with God
>face the firing squad
>get pardoned literally seconds before getting shot
>go to hard labor in Siberia
>console other prisoners with my iron convictions regarding christendom
>even convince one dude to not kill himself
>suffer for years of hard labor in Siberia with chronic fevers and seizures
>be release from prison
>spend several years creating art that accurately captures how redemption can come about through suffering, drawing on my own extensive experience
>150 years later
>some NEET who can't get laid because he spends all his free time laughing at frog memes claims that my ideas of redemption through suffering are misguided

Point me to someone who experiences no suffering. Just one.

The process is too subtle and personal, and as there are varieties of suffering, there are varieties of overcoming it; but a general way of overcoming it is through meditation and analysis.

Also, there is no need to rationalize my suffering. You suffer from being incapable of accepting suffering as an essential component to your life. I've rid myself of that unnecessary component of suffering by accepting it.

Not an argument.

I'm not saying that there are people in life that don't suffer, I'm saying that a world with suffering is the only life that's known, there is no alternative for us. So Dostoyevsky's argument just feels like he's justifying being in a shitty situation by saying how you can redeem yourself through it.

Not him but yeah that's the point. Just because something is given does not mean it is good, true, valuable, etc. Claiming suffering is good is literally Materialist dialectic.

This is Materialist Darwinian dialectic, transcendence of the smartest and such.

You can see it as an excuse, but it's also possible to see it as an advice of using suffering as a means of transcendence/overcoming.

>Beatitude through suffering is an illusion, since it requires a reconciliation to the fatality of pain in order to avoid total annihilation.
E.M. Cioran

???

Well suffering is good in the way discipline is good. Discipline being a form of suffering. There are many benefits derived from the experiences brought upon by suffering. Growth as an individual can only be accomplished through suffering.
What is wrong with that argument? Suffering is the process which helps one transcend limitations.

dost went through hell and back.
if there's anyone worth listening to, it's him and solzhenitsyn.