Prince Myshkin: the anthropology of the image

Annotation

This article is devoted to the image of Prince Myshkin, one of the central characters of F. M. Dostoevsky's novel “The Idiot”. Traditionally, this image has aroused and continues to arouse interest. Of course, one of the most interesting angles of considering the hero created by Dostoevsky is the opportunity to comprehend him as a fool. This is exactly what the Christian interpretation of the image focuses on, which today, of course, is predominant in the space of scientific discourse. Analyzing the already existing views on Dostoevsky's hero, in this article we give a new, philosophical and anthropological interpretation of the image, and assert that Prince Myshkin is someone who lives by internal causation, ignoring the world of the present, where everything is held together by causal relationships. The hero discovers the human in himself and refuses to live according to the laws of society, the necessary conditions for existence in which are the refusal of the opportunity to speak his own language and the inability not to coordinate with others the truth about himself. In addition, Myshkin becomes the forerunner of Dostoevsky's idea of anthropodicy, which will finally take shape in the last novel of the great writer “The Brothers Karamazov”.

Keywords

• F. M. Dostoevsky
• philosophical anthropology
• foolishness
• Prince Myshkin
• “Idiot”
• russian philosophy
• man
• society
• language
• anthropodicy
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