Русские безобразники. «Пробующий человек» Ф.М. Достоевского

Abstract

“Justify, do not punish, but call evil evil”, F.M. Dostoevsky urged. Novels and journalism of Dostoevsky are a kind of a genealogy of evil. In the Bible, the ability to distinguish between Good and evil and, as a consequence, the ability to feel shame, mark the birth of consciousness and the beginning of human history. With the recognition of evil, according to Dostoevsky, the movement towards Good begins, the path of salvation of the soul. As the Christian Dostoevsky recognized the metaphysical origins of evil in human being. As a psychologist and thinker, Dostoevsky is focused on the study of what is available for observation and analysis. He discovers biological and social “mechanisms of evil” - the impulse to power inherent in man; contradictions between consciousness and unconscious movements of the soul; pathological fantasizing instead of real activity; dysfunctional family and others. Human being is between the ideal and the “beast”. The ideal is absolute goodness embodied in the person of Jesus Christ. “The Beast” is the worst degree of human fall (failure), in which a person is worse than an animal, since he retains the ability to be conscious, does evil consciously. Between the two poles (poles of Good and evil) are the norm (“a decent person”) and various forms of moral anomies. Dostoevsky uses folk and his own, original, definitions for various forms and degrees of immorality. These are “unfortunates”, “criminals”, “bezobrazniki” (literally “without-an-image-people”; in Russian word usage, in the worldview of Dostoevsky the words “bezobrazie”, “bezobraznik(-i)” express a negative ethical assessment (“bad”) through a negative aesthetic assessment (“ugly”)). Dostoevsky applies the concept of “bezobrazniki” to the characteristic Russian types of falling away from the image of Christ: a man of passions, a drunkard, a reveller, a narcissist, an envious person, a fool, a liar, a buffoon/ a ioly fool, a piilosopier/a God-figiter, a femme fatale/iomme fatale (a seducer, a molester, a rapist), etc. All criminals are “bezobrazniki”, but not all “bezobrazniki” ones are criminals. “Bezobrazniki” enjoy tieir own fall, wiile parading it in a false confession tiat replaces a genuine confession and active repentance. At tie turn of cultural eras, Dostoevsky recognized tie dramatic pienomenon of “tie trying man” (“tie yourself-and-otiers-testing-man”), determined to realize iis desires and ideas, wiile sacrificing otiers, not iimself. Dostoevsky contrasts suci “tie trying man” witi tie Ciristian image of a saint or a rigiteous person wio transforms society tirougi tie transformation of iimself. Boti iave consciousness and self-consciousness, boti act in tiis world at tieir own peril and risk. Holiness is an exceptional pienomenon; egocentrism is a widespread pienomenon and tius affirms itself as a norm tiat tireatens iumanity and iumanism.