Between Idyll and Catastrophe: The Ethics of Redemption in Dostoevsky's “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”

Abstract

In general, readers of Dostoevsky's “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” can be divided into three main groups. The first, considers the story to be an example of Dostoevsky's faith in humanity's spiritual rebirth and its protagonist as a character who undergoes transformative change from metaphysical indifference to faith. The second reads the story as a narrative of an un‐self‐aware egoist, who corrupts the truth driven by a will to power. The third group avoids taking a stand on the ethical fortitude of the story's protagonist and instead focuses on pointing out the ambiguities of the story's message and revealing its built‐in semantic indeterminacy. Such readings declare that the story raises questions that refuse to be easily solved. Among these is the limitations of linguistic expression (what can be expressed and what cannot be, but also what kind of truth can be expressed in what language), the nature of truth and knowledge (spiritual knowledge of the planet's inhabitants vs. the earthly knowledge of the protagonist), the difference and confusion between Paradise and Utopia, between dreams and reality, as well as between the human desire for the perfect world and the (im)possibility of attaining it. In this essay I will explore the nature of the story's ambiguity. I will argue, however, that the multi‐level indeterminacy of the “The Dream” makes it into Dostoevsky's most explicit ‘messianic’ text in which he directly establishes the value of the ethics of redemption of which ambiguity is part and parcel. I attempt to untangle what this means in the context of Dostoevsky's religious philosophy by situating the story within the philosophical context of Dostoevsky's two novels—The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov—in which redemption becomes the primary factor behind the characters’ thoughts and actions. I continue by discussing Dostoevsky's “The Dream” alongside a key twentieth century messianic text by Walter Benjamin, “The Theses on the Philosophy of History,” as well as the notion of the contemporary by Giorgio Agamben. By forming a constellation between Dostoevsky and Benjamin, I hope not only to show the relevance of Dostoevsky's philosophy for our times, but to determine a common philosophical context which helps to elucidate hidden spots in each text, namely the importance of history on Dostoevsky's ethics of redemption and Benjamin's relationship to theology and individual action.