Wittgenstein and Dostoevsky: Happiness and Subjectivity

Abstract

This paper analyzes the influence that The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky exerted on Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophical ideas. I argue that this impact was not limited exclusively to Wittgenstein's moral certainty but that it played an important role in his concept of the subject as the limit of the world, as formulated in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I attempt to show that this concept is embedded in literature, particularly in Dostoevsky, who describes liminal situations—crime, sin, guilt—in which the human being is at the edge of the world, at its boundary, as if within and at the same time outside.