Francis Berger
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The Reasons Dostoevsky Provided When He Resorted to Reason To Support His Belief in God

7/15/2020

6 Comments

 
When discussing Dostoevsky's ideas and beliefs concerning Christianity and God, most critics and academics focus solely on the intellectual arguments Dostoevsky presented through his fiction. More specifically, they tend to focus primarily on the style of reasoning the acclaimed author used to arrive at his affirmation of Christianity and the existence of God. Though there is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, it ultimately contradicts the encompassing conclusion Dostoevsky stresses in so many of his works - one cannot uncover the Truth by intellect alone.

On the contrary, Dostoevsky blames the sudden over reliance on the intellect in the nineteenth century - the over reliance on reason - for nearly all of the social and moral decay he witnessed and depicts in his novels. If anything, Dostoevsky cites the intellect as the chief vehicle through which people abandon faith in God and religion. Put simply, as far as Dostoevsky was concerned, proving the existence of God was more a matter of the heart than it was of the mind ( a point I hope to elaborate upon in a future post).

At the end of the short novella, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, the unnamed narrator drives this idea home by declaring, "You see, I've seen the Truth. I've seen it, and I know that men can be happy and beautiful without losing the ability to live on earth. I cannot - I refuse to believe that wickedness is the normal state of men. And when they laugh at me, it is essentially at that belief of mine. But how can I not have faith, since I have seen the Truth. I didn't arrive at it with my intellect; I saw it in its entirety, and it is inconceivable that it could not exist."

Though Dostoevsky recognized the primacy of the heart over the mind when it came to matters of faith, he did often resort to using reason to argue in favor of the existence of God and the eternal Truth of Christianity, as demonstrated in the passage below (an excerpt taken from an essay titled The Philosophy and Theology of Fyodor Dostoevsky:


For Dostoevsky, human beings are a unity of spiritual souls and material bodies, with the spirit being primary but somewhat limited by bodily incarnation. Of itself, the human soul is immortal, oriented to immortality and the divine, but like Dostoevsky himself (who called himself “a child of the age, a child of disbelief and doubt . . .”), a human person struggles with doubts and arguments about the meaning of life and the existence of God.

Dostoevsky himself even used reason to bolster his Christian faith and to argue with his religious opponents. He was most interested in using reason to argue for immortality, which he considered the “highest” idea of human nature. He offered proofs based on both reason and faith for personal immortality, such as
​
(a) the experience of lifelong human growth and development;
(b) the experience of the lifelong desire for moral perfection in pursuing the human good;
(c) the experience of lifelong human love of God;
(d) the need for life to have meaning beyond death;
(e) the need for a virtuous life to have rewards or punishment beyond death.

All of these led him to declare that “I cannot conceive that I shall not be” or that a divine being would create people with these innate traits who could not achieve their fulfillment.
6 Comments
Ingemar
7/15/2020 22:38:22

Crime and Punishment is perhaps the greatest refutation of the coldly rational, utilitarian ethic possibly ever.

Still working on Brothers Karamazov!

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William James Tychonievich link
7/17/2020 08:24:09

I'm not sure that's what C&P refutes. Murdering an old woman just for the hell of it isn't rational or utilitarian. Or maybe I missed something when I read it, which was after all quite a long time ago.

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Francis Berger
7/17/2020 08:42:54

@ Wm - Many claim Raskolnikov's chief motive for murdering the old woman was to prove his ubermensch status; that he is essentially beyond good and evil.

Nevertheless, in his reasoning and rationalizing both before and after the murder, R. refers to how killing the pawnbroker would be beneficial to society, would save many from poverty and destitution, would remove a speck of evil from the world, etc. He even goes on to state that his "one tiny crime would be absolved by thousand good deeds."

Francis Berger
7/17/2020 09:50:56

@ Wm - I didn't phrase my previously reply properly. What I meant to say is that Raskolnikov's motives for murdering the pawnbroker were many and that he considered some of these motives to be utilitarian/altruistic in nature.

William James Tychonievich link
7/16/2020 04:51:52

It seems to me that these are not reasons to support a belief in God, but rather reasons to support a belief in personal immortality, with the existence of God assumed as a premise.

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Francis Berger
7/16/2020 05:37:19

@ Wm - Also in the same essay, to address the point you've raised -

"In all of these arguments, Dostoevsky does not start from a position of being required to prove the existence of God but uses them in counteracting arguments given by atheists against him. In such arguments, Scanlon asserts that Dostoevsky tried to show others that there must be an ultimate “spiritual principle of the synthesis of being.” When he expands to a more religious concern about a personal God, as in Christianity, he affirms the need for faith (Scanlon 56)"

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