The Dialectics of Love and Pity in Dostoevsky's ‘The Idiot' in the View of V. S. Solovyov's Polemics with A. Schopenhauer

Abstract

The article concerns the problem of interrelation of categories “love” and “pity” in the context of F. M. Dostoevsky's novel “The Idiot” and the consideration of this problem in the context of V. S. Solovyov's polemics with A. Schopenhauer on the subject of grounding of morality. Dostoevsky consciously did not intend to address this problem within his novel, but certain thinkers as well as certain researchers of Dostoevsky have, nevertheless, attempted to resolve this pity-love opposition. In particular, this concerns Vladimir Solovyov and his major work “The Justification of the Good”, where he criticizes A. Schopenhauer's claim that the sharing of suffering, which makes possible the compassionate relation to other people, is actually the main grounding of morality. Solovyov labels this thesis as purely negative and suggests a more positive conception of morality that is based on loving to the other man and treating him as a particle of unified humanity. This narrative of criticism of negative humanistic ideal of compassion in favor of a more positive conception of Christian love was also frequently reproduced in the studies of Dostoevsky's “The Idiot”. At the same time, in the Japanese research on Dostoevsky and in Akira Kurosawa's adaptation of this novel an opposite Schopenhauerian quasi-Buddhist conception of morality based on one's participation in the someone else's suffering is more predominant. In this way Solovyov's polemics with Schopenhauer can be viewed as a reflection of the dialogue between two opposite interpretations of Dostoevsky's “The Idiot” that correspond to different traditions within the study of Dostoevsky.