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Chapter 8 Despair is the Sickness unto death I first read Dostoevsky’s ‘Demons’ (AKA ‘The Possessed’) in English and didn’t much like it. If I had not later learned Russian, I probably would never have read it again. It would have remained one of those books I vaguely remembered as …
Read More »The philosophy of Dostoevsky: Chapters 6 and 7 Review
Chapter 6 Martyrdom When I first read the Brothers Karamazov there were chapters that I read quickly and without much thought. Either they were to do with description and plot or if they were to do with psychological, philosophical or theological issues I was unable to see the interest. Some …
Read More »The philosophy of Dostoevsky: Chapters 4 and 5 Review
Chapter 4 If God does not exist everything, is permitted: a Kierkegaardian perspective In The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan Karamazov’s philosophical and theological ideas are complex and develop in the course of the novel. However, near the beginning of the novel, in Book 2 Chapter 6, an idea is attributed to …
Read More »The philosophy of Dostoevsky: Chapters 2 and 3 Review
Chapter 2 A lady of little faith Katerina Khokhlakova is a fairly minor character in Dostoevsky’s ‘The Brothers Karamazov’. She is the mother of Lise, the little girl who begins the novel as an invalid, but who later develops a close loving relationship with Alyosha. Madame Khokhlakova in the end …
Read More »The philosophy of Dostoevsky: Introduction and Chapter 1 Review
Introduction I first read Dostoevsky when I was at Cambridge doing my Ph.D. I can’t remember why I decided to begin the Brothers Karamazov. I must have first heard of Dostoevsky when I was about eighteen. I think I saw someone reading Crime and Punishment and asked about it. I came …
Read More »The great leap forward
It is only through writing that I can really know what I think. My views develop and change. The fundamentals don’t normally change a great deal, but the details do. My method is not scholarly. I find most academic writing to be desperately dull and pointless. I rarely now write …
Read More »All is but toys
Is our duty only to obey the law? This question was asked by Iain Martin recently during an article about tax and finance. The issues involved are recent touching upon the way people and corporations may try to pay as little tax as possible. Should capitalism be limited merely by the rule …
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