Most often, happiness and meaning in life, according to Dostoevsky, are achieved through suffering. But they are not an end in themselves. This spiritual path a person trying to find his place in an unfair world. They, according to Dostoevsky, give a person the key to a sympathetic understanding of other people’s suffering, other people’s grief, make him morally more sensitive and more experienced and seasoned in life.
In connection with Dostoevsky’s favorite idea about the beneficial meaning of suffering, it is necessary to note his unusually deep, all-encompassing thought about the guilt and responsibility of everyone before everyone and everyone before everyone, the thought that forms the basis of the story young Dostoevsky“Weak Heart”, and then became dominant in all his novels.
A person does not have the right to withdraw into himself, to live only for himself, a person does not have the right to pass by the misfortunes that reign in the world, Dostoevsky tirelessly repeated. A person is responsible not only for his own actions, but also for every evil that occurs in the world.
Dostoevsky is an infinitely sincere and humane writer. He taught to look for the spark of good in every person, tried to educate a person. "With complete realism“to find a person in a person” - this is how Dostoevsky himself defined the essence of his genius, his high humanistic aspiration. It is not without reason that many of those who experienced moments of despair in life found support and a way out in Dostoevsky’s works. They extracted hope from the writer's deepest faith in man.
Reading Dostoevsky is, although a sweet, but not at all an easy job, since his works provide immeasurably much for the thought and soul.
“I could never understand the idea,” Dostoevsky wrote in 1876, “that one tenth of people should receive higher development, and the remaining nine-tenths should only serve as material and means for this, while they themselves remain in darkness. I don’t want to think and live otherwise than with the faith that all our ninety million Russians (or how many of them there will be then) will all, someday, be educated, humanized and happy. I know and firmly believe that universal education cannot harm anyone in our country. I even believe that the kingdom of thought and light is capable of establishing itself here, in our Russia, even sooner, perhaps, than anywhere else... I don’t know how all this will happen, but it will come true.”
In 1839, an eighteen-year-old young man, Dostoevsky, wrote to his brother: “Man is a mystery. It needs to be solved, and if you spend your whole life solving it, don’t say you wasted your time; I am engaged in this mystery because I want to be a man.”
Dostoevsky had a presentiment of his calling. All his life he fought for the spiritual nature of man, defended his dignity, personality and freedom.
Dostoevsky belongs to those writers whose biography is closely connected with their creativity, to those writers who were able to reveal themselves in their works of art. That is why he was able to penetrate so deeply into the mystery of man. By unraveling it, Dostoevsky unravels the mystery of his own personality, and, conversely, he projects his fate onto the fate of his heroes. And just as you can study their creator from Dostoevsky’s novels, he also puts his life, his own spiritual experience into his novels.
But in Dostoevsky’s biographical milestones there are such important reference points, such events that played a decisive role in his life and creative path.
In his youth, he “passionately” accepted the atheistic worldview of V. G. Belinsky and entered the secret revolutionary society of the most active of the Petrashevites (“Durovites”), who decided to start a secret printing house.

On December 22, 1849, Dostoevsky was sentenced to death and stood on the scaffold.
In these terrible moments, he begins to die.” old man" For four years, Dostoevsky read one book in hard labor - the Gospel - the only book allowed in the prison. Gradually is born " new person", the "rebirth of beliefs" begins.
Dostoevsky went to hard labor as a revolutionary and an atheist, and returned as a monarchist and a believer.
As The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor showed in The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky did not equate Christianity with statehood.

This interpretation of monarchism by Dostoevsky himself reflected the dream of the former Petrashevite about a “golden age”, about an earthly paradise, about the brotherhood of all people. But the writer always connects this dream after hard labor and exile with the Christian faith, which he suffered so thoroughly that at the end of his life he writes about last novel“The Brothers Karamazov”: “And in Europe there is no such power of atheistic expressions and there never was, therefore, it is not like a boy that I believe in Christ and confess Him, but through a great crucible of doubts my hosanna has passed...”
After hard labor, the religious theme is central to Dostoevsky’s work. In 1870, he wrote to his friend, poet A. N. Maikov: “ The main question... with which I have been tormented consciously and unconsciously all my life - the existence of God.”
But the terrible hard labor, the horrors of the “House of the Dead” inevitably exacerbated the idea of ​​​​rebellion and Dostoevsky’s dream of people’s happiness. The writer's rebellion and dream were also fueled by Russian reality after the abolition of serfdom.
All of Dostoevsky's great novels were written in post-reform Russia. Dostoevsky perceived many facts from the surrounding life as ominous signs of a terrible disease that gripped all layers of society after “everything in Russia turned upside down.”
Along with the socio-economic basis of the old feudal-serf system, all moral foundations began to quickly collapse. The old patriarchal “decency” was collapsing, capitalism brought decay, “disorder” (in the draft notes, Dostoevsky’s novel “The Teenager” is called “Disorder”), and, above all, the disintegration of age-old family foundations.
Everyone has become infected with the “demon of national wealth,” the corrupting influence of the capitalist world, where “a person can be the most ordinary, money will give him everything, that is, power and the right to contempt.” "Decomposition - main idea novel,” Dostoevsky formulated his task in one of his early notes for “The Teenager.”
But Dostoevsky was, perhaps, the only writer in the 60-70s of the 19th century who perceived the terrible era of impending capitalism as an era of crisis in Christian culture, the dying of the Christian faith. “I cried,” admits the hero of the novel “Teenager” Versilov, “I cried for them, I cried for an old idea and, perhaps, I cried with real tears.” And Dostoevsky elevated this personal pain, his tears for dying Christianity, to the level of a tragedy for all humanity contemporary to him, and perceived this tragedy as his personal pain.
The religious crisis in Dostoevsky's mind was associated with impending grandiose public and social upheavals. But, having gone through the scaffold and hard labor, that is, the circles of human hell that Dante never even dreamed of, Dostoevsky always believed that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not embrace it.” On April 16, 1864, the day after the death of his first wife, Dostoevsky makes a startling confession: “The highest use that a person can make of his personality, of the full development of his self, is, as it were, to destroy this self, to give it entirely to everyone and to everyone completely and selflessly. And this is the greatest happiness...
Dostoevsky was not understood during his lifetime, the problems and questions that tormented him were inaccessible to his contemporaries, and his global prophecies seemed to be the fruit of a morbid imagination. And in this sense, Dostoevsky truly lived as a misunderstood and lonely genius. He could repeat after Raskolnikov that “truly great people should feel great sadness in the world.”
But Dostoevsky overcame the loneliness of a genius in the creative act. His biography and works of art form a single whole. He always “lived in literature”, without literature he never imagined his existence, artistic creativity was the main meaning of his existence, and he always thought of existence itself as a creative act. Therefore, the true biography of Dostoevsky is the spiritual unity of his life and work, their mutual conjugation. And the book now offered to the attention of readers is a spiritual biography.
And isn’t there a clear condemnation of the philosophy of the “underground” in Dostoevsky’s work, which is filled with high tragedy due to the fact that the writer himself did not yet see real paths to the universal and true happiness of people?

Belov S.V.

Conclusion

“Man is a mystery. It must be unraveled, and if you spend your whole life unraveling it, then don’t say that you wasted time; I am studying this mystery because I want to be a man,” reflected eighteen-year-old Dostoevsky (Dostoevsky F.M., PSS, - 1985 - vol. 28, - book 1 - p. 63.). Has anyone solved this mystery? I think not. The problem of man is directed to the future. Each of us and each of those who will replace us will ask ourselves more than once: who am I? What am I living for? Why does the entire human race exist? Everyone will find their own answer or not find it at all, leaving in ignorance into another world - into a world where divine insight, having clarified our minds, will resolve all problems. But those who leave in ignorance are not so many. We need the meaning of life like air. Like water, we need an understanding of a person in his integrity, which helps the individual understand himself. Philosophy makes an invaluable contribution to revealing the essence of man, to his search for the meaning of life. Countless philosophical concepts of man and his nature - where is the truth? how to determine the essence of a person and the meaning of his life? We must not forget that truth is not a static, but a developing phenomenon. Today it is true, tomorrow it will become false. The human problem develops over time: a huge path has already been passed, but the future opens up more and more new prospects for solving this problem. The main thing is not to go to extremes, “splitting” the single essence of man, and remember: in order to be a person, we need to comprehend every minute, every moment, step by step, the secret whose name is Man.

List of used literature

1. Berdyaev N.A. On the purpose of man // World of philosophy: A book for reading. - M., 1991. 2. Gurevich, P.S. Philosophical anthropology: Tutorial. - M.: Vestnik, 1997.

3. Dostoevsky F.M. Full Collection cit.: In 30 T. - L., 1985. - T.28. - Book 1.

4. Ivanov V.P. Artistic activity And artistic reality// Problems of the subject and objective determination. - Kyiv, 1981.

5. Kuznetsov V.G., Kuznetsova I.D., Mironov V.V., Momdzhyan K.Kh. Philosophy. Textbook. - M.: INFRA - M., 1999.

6. Ortega-y-Gasset. Revolt of the masses // Questions of philosophy. - 1989. - No. 3

7. Orlov V.V. Social biology // Correlation of biological and social. Interuniversity collection of scientific papers. - Perm: Publishing house. Perm. Univ., 1981.

8. Philosophical encyclopedic dictionary/ Ch. editor: L.F. Ilyichev, P.N. Fedoseev and others - M.: Sov. Encyclopedia, 1983.

9. Khomich E.V. Man // Newest philosophical dictionary / Compiled by A.A. Grishchanov. - Minsk: Publishing house. V.M. Skakun, 1998. - P. 802.

10. Socio-political magazine. No. 2,3. 1998. Article “Man as an Object”

philosophical knowledge." Migolatyev A.A.

Life of Dostoevsky. Through the twilight of the white nights Basina Marianna Yakovlevna

"Man is a mystery"

"Man is a mystery"

After the death of his father, Fedor began to think more and more often about his later life. Now, being completely left to his own devices, he could solve the issues that daddy had so far decided for him. And he, a submissive son, accustomed to obedience, obediently followed the will that guided him, not wanting to upset his caring father.

Having left Moscow and lived in St. Petersburg, although in a closed educational institution Fyodor was already looking at many things with different eyes, acquiring his own concepts about life. He felt sorry for his father, sympathized with him, but did not at all share his views and judgments. Having barely studied at the school for a year, he already wrote to Mikhail: “I feel sorry for the poor father! Strange character! Oh, how many misfortunes he suffered! It’s bitter to the point of tears that there is nothing to console him.” And he added: “Do you know? Papa does not know the world at all: he lived in it for 50 years and remained the same opinion about people that he had 30 years ago. Blissful ignorance. But he is very disappointed in him. This seems to be our common lot.”

Fyodor was also not fascinated by the light. But he believed that, despite his early years, knows something about life and people that Mikhail Andreevich was not given the opportunity to know.

Most of all, Fedor was interested in people. Both living now and from past centuries. “Man is a mystery. It needs to be solved, and if you spend your whole life solving it, don’t say you wasted your time; I am dealing with this mystery...” So he wrote to Mikhail in August 1839.

How did he solve this mystery? Vigilantly looked closely at life, at the people around him. And I read. I read ancient and modern writers. I read a lot, greedily searching books for answers to the mystery. human soul and the meaning of life. “...To learn “what man and life mean” - I am quite successful in this; I can learn characters from writers with whom the best part of my life flows freely and joyfully.” He looked in books for answers to questions that worried both him and all thinking youth. “It should be noted,” he wrote much later, “that then only this was allowed, that is, novels, everything else, almost every thought, especially from France, was strictly prohibited.”

The revolutionary “infection” was coming from France. She was seen everywhere. And even French novels they didn’t always “slip through”. Thus, the Minister of Education Uvarov forbade the translation into Russian of Victor Hugo’s novel “The Cathedral Notre Dame of Paris”, believing that it is “too early” for the Russian public to read such books.

V. Hugo. Engraving mid-19th V.

And the young conductor read these books. He wrote to his father: “Having moved to the upper class, I find absolutely necessary Subscribe here to the French library for reading. How many great works of geniuses there are - mathematicians and military geniuses on French. I see the need to read this..."

Always truthful, in in this case it wasn't entirely accurate. He didn't borrow so much from the French library scientific essays, how many novels by George Sand, Balzac, Hugo have not been translated into Russian...

George Sand had extraordinary success in Russia at that time. Dostoevsky was captivated by her novels. Ordinary people, artless characters, modest women, ready for heroism, tall moral purity, mercy, justice, faith in man, in the happy future of humanity... “I was, I think, about sixteen years old when I read her story “Uskok” for the first time, one of her most charming original works. I remember I was feverish all night afterwards.” Since then, he has not missed a single new creation by Georges Sand.

J. Sand. Engraving of the middle. XIX century

He also reveled in Schiller, the noble, sublime, denouncing Schiller, a passionate fighter for justice. “You wrote to me, brother, that I had not read Schiller. - You're wrong, brother! I memorized Schiller, spoke to them, raved about him; and I think that fate has done nothing more opportunely in my life.”

He read Schiller together with Shidlovsky, checking “above him” Don Carlos, Marquis Posa, Mortimer.

Yes, characters - the very essence of human nature - he learned so far mainly from books and, an ardent dreamer, he himself imagined himself to be a hero Ancient Greece- Pericles, then the Roman commander Marius, then one of the first Christian martyrs of the time of Nero, then a knight from the novels of Walter Scott... “And what I did not dream of in my youth, what I did not experience with all my heart, with all my soul in golden and inflamed dreams, exactly from opium!

He not only dreamed - he committed his dreams to paper, composed, wrote a lot and enthusiastically. At night, in the bedroom of his company, in his favorite nook, covered with a blanket, by the light of a lonely candle, he not only persistently comprehended engineering sciences, but also wrote. And it is unknown what he spent more time on.