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profound way than the trial can possibly envisage through its rational
approach; and it is a guilt he can expiate only by true Christian
humility.
As a system of ideas, Dostoevsky's thinking does not especially
recommend itself to us. Yet, in its highly morbid and personal form,
it has certainly become a part of what we can call the modern con–
sciousness. Dostoevsky was clearly not alone in proclaiming that the
spirit of science and rationalism acted as a fetter on the truly human.
Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, there has been a general
reaction against the more extreme varieties of empiricism and posi–
tivism that seemingly excluded the imponderables of existence. We
see the emblem of the irrational in Kierkegaard, in Nietzsche, in the
Romantics, in Baudelaire, in the Symbolists, and now in the Existen–
tialists. At the same time, a more theoretical strain expressing anxiety
over the growth of the scientific spirit has emerged in Western thought,
mostly leaning toward the religious, but found also among some
disillusioned radicals today and some of the Existentialists. Not only
does it attribute the dreaded mechanization of life to the spread of
scientific belief, but it makes the more fundamental criticism that
the scientific approach cannot yield moral values.
This point of view is far from unfashionable these days, and
there have been several .attempts to bolster it by invoking the genius
of Dostoevsky. But while any such attempt today to create a cult of
the irrational and the irresponsible in the name of art and morality
must be characterized as thoroughly retrograde and lacking in serious–
ness, still the fact remains that the genius of modern art has flourished
so far on the idea that consciousness cannot be contained
in
any purely
scientific philosophy. Like the Existentialists, Dostoevsky tried to come
to grips with man's immediate experience, with
his
inner writhings
and the inescapable presence of death, and to bring man into the
orbit of mankind by discovering the more moral or more human side
of the individual. And though one may question the theoretical value
of Dostoevsky's position, the truth is that it did inspire the remark–
able artistic verities of his fiction.
The same can be said of Dostoevsky's politics which, however
shamefully reactionary, were yet in some respect<; prophetically aware
of the crucial political issues. Shameful indeed, for Dostoevsky was a
provincial nationalist and a slavophile to boot, a sycophant of the
court and the Czar, and an arch-foe of the liberals and socialists
whom he vilified on every possible occasion. Nevertheless, Dostoevsky's
position was scarcely that of some petty tyrant or bureaucrat; nor
