DOSTOEVSKY'S SOCIALISM
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hence of
heart.
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the aim of knowledge is love and nature, there is
clearly a place for the human
heart."
None of
this
makes very much
philosophical sense, as Dostoevsky shows himself uneasily aware in
breaking off his lucubrations; but this defense of
feeling
as a method
of access to knowledge of God (in particular) was to remain one of
Dostoevsky's most deeply rooted convictions.
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now we place Feuerbach's doctrines against this background,
it is not difficult to grasp the future course of Dostoevsky'S inner
evolution. For Feuerbach, it should be noted, never denied the im–
portance or the reality of man's emotional
need
for religion. On the
contrary, he stressed this emotional need with a deep sympathy, and
with a genuine understanding for mankind's instinct to worship its
own aspirations. "The fundamental dogmas of Christianity," Feuer–
bach wrote, "are realized wishes of the heart- the essence of Chris–
tianity is the essence of human feeling." But Feuerbach argued that
in
religion man turns the subjective into the objective, disregards the
laws of nature and reason, and simply believes true what he wishes
were true.
Man therefore has the choice between believing his feelings, and
accepting all the enigmatic and paradoxical consequences which this in–
volves, or denying his feelings and opting for reason. Feuerbach, Marx,
the Left Hegelians, Herzen and Belinsky chose to stand with reason;
Kierkegaard, whose existential Christianity was as much a response
to Feuerbach as to Hegel, chose to push the antagonism between
subjective, existential faith and reason to the uttermost point of
paradox. The arguments of Feuerbach, as conveyed by Belinsky, thus
squarely confronted Dostoevsky with the choice between feeling and
reason; and like Kierkegaard, he ultimately chose to take his stand
with the existential irrational of feeling.
Contact with Feuerbach's ideas, then, after the first upsetting
effects of novelty had worn off, only succeeded, we may speculate, in
sharpening and strengthening Dostoevsky's already established convic–
tion of the importance of feeling. To believe in God's goodness, despite
all the sufferings one endured, had been for Shidlovsky the mark of
man's true greatness; and the acceptance of this paradox certainly
made it easier for Dostoevsky to decide to believe emotionally in
God
and Christ despite all the arguments of reason to the contrary.
Dostoevsky's intellectual history thus placed him at the same fateful
