Dostoevsky's Startling Predictions: Are They Coming True? (7 Tales)

[Music] is trustworthy that I give to Russia hi everyone Theodore dostovsky was 25 when he published his first novel poor folk in 1846. three years later he was sentenced to death in 1849 when he was only 28 years old a last-minute reprieved from the Tsar himself saved his life but he spent almost 10 years in Siberia most of it doing hard labor he published crime punishment in 1866 when he was 45. terrible gambling problem followed in 1879 he published his Masterpiece brothers karamazov and he died soon after in 1881 at the age of 59. he

suffered from epilepsy throughout his life he wrote 12 novels 4 novellas and 16 short stories now dostovsky is considered the greatest Russian writer along with Tolstoy Chekhov and torgenith but none of them experienced life from the lowest to the highest his novel Notes from Underground is considered that the first existentialist novel that influenced future writers such as Abba kamu Franz Kafka and even psychoanalyst Sigma Freud in addition to being one of the greatest novelists ever he's also studied as one of the greatest philosophers of 19th century his novels are centered on deeper's philosophical psychological topics

if Tolstoy was a historian and sociologist Dostoevsky was a psychologist or archaeologist of human existentialist suffering and had a huge influence on the German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche Albert Einstein said Dostoevsky gives him more than any scientist dostoevskis I think a father figure to millions of readers around the world in an era of nihilism most young men have lost their sense of purpose and there's a sense of fatherlessness too that permeates the modern society the old father-son connection has been lost in many parts of the world due to Rapid modernization I think understanding his work can

give people especially on young men a new perspective on life so in this video I'll discuss all his major novels including Crime and Punishment the brothers karamazov nudes from underground the idiot demons as well as two of his most profound short stories the dream of a ridiculous man and white Knights but first let me compare toshowski to another Russian giant Leo Tolstoy which should give you a good background and standing of Dostoevsky in the Russian context at the end I'll also compared to Oswego to the German philosopher Fred Nietzsche another thinker who fought nihilism by

the way if you want to buy the script of this video in a book format you can find the link down below this also supports the channel so thank you very much here's a fact Dostoevsky and Tolstoy lived around the same time often in the same cities in Petersburg but they never met dostrovsky was eager to meet but Tulsa apparently showed no interest it's pure speculation but I think Tolstoy being a count sought us to have skied just as a regular dude both authors however were friends with turginiff also another reason is that Tolstoy disliked

dostoevsky's most famous novel Crime and Punishment because he wasn't convinced that a poor young man would be willing to murder people to get rich or change the world Dostoevsky however was full of admiration for tolstoy's great novel Anna Karenina here is Dostoevsky Anna karunina is sheer perfection as work of art new European work of fiction of our present day comes anywhere near it furthermore the idea underlying it shows that it is hours hours something that belongs to us alone and that's our property our own National new world or at any rate the beginning of it

after Don Swift's death in 1881 Tolstoy lamented I have never seen this man and never had any relations with him and all of a sudden when he died I understood that this was the closest the dearest man for me the man whose presence I needed the most I considered him a friend and had no doubt that we will see each other someday but unfortunately they never did in this video I'll compare the two giants of Russian literature Leo Tolstoy and Theodore doshovsky I'll tell you about their lives novels styles of writing themes characters belief and

much more at the end I'll tell you which author is more popular today I'll show you some stats as well and tell you which author I prefer and why I have summarized and reviewed three of dostoevsky's novels Crime and Punishment the brothers chromosov and Notes from Underground and two of tolstoy's Novel War and Peace and Anna Karenina also in separate videos I have talked about eight lessons from Tolstoy and eight lessons from Dostoevsky mainly about their live philosophies I'll put a link in the description in case you want to watch them later Russian context in

the 18th century under Catherine the Great Russia expanded East Siberia and South Central Asia adopted French language and culture then Napoleon got excited thinking Russians would welcome him but he got humiliated in 1812. both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy grew up reading the two great Russian Romantic Poets Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail lermontov but also the satirical pros of Nikolai Google they both witnessed one of the most important events in Russian history taking place in 1861 when 31 million Russian serfs were emancipated at the same time there was a huge influx of Western influence like French art and

literature German and English capitalism as well as philosophies of utilitarianism rationalism in atheism Russian intellectuals were divided between the slavophiles who wanted to keep Russian values and traditions on the one hand and westernized radicals who wanted to destroy the Russian way of life in order to build a modern racial Society on the other this struggle culminated in 1917 Communist Revolution led by Vladimir Lenin life and career dostrovsky was born in 1821 in Moscow unlike other writers of his period he was a city boy not a Country Gentleman his father was a low-level doctor tolsto was

born seven years later in 1828 in their family country State yasnaya polyana and grew up in an aristocratic family so there are wildly different socio-economic situation influenced their world view and writings dostovsky's first novel poor folk about the plight of the Russian poor published in 1845 when he was 24 years old dostrevsky's entire body of work focuses on those at the bottom of the Russian Society tolstoy's first novel childhood published six years later in 1852 when he was 23 years old focused on his own life growing up in which he wrote about losing both parents

at a very young age Tulsa's mother died when he was two and his father died when he was nine as a result of growing up without parents told story's entire body of work focuses on family Tolstoy published two more novels in the series titled Boyhood and youth all autobiographical however had a very different fate after his first novel in 1849 he was arrested almost executed because of his radical activities and sent to Siberia where he spent almost 10 years in the harshest conditions the result was a massive change in his views about Russia and the

West he depicted that experience in Siberia in his novel The House of the Dead in 1861. Tolstoy however had an easier time of it he spent his time weaponizing drinking wine and gambling like Prince Harry he was expelled from Carson University in tataristan where he was supposed to study Oriental languages to experience a harsh reality of Life Tolstoy joined the army in the Battle of Crimea in 1854 and 55. this experience helped him to grow up a bit but also helped give his writing depth especially later on in War and Peace after returning from Exile

dostrovsky wrote like crazy first she published nudes from underground in 1864 considered the first existentialist novel that same year he lost both his wife and brother two years later in 1866 he published his most famous novel Crime and Punishment around the same time Tolstoy got married to a very young woman traveled to Europe and wrote three novels family happiness in 1859 the Cossacks in 1863 and his most famous novel War and Peace in 1869. is lost in longest novel The Brothers chromosovo of which most people believe to be his greatest novel was published in 1879

two years before his death in 1881. tolstoy's own favorite novel Anna Karenina was published two years before the brothers karamazov in 1877. it's also his last novel [ __ ] Murat was published in 1912 two years after his own death in 1910. wrote 16 novels and novellas a career that lost it 36 years with brother chromosov being the longest with 350 000 words or about 1 000 pages in English translation crime punishment is about 210 000 words or 700 pages Tolstoy wrote 14 novels and novellas a career that lasted 42 years tulso's longest novel war

in peace is 587 000 words or two thousand Pages his second longest novel is Anna Karenina with 350 000 words or a thousand pages both were in Russian army for a period of time both traveled to Europe extensively Dostoevsky was 59 when he died while Tolstoy lived to be 82. it shows how tough life Dostoevsky endured mostly in City while Tolstoy lived in somewhat comfortable life in the countryside this shows in their fiction too dostoevsky's novels are mostly about those at the bottom of the society from his first novel poor fall to his last novel

The Brothers comozov his characters grapple with poverty and money Walt also mostly wrote about those at the top the nobility and The Aristocrats of course there are some exceptions dostoevsky's novel the area is about an arsukrot be it not a very rich man whom everyone calls an idiot while Tulsa wrote novels about the poor as well Foster was a tall man at 5 11 or 181 centimeters while dostovski was 5'6 or 169 centimeter even the name Tulsa in Russia means thick or fat and his first name Leo or Lev means lion not sure if his

name gave him much confidence or not Theodore means a man of God and dostrovsky comes from a place name in the village of dostoyev and modern day Belarus arm of the same height as Dostoevsky so I can feel his pain as a short man speaking of pain Dostoevsky also suffered from ill health especially epilepsy something he shares with so many famous novelists like Fleur bear Dickens Poe and Dante Tolstoy however had no real health issues he was a fitness fanatic and that's why he lived to be 82 years old human suffering both authors wrote about

suffering dostrovsky suffering is partly economic and partly existential his characters are mostly poor people who are desperate for a place in the world seeking meaning and purpose in other words poverty on the outside and suffering on the inside and crime and punishment raskolnikov is a poor student who commits crime that torments him on the inside in Notes from Underground the narrator hides from society where he was humiliated in Brothers karmaza of all the brothers suffer because they feel lost between atheism Hedonism and religion the cause of suffering is the breakdown of social Fabrics religious faith

and the arrival of Western individualism as a result Russians seeking a quick fix they adopted Western ideas like atheism rationalism and utilitarianism Dostoevsky acknowledges rationality being helpful in alleviating illnesses and helping the economy but not only it was an inadequate solution to your existential crisis it was also dangerous as it broke the old social Fabrics to let individuals lose to commit terrible crimes as in crime and punishment and the brothers karamazov without the fear of God anything was permissible so for the most part ostrowsky blame modernity for the moral and existential crisis of his fellow

Russians which resulted in their suffering total story suffering is usually because of one's failure to fulfill their duty to their family or Society in other words tolstoy's suffering is caused by social institutions like nation and family War and Peace centers on warfare among nations that caused immense suffering among both the French and the Russians Anna Karenina is about the institution of family and social norms that cause suffering the death of Evan Ilitch is about how selfishness can harm those around you so Tolstoy suffering is more about the failure of fulfilling your duties to your family

and Society so for Dostoevsky it was the individual in crisis thus he is called a psychologist while for Tolstoy it was Society in crisis that's considered a sociologist their solution to suffering also differs Dostoevsky wanted to insulate Russia from the bad ideas coming while Tolstoy looked to the whole Humanity for an answer Dostoevsky answered suffering as a kind of blind naive love which can be equated to religious Faith the value of Simplicity and naivety they existed among the Russian peasants this resonates with ostrowska's own life his criminal conviction meant that he spent 10 years among

the Russian peasants but also affected his life and career so he was seeking forgiveness and love no matter what mistakes you made in the past Dostoevsky wanted to insulate Russia from the dangers of bad ideas coming into the country his own criminal conviction was due to Western influence a good example is in Notes from Underground a man goes into himself while hiding underground even in crime and punishment Siberia is a kind of isolated place where ruskolnikov's Soul can be saved was a slavophile passionately supported the Russian peasants to the point that Sam criticized him for

being anti-semitic Dostoevsky was anti-capitalist so as it happened a lot of the bankers and catalysts offering loans at the time were Jewish people and most people in debt were the Russian peasants so Dostoevsky conflated Jewish people with capitalism or westernization Tolstoy however criticized the old institutions like family and church as being outdated in need of modernization he was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church for criticizing it Tolstoy believed in the ideals of European Enlightenment and Universalist humanism he even corresponded with people all around the world Tolstoy had a more optimistic view of humans that through

education people can be molded and shaped into good beings and good citizens so he founded several schools for the peasants and promoted pacifism around the world dostrevsk on the other hand was pessimistic about humans for being too irrational and flawed therefore cannot be trusted if left to their own devices in the presence of bad ideas the company of bad friends dostrovsky believed there is a kind of Darkness inside of us a demon a destructive force that leads you to do Terrible Things due to Greed and selfishness even damage your own lives through addiction to sex

gambling shopping food alcohol or drugs Tolstoy however like Russo believed humans are in essence good but it's the society that corrupts them writing style dosto of his Crime and Punishment and the broad scar module for murder mysteries Tolstoy root family drama tulso is a master of juxtaposing the warmth and the cold Dynamics among people in families among soldiers friends and even strangers in one moment there is a genuine feeling of comfort being with others then there are moments you can't stand others so vsky's strength is a dramatic storytelling while tolstoy's strength is vivid and poetic

writing dostoevsky's writing is quite messy dark spontaneous and improvised almost explosive tolsto's writing appears a little bit more methodical calm and measured characters act on their own free will so they make terrible mistakes irrational decisions and often self-destruct but they are proactive and make things happen tall Source characters however are more Bound by social norms family and Society things happen to them tulsory believes social changes or historical events were not the Deeds of individuals but the whole societies so someone like Napoleon didn't steer his tree but he himself was bound by history and societal forces

tolstoy's novel have no single but many protagonists dostoevsky's characters were mentally Shackled and tormented while Tolstoy characters are socially stifled through marriage or social class dostoevsky's characters victims of their own choices while tolstoy's characters or victims of social change and conventions Dimitri mirajovsky Russian novelist said that Tolstoy wrote about external or Earthly truths I.E societal truths while Dostoevsky wrote about internal or Divine truth in other words psychological truths all of dostoevsky's protagonists or men female characters tend to come to save the troubled men and restore their souls and crime and punishment Sonia The Prostitute comes

to rescue raskolnikov in Notes From The Underground Lisa almost saves the underground man and brothers karamazo female characters with strong men told story on the other hand gave female characters more Central roles in his novels Anna and Anna karinina Natasha rastuva and War and Peace are they protagonists Tolstoy was sympathetic towards women's Freedom High Society tolstoy's main setting limited individual freedom to guard societal norms and traditions especially women Dostoevsky however was more concerned with the Russian peasants where there were no many educated women seeking Freedom among the Russian peasants women worked and suffered alongside men

so there was a kind of equality there and tolstoy's novels human cruelty or perhaps the ability to be cruel is often hidden from view so one has to peel back a layer to find it while endorsevsky's novels human cruelties in the open tolstoy's upper class characters are very good at hiding their true selves as they are bound by many social conventions while dostoevsky's lower class characters are more like open books even in crime and punishment raskolnikov didn't have to confess but he did why again that Russian honesty event also agreed that the Russian peasants lived

a more authentic and genuine life in War and Peace Pierre meets a peasant in his spiritually liberated and The Death of Ivan Ilitch Yvonne learns wisdom from his servant urasim another interesting thing you notice in dostoevsky's novel is how lonely his protagonists are none of his male characters are close to their families and and some even hate their families as they tend to be dysfunctional and Notes from Underground the narrators alone inside an underground basement and mentions new family and his friends abandon him and crime and punishment raskolnikov is very irritated when his mother and

sister show up and it brought karamazov all brothers are on each other's throat or their father's throat except the youngest so you could say dostovsky was the writer of male loneliness today most people find themselves extremely isolated in the majority of men are out of sexual Marketplace thus suicide is very high among men today Haruki murakami as a writer of male loneliness and tolsto's work family bonds are strong therefore his characters try to be free and often unable to free themselves from their families and duties and Anna Karenina Anna desperately tries to divorce her husband

but fails dostoevsky's characters are detached from their families while tolsto's characters are attached also this is because of their social class dostoevsky's characters are predominantly people of lower socioeconomic status while tolstoy's characters are mostly well off so the family bond is tied to money Heritage and inheritance While most of those characters have none of that as a result of this Freedom dostoevsky's characters have psychological issues while tolstoy's characters have social or familial issues of course there are exceptions USSR when the Communists took over in Russia in 1917 they regarded the two writers somewhat differently Tolstoy

was closer to their way of looking at the world through groups class and communities War and Peace was given to Soviet soldiers to improve their morale and promote nationalism because it was about how the Russian Spirit had overcome Napoleon a century before prokofiev wrote an opera on War and Peace in 1946 at the height of Soviet power after defeating Hitler and consolidating Eastern Europe dostoevsk is individualist approach didn't fit well with the Socialist way of seeing the world but also dostoevsky's insular views didn't fit in with his Spirit of international socialism Lenin left Tolstoy and

Stalin celebrated him however after stalling the Soviet leader slowly returned to their Russian Roots so they celebrated osters especially in the 1970s in onward today Putin finds himself closer to rostrovsky than tolsto especially on individual Freedom that individuals cannot be trusted if left to their own devices having said that both authors were read in schools and Russians loved them both now who is a better writer this is a very difficult question and the answer is highly subjective I love dostoevsky's dark edges psychological novels with more drama with his characters mostly volatile crazy irrationally unpredictable that

Madness resonates with me on a deeper psychological level because I think we're all a bit volatile and irrational on the inside by reading dostoevsky's novel you find a kind of release I think if you are a happy person you might enjoy Tolstoy but dostovski was a better writer of human suffering in my view of course also is an overall full of traumas in Madness of its own kind but for the most part also himself was a common measured man and his novels reflect that you could even say that Dostoevsky was slightly a better Storyteller given

his chaotic characters and his focus on crime was also crucial crime fiction simply sells more than family drama to find out who's more popular today I looked at the reviews and ratings on Goodreads which is owned by Amazon the largest Bookseller in the world so it is perhaps an accurate picture of what people read today if you look at them side by side Dostoevsky edges told story on all three metrics he has more ratings 1.7 million compared to 1.4 million for Tolstoy so Tolstoy has almost 400 000 fewer readers than dostrevsky on Goodreads it is

possible that tolstoy's readers are older people therefore less likely to be online the second metric is reviews dostovsky with 84 000 reviews and Tolstoy with 67 000 reviews so Dostoevsky has 17 000 more reviews people have voted with their keyboard now in times of enjoyment or getting something out of their novels again Tolstoy with an average of 4.07 while dostovsk is a clear winner by 0.11 points with an average of four point 218 I don't normally read Match Into ratings on Goodreads but these are important stats my own videos on these two authors also show

a huge discrepancy my video add lessons from Dostoevsky has 230 000 views while eight lessons from Tolstoy has only 1 000 views even YouTube is pretty unfair to Tolstoy I'm only kidding the video on Dostoevsky was published a year before Tolstoy video also it went viral last December due to 200th year anniversary of dostoevska's birth joking aside Dostoevsky resonates with people more today because of his crime genre also perhaps his religious beliefs I think today millions of people feel a bit lost so his writing is deeply psychological and somewhat religious which resonates with a lot

of people seeking meaning for their lives but perhaps the biggest thing is his team view of humanity as Petty self-interested and self-destructive today we can see the most visibly an online hatred the fruitless side of capitalism that has benefited did a small minority of elite and society and the impulsive shopping drug addiction and obesity seen throughout the developed world we aren't as rational as we are meant to be so dashevski got to write that rationality alone cannot solve all human problems Tolstoy despite his happy marriage social guilt of being born in Rich family lived a

comfortable life Dostoevsky however experienced poverty spent years in jail in the cold harsh Siberia he was a convicted criminal a lonely man badly treated and suffered from epilepsy so in all his writing he is seeking a kind of warmth a sense of belonging acceptance by others to fill a void to not be alone Dostoevsky was like Harry Potter orphaned without a family spent the rest of his life seeking the warmth of a family acceptance Tolstoy on the other hand was like Prince Harry or Lord Byron who couldn't wait to leave his family for some freedom

in fact also he spent years womanizing drinking gambling just like Prince Harry also at the end of his life he did what he always wanted he ran away from his wife which resulted in Catching pneumonia and his subsequent death at the train station which is depicted in a 2009 movie The Last Station tolstoy's fascination with train was because of a promise of Escape Anna Karenina as a good example Who falls in love with a man at the train station witnessed a man dying and then ends her own life in front of a train now if

you have never read any of these authors let me a command where you should start for Dostoevsky my favorite knowledge crime punishment and my favorite toast toys novel is Anna Karenina but they are pretty long novels if you like short stories then those kids white Knights and also is how much land does a man need or perfect places to start both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky remain Timeless because of one thing both told the truth honesty is perhaps the best policy if you want to be a novelist who stands the test of time they were lucky because

honesty is one of the most important characteristics of Russian people to the point that people find Russians a bit rude I say they are honest so both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky told the raw truth no matter how ugly and that's why we still read them thank you short story Bellion nochi translated into English as white knights was my very first introduction to Russian giant furyvsky as a university student of Russian language I had to translate parts of it into English and time I absolutely hated it because it was simply too hard as years went by I

fell in love with dostoevsky's work more and more so today I'll tell you all about this wonderful short story which interestingly Dostoevsky wrote in 1848 a year before his hellish Siberian experience so he was full of optimism so to speak but as you can see there's a deep sadness in him the story is incredibly deep and moving and shows dostovsky's Mastery of Storytelling but also how a story written 174 years ago can cut so deep into our soul dissecting how lonely we really are in this world literature is filled with Tales of survival romances and

heroism but this story tells one of the most important aspect of human life that desire for having a company a friend someone to spend time with someone who listens to your story someone who shares a moment of life with you it's a tale of loneliness it makes you appreciate your friend partner family members it's a fantastic portrait of today's world in some way summary billionucci or white Knights referred to sun-lit Summer Nights of Saint Petersburg where we meet an unnamed young man who narrates his own story of meeting and fall in love with a lonely

17 year old girl nostenka Dostoevsky doesn't name his male characters often perhaps because it's mostly himself or he wants to show a male archetype here A Man Without a woman just in the dream of the ridiculous man the generator is a lonely timid introvert young man who lives in a tiny apartment in Saint Petersburg he's too shy to approach women so his only company is his mate but she is not very sociable he likes to walk the streets of Saint Petersburg at night Dostoevsky always prefers Knights over dates it's the cold the loneliness but most

importantly the dark allows freedom from other people's case it's at night that the animal or the Deep truth comes out for our young narrator he prefers nighttime because during the day he is more impressionable changing himself based on how others are but at night he can be more liberated and himself the story starts thus quote it was a wonderful night such a night as is only possible when we're a young dear reader the sky was so Starry so bright that looking at it one could not help asking oneself whether ill humored and capricious people could

live under such a sky as he walks he notices a young woman crying against the canal railing he's worried but he's far too Timmy to approach her to ask what's wrong after a few steps he hears the woman's scream so he returns to rescue her from a man harassing her dostovski wrote it when he was in his twenties so he had that chivalrous optimistic energy in him rescuing a damsel and stress you could see the ending of this short story brings his cynical side as well they start talking the young man confesses his lonely life

introvert personality and the fear of talking to women now I think is quite understanding and keeps telling him that he's fine she even lies to him that women do like timid men now hearing this the man tells her how he spends hours and days thinking and imagining meeting a girl who talks to him who doesn't reject him and who doesn't make fun of him it's like a Floodgate is open as he talks and talks he appears like a desperate man but I assume the latest of Saint Petersburg were pretty brutal in their taste for men

the man doesn't want this experience being in the presence of a young woman to end but soon they arrive at Nottingham's doorsteps he asks if she wants to meet again before she has time to say yes or no he preempted by telling her that he will be at the spot they met whether she comes or not she agrees to meet the following night under one condition telling him do not fall in love with me he promises to be just friends well is that possible the second night they meet he further elaborates his life story here

Dostoevsky alludes to pushkin's character Eugene who had read so many books that he no longer sounded like a real person but a character from some books the young man tells not sinka that he has no history because his whole life has been alone also has been desperate to find someone to be with quote they are nothing add though you may not know it strange nuxents in Pittsburgh it seems as though the same son shines for alts and peaceful people does not peep into those spots let me tell you that in these Corners live strange people

dreamers the dreamer Not a Human Being but a but a creature of an intermediate sort for the most part he settles in some inaccessible Corner as to hiding from the light of day once he sleeps into his corner he Rose to it like a snail or that remarkable creature which is an animal in a houseboat at once and is called tortoise he even refers to himself in the third person as the hero of his own imagination because he's too ashamed to escape his dull life on the outer edge of society he Daydreams when you spend

your life alone your imagination with fantastic elaborate and Whimsical tales about yourself meeting your literary heroes or having a beautiful girl next to you he also tells her that his favorite time of the day is when everyone is rushing home after work to be with their loved ones something deep down he craves to have for himself someday once he finishes still nostica tells her own story she grew up with her grandmother and they lived on her pension to supplement her income the grandma rented out a room when her old tenant died a young man moved

in he began to fancy nostenga therefore he gave her romantic novels to read and even took her to Rossini's Barber of Seville to the point that she too fell in love with him when it was time for him to live in Pittsburgh for Moscow she gathered her courage to ask him to marry her just like in pushkin's Eugene onege the girl asks the man reversing the traditional rule the young tenant refused marriage saying it was too poor to take care of her but he promised her that he would return to Saint Petersburg and marry her

after a year but now it's been a year and the young man has not come back there's an old saying that a man can never be truly friends with a woman by the third night our young narrator realized that he has fallen madly in love with nostenka just like millions of young men secretly wishing to sleep with their female friends however our hero hides his true feeling and helps her write a letter to her lover in Moscow she's moved by this gesture and tells him that because he has not fallen in love with her she

loves him for that irony upon irony he is romantically in love with her while she's platonically in love with him on the Fortnight not senga tells how desperately she is waiting for her lover to return from Moscow our narrator Comforts her but at one point he decides enough is enough he can no longer hold it he confesses his love for nostenka she's shocked as if someone had punched her in the face realizing that their friendship is over he decides to leave and never see her again nostenga offers a glimpse of Hope saying that she might

grow to reciprocate his love someday as they walk they meet a young man who could it be well it's of course is the man she's been waiting for the boy from Moscow grabs the girl and they disappear into the night our narrator remains stunned as if he is hit by a missile the next day at home he receives a letter from nostinga thanking him for keeping her company and also inviting him to her wedding the following week he pauses for a moment and then suddenly breaks into tears night after night he built so much hope

and now he's back to zero he notices his housemate who looked young has now suddenly become old with wrinkles perhaps for the first time our lonely narrator can envisage his own old age perhaps living a lonely life forever the story ends with him saying that he has nothing against nostinga only wishes her the best why because she gave him the happiest moment of his life despite his unrequited love but as for his own life he tries to be hopeful but we know his despair may continue analysis the Narita makes three big mistakes first when upon

meeting a woman who is willing to talk to him he uses the opportunity to complain about his life some people might sympathize with him but for most people it's off-putting and especially in Russia where masculinity requires you to be strong everyone has a tough life so people want to hear Solutions not whining and complaining nastanka has sympathy for him but perhaps deep inside she doesn't respect him second he confesses that he's unable to talk to women yet when he meets her he cannot stop talking telling her all his life's problems you could say this is

dostoevsky's own confessions on the page writers write fiction for catharsis expression and release because most writers spend long hours alone but for our narrator his lack of confidence to talk to women is first made with sympathy and nastinka says she prefers xiamen but we know that's not true because she rejected him when he confesses his love to her confidence is one of the most important qualities most women look in a man confidence triggers admiration while lack of confidence during sympathy his third problem was that he first agrees with nothing and not to fall in love

with her but then he does exactly the opposite and he falls in love with her this flip-flop shows his lack of Integrity in principle falling in love is natural biological so promising not to fall in love is stupid I think he was hoping if they spent more time she might fall in love with him but we know she just needed someone to console while waiting for the dude from Moscow to return so a narrator made the mistake of investing all his eggs in her basket was an incredible psychologist who masterfully depicts the emotional turmoils of

a lonely young man at times the story is a bit too sentimental but so are young people who are unable to attract opposite sex also dosto of skills in his twenties when he wrote it he hadn't gone through the ordeals of Siberia so he still had a pretty romanticized view of the world some 15 years later after returning from the cold Siberia at oswevsky wrote Notes from Underground whose narrator very much resembles the narrator and white Knights now he is so disillusioned with society that he has retreated underground he's no longer seeking company of other

humans and even refuses to get treatment for his liver disease like some injured animal waiting to die White Knight tells his story of the lonely man today millions of men go through the very same experience modernity has made life so much easier than most young men no longer have the courage to talk to women this is especially true in affluent countries where birth rate is falling rapidly the modern education system teaches people how to be better workers but it doesn't teach them how to approach the opposite sex as a result a lot of men and

women live lonely lives so my suggestion to you is to go out there and talk to people the more you talk the higher likelihood you find someone you like dostovic is the only amount of St Petersburg tried but failed however he took it on the chin and didn't grow resentment or hatred towards an arsenka all women in general that's hopeful because I'm sure he learned from the experience and maybe who knows he found someone else [Music] but I don't understand the least thing about my illness and I don't know for certain what part of me

is affected I'm not having any treatment for it and never have had although I have a great respect for medicine and for doctors no I refuse treatment out of spine Dostoevsky wrote Notes From The Underground in 1864. that same year he lost his wife Maria and his brother Mikhail despite those personal tragedies Dostoevsky managed to create a novel that is incredibly profound funny and tragic all at the same time two years later he published his most famous novel crime and punishment but his most important work is his final novel The Brothers karamazov published in 1879

two years before his own death I have reviewed both novels here but today I'll discuss one of his shortest novels Notes from Underground often called the first existential novel what is it about why is it important and what lessons can we learn from the underground man before I answer these questions two things are important to mention here to give a broader context to the novel first Dostoevsky wrote it as a response to another Russian novel published a year earlier in 1863 titled what is to be done by Nikolai chernoshevsky which in turn was written in

response to Yvonne turginis 1862 novel Fathers and Sons and Fathers and Sons turgenef introduced one of the greatest characters in Russian literature bazarov A nihilistic young man with a western education who believed in destroying everything in Russia so he could build it and all they knew in a western style bizarrov was a radical materialist and a rationalist who believed Russian Society was rotten but by the end of the novel he changes his mind and fails to achieve any of his goals and ironically dies of a medical mistake in a way medicine the product of rationality

instead of liberating him ends his life while turgini was trying to warn Russians about the destructive ideology of bazarov Nikolai chernoshevsky's what is to be done however took revolutionary materialism as somewhat at a Face Value the novel's protagonist is a woman who escapes her family to become financially independent in order to avoid and arrange marriage it's a novel of Freedom through material success and turginiv's Fathers and Sons nihilistic materialism as juxtaposed with Romanticism in Russian traditionalism while turginiv himself a romanticist shows a level of objectivity and let his characters speak for themselves and what is

to be done however chernoshevsky argues that materialism leads to Freedom materialism relies on signs in rational thinking which is the core idea of Marxism and more specifically of Vladimir Lenin the father of Russian communism here's a fun fact Lenin wrote a Russian version of The Communist Manifesto titled you you guessed it what is to be done in which he says a centralized political party is necessary for a revolution thus the Russian Communist party or the Communist Party of the USSR was born and in 1917 they overthrew the tsar and the rest is history also in

turgenev's novel the main character bazarov is a rational materialist and in fact one of Lenin's close bolstery comrades changed his own name to bazarov to commemorate that fictional hero of Russian bolshwicks now you see how facts and fiction Collide in Russia so to bring It full circle Notes from Underground is dostoevsky's response to Western nihilism encroaching on Russia's soil and destroying Russian Traditional Values however his warning was ignored in some 70 years later Russia turned into a socialist state with the rational materialism at its core ideology the second important thing to note is that Dostoevsky

was 41 or 42 years old when he wrote Notes from Underground which is the most precarious period in a man's life when meaning and purpose come to an incredibly sharp focus and most men experience what is termed as midlife crisis the reason for that might be evolutionary when men get to the age of 40 or around that time they have a grown son and daughter around 20 or 25 therefore has no other purpose left for him or they reach the peak of their career therefore lose purpose so news from underground is the confession of a

40 year old man the fact that he choose an underground not a church for his confession is also important he knew the Russian intellectuals didn't go to church anymore he couldn't tell the truth to a priest but he could tell the truth to his readers by 1864 Dostoevsky had gone through so many tribulations in life he had become a successful author after publishing poor folk in 1845 at the age of 24. his radical revolutionary ideas led to his arrest a mock execution in 10 years in Siberia he returned to Saint Petersburg in 1849 fully transformed

from a westernized radical intellectual to someone who had the most disdain for those same intellectuals so dostovsky combined his own midlife crisis with that of Russia's socio-cultural crisis of 1850s into a short Novella made up of only two chapters or about 100 Pages the first chapter is very short and has 11 sections in which the unnamed narrator or the underground brown man introduces himself as a sick man and also articulates his idea about philosophy human existence and his rejection of rationality is a solution to Russia's problems or human happiness in general in the second chapter

which is the bulk of the novel he narrates his own story of how he was humiliated by an officer and relates his cowardly botched and comical attempt to take revenge on him but the officer doesn't even notice him because he is so insignificant his second story is how he tried to borrow money from his boss but found new courage to do so again in a comical fashion showing his cowardice later on when he forces an invite to a school reunion his friends show no respect for him they have a fight and leave him alone but

he follows them to a brothel where he meets a prostitute named Lisa the name Lisa shows up in many of those novels and she represents a kind of unfortunate woman Elizabeth and crime and punishment the unfortunate sister of the pawn broker who walks in as raskolnikov is murdering her sister and therefore becomes victim number two in the brothers karamazov pavel's mother is also named Elizabeth who gets pregnant with karamazov's child and then dies a childbirth and her son ends up killing his father before committing suicide the underground man feels his life is taking a positive

turn when he manages to sleep with Lisa but then perhaps a post-sex mental Clarity allows his bitterness to resurface despite his own pitiful life the underground man looks down on Lisa he even admonishes her for selling her body and her soul for money he tells Lisa that her life is futile and meaningless it is in fact his own life that is meaningless but now at the position of power he thinks he can inject his own Venom onto her she leaves him in his devastated he curses himself for being so stupid the way Society has treated

him he has become deeply resentful and Petty and wanted to enact on it on someone weaker than him someone like Lisa Frederick Nietzsche calls this resentment as slave mentality those treated badly become bitter for the rest of their lives and they try to enact their resentment onto others a good example is revolutionaries to succeed in toppling a tyrannical regime end up becoming tyrannical themselves as beautifully depicted in George Orwell's novel Animal Farm now the underground man feels like a total loser he has nothing to lose so what does he do he doesn't become a revolutionary

as Marx claim that the ideal revolutionaries are those who have nothing to lose except their chains the underground man however goes into himself he isolates himself from society like a Buddhist monk or some injured animal that goes somewhere quiet to die away from others the underground man is physically ill mainly his liver but most importantly he is so deeply psychologically wounded that he no longer wants to receive any treatment for his illness he has given up except that he wants to warn us about how modernity with its rationality-driven progress can turn us all into someone

like him isolated dissatisfied and resentful now what can we learn from dostoevsky's underground man these eight lessons will give you a great insight into dostoevsky's philosophies psychological analysis of the Modern Man one we are insignificant because I am the nastiest stupidest absurdist and most envious of all worms on Earth who are not a bit better than I am but the Devil Knows Why or never put to confusion while I shall always be insulted by every Laos that is my Doom the underground man suffers from inferiority complex perhaps due to his lower socioeconomic background throughout the

novel he talks about how insignificant he is early in the novel he attempts an act of Revenge but much to his dismay his Nemesis doesn't even notice him as a result he develops self-hatred he says for example I hated my face I thought it was a scoundrely face and I even suspected there was something servile about it so every time I went to the office I made agonizing efforts to seem as independent as possible so they should not be suspected of subservience and to get my face the most well-bred expression I could manage these realization

leads him underground so he can assess his life in its entirety as a kind of sharp existential mirror he says now I'm living out my life in my corner taunting myself with this spiteful and useless constellation that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously and it's only the fool who becomes something yes a man in the 19th century must and morally ought to be preeminently a characterless creature a man of character an active man is preeminently a limited creature so in essence the underground man is too intelligent or too educated for his own good his

bitterness also comes from the fact that he is not brave enough to act on his ideas he believes every respectable man has dark secret hidden bodies in the closet so to speak but he has none of that his darkest secrets are nothing but a few acts of pettiness if you don't have secrets mistakes bad decisions or bodies in the closet for the lack of better terms you have not done much and he calls himself a mouse who has crawled underground this describes the condition of most people we are insignificant which can be liberating in a

way two I'm a thinking man quote in order to act one must be absolutely sure of oneself no doubts must remain anywhere but how am I for example to be sure of myself where are the primary causes on which I can take my stand where are my foundations the underground man suffers from what he terms as a heightened awareness of oneself always extremely self-conscious of his own behaviors and thoughts why is that he thinks his height and self-awareness was the result of his modern education which he calls a test tube that produces uniformity and calories

therefore he has lost his natural spontaneity in a way he claims that schooling has killed his creativity but also his courage to be a man of action this is similar to the Superfluous man a very important character in all Russian literature of 19th century including in the works of Pushkin lamontov turgenev Dostoevsky and Tolstoy who is a Superfluous man someone who lives in his head often romantic thinks too much but has little or no initiative to take action troganiff Compares Shakespeare's Hamlet with Cervantes Don Quixote Hamlet things without doing anything while donghihote acts without much

thought the underground man is intelligent but perhaps his social status is not high enough to enact on his ideas this social impotence leads to his jealousy and psychological bitterness he wishes he had the power to affect society or if not power at least some is stupidity to act without thinking he's a kind of a middle of the road neither here nor their kind of person intellectually Superior than most people but socially inferior than many men of action this reflects rostovski's own position in Siberia he was thrown in among the common working-class prisoners so he watched

them with some envious to how simple their World Views seemed intellectual lived in his own head wishing he enjoyed a bit more stupidity what education does it heightens your Consciousness useful it may be and can also be a detriment to your own growth and happiness because it tames you from being a proactive person three the problem of consciousness quote but yet I'm firmly persuaded that a great deal of Consciousness every sort of Consciousness in fact is a disease made childhood the focus of his final novel The Brothers commercial in which he laments the loss of

innocence in a kind of blissful ignorance because once seen nothing can be unseen the underground man thinks that acute Consciousness or being self-aware all the time takes a huge psychological toll on an intelligent man quote I tell you solemnly that I have many times tried to become an insect but I was not equal even to that I swear a gentleman that to be too conscious is an illness a real thorough going illness for him Consciousness is to truly experiencing emotions such as jealousy anger resentment and revenge but yet completely unable to take action when experiencing

those emotions he says you cannot have a full genuine Consciousness without a pure heart he feels the full depth of his humiliation because of his acute Consciousness his enemy the officer however is a kind of cool-headed person who doesn't notice things at all therefore lives in a sort of blissful state so education nourishes your intellect and your intelligence heightens your Consciousness he says I repeat I repeat with emphasis all direct persons and Men of action are active just because they are stupid and limited in other words they lack acute Consciousness therefore they are more spontaneous

4 a man of action is spontaneous quote well spontaneous man is a real man I'm Green With Envy of such men they are stupid I won't deny that but perhaps a normal person ought to be stupid the underground man considers a spontaneous person someone close to Nature and his Natural Instincts while he himself is far removed from his natural state of action because he overthinks and over analyze yet unable to make things happen when he wanted to borrow money from his boss it took him forever to knock on the door another thing here is about

spontaneous men is their happiness and laughter their burst out laughing while the underground man observes them with doubt and question fills his head despite his jealousy for men of action he still gives him a backhanded compliment that they are stupid which limits their thinking process so they act quickly modernity on a very deeper level is about predictability and ostrovsky's time only factories armies and education system were aiming for total control and predictability but today the world has become so predictable that we cannot cope otherwise food must be available in Supermarket drinks in bars trains on

time even algorithm predicts what we like to consume online he says I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing but if we are to give everything as due twice to mix five is sometimes a very Charming thing too so we humans love predictability but also surprises the only time the underground man lets his guy down and becomes spontaneous is after sex with Lisa or post-sex mental Clarity and a result he suffers the consequence of her leaving him 5. humans are self-destructive quote but despair can hold the most intense sort of pleasure when

one is strongly conscious of their hopelessness of one's position and Nikolai China's novel what is to be done the Crystal Palace of great exhibition of 1851 in London UK is seen as the ultimate Utopia of material racialism a structure made of glass and iron the underground man says no matter how beautiful such Utopia might be humans are fundamentally self-destructive it's written in our genes quote suffering is the sole origin of Consciousness though Consciousness is the greatest Misfortune for men yet I Know a Man prizes it and would not give it up for any satisfaction Consciousness

for instance is infinitely Superior to twice two makes four our negative emotions which cause suffering are there for a reason from a revolutionary perspective we need pain so we can understand our world better today we cushion ourselves Shield ourselves from negative things we have therapy and medicine to protect us with slightest issue we turn to science to help us the underground man despite suffering a serious illness refuses to get treatment or help instead he has chosen to live alone which is self-destructive he even gets pleasure from being humilated by the officer so the underground man's

approach goes against the self-help industry instead he highlights the self-destructive side of human being no matter how much we cushion ourselves from negative emotions they are necessary for us as I discussed in my video on Marshall Cruz suffering is fundamental to human creativity Dostoevsky agrees with the underground man that suffering cannot be avoided and there is a real Pleasure and Pain please 6. we are irrational too good whether it's good or bad it's sometimes very pleasant too to smash things the underground man refuses to get treatment for his illness to make a deeper point when

your body is sick you're no longer able to make traditional decisions obesity or addiction to alcohol drugs or sex goes against rational thinking the underground man points out that there are deeper underlying motivations which dictate our choices on a daily basis but then a simple physical illness can distort your thoughts or simple emotional outbursts can destroy policies we spend years to build human being is like a game of Jenga there's always the danger of a small slip even a small toothache can change your view of the world millions of years of evolutionary Hardware can't change

because modernity requires us to be rational and logical all the time Dostoevsky has a very low opinion of humanity and paints a picture of human being as something very fragile malleable liquid and unstable our nature or our body dictates our lives so we are chaotic self-destructive and often emotionally unstable why our short-sightedness is because we can't see the bigger picture of Our Lives we are in the present and we have little or no knowledge of the future we are in the midst of Our Lives the underground man is suffering from some type of liver disease

perhaps that has distorted his thoughts about his own self-worth and life when we are happy for too long we look for some chaos when safe we want fake danger like roller coaster when peace we fight over trivial things the underground man thinks we are hardwired to seek negative emotions in irrational Behavior no matter how much rationality is instilled in US it cannot control our rational side emotions 7. intelligence doesn't make you a better person could in fact I believe that the best definition of a man is the ungrateful bip but that's not all that's not

his worst defect his worst defect is his Perpetual moral obliquity according to rationalists being aware of our own self-interest allows us to make intelligent choices therefore if all rational beings make intelligent choices we can create a society that runs like a machine predictable and happy but the underground man has two problems with rational choices first intelligence instead of giving you Clarity of thoughts makes everything appear foggy and blurry while stupidity on the other hand gives you a black and white Clarity the underground man concludes that intelligence is futile when it comes to making good choices

he even questions Free Will arguing our deeper desires determine most of our choices without us being aware of it as an example your choice of a partner is deeply rooted in your biology so that's why most people have so much difficulty finding a suitable partner in today's world second he says that intelligent people employ reason as an instrument to destroy the Truth for their own selfish interest to the detriment of society as a whole so intelligence why highly prized cannot give you that mental Clarity or moral righteousness it merely heightens your sense of self or

ego the more intelligent you are the less altruistic you become 8. the underground man tells stories could finally I'm bored and I constantly do nothing and writing things down really seems like work they say work makes a man good and honest well here's a chance at least Dostoevsky wrote Notes from Underground to in response to a novel boldly title what is to be done now the underground man's response is to do nothing he describes himself a lazy and says he's in a state of conscious inertia or inaction he sounds like a Taoist monk hidden in

some remote mountains he doesn't want to change the world or himself however the underground man is not completely lost he has the desire to write his confession is shedding lights into the darkness of human psyche either consciously or subconsciously he's trying to help us by telling his own story it's a teachable moment he has two important tools and his underground Tool Shed first honesty he doesn't avert his gaze from the truth at the expense of his own character describe himself as a mouse and nasty person resentful and a pathetic loser his honesty is refreshing to

read it's also therapeutic and I think his confession CM must have helped him to unburden himself a bit the second tool he employs is comedy reading Notes from Underground you cannot stop your laughter from time to time despite his Russian pessimism he has a good sense of humor commented through self-deprecation even today great comedians employees self-deprecation as a tool to create empathy and understanding the underground man is very successful in making the reader empathetic to his condition so despite thinking that he is a complete loser he manages to teach us all through the power of

Storytelling and comedy his language is also beautiful that gives us a sense of pathos here's an example the isolated Street lamps glimmered sadly through the haze of snow like torches at a funeral the whole town country or even civilization is doomed and we are burying Traditions with our own hands in the name of change progress he's telling us that it's time to stop and reflect on things as to where we're heading the anagram man lived during a time when therapy didn't exist he took refuge and Solitude that loneliness is something that endears him to us

all because we are ultimately lonely Souls wandering on this rocky planet we call home while at the same time trying to make sense of it all in our Pursuit for meaning and purpose in life published in 1866 crime punishment by Future dostovsky is the most famous Russian novel while dostrovsky was exiled to Siberia for his anti-government activities he met a lot of intellectuals but also a lot of petty criminals or working-class criminals he was blown away by their honesty and accepting their guilt why because they had unburdened themselves by getting Solas from religion intellectuals on

the other hand didn't see themselves guilty as they didn't believe in any moral framework and since they didn't believe in religion they had to somehow justify their actions this contrast between intellectuals and the petty criminals shifted ostrowsky's opinion about the whole crime so this novel clearly shows that shift also before I summarize a novel let me Define a term in in the novel self-referentialism simply means that in the absence of God man is the ultimate moral Authority this can apply to individuals as well as States for instance some countries don't abide by International rules because

they think they are either above those laws or they don't agree with them but in this novel self-referential applies to Ras kolnikov the protagonist of this novel who thinks he's above the law summary raskolnikov is a former law student with Big Dreams in Saint Petersburg he wants to change the world he wants to be Napoleon he wants to become a great figure in history but his poverty means there is a big gap between his dreams and reality but recently has learned a few new ideas that have trickled down from Western Europe to Russia the first

idea is utilitarianism developed by the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham and later refined by J Stuart Mill utilitarian teaches the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people what rashkulikov understand is that sometimes bad actions can be justified if it benefits more people in the long term and justifies the means so to speak but who can decide if action can be justified by its own means now here raskolnikov has learned another idea God is dead and the absence of God extraordinary people or great people which he thinks is one said their own morality what it means

that they cannot be held responsible for their actions under the common moral or legal framework this is called rationalism these great Extraordinary People transcend moral and legal boundaries which must have influenced Nietzsche's idea of Will To Power which I'll discuss later so our hero raskolnikov is loaded with these two ideas a and justifies the means and B great people are above morality and law he sets his Target on an old lady pawnbroker who exploits poor people like him he calls her a loud greedy woman who sucks the blood out of the poor so here skolnikov

plays with the idea of socialism too as if the mother of the old woman would be like a bloody Revolution Justified to create an equal Society first clinical her murder is the first step to his great achievement he wants to use the money to change his dire Financial situation and who knows perhaps change the world too he is ready he has an ax as a physical weapon and two philosophical justifications what could go wrong but here comes a big twist after murdering the pawnbroker her sister shows up to put a spinner in the works Ras

kolnikov thinks he has no choice but to kill her too this shakes him a lot a confident young man a moment ago now shakes like a willow tree he's still some valuable but not as much as he wanted because he's too scared he gets to his room and develops fever and delirium in the next few days whereas kolnikov goes back and forth whether to confess his crimes to the police or not this all depends on how much they know or don't know one day he returns to the scene of the crime clearly trying to be

caught but the next day he becomes rational again trying to save himself it appears inside him there's a Titanic battle going on one pushes him to confess his crimes to police the other Force his Western ideologies tell him that he's not guilty and he has nothing to confess this is the most torturous period in the young man's life he feigns a few times he refuses to see his mother and sister when they show up in Saint Petersburg to see him in the midst of all his internal turmoils he meets Sonia a prostitute whose father was

killed in an accident and raskolnikov happened to be there he gives his last bit of money to help her with the father's funeral her skolnikov feels a little Humanity in her precisely because she is an outcast due to her profession as a prostitute he feels they are somehow the same in the eyes of society then raskolnikov acts weird again he asks best friend who seems to have guessed his secret crime to take him to the detective who investigates the murder here we meet detective inspector our porfree who digs up an article or a skolikov is

written detailing his philosophy about extraordinary people and Geniuses being Above the Law raskolnikov senses the police knows something but passionately defends his article and his ideas later he sees someone shouting murder outside his apartment and disappears these are all bad signs now his fever returns when raskolnikov visits Sonia the second time she reveals that the murder sister of the pawnbroker was her best friend now rascolnikov hearing this again has a shiver up his spine Sonia also tells him how she cooks with her life as an outcast prostitute a sinner and morally correct person in the

eyes of society she says her religious beliefs help her to cope better now hearing this roskolnikov heads to the police station he's about to confess but detective porphyry is tormenting him or playing a sort of game of cat and mouse with him this annoys raskolnikov so he again decides not to confess as they are talking suddenly another man bursts into the police station and confesses to the murders of the pawnbroker her and her sister seeing this for school nikov is let go again and he thinks he can get away after all but the outside world

is a terrifying world and he can no longer hold it in so he confesses his crime to the only person he feels the closest Sonia what does she say she tells him to go to the police right away she's devastated that he has been torturing himself for this long she tells him the sooner he confesses the sooner ends his self-torture but as Sinister a man who is trying to marry skolnikov's sister has been listening to to the confession he tries to Blackmail their skolnikov to get his sister but this backfires and the man commit suicide

now Source colicov's sister also knows the truth raskolnikov decides it's time to confess but detective inspector parfrey tells him he knows everything this cocky attitude of the police makes raskolnikov to take a defensive attitude and tries to rationalize his decision not to confess but then Sonia appears with a cross and that seems to finally seal the deal and the skolnikov confesses to the two murders he's sentenced to eight years of jail time in Siberia Sonia follows him there but it takes her skolnikov some time in prison to fully fill the guilt finally his new philosophical

principles have melted away ironically in a harsh freezing winter of Siberia he can finally sleep with a copy of the Bible he is free from Western ideas in his own Grand and Dreadful dreams so the circle is complete Dostoevsky turned the pompous intellectual into a petty criminal arguing that no matter how educated or grandeures your plans or thoughts are were all the same we want Comfort mentally and physically we all need a security blanket be it religion or art Dostoevsky prefers religion for a skolnikov the only antidote to his Western ideas but the real antidote

to bad idea is the reality of Life the reality of Siberia the reality of survival reality always wins over ideas as I already discussed also asking questions you tell tyranism rationalism and socialism as moral justifications for selfish human actions he's saying that in order to achieve a world-changing success smaller sacrifices aren't okay Napoleon had created this myth of Great Men Who did great things but they had to be ruthless Dostoevsky suggests that Russians weren't really ready for these big ideas for the time being religion was the best answer at the time of distress I think

the novel emphasizes responsibility for one's action modern humans have learned to justify their actions based on some ideological principles I.E socialism utilitarianism liberalism and racialism what dostovsky saying you should strip yourself of all these ideas and take a hard look at yourself in that sense it's a very existentialist novel nihilism is another theme of this novel The meaninglessness of Modern Life we no longer believe in God and religion doctrines or divine power we see ourselves as the ultimate power but we know we are not good at being that ultimate power why because we cannot be

trusted we get addicted to certain things very quickly millions of people gamble smoke eat themselves to obesity and endless shopping Dostoevsky was warning us that individualism and humanism are great ideas but in reality they make our lives emptier of any substance As We crave things we want we don't need any Divine justification so anything goes so the moral of his story is that don't follow your dreams at any cost dreams are good to have but they should remain dreams otherwise they might end up becoming nightmares that's what doorski is trying to articulate in this novel

foreign takes the genre of crime and put it upside down crime fiction works either by who has done it why or how to Cuts all the [ __ ] and tells us all those things at the very beginning of the novel we know it's raskolnikov we know why he has murdered two women and we know how he has done it what is left is what goes on inside a criminal's mind so this story is from inside out his internal torment anguish and finally confession tosinsky is not interested in the identity of the killer he's more

interested in the humanity or the darkness inside that person he's like a geologist or archaeologist he wants to know what makes us human I think this novel influenced a great many philosophers including Nietzsche and some French existential philosophers like Jean Paul Michelle Foucault and Albert Camus I think crime punishment is one of the most important novels of the past 200 years published the idiot in 1869 it's considered his most personal novel as it deals with themes and experiences which Don Swifts he went through in his own life namely death penalty epilepsy and that deep goodness

and innocence that Dostoevsky was seeking throughout his life on a deeper level dostovsky wished he was a little bit more naive and innocent for him once you are exposed to certain ideas it's impossible to unsee what you have seen we often use alcohol drugs and often other things to numb that pain of knowing things the most devastating thing in this novel is the awareness that death is the end of you yes once you die you go kaput nothing remains of you no soul flies to Heaven Dostoevsky grappled with this idea throughout his life and he

called Consciousness as a disease so the idiot is an attempt to find an antidote to suffering in this video I'll summarize a novel that discusses major themes such as religion death penalty man different kinds of love and finally dostrovsky's ultimate message in this novel so get yourself a cup of coffee and some popcorn summary part 1 the Russian word idiot is the same as the English word idiot it is a way to insult someone but oswevsky's character is not an idiot he's innocent a grown-up child so to speak his name is Lev mishkin which Lev

means lion also told Story's name and mishkin means Mouse so in other words a lion on the inside and a mouse on the outside everyone thinks he's a mouse or idiot but he's in fact a lion who sees truth nobody else can see so to set the scene dostovsky uses the train as a starting point where his protagonist Prince mishkin is returning after four years in Switzerland where he's been recovering from epilepsy as Tolstoy famously said all great literature is either a stranger ghost town or the hero takes Journey here we have mishkin who is

returning to Russia after years abroad to meet his distant relative lizaveta prokofievna the wife of a big dude in Saint Petersburg General a panchen Elizabeth is a recycled character in most of those novel who symbol prices are good but often an unlucky Woman these mirrors roshovski's own return to Saint Petersburg after years of Exile and a Siberian labor camp so instead of some nice swiss cheese and lots of cows roaming around although she saw was snow and cold and hard work Prince mishkin however is called the idiot because he's a very mild manner good-hearted 26

year old man almost childlike in his innocence as if he grew up outside society and some remote Mountain among cows and sheep if he was to return from Siberia he would have been bitter resentful and cold so Dostoevsky knew to make Prince mishkin work he had to come from Switzerland the most neutral country in Europe where dostovsky lived while writing the novel in 1867 and 68. Switzerland never goes to war and that's why they have all the world's money stored in Swiss banks very smart but the idiot Michigan is broke at the start of the

novel later he gets a big chunk in inheritance on the train sitting next to Prince Michigan we also meet another important character rogujin who has inherited a lot of money therefore he wants to get married in complete contrast to Michigan's calm and measured manner ragujin the son of a rich businessman is extremely passionate almost madly in love with the beautiful lady called nastancia felipovna Prince Michigan represents the old Aristocrats while ragujin represents a new business class this mirrors how Russia was changing at the time Michigan is poor while ragujin now has a Fortune this chance

encounter on the train in the beginning of the novel is mirrored by a horrific scene at the end of the novel where both mishkin and ragujin come together again Michigan represents innocence while ragujan represents animalistic passion Michigan doesn't judge your past so he lives in the present Michigan instead is the bad boy who is in the middle of all this Nostalgia flip of nice perhapsovsky's strongest female character in all his novels she was orphaned as a child raised by a ruthless Aristocrat tootsky who wanted to raise her for his own sexual gratification by she has

grown up to be very clever socially acute woman who can see through men's intentions perhaps superpowers her beauty men fall to their knees in her presence so she has many suitors but the problem with the beauty is that everyone wants to but only one person can have you we have a problem here so the battle commence first we have Ghana who wants to marry her here's the secret though Kanya doesn't love nostancia but tootsuki nostalgia's Guardian has promised Garnier a lot of money if he agrees to marry her and takes her away from him why

well totsky has his eyes on another woman also Nastasia is too clever for him he wants a more submissive woman so we are only in the first round nostancia flip overnight rejects Garnier who's humiliated and utterly beaten who is next ragujin shows up with a huge sum of money to win her over Prince Michigan told Outsider and all this also raises his hand that he wants to marry Anastasia flip overnight she looks at him and says why Michigan doesn't talk about his goodness instead he shows his bang balance that he has received a huge summon

inheritance too the reason these men talk with their money as their women are practical they don't look for good men they look for competent men who can provide for them also now that Michigan has money he is no longer an idiot and everyone wants to be his friends I wish I had many so I could have some friends now she has a choice to make should she go with Michigan the good man with money or should she go with ragujin the bad boy with money it's a real dilemma that nearly all women face in their

lives the good guy isn't exciting but reliable the bad boy is unreliable or unpredictable but exciting as expected nostalgia's seeking excitement chooses rakujin bad boys always win in the first round also important to note that nastancia flip overnight has terrible sexual experience growing up so those traumas influenced her decision you're making the fact that she didn't have parents means she makes bad choices in life thinking ragujin is one side Choice ragujin has won the battle but not quite although he has her he also thinks her heart is with someone else raghujin thinks even though they

are together Anastasia loves mishkin in other words he has her shell but her inner self is with mishkin ragujin being the bad boy he is capable of violence of course with passion comes jealousy Michigan discovers that rogujin beats Nostalgia somewhat regularly Michigan here plays the role of the Knight who tries to rescue a damsel and stress but the problem is that he neither has the physical power nor the authority to compete with ragujin he is likened to the poor Knight takaratan one of Alexandra pushkin's poem but what's worse ragujin even theriettans to kill her in

his rage and he also attacks Michigan with a knife in an attempt to kill him here dostovskus is a very clever eyes to save his protagonist just as regusian is about to stab him with his knife mishkin has an epileptic seizure ragujin has no idea what's happening so he flees like the Roadrunner having an illness is sometimes handy Michigan survives meanwhile mishkin also has an eye on another woman a Goliath the daughter of his relative lizabetha and a punching aglia is also intrigued by Michigan but has little respect for him thinking he's really an idiot

aglia wishes Michigan was a bit more confident of himself and stop being humble all the time he's an advice for men watching this women wants you to be confident so don't show Too Much humility aglia indirectly tells Michigan to be more manly and teaches him how to use gun how to win duel here dostovsky shows his understanding of how women want change man whom they can love to turn the childlike Michigan into a strong-willed man women don't want a grown-up child they want a strong man who can put detect and provide for them there's a

lot of back and forth between the two agliers conflicted about Michigan her biggest problem that he has no passion and seems too stupid with his innocence her parents want them married will dostrovsky turned Michigan into a passionate man the saying is that everyone has a passion but not everyone gets the chance to show it okay it's time to ostrowsky brings some ideological debate into the mix perhaps we might say Michigan in his element who knows what a guy might think about him then meanwhile oshovsky interrupts the main plot by introducing a commonly recycled character in

all his novels and atheist nihilist he's called epaulet who is convinced that religions are nothing but lies and your soul dies with you he talks about a painting the body of the Dead Christ and the tomb by Hans holbin the younger in which Jesus buried and nature is slowly decomposing him there's nothing one can do to stop the course of nature no God is powerful enough to stop it interestingly Michigan doesn't confront him and his ideas but later on when it comes to Catholicism he confronts it head first this shows dostovsky's own inability to really

have a good answer against the powerlessness of God and protecting the weak especially children against the cruelty of nature so since there is no meaning in life suicide is the only option Apple it shoots himself in front of everyone but despite the fact there's no bullet is fired he feigns like a rabbit in the Headlights like all dostoevsky's atheist characters equally it is scared of his own ideas I wonder if dostrovsky thought courage was only possible with Blind Faith religious nationalistic or romantic in other words if you believe in something you are capable of having

a real courage and crime punishment raskolnikov develops fever delirium and real mental Panic after he kills the woman despite his philosophical justifications from the murders and brothers karamazov Yvonne goes mad after realizing that his idea may have influenced the death of his own father photoshky if you are an atheist or nihilist you're a real coward when it comes to real courage you talk the talk but not walk the walk I have said this many times for the Russians courage is the ultimate value for a man summary part 2 so the little April 8 episode brings

the question as why everyone in the west has turned into atheists why all of sudden people look down on Christianity it's time we see Michigan shows passion God damn it Michigan at one point during a dinner party organized by a glass parents becomes extremely passionate in his attack on Catholicism for its heavy-handedness political rule he claims that because the Catholics were power hungry people they give Christianity a bad reputation and this caused many people to flee Christianity into the bosom of atheism and nihilism from Michigan Catholicism is even worse than atheism for cruelty could Roman

Catholicism is in my opinion worse than atheism itself yet that's my opinion atheism only preaches a negation but romanism goes further it preaches a disfigured distorted Christ it preaches Antichrist I assure you I swear it this is my own personal conviction it has long distressed me the Roman Catholic believes that the church on Earth cannot stand without Universal temporal power he cries non-posimous in my opinion the Roman Catholic religion is not a faith at all but simply a continuation of the Roman Empire and everything is subordinated to this idea beginning with faith the pope has

seized territories in an Earthly throne and has held them with sword and so the thing has gone on only that to the sword they have added lying and tricked to seed fanaticism Superstition swindling they've played fast and loose with the most sacred and sincere feelings of men they have exchanged everything everything for many for base Earthly power and is this not the teaching of antichrist how could the upshot of all these be other than atheism atheism is the child of Roman Catholicism it proceeded from these Romans themselves though perhaps they would not believe it it

grew and fattened on hatred of its parents it is the progeny of their lies and spiritual feebleness Atheism in our country it's only among the upper classes that you find unbelievers men who have lost the root or the spirit of their faith but a broad whole masses of people are beginning to profess and believe at first because of the darkness and Lies by which they were surrounded but now out of fanaticism out of loathing for the church and Christianity this debate is more elaborated in the brothers karamazov's most famous section the crown Inquisitor in which

Jesus is detained in Spain for being too nice you can't Rule people with kindness You Can Only Rule people with Brute Force which the Catholic Inquisition was all about Michigan continues despite making everyone uncomfortable but he lets it all out the man for the very first time shows passion in his conviction he's a Russian man after all if you had doubts about dostrovsky now you should know that he was a true psychologist mishkin's passionate Outburst has done its job soon he finds himself in a client's arms now she loves him she has been desperately waiting

to see him with passion now Michigan's outbursts against the Catholic church is not the point but for a guy the man has passion about something now it has ignited Atlanta's own passion so much so that she attacks Nostalgia flip of which shocks Prince Michigan we have a lot of drama now but what comes out of it is a huge shock for everyone the songs of lipov now asks Michigan to marry her why well mishkin has another woman at Laya which makes him more attractive now for Nastasia it's all a game or the tag of Romance

the prince agrees to abandon aglia the woman who turned him into a suitable candidate instead he wants to marry Anastasia Michigan what are you doing nobody saw that coming ugly as devastated and so is her family Michigan tries to explain but nobody listens to him and everyone calls him with his nickname idiot hmm is he an idiot we'll find out on the day of his wedding with nostancia flipovnak yes mishkin is an idiot of course the Stars the flip of that doesn't show up at her wedding instead runs away with you guessed it the bad

boy ragujin the idiot Michigan continues in his wedding's attire as if nothing has happened once he has greeted all the guests which takes him a whole day he goes in search of his pride Nastasia what an imbecile by the time he finds her it's too late he cannot have a rosterky novel without a good old murder rishikin discovers and starts his dead body in a pool of blood who is the killer we all know ragujin the bad boy the man with passion Michigan shows no emotion here instead of admonishing her gushing or attacking him or

taking Revenge Michigan says nothing the two main Rivals enemies and opposites sit together all night to watch over the dead body of the woman they both loved Dostoevsky having spent years in their harshest conditions Siberia for his crime didn't believe in retribution or revenge or punishment you cannot undo a deed by punishing the person in the beginning of the novel Michigan also says that he is against that penalty could I believe that to execute a man for murder is to punish him immeasurably more dreadfully than is equivalent to his crime a Murder By sentence is

far more Dreadful than a murder committed by a criminal the man who is attacked by robbers at night in a dark wood or anywhere undoubtedly hopes and hopes that he may yet Escape until the very moment of his death but in the case of an execution that last hope having which is so immeasurably less Dreadful to die is taken away from the wretch and certainly substituted in its place there is his sentence and with it that terrible certainty that he cannot possibly escape death which I consider must be the most Dreadful anguish in the world

this reflects tostovsky's own view because he was almost executed by the Tsar in 1849 when facing death humans cling to a certain Beauty art religion or a memory at one point Michigan talks about a man who remembered while waiting for his execution which is more likely to be dostoevsky's own memory of his own experience could he said that those five minutes seem to him to be a most interminable period enormous wealth of time he seemed to be living in these minutes so many lives that there was no need as yet to think of that last

moment so that he made several Arrangements dividing up the time into portions one for seeing farewell to his companions two minutes for that then a couple more for thinking over his own life and career all about himself another minute for the last look around while saying goodbye to his friends he recollected asking one of them some very usual everyday question and being much interested in the answer than having bet very well he embarked upon those two minutes which he had alluded to looking into himself he knew beforehand what he was going to think about he

wished to put it to himself as quickly and clearly as possible that there was he a living thinking man and that in three minutes he would be nobody or if if somebody or something then what and where he thought he would decide his question once for all in these last three minutes a little way off there is to the church and it's killed its Spire glittered in the sun he remembered staring stubbornly at the Spy the Rays of light sparkling from it he could not tear his eyes from this rays of light he got the

idea that these rays were his new nature and that in three minutes he would become one of them Amalgamated somehow with them the world would have been without ostrovsky's greatest novel if he was executed at such a young age so mishkin is devastated but doesn't do anything against raccoon which is perhaps the heaviest burden on regusian he wished he was punished for what he did the Russian State however punishes rakushin by sentencing him to 15 years of hard labor and you guessed it so Iberia the English used to send theirs to Australia the Russians send

their Siberia to tame the Wilderness our Russian tragedy is over and Michigan returns to Switzerland to recover from it all Russia wasn't ready for a good man like him just like the Roman Empire wasn't ready for Jesus lucky for Michigan they didn't crucify him but they broke his soul at the beginning of the novel everyone joked about him being an idiot by the end he goes insane to make him the Russian Don Quixote who tried to save Nastasia but by virtue of his interference she ended up death you could say with Bosch's attempt by an

idiot night to rescue at Damsel in Distress aglia ends up running away with a Polish man who turns out to be a Catholic oh boy don't tell Michigan about that he hated the Catholics is Switzerland a Catholic country but Michigan remains inside the sanatorium so he won't see any churches in the distance I wonder if Michigan was there when Thomas Mann wrote his novel The Magic Mountain also set in a signatorium in Switzerland foreign makes a clear case against death penalty in this novel through words of Prince Michigan though Swifty experienced it firsthand before his

herberian Exile dostovsky says if someone wants to kill you there's a slim chance that that person may fail just like ragujin failed to kill mishkin with a knife but when the state executes you you have zero chance of survival so the psychological experiences are very different one is a certain death and the other you have a chance of survival as animals we have evolved to believe that we always have a chance of survival but with State choosing to kill you you no longer have that chance but it was part of face the waiting it is

excruciatingly painful the hours and minutes as you wage your execution Dostoevsky who went through the horrifying ordeal himself says no matter how terrible crime you may have committed the state has no right to take you alive relax epilepsy when reading Charles Bukowski I came across a passage in which he describes how one experiences pain in front of other people other things you look stupid when you publicly experience pain so the swivsky tackles the same issue epilepsy is a public illness he exposes you in front of others it can come at any moment and it makes

you look dumb and idiotic in front of others with every seizure you look stupid so the novel's title also refers to the illness I think Prince Michigan suffers from epilepsy that's called an idiot as a child I witness a boy having seizure I remember my mixed emotion on the one hand I felt sorry but on the other I felt how stupid he looked because I didn't know how he was doing at first himself develops epilepsy after his Siberian Exile many great authors had epilepsy which must have contributed in the decision to stay indoor and right

instead of going outside in case of an attack alcohol whether the stereotype that Russians drink a lot is a myth or real in this novel it's totally true and nearly every party there are many who are completely wasted and they start to state things to create chaos in the absence of religion alcohol is your best mate to numb your pain that's why Marx called religion the opiate of the masses but today it's alcohol or shopping alcohol is a bigger problem among the poor in this novel those of a higher socioeconomic status drink moderately but those

at the bottom drink like there's no tomorrow in some cases unfortunately there is no tomorrow money money is pretty Central in the novel from the first scene money and marriage go hand in hand ragujin inherits a lot of money he chases nostancia she weighs men against their money Michigan is poor then Rich then people follow him like scavengers follow a dead carcass trying to prove that they are his real cousins or friends when money goes missing everyone is a suspect without money forget about marriage and love it's the same today if your poor man forget

about Romance foreign 's love is passionate animalistic which attracts Nostalgia she chooses him every time for his raw impulsive passion Michigan's love is a bit religious based on pity this was Nietzsche's biggest problem with religion for promoting weak-mindedness Nietzsche might say the reason nostancia chooses the bad boy ragujin is that he represents nature while Michigan represents religion that suppresses nature mishkin feels sorry for nostancia but also wants to marry her it's confusing I think Joseph himself wasn't really convinced by Michigan's stance despite being a really innocent man a woman doesn't love you unless she knows

where you stand unless she respects your position unless she can understand where your passion is I guess those skills try to show that religious Love is misunderstood by people garnier's love is based on getting promoted he uses love as a social ladder so he is opportunistic ragujin's love is animalistic and natural Michigan's love is religious Dostoevsky doesn't make a woman in the novel to prove their love for these men it's only men who are on trial to prove their love I guess women do the choosing so it's hard job on itself they get pregnant have

to live with a man she chooses so it's far greater risk for her than for the man [Music] religion religion is prominent here Dostoevsky shows that Orthodox religion is superior to Catholicism as it stays away from political power atheism confronted Dostoevsky throughout his life he tried to show that religion is Spotlight being the sharpest tool in the shed is still relevant for millions of Russians despite his religious theme Dostoevsky doesn't show within our throats there are many nuanced moments when religion has no answer to atheism like how all the powerful God allows Injustice and cruelties

towards children at the end jesus-like character Prince Michigan goes mad because he couldn't even prevent a single murder which I think he was partially responsible for if he hadn't declared his love for Nostalgia she and ragujin might have had a somewhat decent marriage who knows but the main message is that no matter how bad you are you can redeem yourself nobody is just evil or just good we are both for as long as you live you have the chance to do great things and terrible things make mistakes and amend them Michigan AKA dostovsky sees goodness

in everyone he doesn't judge people unless you're a Catholic of course instead of responding to atheists claim in them he recognizes his own past struggles with the same ideas but ironically when it comes to the Catholics oh boy he goes on a rant with so much passion and conviction I know there's a lot of people who box Dostoevsky as a Christian novelist so I think that is a huge disservice To His Brilliant writing he understood that rationality alone cannot save us because humans are deeply flawed so to describe humans as rational is like forcing a

square peg into a round hole dostovsky couldn't accept that death was the end of everything so I say his death was not the end of Dostoevsky because he created something amazing and that is Art the idiot is one of them dostovski says quote the important thing is life life and nothing else if you don't care about others people think you're an idiot to send Buddhist monk or an ascetic man might appear like idiots because they don't care about worldly positions or how others think of them great white people tend to appear to us a bit

childlike innocent and even stupid on the outside dostoevsky's Prince Michigan is a man who has remained a child he sees goodness in people he doesn't try to show that he's smart and Fast Track wiser if you're happy on the inside it doesn't matter what other people think about you or calling you an idiot but here's a problem at different stages in our lives we have different goals when young we seek partner a career worldly success and more but later in life we slow down appreciate the little things or seek happiness on the inside in the

east in the past people turn to Buddhism at a later stage in their lives because they are worldly pursued didn't make them happy or fulfilled this so the Buddhist philosophy of non-detachment allowed people to find peace on the inside dostoevsky's Michigan is only 26 years old so he's too young for Buddhism and is half the age of Don Quixote who was 50 so he's slightly confused at times he wants to help people but as a result he causes more problems he's neither detached from nor attached to other people and his own worldly desires he wants

to marry two women but also tries to say he's not interested in them for sex or lust his mixed signals result in one woman getting killed and the other very unhappy he fits The Stereotype of a nice man you know the saying the nice man finish last but oswevsky's message is that one should not worry about how others judge you as long as the core inside you makes you happy and fulfilled other people's opinions about you should not matter even if everyone thinks you're an idiot nothing can penetrate you if you have peace on the

inside dostovsky goes even further if you find peace on the inside the outside world is irrelevant I'll leave with this quote I used to watch a line where Earth and Sky met and long to go and seek there the key of all Mysteries thinking that I might find there a new life perhaps some great City where life should be grander and richer and then it struck me that life may be grand enough even in a prison what is the oldest human conflict a conflict present in all societies cultures and periods in history it is of

course the conflict between Generations the youth won't change and the old one to keep Traditions going this generational conflict is built in or pre-installed in human biology which drives Evolution but sometimes the youth want radical change not Evolution but a bloody Revolution here's a question did fiodosovsky predict the Russian Revolution of 1917 some 50 years before it happened novel demon centers on a radical young man who brings a bloody socialist revolution in a Russian town he is an interesting twist or historical irony as doorsky was writing demons in the same year 1870 one of the

most influential Russian babies was born who grew up to exactly what Dostoevsky was writing about changing Russia's history forever it was Vladimir Lenin whose socialist Revolution 1917 set up the USSR a kind of replica of the surfsky's fictional Revolution incidentally it ostrowsky's novel demons was published in 1871 but apparently Lenin refused to read it because he considered it reactionally garbage who knows what might have happened had he read the novel as a boy or teenager dostoevsky's demons is not only a political satire but also a psychological drama and a social tragedy set in Russia after

the emancipation of serfs in 1860s which is also the Golden Age of Russian literature that gave birth to three masterpieces through Guinea's Fathers and Sons in 1862 dostovsky's crime punishment in 1866 and told stories were in peace in 1869. outside literature the 1860s was a politically volatile and idea charge period where where westernized radicals fought Russian traditionalists today I'll summarized demons consider one of those keys most important novels and later discussed some of the themes such as nihilism Hedonism and suicide I will also compare dostoevsky's demons To turgenev's Masterpiece Fathers and Sons and how they

depict nihilism differently also to make it interesting Dostoevsky has a character in the novel based on trogenith himself which I think puts Dostoevsky in a somewhat negative light Bessie in Russian translated to English as the possessed or the Devils or demons is a first person narrative by Anton g a civil servant and whose enclosed friend of the main intellectual step on verkhovinsky who is the inspiration behind the radical youth Anton is somewhat similar to the Swifts himself who was part of a radical group in his own youth so he knows the characters inside out almost

omniscient he fondly remembers the younger days of estepon as a promising young man with a University career ahead of him but his radical Western ideas prevented him to get a job instead he's employed as a personal tutor by varvara extravagina to teach her son Nikolai stavrogen a young Aristocrat who becomes the main and the most complex character of the novel stepan is an older man a westernized intellectual who has a big influence on the young people including his own son pirator verhulfinsky who is another important character in the main instigator of a socialist Revolution just

like all dostoevsky's novels there are far too many fully developed characters but I'll focus on the intellectual step on but more in the background his son puta as the main revolutionary protagonist and Nikolai computer wants to recruit because of his aristocratic influence the westernized pewter verkhovinsky similar to Vladimir Lin in some decades later orchestrates a revolution the Irish crowd Nikola extravagan the main and the most charismatic character in the novel opposes the revolution but not with all his energy why the Aristocrat has some dark secrets himself so he is preoccupied to cover his own Dirty

Laundry pure tear looks up to the Charming Nikolai and tries to recruit the other Squad in his revolutionary causes a step on verhovinsky pewter's father and nikolai's teacher represents the idealistic group of westernizing intellectuals but now that he is a bit older and wiser he's not eager to promote Revolution and Chaos Yvonne chatov a fierce enemy of westernized pewter is another idealist who favors the Russian Orthodox culture and Faith himself having gone through a radical Western face as a young man just like Dostoevsky himself did before his Siberian Exile Ivan shatov is partly religious and

partly nationalistic again just like Dostoevsky osivsky was reform in Siberia but Ivan shatov is reformed through his travels in Europe and Russia he is a slavophile who believes in the Orthodox Faith Russian soil and peasants again very similar to rostovsky himself portugene Chester meaning return to soil which was a 19th century movement in Europe and Russia somewhat similar to Romanticism based on championing certain people or ethnicity with its extremist version being fascism but here it meant promoting Unity among various groups of Slavic people Ivan shutoff's housemate Alexa krillov an engineer who seems like a Christian

socialist is seeking to sacrifice himself for the good of society just like Jesus he's a deep thinker perhaps the thinking side of toshibsky himself I think dostovsky noticed the similarities between socialism and Christianity as they both promoted equality fairness and promised a heaven like Utopia but their method of achieving such Utopia are radically different It's Autumn before the cold of Siberia hits Russia we are in small provincial town somewhere in Russia instead of Gathering five words for the cold winter the people in this town are organizing a ball to get drunk and recite poetry but

that's on the surface in reality it's not a ball it's a bloody coup or revolution that chops people's balls not literally though we meet the intellectual Stefan verkhovinsky our spiritual leader and teacher to the young people in the novel whose promising career Prospect vanished due to his radical ideas instead of becoming a university Professor he has been living in the house of a wealthy landlady varvara stav frogina he was initially employed as a tutor to educate her son Nikolai the young Aristocrat who becomes the main character in the novel but as years passed he found

himself comfortable there and the landlady also enjoys his platonic company and his intelligence and artistic mind varvara has just returned from Switzerland to talk to Stefan about his money problem but most importantly discuss some unsavory rumors that has been circulating about her son Nikolai whom dostovsky Likens to the Playboy Prince Harry not that one but the one in Shakespeare's play Henry V and forts the young Nikolai is the man of many contradictions with bad boy Tendencies also cynical and almost amoral who manipulates women to sleep with him and his hedonistic Pursuits in the past he

was also involved in a duel pulled someone's nose and even did Mike Tyson on someone by biting his ear varvara first twists Stefan's ears for spending too much money and tells him to be more responsible with his credit card your grown man God damn it but her real concern is her son's liaison with a few women the beautiful Lisa her friend's daughter the reliable Dasha her own Protege and the mentally handicapped woman called Maria to resolve this entanglement valvera convinces I guess forces step on to marry Dasha to hit two birds with one stone it

solves his many problem but also takes her away from Nikolai to hide some senseless secrets in the family which is step on and eventually realizes there's a lot going on in the state and it all has to do with the young Nikolai who has been having a lot of fun with multiple women even marrying Maria who seems to be mentally challenged her mother Barbara tries everything to keep a lid on the scandals through money coercion and persuasion but she can only do so much but this is not only a family trauma it's a Russian social

drama the hidden is Nikolai is a new representative of Russian aristocracy lazy womanizing and pleasure seeking we have a meeting where everything comes to a head Dostoevsky is a master of putting various characters together to confront one another they have an open volatile discourse it's like a percussion Orchestra a large sum of many is involved a sacred marriage and many disordered activities it's like the Jeremy culture or the Oprah soap opera where everyone screams and people show up Suddenly from nowhere Nikolai himself the subject of the scandals is conveniently absent from the meeting but another

young man shows up a stranger who starts over talking everyone in the meeting who could it be it is our revolutionary pewter Stefan's son a man with a plan but we don't know what his real plan is then suddenly Nikola shows up and takes away Maria while telling everyone that he's not married to her once Nikolai is gone pure the Revolutionary tells Barbara that Maria's mental illness forced Nikolai to look after her and that's why she believed this was marriage he paints her son as noble man who rescued a sick woman not someone who took

advantage of her we know what pewter is up to here he has a ruthless plan to ingratiate himself with Nikolai by rescuing him from his scandalous life so that the aristocrats become the patron of his socialist Revolution if you can't beat the system from outside beat it from the inside through what you could term as blackmail his plan is to Blackmail all the influential people in town then it's an easy Revolution where you don't have to call an army pewter makes up some other stories to corroborate nikolai's innocence in all this lady Barbara is happy

that her son is a good man after all but future warns his father out of his plans how can he remove him from the scene he lies about his father I step on confessing that he is being forced to marry Dasha varva is shocked to hear this so she tells Stefan to pack his bag and leave immediately dosha's brother Yvonne shutoff pewter's Arch Enemy who has been silently watching everyone walks up to Nikolai and Dazzle Will Smith on him by smacking him in the face the beautiful Lisa faints the first drama is over this was

just a Prelude so the main course will sacrifice a few cows I mean people because we will have a revolution just remember his fiction summary part 2 the staff Rogaine family Scandal spreads like a wildfire everyone is too ashamed to be involved in the drama so they hide themselves from social media I mean the town's gossip but one man is out there talking to everyone on YouTube on Radio and on TV I mean he's out there talking to people on the streets cafes and everywhere he's not afraid of the gossip it's our young revolutionary socialist

pewter here we also learn about his cunning plan to recruit Nikolai the most powerful influential Aristocrat for his revolutionary cause Nikolai understands his own terrible predicament however shows a cold shoulder but doesn't refuse him overtly either he has a bigger problem his own life is on the line someone whom he had insulted a while back has challenged him to a duel we are in Russia baby but as it turns out he survives The Duel Dostoevsky doesn't want to kill him yet Nikolai in search of a backer for his duel comes face to face with Yvonne

shutoff who instead of slapping again confronts him about his hypocrisy of pretending to be a Christian on the one hand and making false promises of marriage to women on the other Nikolai tries to explain his religious conviction but it's pretty lame so he tries Scare Tactics saying that because evangelov was a former revolutionary himself and now reform he is being hunted down by his former comrades including pewter after leaving that frightening seat inside shadow of his mind Nikolai leaves him alone to brood Nikola goes to Maria his alleged wife telling her to escape with him

to Switzerland for some peace and some swiss cheese Nikolai has had enough of Russia and its endless dramas but Maria is deeply dismayed by his previous action of disowning her in front of everyone she thinks the man has no backbone she tells him no nikolai's patient is at its limits now he becomes violent towards her once outside the house he comes face to face with fedka a convicted criminal whom pewter has recruited to assist Nikon perhaps in getting rid of his wife Maria to stop the Scandal Nikolai is in a very foul mood so he

first attacks fedga and then insults him by throwing some money at him oh boy this impulsive act wasn't wise Nikolai later realizes that it was not wise to give the criminal money because by paying the convict he has somehow implicated himself in a possible murder it is possible fatka assumes the money was a payment to murder Maria nikolai's wife pewter has Nikolai completely wrapped so he inches towards his Revolution by targeting another influential person in town the governor's wife Julia he uses his sexual seduction and masculine charm to control her pewter and some of his

comrades infiltrate Julia's private parties to talk about the ills of the system so that they mentally prepare the people for a revolution the governor himself knows what's happening but he has no power over his wife because she only listens to Charming young pewter who runs the town like a Mafia Boss but he's still not there yet he has a few other plans to fall into place before he can achieve his socialist Revolution he gathers everyone including Nikolai and shatov to tell them about the violent overthrow of the government while everyone agrees with him shut off

and Nikolai leave the meeting to show their descent pewter is not happy so he follows Nikolai and his tactic to recruit him for revolution becomes bizarre and farcical pewter confesses that he loves Nikolai and even kisses his hand his blackmail didn't work so he uses sexual charm Dostoevsky depicts his atheist as somewhat pathetic I don't know what sort of atheists were around in Russia in those days or perhaps dostovsky saw atheist as nothing but cartoonish people computer tickles nikolai's ego by promising him the leadership position and the new revolutionary regime nobody can say no to

power of course Nikolai remains silent but we know he wants it that Devil Wants power despite all his personal problems with women he wants to be the leader so far things have been calmed just ideas conversations and gossip now Dostoevsky cranks it up a notch ideas turn to violence only if you really believe in those ideas people die for their beliefs but also kill others for their beliefs so ideas can liberate you but also become your worst demons things begin to go south for the small Russian Town Julia the governor's wife has arranged the gala

horror ball in which all the influential people of the town are supposed to gather for some great food dreams conversation and even poetry but before the gala starts we have some revolutionaries and workers gathered outside the governor's house and there's a mad chaos some Madness as the governor loses his [ __ ] and starts acting like a lunatic the man knows he has lost his wife in his powers so we have a revolution but remember we also have a family drama here Nikolai tells everyone that he is indeed married to Maria the mad woman seeing

this people are a bit distracted from the actual Revolution instead everyone is interested in the gossip there is a war going on in the world but Will Smith did what drostovsky shows that we humans are not as rational as we might think we are at times we enjoy gossip more than actually worrying about revolutions or Wars we need gossip stories and family dramas to calm our nerves the gala takes place and since we are in Russia a few drunkards invade the stage and some other dramas but the star of the show is a great writer

Karma zenov Dostoevsky uses his character to poke fun at Yvonne troginev who was more a westernized writer more like a French artistic writer who reads A poem titled merci if you thought he was in French enough he annoys the hell out of everyone by spending a long time talking nonsense when getting to the point this is pretty cheap after if I'm being honest he disliked her again for his secularism sure dostovsky can tell great psychological stories but no Russian writer is as poetic as torgenith when it comes to writing about nature and the countryside the

gala turns into a farce people are drunk and pewter consoles Julia that everything is fine later that evening the ball continues but things start to go further south so someone shouts fine and everyone panics Julia the hostess fans and her husband the governor is knocked unconscious the town is burning all night there's also news that Maria and her brother have been murdered Nikolai our main hero oblivious to all these events is spending the night with the beautiful Lisa at some point there's a knock on the door pyotor is here to convey that fedga the convict

whom Nikolai had thrown money at has murdered both Maria and her brother Lisa rushes to find out for herself Nikolai tries to stop her but the woman walks right into the chaos and gets herself killed in the process pewter's Revolution trimes but there's no time for celebration now it's time to take revenge most revolutions saw Act of Revenge and this is no different pewter and his comrades punished those who opposed him he murders Ivan shutoff a former socialist termed against Revolution he then finds his housemate kurlov and they have a Titanic debate which conveniently ends

when kulov commits suicide so the murderer of even shutoff can be blamed on kirlov who is dead and unable to defend himself it's like an atomic bomb has exploded in town peoto's father step on the teacher the spiritual leader to the young man flees the town on foot but he's stricken by an illness and dies while regretting his life and asking God for forgiveness he says could God is necessary to me if only because he is the only being whom one can love eternally this was nostuvsky's main reason for the existence of God we cannot

love a human being forever because humans are flawed each generation wants to have a new human God to solve this Dostoevsky wanted a non-human God there are a few more deaths including a newborn child once the dust settles many things come to light a man confesses about the plot exposing the Revolutionary Circle the authorities round the revolutionaries one by one and one man is missing pewter has left the town heading for Saint Petersburg the last shocking news in the novel is that Nikolai who had abused many women has committed suicide inside his State he spent

his entire life seeking more and more Pleasures dostovsky's biggest problem with the Godless world was self-indulgence he traveled the world he slept with many women he sought those things to numb the pain of his empty existence but nothing quenched his thirst his death finally put a stop to his suffering his mother is distraught beyond belief this all sounds like a terrible nightmare but as history of Russia transpired some 50 years after the publication of demons Russia woke up to the October Revolutions of 1917 by bolshuks the romanovs were murdered soon after to establish the USSR

which ruled Russia for 70 years analysis nihilism the main premise of the novel is this assumption that bad ideas possesses one's Soul like demons do once it takes over you begin to act like crazy a good analogy would be rabies and dogs the virus gets into their brain and control them from the inside there are two demons in the novel nihilism and Hedonism on the one hand we have atheism of pewter whose Revolution brings a lot of Chaos in the fictional Town his character and ideas are a bit farcical his demon is his Western indoctrination

or ideology to change Russia in order to bring equality by destroying the old system it's much like the Socialists that came after in 1905 and 1917 revolutions these Russian radicals were influenced by the German and French utopian socialism who believed in creating a perfect society that runs like a Clockwork where everyone is happy and equal Dostoevsky joined a socialist Circle as a young man which resulted in his exiled Siberia here he looks back at those naive and Youthful days when he was possessed with new shiny ideas without really knowing the consequence of their activities I

think the youth in every society has a desire for change while the old tries to resist change because they have seen it all through their life experiences butzewsky is an older man looks back at his own youth this nihilistic demon was also the main theme in torgenith's novel Fathers and Sons published 10 years before dostoevsky's demons for me Fathers and Sons are far more artistic in how the nihilist is transformed through his own encounters with the real world and his own experiences turginiff is much more methodical by highlighting the differences between hot-headed Youth and the

calm of the old people the young are naive to the reality of the world while the older is stuck in their assumptions in voices But ultimately into Organics novel the youth with their new sexy ideas lose against lifetime experience of the old because they are more grounded in reality so experience wins against ideas Dostoevsky and his usual messy Titanic style bangs characters against each other which is incredibly inciting and dramatic true genif is like a violinist in a quiet Countryside while dostoevski is like a percussionist in the midst of urban hustle and bustle also dostoevsky's

depiction of karmazino of whom everyone considered to be true organif is not justified for me as a conservative man Dostoevsky dislike trouganet for his liberal European Outlook which is fair enough but he depicts to organif as a rambly and confusing which is completely the opposite of the real turgenic reading to organif's novels which are very short compared to dostoevsky's long-winding novels they are incredibly to the point to organic stories are far more poetic and beautiful to this French influence I think but they lack the excitement and drama of dostoevsky's Storytelling Dragon if's nihilist character and

father and son pazorov is a far more rounded character than dostoevsky's pewter who is almost cartoonish at times and how rigid he is in his ideas I think turginev is a more objective writer compared to Dostoevsky who was a conservative Russian disliked most things that came from the West did turgenef and later dorsovsky foresee the Russian Revolution Russia in 1860s was a chaotic place as 30 million serfs were suddenly freed so they flooded the cities for opportunities obviously Moscow and Saint Petersburg couldn't absorb everyone's poverty homelessness prostitution Etc led to a lot of chaos he

serves in the country used to be controlled by the landowners now they are free but also Hungry For Change turginev's father's Sons came out a year after the emancipation of serfs so he said this story in the countryside dostovsky's demons came out 10 years after the emancipation of serfs so most cities were flooded with the poor which the radical intellectuals saw as a reason to revolt against the monarchy a lot of toshowsky's characters are based on real people who are active in the 1860s Russia's highly unequal and volatile socio-economic infrastructure on the one hand and

its highly communitarian values on the other provided ideal conditions for socialism to grow and ultimately overthrow the tsarist system kosovsky also saw a connection between Utopia and socialism and Christianity especially in the character of kerlov who wants to sacrifice himself for the greater good to become a jesus-like figure now we see the connection between social and Christianity more clearly as they both promise a future Utopia one on earth the other on the afterlife here dostovsky questions Revolution as a means of achieving that which is violent he was against violence in any form as a small

man myself I understand dostoevsky's concern about violence trostovsky understood that once you stick to your idea or ideology or tribe then violence against those outside your circle tribe ideology becomes an easy act for you because you have a goal and anything that stands in front of you needs to be removed the old adage The end justifies the means Hedonism the second demon dostovska is talking about is more psychological Nikolai symbolizes a kind of self-indulgence hindenism a thirst for sex power and pleasure if puta was possessed by utopian social justice demons Nikolai was possessed by his

carnal desire of sleeping with women seeking quick gratification in life his demon is his own body pewter was possessed in the head while Nikola was possessed in the body mainly in his penis area I guess but he's also possessed in his desire for power despite not being convinced by pura's revolutionary or utopian ideas Nikolai hopes the revolution puts him at the helm so he can fulfill his desire for power and who knows more women too the central question dostoevsk is asking is this if modernity liberated people from God religion and traditions has it replaced those

things with something meaningful his answer is no since modernity killed God people feel more and more empty on the inside once something is empty T it is very easy to fill it with something cheap instantaneous and temporary you either fall into the hands of shiny ideologies like idealism rationalism materialism atheism socialism and so forth if ideas are not you a thing you fill your Void with shopping sex addiction endless travels or social media but unfortunately all those things are only temporary so in the long run nothing can quench your thirst or fill the void final

words the novel reads partly like a political drama and partly comedy the botched Revolution is more like a farcical revolution performed on stage I think dostovsky is serious but also not serious he poses his usual questions about atheism religion meaning and irrationality of humans despite being psychological the political tone and the setting of the novel make it less serious and this novel dostovsky is in his most Google style comedy pewter is cartoonishly square in his socialist ideology the most complicated characters of course his father Stefan whose intellectual life is a bag of contradictions he lives

with this woman yet has no romantic relationships he has revolutionary ideas but condemns Revolution he's an atheist who turns to God I think as humans we go through many stages in life when young we have radical Tendencies won't change question traditions in the system as we grow older we establish ourselves through our or Jobs family children and material success we tend to become more conservative and want to keep Traditions dostovsky depicts his own experience of radical youth versus his experience old age and this novel here reflects on that perhaps the most psychologically complex character is

Nikolai whose existence is perhaps the most mysterious and the most horrifying too he is possessed by his own inner demons of sex deception and power he doesn't have any deep principles he's not a black and white character but varying Shades of Gray perhaps 50 shades when it comes to his entanglement with endless women tosovsky shows the complexity of human existence we want progress but often very quickly without really thinking about the consequences human history is littered with violence in the forms of revolutions conquests Wars and often due to the whims of some ill-advised individuals whose

grasp of reality is quite superficial each generation wants to different things the young want to change society the old want to keep the Traditions going perhaps there should be a balance there without new ideas Society is stagnate and without Traditions societies fall apart Dostoevsky warned young people to think twice before starting a revolution listen to those older than yourself because they experience life longer don't be too stuck in your own ideas but ostrowsky also shows how the old are stuck in their assumptions in biases which blind them to see the value of change sometimes so

this old generational conflict is almost guaranteed to continue for the rest of human existence but the best way to feel and experience each generation's perspective and to comprehensively understand the other can be done best through Reading great literature short story soon smashing away challaveka translated into English as the dream of a ridiculous man tells the story of a lonely and despairing man who has nothing to live for so he is on the verge of ending it all when something incredible happens the dream of a ridiculous man was published in 1877 towards the end of dostoevsky's

own life two years before he published his greatest novel The Brothers karamazov and four years before his own death in 1881. so this short story came at a time when dostrovsky had experienced life from the lowest of the low to the highest as usual I'll tell you the story discusses themes and how it can teach us about the purpose of life this is perhaps one of the most uplifting stories you will ever hear so stay tuned until the very end when everything is revealed that my brain tears to your eyes [Music] summary we aren't in

Petersburg Russia we meet a man on the streets of the capital who narrates his own story thus I'm a ridiculous man now they call me a Madman the tale begins in the same way as nodes from underground dostovsky's other most famous existentialist Tale the man says that he has always been a ridiculous man at school at University and throughout his youth but you know what he has always resented this title and never had the courage to confess to being a ridiculous man but then as a grown man he comes to a realization that nothing really

matters in this world he feels it doesn't matter if the world existed before or they would exist in the future this sudden realization brings a huge feeling of relief and Liberation in him he's no longer burdened to carry the weight of his existence over his shoulders so suddenly he's eased off his suffering but this realization has not turned our hero into a Taoist who wants to flow with nature but this realization has turned him into annihilus who sees life without any value or meaning yes there is no purpose in life everything is meaningless he's not

only indifferent to the world but he has made up his mind that his life is no longer worth living it's just a matter of time he would end it all one night as he wanders the street the man is carrying a pistol intent on ending his empty life the streets are dark except for some lamps the man looks up the sky something catches his eyes he notices a star all alone just like him he sees his own existence as a lonesome star wandering in this empty Universe what is the point why is he walking the

semi-dark streets of Saint Petersburg and up in the sky this tiniest are all alone why but as he's watching the Stars something extraordinary happens on the ground a little girl of about eight grabs his elbow her clothes are tattered and soaked in the rain her shoes broken and she's crying the word mummy quote I turned facing her I did not say a word and went on but she ran pulling at me and there was that note in her voice which in frightened children means despair I know that sound though she did not articulate the words

I understood that her mother was dying and that something of the sort was happening to them and that she had run out to call someone to find something to help her mother I did not go with her on the contrary I had an Impulse to drive her away I told her first to go to the policeman but clasping her hands she ran beside me sobbing and gasping it would not leave me then I stamped my foot and shouted at her she called out sir sir but suddenly abandoned me and rushed headlong across the road some

other possible appeared there and she evidently flew from me to him despite him pushing away the little girl our hero is shaken by The Experience he returns to his soulless apartment but something like a struggle has creeped inside him he was intent on shooting himself but now he feels an inner pain the encounter with a little girl has brought something inside him a flame an idea a nudge but he doesn't fully understand what it is it is something despite this slight shift inside him he still wants to end his life that same night as he's

pondering this idea as he suddenly falls asleep he dreams that he has gone through his plan and has shot himself he's dead yes it's all over people hold a funeral and bury him beneath the crown inside a tiny grave he feels no pain if anything the only feeling he has is loneliness and cold then as rain water sips into his grave he feels an utter Despair and Shout these words whoever you may be if you exist and if anything more rational than what is happening here is possible suffer it to be here now but if

you are revenging yourself upon me for my senseless suicide for the hideousness and the absurdity of this subsequent existence then let me tell you that no torture could ever equal the content which I shall go on dumbly feeling though my martyrdom May last a million years suddenly a dark figure opens his grave and pulls him out his shadowy figure grabs him and together they fly up the sky and eventually into the empty space he feels nothing but thrill and ecstasy as they Shore up then he notices the lonely star he saw from below a few

hours earlier it turns out near that lonely straw there's a lonely little planet just like Earth just then he suddenly thinks about the suffering child he saw on the street of Saint Petersburg and wonders if this planet also has suffering kids Dostoevsky grappled with the idea of suffering kids throughout his novels and in his final novel The Brothers chromosov he made kids his main focus for Dostoevsky suffering kids was the biggest dilemma of human existence and religious belief if God truly existed then why would he make insane children suffer he never found a satisfactory answer

now back to the story our hero is flying in space towards the little planet by the lonely star with this strange figure when he arrives at the planet he realizes everything is just like Earth with one exception here on this planet people accept their fate they accept that in other words they Embrace what happens to them with open arms as a result of having this Carefree attitude towards that people are incredibly happy and courageous the universal principle on this planet is love love people no matter who they are a lot of people despite their shortcomings

a lot of people despite their Darkness the people also love our narrator despite knowing the darkness in his heart and despite him being a stranger they accept him without a single question but here's a Twist in the tale our hero from Earth still has his Earthly habits he introduces something we humans do every day deception we lie old habits creep in one day he accidentally teaches the people to lie we all know what happens next soon the Blissful planet is turned into another Earth instead of pursuing peace and happiness they pursue knowledge and power instead

of cultivating love they develop Science and Technology instead of the collective they promote individualism and selfishness Sunday's chaos Wars divisions and tribalism people instead of being happy or promoting well-being they study happiness and they study well-being like scientists in other words instead of being happy they want to become happy just like our world today our hero tries his best to persuade people to return to their old ways of blissful life but everyone laughs at him and calls him insane at the height of his despair he suddenly wakes up from his Saint Petersburg dream and realizes

that is still in his room he also notices his pistol next to him but the dream has been so incredibly transformative for our hero that the trovian gun no longer Fires for the very first time in his life our narrator understands how incredible it is to be alive how am immensely powerful life is how lucky is to be alive it's one in a million or billion chance that he is alive he decides to live a full life and teach people to love one another he firmly believes that the planet Earth is our true Paradise instead

of seeking another planet it's here we make a paradise for everyone what happens to the little girl well I'll tell you at the end themes instead of intellectuals Dostoevsky Champion Ordinary People as a source of true existentialist wisdom why because intellectuals tend to intellectualize life while Ordinary People live life this theme of living life not questioning things was first elaborated by cervante and Don Quixote but later darshovsky took it as his foundational philosophy of existence life is not about pursuing knowledge and power but living your life to the fullest while simultaneously loving others in other

words today we are bogged down by tribal bickering a political patternist which ultimately makes us unhappy we don't understand the truth about ourselves because we are too focused on judging and worrying about others instead of enjoying and loving life we focus on other people's lives the ridiculous man's dream opened the door into his subconscious self like some gateway to his deeper existence or higher Consciousness when we focus on others we keep that door shut today loneliness is a real thing to Escape it with fake things on social media for temporary validation Michelle de Montan whom

I have discovered recently thanks to Grace on YouTube argues that Solitude gives us mental clarity as well as moral Integrity as a result we don't rush making snap judgments decisions or mistakes seeking other people's attention or validation can sway us and some unsavory ways turns into mobs or foot soldiers of some political or tribal groups in other words being among the crowd or seeking their validation can blind us to see our true purpose since we live in an attention-seeking existence Dostoevsky shows us how we tend to see the glass half empty life's problems can also

be opportunities for change the ridiculous man noticed this star among the foggy lights of Saint Petersburg later his dream allowed him to examine things with Clarity and precision it's incredible that sometimes a simple idea or inspiration can turn us from the depth of Despair to the height of Vitality just the simple nudge this shows how fragile the human mind is you can cure the deepest of problems with the smallest of change just like changing a lens on a camera suddenly everything focuses there's Clarity and and suddenly you're revitalized blastovsky shows that to live a full

life all you need is a simple mind a clear mind a simple purpose Dostoevsky psychological depth at the time when psychology as we know didn't exist is almost incredible the subconscious wasn't seen as something serious everything sort of revolved either in the arena of religious belief or the material world Dostoevsky understood that humans were ruled by things other than the material side of life there was something deeper which we call the existential angst today at the time and even today most people believe if your material life is sorted by a good house and lots of

money in the bank you will be happy dostrovsky understood that that's really the case modernity has been incredibly successful in alleviating poverty and diseases but it has failed to provide us with the mental Clarity or a higher purpose and the absence of clear purpose Dostoevsky saw a clear nihilistic tendency early on despite the material Comfort a lot of people are not happy because they lack mental Clarity or sense of direction or an anchor dostoevsky's message in the dream of ridiculous man is that the purpose of our existence is to love life but also love and

care for others once you fully understand this it's unbelievably liberating and cathartic the ridiculous man's encounter with the little girl seeking help was enough to nudge him in the right direction now he has a purpose suddenly a man's protector or provider's Instinct kicks in and you have a man transformed the desire to provide a protect is incredibly strong in men that they can sacrifice so much in order to protect and provide for their family dostov skin all his novels capture the spirit of a lonely man who is lost for purpose in life men who had

nothing to live for and they cured or surfski saw was women and children who have an immense power to to restore broken men and crime and punishment it was Sonia who ultimately saved our skull nikov that little girl's despair ignited a flame inside the ridiculous man throughout history the biggest purpose a man could have was to protect his wife and children when you're no longer able to have a family you are pretty much nothing to live for but our ridiculous man has found a purpose at the end of story there's this incredible happy ending the

ridiculous man has some great news could and I tracked out that little girl and I shall go on and on the brothers chromosive is considered one of the greatest and most profound Russian novels of all time but what is the story and why it's important what are the three main philosophies discussed what was dostoevsky's purpose in writing it and what are some of its weaknesses and finally what is it really about this is a summary and Analysis of the brothers karamazov by Theodore doshovsky often called his magnum opus the brothers karamazov was drift's last novel

published one year before his death in 1881 but it's also his longest novel almost twice the length of his other famous novel Crime and Punishment which I have already summarized here first I'll give you full summary and then give you a few points of analysis mainly the three major philosophies that run through the novel at the end I'll tell you dostovsky's main purpose in writing this novel which might surprise you summary first let me tell you that the plot of the brothers chromosome is a murder in which the father is killed but we don't know

which son has killed him but that's the surface level story it goes much deeper into religion philosophy and psychology these are a staple of dostoevsky's themes before I go any further let's meet the chromoso family perhaps the most Dysfunctional Family in Russia the father is Theodore karmazov who has three kids from two marriages he's also got an illegitimate fourth son who also plays a major role in the plot Theodore chromosov is not the best father in Russia he prefers to enjoy life instead of taking care of his kids his philosophies that life is short you

might as well enjoy it as a result of this hands-off approach to raising kids he has three very different Sons with very contrasting World Views and personalities the eldest is Dimitri who's most similar to his father he loves alcohol in women so when he grows up he demands his father for his share of the family's wealth so so he can get married this father-son conflict starts off the whole drama of this novel The Second Son Yvonne is an intellectual who questions why there is so much suffering in this world so he concludes that the almighty

doesn't exist otherwise he would not allow so much suffering or this God is not good and compassionate that allows innocent children dying Yvonne is perhaps the young Dostoevsky himself who was drawn to atheism and Western ideas at the time his third son and the youngest ayusha is the protagonist of the novel is a good-hearted religious boy who spends a lot of time in a church with an old priest called father zosima feudal karamazov the father also has a fourth son out of wedlock Pavel smedyakov who is employed as a servant in the family he is

not considered very bright so he could easily influenced by The Atheist Yvonne so the father and his four sons are the main family in the novel I wonder why dostrovsky didn't give karamazov a daughter perhaps with a female presence they might have been less dysfunctional therefore less interesting as a story there are so many characters in the novel but the father and his three legitimate sons and one bastard son are the main characters in the story father zosuma is a priest who counterbalances Yvonne's atheism and also a mentor to illusion the youngest karamazov the two

main female characters are two young women gurusha and Katya who are romantically involved with Dmitry the eldest karamazov at the end of the novel both women turned somewhat religious thanks to the works by ayusha the main plot of the novel revolves around money specifically family inheritance the eldest son Dimitri demands his share of the family money so he can get married to his fiancee but his father Theodore refuses why it turns out the father and his son Dimitri love the same woman crucia gruja on her part plays the two men against each other and enjoys

watching them tear each other apart it turns out grusha was her hurt by some other men so this is her revenge on men but she also gets jealous as Dimitri gets engaged to Katya another prominent female character in the novel then we have a few long detours in the novel in which dosorvsky tells us separate stories in fact ostrowsky wrote these stories in different periods in his life and then patched them together here why because he knew it would be his final novel before his death a year later the first of this subplot stories is

a little boy illusion not to be confused with the main character alyosha elusia is bullied by his peers and later dies of humiliation caused by Dimitri karamazov attacking the little boy's father I'll tell you later while childhood is perhaps the most important theme in the novel another major support is the story of a Spanish Inquisitor who is visited by Jesus to tell him to curb his brutality against non-christians as you know in the 15th century during Inquisition in Europe thousands of Jews and Muslims were forced to convert to Christianity and those reviews were burned alive

or killed in horrific way ways so the SwiftKey tries to answer whether force is Justified in putting people in line so here Jesus returns to tell the grand Inquisitor that his actions are not justified you cannot kill or torture people to make them Christian but the grand Inquisitor turns the table and imprisons Jesus to teach him that Jesus is too idealistic and has no understanding of human nature he tells Jesus that force is needed to turn humans into good humans if left to their own devices in free will humans turn nasty I guess this might

be due to Dostoevsky reading Darwin that humans are basically beasts and it was Society mainly religion that civilized them without Force they cannot find the right path so free will is not the answer but social force is necessary to make people become good this story is told to Alisha but it's meant to teach Yvonne The Atheist that rationality cannot beat love Jesus represents love and crime Inquisitor is the symbol of rational thinking love triumphs over signs and reasons third subplot is the story of father zosima who was a young rebel but was saved by his

Christian faith later in the novel when he dies his followers expect his body not to decade due to his religious piety but soon the smell is so terrible that shakes everyone's faith and his Holiness but also religious Faith as a whole nobody is more devastated than his Protege alyosha the young chromazo but then he meets gurusha Dimitri's romantic interests who restores his faith a little female touch I suppose helps elusia to continue in spreading his message of love nothing sexual but a more religious connection this is the same in crime and punishment when roskolnikov meets

Sonia he feels unburdened and ultimately agrees to confess his crime I think Dostoevsky believed that women in general heal troubled men so now we know that chromoso family was dysfunctional precisely because there was no female presence in the family now let's return to the main plot Dimitri is tired of dealing with his father and decides to run away with his lover grusha but she has disappeared here Dimitri panics thinking that she might have chosen his father as a lover instead why the father has all the money while Demetrius broke Dimitri goes to his father's house

with a pestle as a weapon to attack his father dostovski here plays a trick where the story suddenly stopped so the next time we see Dimitri he attacks a servant who tries to stop him from fleeing the house the servant also accuses him of killing his father funeral karmazov soon the police arrest Dimitri and charges him for the murder of his own father what is the evidence a witness seeing him flee the house and a pastel as a weapon but the damning evidence is that a lot of money is missing and Dimitri suddenly has a

huge stack of cash with him he tries to explain that this many belongs to his fiancee but the police are not convinced meanwhile elusia the youngest chromosov continues to spread his goodness and love he meets scolia a young boy who is westernized and radicalized without really understanding these Western philosophies like atheism socialism and nihilism on the other hand we have the atheist Yvonne who is depicted as having a negative influence on those around him one person in particular Pavel smardiakov his bastard brother who confesses to Ivan that he actually killed his father I install the

money so Dimitri is innocent Yvonne asks madiakov why kill his father he says because earlier Yvonne had told him that in the absence of God anything was permissible so in a sense Yvonne is also implicated in the murder of his own father here we see Ivan turning into raskolnikov terrorized by his own demons delirium and Insanity Because deep down he knows he's responsible for the murder too by influencing smart diarkov that there was no God in any Act was permissible later Yvonne learns that Pavel smartyakov has committed suicide which relieves him that now he cannot

be implicated in the murder Dimitris tried and found built in court the whole trial exposes the nastiness and resentment of those involved plasoski shows how irrational human beings really are when it comes to justice system it's not about justice but Revenge the justice system is also corrupt because it sends Dimitri an innocent man to prison Dimitri is sentenced to 20 years of hard labor in New guessed it Siberia Siberia is a place where bad people are corrected in Russia good people stay in the city and bad people are sent to the cold if you do

something bad in Russia just be prepared to live in the cold of Siberia for a few years Dimitri has a plan to escape to America and then years later return to Russia under a different name but we don't know if he manages to do that or not Elijah still continues to spread his religious Love mostly among young boys Yvonne The Atheist goes mad and is taken to a hospital so to conclude the brothers chromoso of the father future of the rich pleasure Seeker is murder his eldest son Dmitry also a pleasure Seeker is found guilt

despite the fact that he is innocent here Dostoevsky shows that we suffer no matter whether we're guilty or not because life is suffering poor people around the world live in terrible conditions not of their own fault his second son Yvonne the rational atheist goes insane irony there his bastard son Pavel the real murderer commits suicide for the shoes guilty Brothers Yvonne The Atheist as it was he who influenced Pavel that anything is permissible including murder his youngest son the protagonist of the novel alurgia continues to spread religious message of Love Dostoevsky wanted to show him

as his ideal reader as his young and somewhat innocent and naive as he watches different ideologies and outlooks collides so they can learn how to live his life which is to love everyone no matter if you're guilty or innocent poor or rich bad or good at the end of the novel the young kids who bullied a child attend the funeral of the young victim to show remorse this shows that no matter how small an action of bullying or even insulting words can have huge consequences in someone's life one must take responsibility for the actions no

matter how trivial it may seem analysis the writing is very fluent conversational and improvised but also messy perhaps telling us that dostrovsky had a cluttered mind with many philosophies and ideas in some Titanic battle inside his head you don't want to be industry of his head nostrovsky shows his love for the ordinary people here Dimitri despite chasing women money and alcohol has an honesty the Dostoevsky admires he finds the intellectual Yvonne secretive dishonest and coward today we see those negative traits and bankers politicians clever people who play the system so well that they never get

caught and usually the ordinary people who pay the price for the actions of those smart but selfish people Dimitri gets sent to jail not Yvonne who Mastermind the whole thing so usually the innocent pays the price I think photoshky reason in rational thinking doesn't make you life easier psychologically speaking of course materially speaking rationality makes life easier by inventing tools and techniques for an easier life but when it comes to psychological happiness dostoski prefers less rationality but more naivety why guilt only comes when you knowingly do something intelligence makes your life more complicated and smart

people are less happy than those who are naive it is simplistic to say that Dostoevsky agrees that ignorance is bliss but he definitely thinks knowing too much makes your life harder this runs in his other novels too most clearly in the idiot dosorvsky famously said that Consciousness was a disease so according to dostovsky we should curb our intelligence carbon knowledge and have faith and trust in people and the world around us don't question everything philosophies three main philosophies are present in the novel first on the left we have Yvonne who is an atheist and represent

Western Enlightenment philosophy of rationalism he believes that everything should be scientifically proven before he can trust it his main question is why there's so much suffering in the world especially innocent children dying either God doesn't exist or if he does exist he is not a good God to allow so much pain Dostoevsky by depicting Yvonne going insane at the end of the novel believes russianism ultimately leads to nihilism around the same time Frederick Nietzsche the German philosopher had the same conclusion but Nietzsche offers art as an answer to the problem of nihilism Dostoevsky has love

as an antidote the second philosophy is Hedonism which is a middle ground for Dostoevsky we have Theodore the father and Dmitry both represent a more hedonistic philosophy of life where the focus is more on pleasures of life that life is short you have to enjoy it but this also brings a violence in the mix as you are less care full and less responsible Romanticism in Europe grew in response to Industrial Revolution and Enlightenment philosophy of rationalism they focused on the emotions and passions which is creative but also can be volatile and even violently destructive and

finally the third philosophy is the religious faith on the right as we have elusia and father zosuma who believe in religious Faith a bit dogmatic but also they believe in love as the only way to treat others Dostoevsky leans towards the religion here he was on his deathbed so it was perhaps his way of redeeming himself somewhat similar to George Orwell who also turned religious at the end of his life which I discussed in my video 10 lessons from Orwell having said that Dostoevsky also questioned religious absolutism so there are many scenes where religious Faith

as Dogma is robustly questioned the most famous scene is father's osama's body putrifying much to the dismaye of his followers so Dostoevsky didn't believe in Saints nor in Pure Evil he thought every human being was capable of both and one has to constantly battle to keep the balance both on the left and right human idealism is the main theme atheism and religious Faith are human idealized views that's less practical in the middle you have the more animalistic pleasure-seeking people who don't fight their carnal desires for Dostoevsky idealism is not the answer but being responsible towards

fellow human beings matters the most the responsibility to act well anyways promotes naivety or innocence and love for everyone weaknesses my biggest criticism is that brother kamazov is not focused enough there are too many subplots so this can make the reading a bit tough for today's readers if you condense the main story you would probably get about 500 pages not the current 1000 Pages as I said several of the stories were written years earlier and he patched them together as he knew it would be his last novel he died a year after his publication in

the same way 266 by Roberto bolanio puts five novels into one another thing that most people Miss is that ostrovsky wrote this as a childhood novel which is not clearly elaborated until the very end so these can make those Early Childhood sections a bit tedious treat another weakness might be it's a religious tone for those who are not religious if you are a Christian reader you might enjoy but readers who are not religious may find the crying Inquisitor section a bit tedious having said that the novel is very deep in nuanced and the plot very

intriguing another big pain in the butt is Russian names this is not only in brother's chromosov but on all old Russian novels each character has like four to eight different names depending on who is calling them for example Lucia whose name is Alexis called eluska elusich Lucia and yoshenka the more names a character has the more important they are in the novel alucia has eight Dimitri five in Yvonne four final words the ultimate message of the brother's chromosov is this it is better to be naive or even stupid but good then smart successful but bad

in a way toshowski didn't like how capitalism focus on ruthlessness and material success was ruining the Innocence that permeated in the simple lives of the Russian peasants now as promised at the beginning of this video I'll answer what the brother's chromosovo is really about in this final novel The surface was looking back at his own childhood the innocence of 1820s 200 years ago from today away from the messy world of adulthood Western ideas and Siberian experience gambling and tons of other shitty things that grown-ups get involved in tostovsky knew he was dying soon so he

wanted to tell other Russians that life is too short to do stupid revolutionary ideas to tear each other apart for money a simple life is all you need he wanted to take Russians to those good old days of Simplicity and naivety so the brothers come is a novel of childhood and ostrovsky wrote it to preserve the childhood innocence that he will that we lose when we grow up and learn the Sinister world of adulthood and we spend the rest of our lives to restore that childhood naivety but never manage in other words once you see

it you cannot unsee it that's it so dostovsky tells us not to see everything not to question everyone blind trust can cause suffering but it's good in the long term in a way it's similar to pru's novel In Search of Lost timing in which Bruce went back to his magical world of his childhood wonders to recapture the last time the magic of not knowing the cynicism of this world the magic of simplicity so the brothers commercial is a novel about the magic of childhood is God the Father Figure is dead Dostoevsky shows what happens when

God dies children go crazy they are murderers chaos nihilistic meaninglessness and deep suffering how do you cure nihilism Dostoevsky wants to revive the dead God back to life why we cannot love a human being forever because humans are fundamentally flawed we need a non-human neutral God to unite different generations and different cultures no human being can unite everyone Nietzsche however takes us back to our evolutionary past back to the wild west of natural creativity why because it's in nature we can find New Gods we have become too human too contaminated to religion morality and slave

mentality so we need a fresh start going thousands of years back to find new human Titans or genius ubermench is the kind of humans who have overcome their human qualities Dostoevsky says we need to cultivate goodness among people while Nietzsche says forget about goodness we need to cultivate greatness to flourish human culture but what's interesting is that both Nietzsche and ostrovsky looked for an answer not on the outside but inside the human subconscious mind and then human passion [Music] hey everyone thank you for watching this video is one of the greatest novelists of all time

he was the pioneer of psychological realism a literary movement that probed into the human psyche to analyze what's going on inside our head to understand our deeper motivations behind the choices we make in life what makes us tick what makes us suffer what makes us do terrible things and finally what makes us do good things for dignity is one of the greatest philosophers of all time he was the first philosopher to robustly questioned the entire Western philosophical foundation too much rationality and not enough passion for Ninja we are not driven by reason to do great

things but it's our natural passion that motivates us to create great things a fierce critic of religion nature saw artistic creativity the ultimate goal of human existence Dostoevsky and Nietzsche diagnosed how modern reason-driven Enlightenment instead of liberating us to reach your true potentials was creating a new kind of nihilistic man who was self-centered egotistic and self-indulgent they both rejected the humanists claim that since humans are rational we can create a free and happy International Utopia both Dostoevsky and Nietzsche understood that humans are also quite irrational passionate creatures always seeking meaning and purpose despite diagnosing the

problem of modernity they offered quite different solutions Dostoevsky looked up to the sky for a non-human solution I.E God and deep inside a human heart for Universal love while Niche offered a nature-based evolutionary solution so in this video a look at their lives careers writings and philosophies who offers a better solution to the problem of nihilism is it possible that they complement each other who is the masculine father and who is the feminine mother among the two but first let me answer how their background shape their views fyodovsky was born in 1821 in the suburb

of Moscow into a middle-class family dostrovski's father was a doctor who worked among the Russian poor so Dostoevsky saw human pain in suffering firsthand and almost every day which became a central theme in all his novels Frederick Nietzsche was born some 22 years later after Dostoevsky in 1844 in the suburb of Leipzig his father was the village priest so Nietzsche also came across a lot of human pain and suffering due to his father's job perhaps rostovsky witnessed more physical pain while Niche witnessed more existential religious pain dostovski's father wanted him to learn hard Sciences like

medicine and Engineering but his mother and Nanny read him a wide range of stories so he came across narrative works by Pushkin cervante Gerta and more but Nikolai Google satirical and Dark comic Tales had a huge impression on him which he later emulated in his own fiction Nicholas the hand was surrounded by priests something that run in his family for Generations but his father died when he was around five so he was raised by his grandma aunties and mother so he grew up without a strong male role model in the family in other words he

experienced the death of a male Authority in a Priestly guide within his own family which later he articulated that God was death and Humanity was without a chaperone this mirrored his own life growing up without a disciplinarian in his family window shops goes 12 his parents borrowed money to send him to an expensive French boarding school for the Filthy Rich where the little Theodore found himself an outsider among the aristocrats who came from country states the aristocrats in Russia were educated in French and they acted like French too who snaughty nose snobs this continued when

dostovsky entered a military engineering Academy in Saint Petersburg where he showed little interest in engineering and again found himself alone among his snobbish classmates he saw the social inequality in how the upper class looked down on him and the Russian poor this led Dostoevsky to write about the poor but most crucially he joined a radical group with the aim of changing Russia into a more egalitarian society he joined the socially circle called the petrochevsky circle meanwhile in Germany Nietzsche attended a boys school then a private school and later a very prestigious Christian School and not

surprisingly he excelled and theology which was a family business after all while there nature studied music and literature so he began composing songs and writing poems but he was also introduced to many languages like greek latin Hebrew and French which resulted in him studying philology and Theology and Bourne University later on his goal was to become a priest like his father but here's an interesting twist he came across Ludwig fierbach's influential book essence of Christianity in which the German anthropologists argued that God didn't create humans but quite the opposite humans created God this had a

profound influence on nature as he abandoned Theology and solely focused on philology the study of languages suddenly Niche was an atheist and God was truly dead to him what's even more interesting is that dostoevsky's group The petrovise Circle was founded five years after fearbox influential book was published so few boss atheism also trickled down to Russia to influence dosto of skills circle of friends in 1845 Dostoevsky published his first major novel poor folk highlighting the class disparity in Russia it was a big hit but with the success he was also a flag to the government

in 1849 he was arrested for his activities against the Russian State he was put on a mock execution and then sent to Siberian labor camp for four years and then another six years of compulsory military service to total of 10 years of Exile in Siberia he came across ordinary inmates who kept their Spirits hide despite their turret conditions because of their religious belief and also their admittance of guilt the radical intellectuals however never took responsibility for the actions instead they blamed everything on the state or other people the Socialist intellectuals usually blame the upper classes

as parasites stayed as brutal and The Peasants are stupid for not standing up for their rights in other words the intellectuals were blameless nothing was their fault this had a profound impact on Dostoevsky and he became deeply disillusioned not only with intellectuals but also with Western ideas he moved more and more towards Orthodox religion in the Russian communitarian way of life he understood that Western rationality promised Freedom wealth happiness and fulfillment but delivered some Freedom some wealth but little happiness and even less fulfillment Nietzsche had a far easier life so to prove a point in

1867 his enthusiasm got the better of him as he volunteered to join the Prussian Army but he fell from his horse broke a lot of Bones and then returned to his studies that wasn't fun reading schopenhower is a lot easier than riding horses with a huge gun on your shoulder in 1869 Against All Odds he became a university professor in Basel Switzerland at the age of 24. and Incredibly he hadn't even completed his doctorate degree when you get lucky you get lucky or he knew the right person but there was no doubt he was a

genius he renounced his Prussian citizenship before heading to Switzerland Nietzsche remained a stateless person until his death back then people didn't carry passport so it's easy to slide through borders Nietzsche traveled a lot partly due to his ill health as he was seeking a better climate but partly because he needed to be on the move so he could think Nietzsche was one of those philosophers who thought with their feet he would articulate his thoughts and even write some of his books while walking I think his bipedal thought process is quite crucial because his philosophy is

grounded in evolution in the human body not in some divine power in other words the human body was the center of Nature's philosophy the ability to walk straight had a massive impact on our Evolution as well as our brain so thinking with your feet is a genuinely creative process in human evolution Nietzsche wasn't a conventional behind the desk or armchair philosopher he was a free-moving thinker perhaps the most ungerman German philosopher and that makes him even more appealing to a wider audience most of his books read like collection of sayings aphorisms poems and short Tales

not some organized philosophical Treatise of complex structure after 10 years in Siberia at ostrovsky returned to civilization in 1859 and spent hours and hours writing fiction he wrote fast and his stories were read like crazy but the man had never had enough money his poverty made him always anxious about money after a few years in Saint Petersburg he fled to Europe not escaping the government but his creditors knocking on his door every day in Germany he spent hours in casinos trying to get some quick money but nothing worked he moved from country to Country like

a nomad and even wrote his novel The Idiot in 1868 while in Switzerland only a year before Professor Niche took the job in Basel it is possible the two men might have been in the same city at some point but Nietzsche being a young man might not have noticed this old brooding Russian dude loitering outside casinos Dostoevsky married a few times and had a few kids from 1860 until his death in 1881 he published his great novels including crime punishment the idiot demons and the brothers Karma he died in 1881 aged 59. Nietzsche taught Ambassador

for 10 years from 1869 to 79 before his health forced him to retire so he spent the next 10 years traveling and writing in 1889 Nietzsche went mad which left him incapacitated for the next 11 years until his death in 1900. he was 55 years old he never married and had no kids now before I look at their works and philosophies let me clarify one thing dostrevsky was a novelist therefore he didn't articulate his ideas overtly like nature did instead Dostoevsky used his characters to articulate his ideas through storytelling devices so his characters like a

thin wall between us and dostoevsky's philosophical views so I'll mainly focus on his protagonist as a way to gauge dostoevsky's own ideas kosovski's first novel poor folk published when he was 24 years old looked at the class inequality in Russia his first major work after his return from Siberia was nudes from underground published in 1864 when he was 43 years old in which he questioned modern rationality outlining the irrational side of human life two years later he published his most famous novel crime and punishment in which he depicted a Godless World in which his protagonist

rascolnikov influenced by Western ideas such as socialism rationalism utilitarianism justify is murdering a woman for her money so he can improve his own life and become a great man who could change the world like Napoleon did in 1869 he published the idiot in which he shows how a jesus-like figure couldn't survive in modern day Russia in 1872 he published demons in which he showed how radical ideas justify violence and Causes Chaos in a fictional town in Russia in a way predicting the Russian Revolution some 50 years before it happened in 1880 he published his last

novel often considered his magnum opus the brothers karamazov in which he pits Four Brothers against one another each representing a different philosophy of Life One atheist one hidden is one religious and one with deep resentment in all his novels drostrovsky showed the destructive side of modern rationality especially Atheism in Russia and how radical ideas were destroying the social and religious fabric of Russian Society niche's first major work was the birth of tragedy published in 1872 in which new chair reinterpreted ancient Greek civilization not through the status quo of rationality but through the Greek tragedies before

Socrates Nietzsche thought Western philosophy took the wrong step when it followed rational philosophers like Socrates as a result West solely championed reason at the expense of passion and emotions this became Nietzsche's foundation for his critique of modernity and its rational engine in 1878 he published human all to human a collection of aphorisms on a variety of topics which allowed him to develop a more coherent set of ideas and be more focused in his future books in 1882 he published gay signs in which he first articulated the death of God and his doctrine of Eternal recurrence

which means everything in the universe is eternally cyclical very similar to Eastern philosophy of sick little time in Buddhism and Hinduism in 1883 he published his most popular book thus spokeswara tustra a philosophical novel in which he forces the version profit to reject religion and become a messenger for ubermensch I have dedicated a whole video on this in which I Summarize the book and discusses three Central themes Eternal recurrence wilted power and ubermesh in great detail in 1886 he published Beyond Good and Evil in which he questions morality as a stifling Force arguing that good

and evil are not opposites as everyone think but simply the manifestations of the same Universal or natural will in humans which schopenhauer had put forward a few decades earlier in 1887 he published on the genealogy of Morality In which he takes a more naturalistic or darwinian approach to understanding morality good and evil guilt and conscience while concluding that all of them are anti-life and anti-nature his last book was XA homo published after his death in which he looks at his own life and work as someone who exposed the problems and deficiencies of Western philosophy it's

like a self-portrait of a philosopher both Dostoevsky and Nietzsche live during a time when European philosophers and thinkers like Hegel schopenhauer Mark Stuart Mill and others were responding to the enlightenment philosophers of the previous Century like Voltaire Khan true so Hume Etc who emphasized Russian humans at the expense of God and religion but advancement in science and especially Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection shook the religious foundation so 19th century Europe witnessed the development and growth of atheism which replaced god with rational humans in the absence of God as their source of Social and

moral values of what is right and what's wrong many people search for new values in life both dostovsky Nietzsche grappled with this fundamental question if God didn't exist then what was the purpose of human life and how do we organize Society if there's no God as a moral Arbiter telling us what is right and what's wrong the European Enlightenment offered rationality as an answer to the absence of God and religion in other words what was rational was good and what was irrational was bad Europeans saw how science allowed technology to flourish to solve so many

fundamental human problems science allowed humans to understand the world the human body and provide Concrete Solutions God on the other hand never offered real solutions only Promises of afterlife so it became common sense to believe that rationality could solve all human problems including morality it could feed you clothe you cure your illnesses and every human problem was only Stones throw away from a new invention or Discovery there was nothing better than reason to replace God as Europe prospered and colonized more territories instead of people becoming happy and Blissful they turned Savages against one another despite

the enlightenment rationality being widespread European nations fought terrible Wars leaving Millions dead and millions hungry ill and in pain and to make matters even worse doors wheel off at the top of social hierarchy still had existential problems so in the absence of meaning and purpose they indulge themselves in hedonistic instantly gratifying activities like eating too much shopping or even gambling there was something rational about human behavior whether at the top of the food chain or at the bottom people acted irrationally from time to time they all had irrational Tendencies despite years and centuries of rationality

both Dostoevsky and Nietzsche realized that rationality didn't offer a great solution to the problem of meaning rationality made everyone nihilistic those in power tore through society and the world for their own selfish purposes and those without power waited their turn for a good moment to revolt and take revenge The Guillotines of the French Revolution showed that the poor and the disadvantaged revolutionaries were as ruthless bloodthirsty and vengeful as those they had toppled rationality instead of bringing peace prosperity and happiness became a robust tool for the people to exploit others for their own selfish end it

was just a tool not a purpose whoever had access to the products of reason I use science and technology they used it to control others or inflict pain on others this was no better than religions Gods demons all the things deemed irrational or dogmatic Dostoevsky articulated the problem of rationality first in Notes from Underground in 1864 but later in his 1866 novel Crime and Punishment whose protagonist rascolnikov justifies his crime of murdering two women on the ground that he belonged to the group of Extraordinary People therefore he is above law in Morality and absence of

God since there's no God some exceptional humans which was colicopting his one can create their own moral values in other words anything is permissible as long as his is good he wants to alleviate his poverty and later change the world for the better in other words he is a Napoleon in the making so he couldn't justifies the means to show how irrational humans are in Notes from Underground dostoevsky's protagonist refuses treatment for his liver illness and instead hides himself inside a basement yet full of resentment and hatred highlighting that humans are more motivated by irrational

phenomena than reason rationality is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how the human animal Works our deeper motivations are quite irrational so the exact shoot of rationality instead of liberating as it stifles us even more where we cannot express ourselves freely it turns us into a machine like agents that only believe in two plus two equals 4 and nothing else which makes us inherently self-centered with the narrow understanding of the world and this leaves us unhappy dostovsky says humans were far more complicated than that we seek meaning purpose that goes beyond

our material needs two plus two equals 4 only offers solution to our material needs and physical pain but we need a purpose that is bigger than ourselves and a cure for our existential suffering dosovski's rational atheist Ivan karamazov goes mad at the end raskolnikov ends up in Siberia to serve his punishment in the idiot his atheist character fails in his suicide attempt a pathetic loser in every sense in demons his protagonist commits suicide once his dirty secrets are out Nietzsche also understood that with the death of God rationality was the dominant lens through which people

not only saw but also organized the world everything was rationally explained either through racial science or philosophy then Nietzsche read schopenhauer who was influenced by Hinduism in Buddhism schopenhauer saw something deeper than rationality than motivates humans something bigger than reason he called will schopenhauer's will is a fundamental force in the universe and more importantly in the living beings that motivate them to continue living we have no control over this will it's beyond ourselves it's a universal will it's like gravity invisible to us yet it keeps us grounded on Earth it basically is blind will that

keeps us alive this Eastern lands give Niche to look critically at the entire western civilization and philosophy all the way to Socrates he then realized that Western philosophy was extremely one-sided or left-brained rational Analytical in other words focused too much on two plus two equals four as a result European modernity ignore the other side of human existence the emotional the passionate the artistic right brain he noticed that the pre-socrates ancient Greeks championed both reason and passion and their tragedies Apollo the god of Reason in science and dionysius the god of fashion and art balance each

other by which socrates's method of questioning things and later Aristotle's scientific approach and much later the European modernity shifted more towards reason-based appalling World while labeling human passion as something irrational therefore must be contained stifled and even eradicated in other words humans were becoming all too human too tame too timid and less natural and less spontaneous so both Dostoevsky and nature diagnosed modernity as being too rational which resulted in nihilistic self-indulgent materialism and insatiable desire for instant gratification of the self now I'll look at their solutions to the problem of nihilism and reason based modernity

solution to the problem of nihilism was to return to the Past he offers religion as an antidote to Modern problem of meaninglessness his Orthodox upbringing had a profound impact on him but also his mother's reading of the Bible to him as a child remained with him throughout his life on the outside he saw how poor Russians found Solas and the Orthodox religion despite their economic miseries and existential suffering Orthodox Christianity is based on the IDF Community being more important than the individual in other words rostovsky says you can find meaning if you truly serve other

people love other people love others despite their flaws love them despite their past mistakes kosovski's religious solution did not make him very popular in Russia at the time he became even less popular when the Bolsheviks took over in 1917. his popularity has started to grow now as more and more people find themselves disillusions with modernity Niche however took a very different path instead of going back to the past and religion or taking a soft feminine approach of calling people with religious cushions Nietzsche went far back to human evolution he returned to Nature yes Nietzsche placed

his solution to nihilism in nature for him nature is raw honest and full of passion so he went back to the pre-religion world where humans were one with nature acted naturally why because there was no robust morality to stifle them there was no religious punishment to deter people to push the artistic boundaries Nietzsche's biggest problem with religion was that it protected the weak as a result it Shackled the Geniuses too from being creative in other words religion is not about great news or creativity or pushing boundaries water is about providing Solas to the weak-minded individuals

for Nigeria religion was cuddling people not pushing them to confront their fears instead it was shielding them from danger risk spiders demons while providing a safe space today people say the young are overprotected so we have a generation of very sensitive types the so-called snowflakes who cannot cope with the slightest criticism or hardship Nietzsche says religions have Coral Humanity for centuries and Millennia then in recent centuries rationality has done the same thing providing us with too much comfort our technology has made us too soft and too sensitive that it's hard to imagine herself surviving in

the wild or striving for greatness it is time we break from this religious spell and rationality-driven comfort seeking mentality and dive into the Untamed nature we will have the freedom to grow whichever way we see potential in some way you could say that Niche is reacting to Dostoevsky saying that religion is not the answer but the problem niches dostoevsky's religious solution as being too feminine seeking a god-like male authority figure who keeps all the dangers away from us so we can flourish in the safety so Dostoevsky Solutions not only feminine in who needs a masculine

God it's also for children seeking a father Nature's solution is for individuals to become masculine and father themselves by confronting their fears and conquering new artistic and philosophical territories now here the two fundamentally diverse toshowski promotes goodness he asks you to love people no matter how bad or good they are no matter what kind of mistakes they've made in the past it's through love not reason that we can find meaning in life it's through faith that we can find Clarity in life being a cynic by questioning things is not the answer but naivety innocence and

simplicity are the answers you can only find those if you believe in a higher being Nietzsche however doesn't believe in goodness he says you should not aim to be good moral or nice person instead we should aim for greatness this greatness may come at a cost but that is fine because the purpose of life and human life in particular is not to be good or soft or morally correct effect but to flourish grow and dominate for example if a YouTuber nietzsa says you should not aim to be good to everyone or always promote morally good

stuff instead your aim should be to grow and become the best version of yourself and the best in your field okay that's not the best example but you get the point ninja was fascinated with art music in particular in his philosophical novel thus books are attestra he proposed ubermensch genius artist and great philosophers who could provide Humanity with new values I discuss this in relation to novels such as Franz Kafka Marcia Bruce Charles Bukowski who dedicated their lives to the production of great ART furniture artists and Geniuses and philosophers which I'm sure he included himself

should have complete freedom to create and write new morality police or religious doctrines should stifle their natural creative Geniuses art is not about Justice or goodness but greatness because nature is not just are equal human species in life in general have survived and thrived not because they have been just or morally good because nature experimented in millions of different ways those strong enough survived and those weak tied away since we are nature we should also experiment more specifically in the arena of art and culture Nietzsche divides human into two groups the slave majority in the

genius minority the slaves do not have original ideas they simply follow the crowd or hurt or even mobs but then there are individual Geniuses who are capable of original ideas these select few have the ability to transcend human life to become ubermesh and then able to create values for the rest of society human history is a full of these great people mainly men according to Nature who have invented created discovered things that benefited Humanity as a whole these great Geniuses could be philosophers composers scientists artists or even novelists So based on this one could say

dostrevsky was a Nichi and ubermesh whose art of fiction and storytelling helped humans flourishing in some sense Dostoevsky realized that the human psyche surely was in Russia all the time and most of the time it was incredibly flimsy and weak and his novel demons he depicted the consequence of a rational Utopia which was nothing but deception and Madness kosovsky's experience of almost getting executed allowed him to see life with Clarity he valued life greatly so this motivated him to do something bigger than himself he dedicated his entire life to writing to understand the human psyche

in other words he found his own life's purpose in his work in his writing he struggled throughout his life with poverty legal system family addictions epilepsy and above all years of sitting alone to write and in that struggle he found his purpose he found his purpose in his works so he personifies a Nichi and ubermensch who suffered a great deal in the service of creating art Dostoevsky diagnosed a problem of nihilism and produced amazing art he says that those with big brains suffer more in other words he served Humanity by writing so he was in

ubermensch artist who transcended Humanity to reach the recess of human subconscious to understand the animalistic passionate side of human motivation he was an artist of human irrationality Dostoevsky offered religious Faith naivety in love for him we cannot love a human being forever we might love them for a month a decade or even a generation but not for eternity for that we need non-human Gods who can unite us all despite our cultural differences without God it's very difficult to motivate people to do good things according to dostovsky without God we become fat self-indulgent addicted to drugs

in all in other words we need someone in the family who tells us and reminds us to be good to love others why because as human animals we are erratic irrational selfish and forgetful nostrovski says to be good you must curb your selfish desires Nietzsche says harness your will to power to become an ubermensch or transcend Humanity for artistic flourishing dostoevski says take responsibility for your own actions while Nietzsche says forget moral responsibility instead you use your freedom to push boundaries in pursuit of things greater than yourself I should point out that Niche didn't clearly

justify violence his main focus was artistic Endeavor not political goal society says find Solas by being among a loving Community says find a cave for some Solitude to find something bigger inside you dostovsky sends his protagonist to Siberia underground or even in its Swiss sanatorium so they can find the goodness the love and inside their own heart while Nietzsche sends his oratusra to the cave to gain wisdom from nature and Solitude so he can ready himself for the battle and struggle for greatness it's obvious that Nietzsche industries were talking to a different set of audience

Dostoevsky wrote for the Russian people mainly westernized intellectuals but his real audience was the majority of people who found themselves lost in this world fallen from the economic race stuck in the mud so to speak his religious solution appealed to those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder where being good was a real solution trostovsky says makes life simpler don't chase your lofty dreams as druskolnikov did in crime and punishment and for God's sake don't kill or commit violence for a better life as in demons Nietzsche however wrote for the philosophers and Elite artists who

are not seeking goodness but greatness through creativity his audience is not the masses and said people at the top or those with creative Geniuses who are seeking a purpose greater than themselves people who want to sacrifice their lives for the flourishing of humanity not from a moral or religious point of view but from an an evolutionary and naturalistic point of view artists are often anti-social and deeply flawed human beings if you judge them through morality but people love their art for example both wins in Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin had deep flaws and weren't very

nice people but produced great art another example is Picasso had some deep flaw but it still managed to make great art for Ninja artists can genuinely tap into a deeper place in human psyche deeper well in human evolution to make art that move people he was more fascinated with musicians because music as an art form is not only Universal but it's also very deep Nietzsche might consider as skolnikov as slave-minded person who is more motivated by Revenge than greatness his subsequent guilt through delirium and eventual confessions show his enslaved mentality and delusional mind incidentally both

Dostoevsky and Nietzsche agreed that society's legal system wasn't based on justice but retribution and revenge Nietzsche's biggest problem with religion is that it tames you from achieving your true creative potential dostovsky is content with that as long as Society is peaceful people content and loving one another it's better than modern obsession with an insatiable desire from more and more Dostoevsky says Blind Faith and love while Nietzsche says blind artistic creativity that keeps probing New Horizons both Niche and also obscure against shortcuts you have to earn your spoils in life not steal it I cannot ignore

their distinct facial hair from an evolutionary perspective facial hair mustache and beard are for sexual selection just like peacock's tail even women with terrible eyesight could recognize a man with a mustache or beard to mate with joking aside it has also been suggested that men with more robust facial hair kept dominance among other men so they could mate with more women but today we live in a very safe Society so most men shave to show how nice we are historical speaking actually my own observation I could be wrong mustache showed hard power and strength while

beard short soft power like wisdom and generosity Santa's beard reaches his belly while Hitler and Stalin oil their mustache heart philosophers and artists and writers groomed their long beards while those with political economic Ambitions all their mustache both the Mustachio Niche and bearded are Goods pun intended dostoevsky's animal is not a good but more like a friendly dog as he promotes a motherly Instinct of nurturing and caring for others while nature is promoting a Fearless fatherly Instinct of fighting dragons in the wild so his animal is a tiger or a lion not only because of

their whiskers but also because of their ferocious Will To Power and carving their own path and life foreign together is a better package in guiding you towards a fulfilling life I think we need goodness and greatness in other words we need a lot of good people and some great people who push things forward and then discover things artists who capture people's imagination and create storytellers who articulate the voice of their Generations just like dostrevsky did Ninja tells you to get up on your feet stop blaming others and do something creative in whatever field you're in

don't avoid suffering because to be great you have to suffer life is meant to be suffering write a great novel produce great art invent something new have blind courage to confront your own fears and have the dedication to persist in your path and forget your own selfish desires for Niche Ally's purpose is not to be mediocre but great Dostoevsky says individualism of me before everyone else will make you very unhappy the purpose of life is to be good to others and love Everyone despite their flaws and mistakes so to sum up Dostoevsky warns you about

the danger of new ideas and Nietzsche tells you to carve your own path away from the crowd Niche presses you to not only understand your societal Norms traditions and values but deeply embody them before you break with them to carve your own path you cannot topple the statue of those who came before you before you fully digesting their ideas Nietzsche tells you directly like a masculine father would make something of your life gostovsky shows you by telling you stories like a mother would sir to avoid the same mistakes dangers other people made and to cultivate

your love for everyone to flourish a child needs both parents a German father and a Russian mother incidentally there is a Russian fictional character named Andre in Evan gancharov's Masterpiece oblimov who is a very well-rounded character in complete contrast to the main character the laziest character in literature why he has a German father who instills discipline in him in a Russian mother who loves him dearly you too you need both the amazing psychological Tales of Dostoevsky and the robust and probing philosophical aphorisms of Nietzsche so the biggest antidote to laziness is Dostoevsky plasniche they will

help you make something of your life in my comparison of dostoevski's Tolstoy I put Tolstoy and the mother's seat while dostrevsky and the father's seat between the two great Russians Dostoevsky takes a more psychological and individualistic approach of tough love while tall stories take a more communitarian egality and Universalist approach Nichi on the other hand is the Lone Wolf for lone tiger who has little time for motherly love he says don't cry don't be a victim toughen up while dostrovsky wanted to Shield Russians from bad ideas coming from Europe for the most part was a

critique of modernity he argued that the enlightenment induced modernity with a human-centered morality had not given us a convincing alternative to God and religion science had no answers when it came to Life's meaning or happiness religion despite being an old and rustic tool still remained a trusted tool in the shed a tool that has served Humanity for thousands of years despite being very blunt compared to science and understanding nature it still gave millions of Russians a sense of psychological comfort that science couldn't this was of course 200 years ago in Russia where life for the

majority was a matter of survival for sure science had made life easier through medicine and technology according to Dostoevsky but it had failed to offer an adequate tool for life's meaning and most of his novels religion comes head to head with Western modernity and also excuse his religion as the older tool that has stood the test of time which can give Modern Man a more fulfilling and meaningful life today the pace of technological development is so rapid that a lot of men feel alienated from their fathers and a lot of young men don't have a

father figure in their lives as a result a lot of people especially men feel lost and lonely so dostrovsky's novels are mostly about lonely men struggling in the Modern Life Theodore Dostoevsky is more like a father Dostoevsky to a lot of lonely young men reading him Can Shed lies to a lot of modern emptiness people feel his ultimate message was to be honest and free from social deception but most importantly from self-deception I would love to hear from you have you read any of his books and what do you think of them and what are

your favorite novels by thank you for watching