Dostoevsky’s Legal and Moral Philosophy
Dostoevsky’s Legal and Moral Philosophy

Author: Raymond Angelo Belliotti

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2016-11-28

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 9004325425

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This work closely examines the trial of Dmitri Karamazov as the springboard to explaining and critically assessing Dostoevsky’s legal and moral philosophy. The author connects Dostoevsky’s objections to Russia’s acceptance of western juridical notions such as the rule of law and an adversary system of adjudication with his views on fundamental human nature, the principle of universal responsibility, and his invocation of unconditional love. Central to Dostoevsky’s vision is his understanding of the relationship between the dual human yearnings for individualism and community. In the process, the author related Dostoevsky’s conclusions to the thought of Plato, Augustine, Anselm, Dante, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Sartre. Throughout the work, the author compares, contrasts, and evaluates Dostoevsky’s analyses with contemporary discussions of the rule of law, the adversary system, and the relationship between individualism and communitarianism.

Dostoevsky the Thinker
Dostoevsky the Thinker

Author: James Patrick Scanlan

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 9780801439940

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For all his distance from philosophy, Dostoevsky was one of the most philosophical of writers. Drawing on his novels, essays, letters and notebooks, this volume examines Dostoevsky's philosophical thought.

Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment
Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment

Author: Robert Guay

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0190464011

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The gruesome double-murder upon which the novel Crime and Punishment hinges leads its culprit, Raskolnikov, into emotional trauma and obsessive, destructive self-reflection. But Raskolnikov's famous philosophical musings are just part of the full philosophical thought manifest in one of Dostoevsky's most famous novels. This volume, uniquely, brings together prominent philosophers and literary scholars to deepen our understanding of the novel's full range of philosophical thought. The seven essays treat a diversity of topics, including: language and the representation of the human mind, emotions and the susceptibility to loss, the nature of agency, freedom and the possibility of evil, the family and the failure of utopian critique, the authority of law and morality, and the dialogical self. Further, authors provide new approaches for thinking about the relationship between literary representation and philosophy, and the way that Dostoevsky labored over intricate problems of narrative form in Crime and Punishment. Together, these essays demonstrate a seminal work's full philosophical worth--a novel rich with complex themes whose questions reverberate powerfully into the 21st century.

Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky
Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky

Author: Petr Vaškovic

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2024-10-21

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 3111591344

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The book brings together the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard with that of another prominent proto-existentialist thinker, Fyodor Dostoevsky. Asking the question: "What constitutes an authentic Christian life?", the book explores the answer given by both authors, which is that one should rid oneself of selfish inclinations and strive for a life of faith that revolves around the virtues of humility and non-preferential love. However, as we learn from Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard, becoming an authentic individual is no easy task, and the book goes on to examine the obstacles that lie in the path of individual existential self-development. The book then examines the ways in which the various characters and pseudonymous authors who populate Dostoevsky's and Kierkegaard's books struggle in their attempts to become authentic ethical and religious individuals. The examination of this struggle, termed existential entrapment and defined as the inability to progress on the path of one's existential self-development, forms the core of the book and helps to map out the ethical-religious landscape of Dostoevsky’s and Kierkegaard’s thought.

Punishment and the Moral Emotions
Punishment and the Moral Emotions

Author: Jeffrie G. Murphy

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014-03

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 0199357455

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The essays in this collection explore, from philosophical and religious perspectives, a variety of moral emotions and their relationship to punishment and condemnation or to decisions to lessen punishment or condemnation.

Is Human Life Absurd? A Philosophical Inquiry into Finitude, Value, and Meaning
Is Human Life Absurd? A Philosophical Inquiry into Finitude, Value, and Meaning

Author: Raymond Angelo Belliotti

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-06-24

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 9004408797

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In this work, Belliotti unravels the paradoxes of human existence. The purpose of this philosophical journey is to reveal paths for forging meaningful, significant, valuable, even important lives. By examining notions of The Absurd expressed within Search for the Holy Grail, The Seventh Seal, and The Big Lebowski, the author crafts a working definition of “absurdity.” He then investigates the contributions of classical thinkers such as Shakespeare, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, Sartre, Camus, as well as philosophers such as Nagel, Feinberg, and Taylor. After arguing that human life is not inherently absurd, Belliotti examines the implications of mortality for human existence, the relationship between subjective and objective meaning, and the persuasiveness of several challenging contemporary renderings of meaningful human lives.

Reader as Accomplice
Reader as Accomplice

Author: Alexander Spektor

Publisher: Northwestern University Press

Published: 2020-10-15

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 0810142473

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Reader as Accomplice: Narrative Ethics in Dostoevsky and Nabokov argues that Fyodor Dostoevsky and Vladimir Nabokov seek to affect the moral imagination of their readers by linking morally laden plots to the ethical questions raised by narrative fiction at the formal level. By doing so, these two authors ask us to consider and respond to the ethical demands that narrative acts of representation and interpretation place on authors and readers. Using the lens of narrative ethics, Alexander Spektor brings to light the important, previously unexplored correspondences between Dostoevsky and Nabokov. Ultimately, he argues for a productive comparison of how each writer investigates the ethical costs of narrating oneself and others. He also explores the power dynamics between author, character, narrator, and reader. In his readings of such texts as “The Meek One” and The Idiot by Dostoevsky and Bend Sinister and Despair by Nabokov, Spektor demonstrates that these authors incite the reader’s sense of ethics by exposing the risks but also the possibilities of narrative fiction.

Nietzsche's Will to Power
Nietzsche's Will to Power

Author: Raymond Angelo Belliotti

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2016-12-14

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1443855529

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This book represents a unique contribution to Nietzschean scholarship in its analysis of the concept of power as preliminary to addressing Nietzsche’s psychological version of will to power. It advances a fresh interpretation of will to power that connects it explicitly to the meaning of human life, and, in so doing, the author addresses major questions such as: What does will to power designate? What does it presuppose? What effects does it engender? What is its status, epistemologically and metaphysically? How is will to power to be evaluated? How persuasive is will to power as an explanation of fundamental human instincts and as the lynchpin of a way of life? The volume argues that Nietzsche’s psychological notion of will to power cannot plausibly be understood as merely a first-order drive to attain and exert power. Moreover, despite some of the philosopher’s extravagant rhetoric, will to power is not an inherent instinct to oppress other people or things. Instead, will to power, understood generically, is a second-order desire to have, pursue and attain first-order desires; it bears a relationship to confronting and overcoming resistances and obstacles, and is related to the pursuit of excellence and personal transformation, as well as to experiences of feeling power. As, according to Nietzsche’s account, all human beings embody will to power, the book concludes that we should distinguish at least three varieties: robust, moderate, and attenuated will to power. Only by doing this, can we understand and evaluate will to power concretely.

The Logos of Law: Parmenides – Hegel – Dostoevsky
The Logos of Law: Parmenides – Hegel – Dostoevsky

Author: S.I. Zakhartsev

Publisher: Europa Edizioni

Published: 2021-04-30

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13:

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This monograph develops an extensively fresh approach for interpreting logical philosophy as a way to understand the universal unity of thinking and being (Fichte and Hegel) and interpreting the meaning of its harmony (Dostoevsky). The book offers a starting, easy-to-read overview of the essence and meaning of the universal unity of thought and being, as a core concept of the classical philosophy—from the teachings of Parmenides to those of the early Christian Fathers—and the philosophy of law, that tries to demonstrate how this universal unity, which is the foundation of the absolute harmony of existence, manifests in itself the certainty of law and legal awareness. Gradually, it proceeds to introduce increasingly difficult aspects of the German philosophy of 18th–19th centuries by presenting a synthesis of the logical form of philosophy until landing in metaphysics of law, as well as major long-term issues of modern jurisprudence. The authors present a specialized knowledge about law as a complex and multidimensional notion; they discuss the problem of monism-dualism, look at the law-morality, law-religion dualisms and at the concept of the Absolute in law. Their approach is aimed to develop theoretical and methodological premises of a modern, comprehensive theory of law based on an updated notion of freedom in law. This paper synthesizes the results that this trio of researchers, regarded as experts by the Russian scientific community, has achieved after many years of systematic studies of philosophy of law. It is addressed to specialists in the field of theory and philosophy of law, university tutors, post-graduate students, graduate students, legal experts and to everyone who is interested in improving their knowledge of history of philosophy and legal thought as well as exploring Dostoevsky’s ideas from an unusual perspective.

Heroism and Wisdom, Italian Style
Heroism and Wisdom, Italian Style

Author: Raymond Angelo Belliotti

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-09-08

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 1683933583

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This is an interdisciplinary work that philosophically analyzes concepts such as heroism; practical wisdom; honor; Nietzsche’s notions of will to power, the overman, and the three metamorphoses; Plato’s understanding of love; creating meaning in life; the issue of morally dirty hands in political administration; the relationship between political means and ends; the proper role of positive duties in society; the aspirations of grand strivers; and the linkages between biological, biographical, and autobiographical lives, all in the context of explaining and evaluating the lives and works of fourteen historically significant Italian: Gaius Julius Caesar, Brunetto Latini, Dante Alighieri, Caterina Sforza, Niccolò Machiavelli, Giuseppe Mazzini, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Francesca Cabrini, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Antonio Gramsci, Salvatore Giuliano, Oriana Fallaci, Giovanni Falcone, and Paolo Borsellino. By dissecting the lives and philosophies of the figures discussed in this work, by extracting moral, political, and existential lessons from their aspirations and enterprises, by reflecting on their ideals from the vantage point of our divergent social context, by evaluating their virtues and vices from a wider perspective, and by confronting the conceptual puzzles and social impediments hampering the exercise of practical wisdom and heroism, we may confront the people that we are and reimagine the people we might become.