Blank K. Dostoevsky’s Dialectics and the Problem of Sin

Northwestern University Press, 2010. — x+172 p. — (Studies in Russian Literature and Theory). — ISBN: 978- 0- 8101- 2693- 0.In Dostoevsky’s Dialectics and the Problem of Sin, Ksana Blank borrows from ancient Greek, Chinese, and Christian dialectical traditions to formulate a dynamic image of Dostoevsky’s dialectics — distinct from Hegelian dialectics — as a philosophy of “compatible contradictions.” Expanding on the classical triad of Goodness, Beauty, and Truth, Blank guides us through Dostoevsky’s most difficult paradoxes: goodness that begets evil, beautiful personalities that bring about grief, and criminality that brings about salvation.
Dostoevsky’s philosophy of contradictions, this book demonstrates, contributes to the development of antinomian thought in the writings of early twentieth-century Russian religious thinkers and to the development of Bakhtin’s dialogism. "Dostoevsky’s Dialectics and the Problem of Sin" marks an important and original intervention into the enduring debate over Dostoevsky’s spiritual philosophy.Note on the Transliteration and SourcesApproaches to Dostoevsky
Why Dialectics?
A Model for Dostoevsky’s Dialectics
Thesis, Antithesis, and Sin
The Principle of Dvuedinstvo (Duality-in-Unity)
Antinomies of Goodness, Beauty, and Truth
Bakhtin’s Dialogism and Dostoevsky’s (Non-Hegelian) Dialectics
How This Book Is Structured
A Word on MethodologyThe Dialectic of Goodness
“If You Don’t Sin, You Can’t Repent; If You Don’t Repent, You Can’t Achieve Salvation”
Controversies About the Epilogue to Crime and Punishment
Saint Andrew of Crete and Dostoevsky’s Great Sinners
Raskolnikov at the Doors of Repentance
A Ray of Light in the Abyss
Dmitry Karamazov’s Journey to the Underworld
The Turning Point
The Way of the Grain
“The Devil Begins with Froth on the Lips of an Angel”
The Cherub Alyosha Karamazov
From Saints to Sinners: The Spectrum of Possibilities
The Novel’s Ending in Light of the Projected SequelThe Dialectic of Beauty
The Corridor of Mirrors in The Idiot
Krasivoe and Prekrasnoe: Two Conceptions of Beauty
Beauty and Charm (Prelest’)
Beauty, Passion, and Compassion: The Novel’s Finale
A Grain of Eros in the Madonna, a Spark of Beauty in Sodom
Madonna and Sodom
The European Aesthetic Ideal of the Madonna
The Madonna Cult in Russian LiteratureThe Dialectic of Truth
Dostoevsky’s Case for Contradictions
Pravda and Istina, Two Conceptions of Truth
High and Low Truth (Pravda) in Notes from Underground
The Birth of Polarities in “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”
Antinomic Truth (Istina)
The Principle of Contradiction in Russian Religious Thought
Pavel Florensky and Mikhail Bakhtin on Antinomic (Dialogic) Truth
Two Truths in The Brothers Karamazov: Pro and ContraConcluding Notes

Selected Bibliography
Index