F.M. Dostoevsky and T.G. Masaryk. Tragic Humanism and the Philosophy of Crisis

Abstract

The article presents a comparative analysis of the views by Dostoevsky and Masaryk on the nature of humanism in times of crisis. The focus of the author‘s attention is aimed, firstly, at the attitude of both thinkers to the “last” questions of human life, which for the Russian writer and for the Czech philosopher were directly related to the problem of suicide. Dostoevsky, whose novels contain a whole gallery of the types of suicides, considers that social disease in the context of atheistic logic that gave rise to the “nihilistic demonism”. Masaryk removed the problem of suicide from the field of psychopathology, analyzing its philosophical and historical meaning and social consequences. The triumph of atheism and nihilism appears to both thinkers as a harbinger of the coming revolutionary upheavals, a pagan uprising of the masses. Secondly, the article demonstrates how, in the situation of the crisis of Christianity, which became the painful axis of the entire European civilization, the content of humanism is updated in accordance with the challenges of the time. Anticipating the emergence of a “new element” in the world history, Dostoevsky outlined the contours of the solution of the “Russian” and “Slavic” issues. He remained a supporter of the mystical unity of the national principle and religiosity and affirmed the redemptive power of Christian humanism. Masaryk consistently criticized the relics of mythological consciousness from the standpoint of the classical principle of rationality and humanism, which he understood as a supranational phenomenon — a non-violent form of life, achieved not extensively, but intensively through the active humanization of oneself. In a dialogue with Dostoevsky, the Czech thinker overcame the tragic experience of the philosophical and historical crisis, offering a position of “concreticism and pluralism”, which allows one to perceive reality in its entirety and cultivate love for an individual person.

Keywords:

Dostoevsky, Masaryk, philosophy of crisis, tragic humanism, suicide, uprising of the masses, Slavic question