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Author: Jimmy Sudário Cabral
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PhD in Theology and Religious Studies, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and University of Strasbourg, Professor of Religious Studies, Department of Religious Studies at Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Coordinator of the Laboratory of Studies of Religion in Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and his reception (NERDT), Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil

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For citation:

Cabral J.S. The gospel of Chernyshevsky: Nihilism, Art and Religious Asceticism. Dostoevsky and World Culture, 2019, No 2(6), pp. 242-269.

Issue: 2019 № 2(6)
Department: DOSTOEVSKY: HIS READINGS
Pages: 242-269
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2019-2-242-269
UDK: 82+821.161.1+2-1
BBK: 83+83.3(2=411.2)+86.2
Keywords: Chernyshevsky, Art, Religion, Nihilism, Materialism, Christianity, Asceticism.

Abstract: The paper attempts to evaluate the philosophical and religious elements of Chernyshevsky’s book What is to Be Done. Taking into consideration a critical fortune that considered the book as a “new gospel”, the paper is divided into three parts. Firstly, we evaluate the religious trajectory of the young Chernyshevsky, his interpretation of Christianity, and the transformation of his religious convictions through his contact with Feuerbach’s philosophy. Secondly, the article analyzes the essay The Aesthetic Relations of Art with Reality, and Chernyshevsky’s redefinition of the concepts such as beautiful, tragic, and sublime, which will be at the base of his realism and of his materialist aesthetic. Lastly, the paper interprets What is to Be Done as a symptom of secularization of Christianity that translated the religious instinct of Chernyshevsky through a scientific and materialist Weltanschauung.

 

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