Apatetic Ideas as Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Cognitive and Thinking Principle

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Author: Tatyana V. Kovalevskaya
Information about the author:
DSc in Philosophy, Associate Professor (VAK), Chair, European Languages Department, Institute of Linguistics, Russian State University for the Humanities, Miusskaya Sq., 6, 125993 Moscow, Russia.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0527-2289

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For citation:
Kovalevskaya, T.V. “Apatetic Ideas as Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Cognitive and Thinking Principle.” Dostoevsky and World Culture. Philological journal, no. 3 (31), 2025, pp. 300–324. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2025-3-300-324
Received: 13 May 2025
Approved after reviewing: 30 May 2025
Published: 25 Sept. 2025
Issue: 2025 no. 3 (31)
Department: DOSTOEVSKY: CURRENT STATE OF RESEARCH
Pages: 300-324
DOI: Visit Website
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https://elibrary.ru/KERQYL
UDK: 821.161.1.0+82.0
BBK: 83.3(2Рос=Рус)+83
Publication Type: Research Article
Keywords: self-deification, pan-humanity, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Harriet Beecher-Stowe, America.
Abstract: The author suggests a new perspective on Dostoevsky's poetic method defined as an "apatetic" novel: Dostoevsky's principal technique is having his characters' false ideologemes mimic his own ideas. Such pairings include Shatov's and Dostoevsky's ideas of the god-bearing people, the underground man's and Dostoevsky's ideas of freedom, and various forms of the "pan-humanity" ideas. This approach springs from the Gospels and pre-apocalyptic expectations of "false christs" and "false prophets." One of the ways of distinguishing such ideas is testing them for compliance with Christ-like Christian love for one's neighbor. Thus, in contrast with Dostoevsky's idea of the god-bearing people as bearing the true image of Christ they have preserved, Shatov proposes coercive assimilation derived from Rousseau's concept of war as a religious enterprise and from the American social model. Such ideas are generally connected with asserting individual or collective dominance over people. The task faced by the readers of an apatetic novel consists in telling false ideas apart from the true ones. Dostoevsky's anti-heroes are focused on gaining various kinds of power, up to and including godlike power. Claims to such power effectively constitute attempts at self-deification that forms principal conflicts in Dostoevsky's later works. The article summarizes the findings of many years of efforts channeled into finding certain general approaches to Dostoevsky's works, to some of his characteristic and even constitutive qualities, both substantive and formal, that are explored in greater detail in the book Dostoevsky's Apatetic Poetics; the article also attempts to further apply the concepts developed therein to the way Dostoevsky uses the notions of "obschechelovek" and "vsechelovek" (panhuman).

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