What do you guys think of Dostoevsky's overall theme in

>>9470141
>What do you guys think of Dostoevsky's overall theme in his books that religion is useful to society as a means of social cohesion?
It's really stupid and outdated even for his time.

>>9470141
i think the cunt should have either been a philosopher or a playwright

i cannot stand moral lessons in literature

literature is an artform, not a teaching manual

disgusting

>>9470149
>>9470151
>denying the truth of his words even after Stalin proved him right

>>9470151
>implying you can separate morals and literature

>>9470141
He starting taking religion seriously after he was in prison, not his whole life.

>>9470149
Kinda this
It's pretty tempting to read into it as only a contrarian position against the Social Nihilists, a kind of appeal to authority. That or a position adapted only after his stint in prison to keep the censures off his ass.

That said I haven't read Brothers Karamazov which I understand to be his most thoroughly religious work.

>>9470153
correct

but this is not what dostoevsky does

his literature is the backdrop to his philosophical standpoints

he is basically using it as a long lengthy example of his philosophical standings

pathetic and trite

not literature

>>9470177
One of the greatest writers who ever lived didn't write literature? Sure pal.

>>9470189
>One of the greatest writers who ever lived

wew

>>9470192
>contrarianism with no backing point
Sure activates my almonds kouhai

>>9470203
>no backing point

See >>9470177

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>>9470152
Stalin was both a better Christian and better at applying Christianity than Toasty could ever dream to be.

>tsarists

>>9470203

In the light of the historical development of artistic vision, Dostoyevsky is a very fascinating phenomenon. If you examine closely any of his works, say ''The Brothers Karamazov,'' you will note that the natural background and all things relevant to the perception of the senses hardly exist. What landscape there is is a landscape of ideas, a moral landscape. The weather does not exist in his world, so it does not much matter how people dress. Dostoyevsky characterizes his people through situation, through ethical matters, their psychological reactions, their inside ripples. After describing the looks of a character, he uses the old-fashioned device of not referring to his specific physical appearance anymore in the scenes with him. This is not the way of an artist - say Tolstoy - who sees his character in his mind all the time and knows exactly the specific gesture he will employ at this or that moment. But there is something more striking still about Dostoyevsky. He seems to have been chosen by the destiny of Russian letters to become Russia's greatest playwright, but he took the wrong turning and wrote novels. The novel ''The Brothers Karamazov'' has always seemed to me a straggling play, with just that amount of furniture and other implements needed for the various actors: a round table with the wet, round trace of a glass, a window painted yellow to make it look as if there were sunlight outside, or a shrub hastily brought in and plumped down by a stagehand.

>>9470214
Let me refer to one more method of dealing with literature - and this is the simplest and perhaps most important one. If you hate a book, you still may derive artistic delight from imagining other and better ways of looking at things, or, what is the same, expressing things, than the author you hate does. The mediocre, the false, the poshlost* -can at least afford a mischievous but very healthy pleasure, as you stamp and groan through a second-rate book which has been awarded a prize. But the books you like must also be read with shudders and gasps. Let me submit the following practical suggestion. Literature, real literature, must not be gulped down like some potion which may be good for the heart or good for the brain - the brain, that stomach of the soul. Literature must be taken and broken to bits, pulled apart, squashed -then its lovely reek will be smelt in the hollow of the palm, it will be munched and rolled upon the tongue with relish; then, and only then, its rare flavor will be appreciated at its true worth and the broken and crushed parts will again come together in your mind and disclose the beauty of a unity to which you have contributed something of your own blood.

>>9470216
When an artist starts out on a work of art, he has set himself some definite artistic problem that he is out to solve. He selects his characters, his time and his place, and then finds the particular and special circumstances which can allow the developments he desires to occur naturally, developing, so to say, without any violence on the artist's part in order to compel the desired issue, developing logically and naturally from the combination and interaction of the forces the artist has set into play.

The world the artist creates for this purpose may be entirely unreal - as, for instance, the world of Kafka, or that of Gogol - but there is one absolute demand we are entitled to make: This world in itself and as long as it lasts must be plausible to the reader or to the spectator. It is quite inessential, for instance, that Shakespeare introduces in ''Hamlet'' the ghost of Hamlet's father. Whether we agree with those critics who say that Shakespeare's contemporaries believed in the reality of phantoms, and therefore Shakespeare was justified to introduce these phantoms into his plays as realities, or whether we assume that these ghosts are something in the nature of stage properties, it does not matter: From the moment the murdered king's ghost enters the play, we accept him and do not doubt that Shakespeare was within his right in introducing him into his play. In fact, the true measure of genius is in what measure the world he has created is his own, one that has not been here before him (at least, in literature) and, even more important, how plausible he has succeeded in making it. I would like you to consider Dostoyevsky's world from this point of view.

>>9470220
Secondly, when dealing with a work of art we must always bear in mind that art is a divine game. These two elements - the elements of the divine and that of the game -are equally important. It is divine because this is the element in which man comes nearest to God through becoming a true creator in his own right. And it is a game because it remains art only as long as we are allowed to remember that, after all, it is all make-believe, that the people on the stage, for instance, are not actually murdered - in other words, only as long as our feelings of horror or of disgust do not obscure our realization that we are, as readers or as spectators, participating in an elaborate and enchanting game: The moment this balance is upset we get, on the stage, ridiculous melodrama, and in a book just a lurid description of, say, a case of murder which belongs in a newspaper instead. And we cease to derive that feeling of pleasure and satisfaction and spiritual vibration, that combined feeling which is our reaction to true art. For example, we are not disgusted or horrified by the bloody ending of the three greatest plays ever written: The hanging of Cordelia, the death of Hamlet, the suicide of Othello give us a shudder, but a shudder with a strong element of delight in it. This delight does not derive from the fact that we are glad to see those people perish, but merely our enjoyment of Shakespeare's overwhelming genius. I would like you further to ponder ''Crime and Punishment'' and ''Memoirs from a Mousehole,'' also known as the ''Notes from Underground'' (1864), from this point of view: Is the artistic pleasure you derive from accompanying Dostoyevsky on his excursions into the sick souls of his characters, is it consistently greater than any other emotions, thrills of disgust, morbid interest in a crime thriller? There is even less balance between the esthetic achievement and the element of criminal reportage in Dostoyevsky's other novels.

>useful to society as a means of social cohesion
His point is that God is necessary for any coherent moral and metaphysical judgement what so ever

>>9470227
Thirdly, when an artist sets out to explore the motions and reactions of a human soul under the unendurable stresses of life, our interest is more readily aroused and we can more readily follow the artist as our guide through the dark corridors of that human soul if that soul's reactions are of a more or less all-human variety. By this I certainly do not wish to say that we are, or should be, interested solely in the spiritual life of the so-called average man. Certainly not. What I wish to convey is that though man and his reactions are infinitely varied, we can hardly accept as human reactions those of a raving lunatic of a character just come out of a madhouse and just about to return there. The reactions of such poor, deformed, warped souls are often no longer human, in the accepted sense of the word, or they are so freakish that the problem the author set himself remains unsolved regardless of how it is supposed to be solved by the reactions of such unusual individuals.

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desu there is no good solution against social nihilism

>>9470209
>actually attended seminary and was the best student
>read from the Bible often and could quote it verbatim
>read Dostoevsky's books, made extensive notes to them, and understood them better than Dostoevsky himself did

How can one leader of men be so based

>>9470141
>What do you guys think of Dostoevsky's overall theme in his books that religion is useful to society as a means of social cohesion?
I think it's wonderful, as are his novels.

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>>9470177
The majority of great art has some sort of ideological backdrop

>>9470141
It's an old card but every time I read ol' Dostoe all I can think is 'tolstoy did it better'. I hear Russian tour guides who give /lit/ tours are often baited into Dostoevsky v. Tolstoy debates and have to refrain.

>>9470389
looks fun actually.

>>9470234
The Soviet Union suppressed religion you cuck.

That's one of Marx's points. Religion must be suppressed/eliminated in a communist society. He fucked up Russia's orthodox churches so he could build his cult of personality and everyone could follow the state's laws, morals etc. This is why we need religion.

>>9470305
If you're a writer, you're obliged to use ideology in your art. It then becomes a matter of whether your work is a vehicle for a particular ideology, or is an ideological playground.

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>>9470440

>>9470440
Stalin returned religion to USSR after it was found that atheists suck at war.
Bombing Middle-Eastern goat herders does not count as war.

this thread is highly unintelligent

>>9470141
I'm completely honest when I say that the questions of "a lie for the sake of social cohesion" and "a lie because the alternative is nihilism" are probably the two most important questions of our time.

I don't think literature is the place to discuss them though.

>>9471106
thank you for your contribution

God isn't real and if He was I'd kill Him

>>9470149
>>9470151
Kys

>>9470149
>even for his time.
Le current year argument xD

>>9470141
>even though he most likely didn't believe in the literal word of the bible.
NOT
EVERY
CHRISTIAN
IS
A
PROTESTANT
FUNDAMENTALIST

kys

>>9470141
I think it was part of the evolution of Abrahamic religions that wise men sought to prescribe good behaviour. Without that positive social engineering you just have shamanism or modern Islam

>>9470151
You read poetry for pretty words and style.

You read novels for everything else.

>>9470234
and THEN he killed millions of people

>>9473376
Absolutely pleb statement of the year

>>9470141
>religion is useful to society as a means of social cohesion?
Is this controversial somewhere?

Here's a good thread to ask in, I picked up the Garnett tl of Crime & Punishment on the cheap, but I hear there are better alternatives available. What's the best translation?

>>9473462
Garnett is fine. Any other translation is fine too.

>>9473556
>>9473462
Most translations are fit for purpose, but Pevear & Volokhonsky are widely agreed to be a significant improvement over previous scholarly translations.
The translation issue is most prominent with older translations of Notes from Underground which significantly bastardize the prose.

>>9473566
True, but even P&V say Garnett is top tier.

>>9470214
>>9470216
>>9470220
>>9470227
>>9470232
Where is this from?

Dostoevsky is more concerned with existential implications, than the social ones

>>9476016
Nabokov

>>9470141
>Western Civilization is so dependent of Christian Morality that if it decays the modern man thougt that it would lead to absolutely social nihilism

That's a little naive, i would guess. Society still exists and will exists dven admist problems. In the end, what ruin and kill civilizations are economic/politic problems and other civilizations destroying it. In the post-capitalism world we live in the latter is absurd, and the first also umprobable.

>>9476895
Sub-replacement fertility is a fairly significant thing to be worried about

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I don't think religion is an especially good tool for social cohesion.
It only works that way in specific parts of the globe, in specific communities, that are getting more and more rare (it was all starting to get outdated even at his time).

If we want to talk in pratical terms, religion can be an useful tool to "trim down" and "keep in check" the most unstable and harmful individuals in your society.
A sort of vague, abstract deterrent.
It can also keep the poorest in your society somewhat more in check by giving them false hope in their meaningless lives full of despair and endless personal sacrifices.

So all in all religion does serve a decently useful role in any society as a regulating tool, but it probably has too many drawbacks in the long term to be something you really want to use all that often.
It probably stops keeping maniacs in check at some point and starts enabling them eventually, making your society unstable, the exact opposite of what you want.

>>9470305
Learn to read buddy, there's a difference between having ideology be the backdrop to your actual work or having your work be the backdrop to the ideology (aka propaganda). That guy is saying the latter which he's correct in pointing out how shit that is.

>>9470440
>dude who needs jesus's cock up his ass calls other cucks
kek

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>>9473376
this tbf

>>9470152
But don't you see how Stalinism shares the relevant thing with religion - there is a "god", the historical necessity of communism.

Just like a Christian would justify their deeds with the will of God, Stalin justified everything with something along those lines.

And look at today's fundamentalist terrorists, as well as how even George Bush mentioned God when he told about starting a war. Look at Israel.

Thus: if god exists, everything is permitted. If you have a divine will of some kind to justify your actions, you can do anything.

>>9473292
WE ARE ALL PARTICIPANTS IN VARYING LEVELS OF KEKOLDRY PERPETRATING KEKOLDRY AT VARIOUS TIMES AND IN VARIOUS SHADES

I'M NOT A LITERAL KEKOLD BUT A FIGURATIVE ONE, I GRASP THE INTRICATE UNDERTONES OF THE KEK

ACCEPT ME

You have horribly misread Dostoevsky if you think that's a theme at all or that what you wrote in the OP is even approaching his views on religion.

some real booktubers in this thread:

>i didn't like the ending, and what was all the God stuff? this didn't have a very clear plot and the characters were all over the place! i mean, what was the weather like? how did they pay their taxes? how come the characters never go to the bathroom? overall i give this 5/10. maybe somebody could clean up the story and i could recommend it to my friends. i didn't want to read PHILOSOPHY, i wanted LITERATURE