In Week 3 of our class, our main focus will be on the ideas and works of another early Existentialist thinker, the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. You will notice the characters in our reading selections - the "underground man" and the grand inquisitor - are concerned with some of the same issues that Soren Kierkegaard raised in his works. For example the relationship between the individual and the larger society, and the difficulties of living an authentic life arise. The nature of human freedom is another key idea that Dostoevsky's works explore, particularly in relation to social planning ostensibly aimed at providing human beings a better, more rational existence.  

In one way or another, Dostoevsky influences practically all of the other existentialists coming after him. Friedrich Nietzsche had Dostoevsky's writings brought to his attention by the Danish professor Georg Brandes, and wrote that he was "the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn."  You will see references to Dostoevsky in Marcel's, Camus, Sartre's, and de Beauvoir's works, as well as in other existentialists we aren't reading in this course.

We will be discussing the following texts (which you'll find in the module "PDFs of Course Texts")

• Notes From Underground (part 1)
• The Brothers Karamazov (the chapters Rebellion, and The Grand Inquisitor)

Some of the key ideas we will be examining together are:

• Individuality and authentic existence
• The priority of emotion and desire
• Nihilism in modern culture
• Human freedom
• The problem of evil and God
• The absurdity of existence
• Ethics and moral responsibility