0:03 What is hell? I maintain it is the
0:06 suffering of an inability to love.
0:08 Theodor DSTVski is known as a historic
0:11 thinker on many many topics. In his
0:13 novels and articles, he discusses God,
0:16 morality, nihilism, and existentialism.
0:18 But today, I want to focus on an often
0:20 neglected part of DSTski's overall
0:23 philosophy, his ideas about love.
0:25 Because for this Russian author, love
0:28 was a subject of endless fascination.
0:30 and it crops up in almost every one of
0:33 his works. DSTVsky is adept at
0:35 displaying how love can compel us to
0:38 commit heinous self-destructive actions,
0:41 but also how it can redeem us, grant us
0:44 meaning, and ultimately even save the
0:46 world. And if that's not a reason to
0:48 keep watching, I don't know what is. Get
0:50 ready to learn how love can kill, what
0:52 passion has to do with politics, and
0:55 why, for DSTVski, love was the
0:57 fundamental redeeming quality of all
0:59 humanity. As always, bear in mind this
1:01 is just my interpretation of DSTV, and
1:03 you are totally free to disagree. Also,
1:05 there will be spoilers ahead for many of
1:07 Dosski's novels, though I will do my
1:09 best to avoid giving too much away on
1:11 major plot points. But with that out of
1:14 the way, let's begin by exploring the
1:16 darkest aspect of DSTVski's philosophy
1:19 of love. What happens to us when we are
1:22 deprived of it? One, the unloving life
1:25 is not worth living. The quote at the
1:27 start of this video comparing hell to an
1:29 inability to love comes from the elders
1:32 Osma in Dostki's Magnum Opus, The
1:34 Brothers Karamazov. According to him,
1:36 the quickest and most potent way a human
1:39 can plunge themselves into unimaginable
1:41 torment is by cutting off their ability
1:44 to love others. Deprived of this love,
1:46 they will begin to fester like an
1:49 infected wound as resentment, envy, and
1:51 hatred fills the place where affection
1:53 could have been. And nowhere is this
1:55 more evident than in the character of
1:58 the underground man. Famously, Dostki's
2:00 nolla, Notes from the Underground,
2:02 begins with the main character declaring
2:04 himself sick, spiteful, and
2:06 unattractive. And throughout his story,
2:08 he narrates the various ways he sought
2:11 to enhance the misery of other people.
2:13 He vividly describes the sick pleasure
2:15 he took in a toothache because he could
2:17 make the lives of everyone around him
2:19 that bit worse with his loud and
2:22 theatrical moans and complaints. He says
2:24 that in his position as a civil servant,
2:27 he would exercise his petty power on the
2:29 people around him in a needlessly cruel
2:31 manner. He would care nothing for the
2:32 feelings of other people and would even
2:34 go out of his way to make their lives
2:36 worse just to savor their suffering. His
2:39 entire philosophy can be summed up in
2:41 the following phrase. let the world go
2:43 to hell, but I should always have my
2:45 tea. Of course, this philosophy is
2:47 hardly a successful one, and the
2:49 underground man ends up in profound
2:51 misery as a result of it. The core of
2:53 the underground man's suffering is that
2:55 he has absolutely no fellow feeling for
2:57 other people. And it is tragically
2:59 understandable how he has become this
3:01 way. To hear him tell it, he only has
3:04 cruel and disloyal so-called friends, a
3:06 meager pension, and no reason to carry
3:08 on living. In such a situation, it is
3:10 easy to see how someone could lose their
3:13 sense of love entirely. But this lack of
3:16 love dooms him all the same. Ever eager
3:18 to present complex psychological
3:20 profiles, Dostki shows how this
3:22 aggressive spite eventually morphs into
3:24 the underground man's way of punishing
3:26 himself. Towards the end of the novella,
3:28 he begins to befriend a poor and
3:30 downtrodden prostitute named Liza. And
3:32 it seems like there might be the first
3:35 smatterings of genuine affection here.
3:37 They have a long conversation where the
3:38 underground man shocks her with his
3:41 brutal and cruel honesty, but then
3:43 briefly softens, inviting her to visit
3:45 him at his home. But when she does
3:47 appear and offers out a hand of
3:49 friendship and companionship, he
3:51 suddenly changes his tune, berating her
3:54 and insulting her until she leaves. Now
3:56 he is not just unloving out of lack of
3:59 opportunity. It has become a direct
4:01 selfharming choice. He soon regrets his
4:04 cruelty and begins to run after Liza.
4:06 But at the last moment, he decides it
4:08 was better to spread his bitter
4:10 resentments to another person. Now she
4:12 will know the truth as well, that the
4:14 world is not loving or kind, and it
4:16 never will be. The hot brand of his
4:18 insults will turn her against humanity
4:21 as well, and a new underground man will
4:23 be created. Where before there was such
4:25 promise of selflessness and redemption,
4:28 the underground man has become so deep
4:30 in his hatred of himself and the world
4:32 that he does not know how to love
4:34 anymore. It is like an atrophied muscle
4:37 he has lost control over. And here we
4:39 get potentially the saddest line in the
4:42 entire story. Liza certainly did fully
4:44 understand that I was a despicable man
4:47 and what was worse, incapable of loving
4:49 her. The underground man is so torn
4:52 apart inside with the insults and
4:54 injustices of the world and so unable to
4:56 look past the malaise of his own
4:58 self-hatred that he is permanently
5:02 deprived of love. Thus, he dwells in a
5:04 dstyky in hell, mourning the loss of
5:06 what could have made his life
5:08 worthwhile. And when Dstivki equates
5:10 lovelessness with hell, he is not
5:12 talking merely about romantic love. Some
5:13 of the happiest characters in his other
5:16 novels are contented monastics filled
5:18 with a gentle love for everyone. But it
5:20 is the all-encompassing totalizing
5:22 completeness of the underground man's
5:24 hatred that dooms him. Because it is not
5:27 just poor Liza he despises. It is all of
5:30 mankind. Every indignity or suffering
5:32 thrown at him becomes another twisted
5:34 smile he can curl in the face of the
5:37 next person he passes. He is the very
5:40 definition of a hurt person hurting
5:42 people. And he is also the starkkest
5:44 example of just how important love is in
5:47 Dsvski's overall philosophy. For some
5:49 thinkers like Plato, love is a wonderful
5:51 compliment to a good life, but is
5:52 ultimately subordinate to more important
5:54 matters like virtue and the pursuit of
5:56 truth. For others like nature,
5:58 interpersonal love is often looked down
6:00 upon with him remarking that very few
6:02 great thinkers have ever been married.
6:04 The romantic poets often depicted love
6:06 as a powerful motivating and
6:08 destabilizing force, throwing our souls
6:11 into torment and ecstasy with every
6:12 passing moment. But notes from the
6:14 underground demonstrates that for
6:17 Dostki, love is not just powerful, not
6:19 just valuable, but is an indispensable
6:22 component of a worthwhile life. Without
6:24 any love at all, no compassion for a
6:26 partner or affection for a friend or
6:28 even a loose sense of commonality with
6:31 the rest of the human race, we are
6:33 doomed to be miserable and despise
6:35 ourselves. To ask someone to live
6:37 without loving others might as well be
6:39 asking them to live without the use of
6:41 oxygen. For those of you familiar with
6:43 Buddhist philosophy, you might recognize
6:45 some parallels here with the idea of
6:47 loving kindness and the unskillful
6:49 emotions. I also want to focus on
6:52 DSTVKI's choice to say that hell is the
6:54 inability to love. He seems to agree
6:56 with Aristotle here that the greater
6:58 part of love is in the loving. It might
7:01 be heartbreaking and isolating for us to
7:03 feel that we are not loved. But to use
7:05 this as a reason to never love others is
7:08 to needlessly increase our suffering
7:11 100fold. It is the genius of dstyki to
7:13 argue that our philosophies should begin
7:15 with love rather than getting to them
7:16 further down the line. and Notes from
7:18 the Underground is perhaps the darkest
7:21 demonstration of this terrifying idea.
7:23 And as we move forward to looking at
7:25 some of the less savory ways love can
7:27 manifest, we should bear in mind that
7:29 DossiKi thinks that a rejection of love
7:32 entirely is the worst situation of all.
7:34 This is why he equates lovelessness with
7:36 hell. Abandoning our natural affection
7:39 for other people dooms us entirely. It
7:41 cannot get any worse than this. But
7:44 anyway, enough of my gloomy rantings. We
7:46 can now slowly move out of hell and
7:49 begin to explore some of the ways DSTVKI
7:51 thinks the noble emotion of love can be
7:53 morphed into something much uglier. How
7:56 it can turn into a wish to control or to
7:58 dominate or otherwise bring out the most
8:00 violent aspects of the human psyche.
8:02 Let's look at the people who talk about
8:05 love but believe only in ego. If you
8:07 want to help me make more videos like
8:08 this, then please consider subscribing
8:10 to my channel or my Patreon. The links
8:13 are in the description. Two, the love of
8:15 the egoist. In modern parliament, the
8:18 term narcissistic love has become pretty
8:20 commonplace. Various definitions abound,
8:23 but they all orbit around one key
8:25 insight. Some lovers are only out for
8:28 themselves. Knowingly or not, they
8:30 aren't truly loving for the sake of
8:32 those they love, but instead for some
8:35 selfish benefit. This might be to plug
8:37 some gap in their self-image or from
8:39 hedonistic desire or simply out of
8:41 spite. But however this manifests,
8:44 DSTVski normally envisions it ending in
8:46 disaster. And moreover, he sees this
8:49 type of love everywhere in public life.
8:51 Perhaps the most well-known example of
8:53 this type of love is in the character of
8:55 Lujin from Crime and Punishment. Ljun is
8:57 a lawyer betrothed to marry Duna, the
8:59 sister of our protagonist, Rascalikov.
9:01 Sorry, that's a lot of names to take in.
9:03 However, it quickly becomes clear that
9:05 Lujian loves Dunya purely for the
9:07 control he can exert over her. He talks
9:09 about how he has always wished to marry
9:12 a poor woman down on her luck as this
9:14 encourages her to remain constantly
9:16 grateful to him for magnanimously
9:18 agreeing to take her in just when she
9:20 was least desirable. He thinks that
9:22 women make much better wives, you see,
9:24 when they cannot survive without their
9:26 husbands. He becomes terrified when
9:27 Dunya looks like she might come into
9:29 some significant money because he does
9:32 not really want to freely love and be
9:34 loved freely in return. What he desires
9:37 most is to control his beloved.
9:39 Moreover, when he feels like he is
9:41 losing this control, he turns spiteful
9:43 and bitter, attempting to ruin
9:45 Rascalikov's reputation as a petty form
9:48 of revenge. Today, we would probably not
9:50 hesitate in calling Lusian somewhat of a
9:52 narcissist. Later, DSvski would explore
9:55 this ugly variant on love in even
9:57 greater detail in his terrifying short
9:59 story, The Meek One. Here he portrays
10:02 how a narcissistic and doineering
10:04 husband mentally tortures his own wife
10:06 until she eventually decides to end her
10:09 life. Dosski describes every inch of the
10:11 man's control. He would deprive her of
10:13 affection and have her beg it from him
10:15 piece by piece. He would attempt to
10:17 uncover dirt on her so he always had
10:19 something to hold above her head. Worst
10:22 of all, he always presented things so he
10:24 could hold the moral high ground and
10:26 look down on her from it, not letting
10:29 her forget a single one of her faults.
10:31 Again, we see how a twisted and
10:34 malformed version of love can manifest
10:36 from a spiteful and controlling person.
10:38 In this case, the egoist does not truly
10:40 care about their beloved, but instead
10:42 wants to see a glorified image of
10:44 themselves reflected back at them. They
10:46 want to prove that they are worthy of
10:49 worship and affection, superior to
10:51 everyone else around them, especially
10:53 the one they are supposed to love. Both
10:55 Lusian and this husband managed to come
10:58 across as simultaneously repulsive and
11:00 deeply pitiable. They want selfless
11:02 devotion. They want to be loved, but
11:05 they refuse to give it themselves. As a
11:07 result, rather than receiving the free
11:09 affection of another agent, they must
11:11 extract it bit by bit through numerous
11:14 avenues of coercion. I would wager we
11:16 all know people who love a little bit
11:19 like this. For DSTVI, these people are
11:21 also suffering from a certain inability
11:23 to love. Though they are not quite in
11:25 the living hell of the underground man,
11:27 they are ultimately still cut off from
11:29 true joy. And this begins a theme for
11:31 DSTVski's philosophy. The more
11:34 self-centered a love is, the less joy it
11:36 can bring, both for the lover and the
11:38 beloved. This will eventually culminate
11:40 in him praising a semi-religious
11:42 selfless love, but we'll save that for
11:44 later in the video. It is also worth
11:46 noting that at points both Lujian and
11:48 this husband express seemingly quite
11:50 deep feelings of self-loathing. This
11:52 continues the idea that Dostki expressed
11:54 in Notes from the Underground, how
11:56 self-hatred can very quickly transform
11:58 into a total lack of affection for
12:01 anyone. DSTVKI also explores how
12:03 possessiveness in love can bring out its
12:05 destructive and explosive dimensions.
12:08 For instance, in the brothers Karamazov,
12:10 much of Dmitri Karamazov's suffering is
12:12 caused by his lustfilled attachments to
12:14 a woman named Grusena. In an attempt to
12:17 win herova, he betrays almost every one
12:19 of his principles. He deceives his
12:21 fianceé, spends other people's money,
12:23 and beats his own father in a jealous
12:25 rage. Though Dimmitri's love is not
12:27 outright narcissistic or manipulative,
12:30 it is still possessive and envious. And
12:32 without spoiling too much, this leads to
12:34 pretty disastrous consequences.
12:36 Likewise, in The Idiot, we see jealousy
12:39 slowly drive the character of Ragjin
12:41 insane. And this culminates in a
12:43 horrific and violent act against a woman
12:45 who needed more than anything for
12:47 someone to be kind to her. In both
12:50 cases, it is not that these lovers set
12:52 out to use the object of their affection
12:54 egoistically. Instead, it is that their
12:56 fear and their self-image got in the
12:58 way. They may not have wanted to
13:00 control, but they definitely wanted to
13:03 possess. And DSTVski paints this drop of
13:05 selfishness transforming pure love into
13:07 something potentially violent and
13:09 terrifying. To branch out from romantic
13:12 examples, we also see DSvski criticizing
13:14 the intellectuals of his time period for
13:16 their egoistic love of the people of
13:19 Russia. Amongst the intelligencia of his
13:21 time, he saw that almost everyone would
13:23 profess this deep affection for the poor
13:26 and needy, but that this rarely extended
13:28 to actually spending time with them and
13:30 treating them as equals. Instead, much
13:32 like the narcissistic lovers in his
13:34 novels, the intellectual circles of St.
13:36 Petersburg would insist that they
13:37 already knew what the peasantry of
13:39 Russia needed and thought it was their
13:42 job to enlighten them. Very few things
13:45 seemed to make DSvki as angry as this
13:47 condescending attitude. For him, behind
13:50 all of these highulutin words, was a
13:51 fundamental lack of respect for the
13:53 traditions and way of life of the
13:55 Russian peasantry, which in many ways
13:57 Dstigki thought was superior to the
13:59 westernized academic circles of the
14:01 cities. This thought culminates in his
14:04 astonishing novel Demons, where he
14:06 skewers the members of the intelligencia
14:08 as fundamentally self-interested. He
14:10 accuses them of really just wanting to
14:12 use whatever sentiments they deemed
14:15 necessary to gain control and power and
14:17 of thinking they knew how the peasantry
14:19 should live their lives better than they
14:21 did. Here we also begin to see another
14:24 theme in DSTVKI's view on love. He not
14:25 only views it as of extreme
14:28 interpersonal significance, but it also
14:29 becomes a key part of his wider
14:31 philosophical and political views as
14:33 time goes on. The idea we see running
14:35 through all of the examples of this
14:37 section is that love can become
14:40 corrupted through a sense of superiority
14:42 and a lack of respect for the agency of
14:44 the beloved. And this makes sense given
14:46 the particulars of DSTVKI's religious
14:48 views. For him, part of what made
14:51 Christ's love for mankind so moving is
14:53 that he was fully human. He was not a
14:55 spirit standing above us, dictating
14:58 orders, but instead suffering alongside
15:00 us and delivering his message as a
15:02 god-made man. I am not Christian myself,
15:04 but I don't think you have to be to see
15:06 the beauty in this idea. Dosslevki
15:09 constantly points out how our desire for
15:10 love can mingle with our fears and
15:13 insecurities to create this noxious
15:15 mixture of condescension and control,
15:17 and that this threatens to strangle what
15:20 could have been a joyous kind of love.
15:22 This poisoning of kindness and affection
15:24 by a wish to control also forms the
15:25 backbone of much of his critiques of
15:27 other religious movements. For instance,
15:30 Roman Catholicism and Protestantism and
15:32 even some Orthodox churches. And I think
15:34 this warning is worth listening to for
15:36 our own lives. How often do we taint our
15:39 own love with some form of egoism or
15:41 selfishness? Sure, we might not be total
15:43 narcissists or believe that we are
15:45 fundamentally superior to our partner.
15:47 But how often do we think we love
15:49 someone for who they are only for it to
15:52 emerge later that we may have partly
15:53 loved them for what they could do for
15:55 us? It is a difficult question to pose,
15:58 but one well worth asking when something
16:00 as important as love is on the table.
16:02 But then this also begs the question,
16:04 how do we love in a way that is not so
16:08 egoistic? Well, DSTVski has a surprising
16:12 answer. Three, love and sacrifice. In
16:14 the 14th century, the English mystic
16:16 Julian of Norwich fell ill with a fever
16:18 and began to experience visions. A
16:20 devout Christian, she experienced
16:23 revelations about the passion Jesus felt
16:25 for humanity as he died on the cross,
16:28 sacrificing himself to save our souls.
16:30 In one of these visions, Christ tells
16:32 her, "It is endless satisfaction to me
16:35 that I ever suffered passion for thee,
16:37 and if I might suffer more, I would
16:39 suffer more." The phrasing here is
16:41 incredibly important for Julian. Christ
16:43 did not just suffer because it was
16:46 necessary. He did so as a loving and
16:49 willing act of self-sacrifice. So great
16:51 was his devotion to mankind that he was
16:53 not only able to bear suffering for us,
16:55 but was glad to do so. Just like how you
16:57 will often hear parents not just say
16:59 that they would die for their children,
17:01 but that they would do so without a hint
17:03 of regret or resentment in their hearts.
17:06 Again, I am not personally religious,
17:08 but I have had this line running through
17:10 my head for months now because it is one
17:12 of the most insightful meditations on
17:14 selfless love I have ever come across
17:17 and it also summarizes in a single
17:19 sentence what DSTVKI thinks the purest
17:22 kind of affection can amount to. A key
17:24 theme in many of DSTVski's later works
17:27 is the idea of loving through sacrifice.
17:29 This forms a very clear contrast from
17:31 the egoistic kind of love we explored in
17:33 the previous section. Whereas the
17:35 selfish lover attempts to extract from
17:37 their beloved, the sacrificial lover
17:39 intends to give themselves over to them
17:42 as if as an offering. Obviously, such a
17:44 move is fraught with danger. And despite
17:46 praising this sort of sacrificial love,
17:49 DSvski does not shy away from how it can
17:52 end horribly. Arguably, his novel The
17:54 Idiot, is all about how a kind man who
17:56 loves in a wholehearted and selfless way
17:59 is driven mad by the cruel and cowardly
18:01 behavior of other people. The titular
18:03 character, Prince Mishkin, spends much
18:05 of the novel attempting to help the
18:07 fallen woman, Nastasia Philippova, and
18:09 her troubled and reckless lover,
18:10 Rogosen. Sorry if I've completely
18:12 butchered the pronunciations there. More
18:14 than anything else, he wants them to see
18:16 their own value. Bring them out of their
18:19 cynicism and love them. He even
18:21 sacrifices his prospects with the woman
18:23 he truly wants to be with to achieve
18:25 this, and forgives Ragoen's murder
18:28 attempt on him. And yet, in the end, it
18:30 is all in vain. I won't totally spoil it
18:33 here, but suffice to say, the innocent
18:35 Prince Mishkin's attempts blow up in his
18:37 face, and he is left a broken man sent
18:39 abroad for extensive medical treatment
18:42 in an attempt to recover his psyche. He
18:44 gave all he had in acts of selfless
18:46 love. And yet, Dostki paints him as
18:49 suffering for it. The question dangling
18:51 in the air is, should he have been so
18:53 kind? Should he have been so loving? And
18:56 Dostki's answer is still unequivocally
18:59 yes. We get a glimpse of the true
19:01 radicalism of his loving philosophy
19:03 here. He implores us to love others
19:05 selflessly even as it's going horribly
19:08 wrong for us. For him, this is what it
19:10 truly means to be self-sacrificial in
19:13 our love. And let's be absolutely clear,
19:15 this is a tall order the great Russian
19:17 is asking us to perform. And it leaves
19:19 us incredibly vulnerable to exploitation
19:21 and manipulation. But as we shall see in
19:23 the next section, his demands only
19:26 become more extreme. We see a similar
19:27 kind of selfless love in the character
19:30 of Aliosha in the brothers Karamazov. He
19:32 is the most spiritual of the three
19:33 brothers and his most remarkable trait
19:36 is his complete unwillingness to judge
19:38 other people or consider them beneath
19:40 him in any way. All throughout the novel
19:42 he encounters people who have done
19:44 terrible things, pursued selfish ends,
19:46 and committed only scant acts of
19:48 kindness in their lives. And yet each
19:50 time, despite all the good he is doing
19:52 in the world, he will continually affirm
19:54 that he is not better than them.
19:56 Instead, he shows them an unrelenting
19:59 and indiscriminate kind of love. This
20:00 comes out most strongly in his meeting
20:03 with Grusanka, another of Dostki's
20:04 fallen women. Despite her poor
20:07 reputation and lowly societal position,
20:09 Aliosha will not consider himself
20:11 superior to her and indeed at points
20:13 even acts as if he is beneath her.
20:16 Confronted with genuine egalitarian
20:18 affection and understanding, Grashanka's
20:20 spirits are restored and she actually
20:22 begins to change as a person for the
20:24 better. He does the same thing for many
20:26 others over the course of the story.
20:28 Aliosha will take someone who has been
20:30 made cruel by self- judgment or the
20:32 judgment of others and he will extend a
20:34 hand to them. But this is not the
20:36 condescending wish to save that dsvki
20:38 was so critical of in the previous
20:40 section. This is instead a genuine
20:42 brotherly love that emanates from
20:45 Aliosha like an aura. This is the ideal
20:47 sort of love for DSTVski. Endless,
20:50 uncondescending and selfless. and he
20:52 admits that this is incredibly
20:54 demanding. In the same novel, The Elder
20:56 Osma, a much reggarded monastic, talks
20:58 about the difference between active love
21:01 and a kind of dreamy love. Whereas it is
21:03 easy for anyone to fantasize about grand
21:05 romantic gestures or a general affection
21:08 for mankind or to say that they love
21:09 someone from the bottom of their heart.
21:12 Active love is different and much more
21:14 difficult. Zosma admits that it is harsh
21:17 and dreadful and requires labor and
21:19 fortitude. It is the kind of love that
21:21 is willing to give and give and give
21:23 without a hint of resentment or
21:25 entitlement. I would argue we see this
21:28 kind of love in small ways everywhere.
21:30 From the grandfather who painfully
21:32 kneels on brittle bones to play with his
21:34 delighted granddaughter to the wife
21:36 standing by her husband as he's ravaged
21:38 with illness. It is in the eyes of the
21:40 dog who leaps to the defense of their
21:41 owner and in the last breath of the
21:43 soldier taking a bullet for their
21:45 friend. But to have this active love be
21:47 the guiding force of your life. To be
21:49 totally devoted to others, willing to
21:52 sacrifice anything for them and actively
21:54 loving them every second of every day.
21:56 That is the sort of love Zosma and
21:59 Dostki demand of us. And at points, he
22:01 says it is the highest virtue a person
22:03 can have. It is the cornerstone of
22:05 Dsvki's faith. And he finds its
22:08 apotheiois in the image of Christ dying
22:10 for us all. Still crying out for his
22:12 capttors to be forgiven. And all
22:15 throughout Dstyvk's novels, we see the
22:17 redeeming power of being loved like
22:19 this. In Crime and Punishment, it is the
22:21 selfless and noble love of Sonia that
22:23 helps Rascolnikov rediscover his ailing
22:26 conscience and become a better man. In
22:28 The Idiot, it is what convinces Nastasia
22:30 Philippova, if only for a moment, that
22:33 she might have worth as a person. And in
22:35 the Brothers Karamazov, Aliosha's love
22:37 consistently transforms the people
22:40 around him from can and uncaring to kind
22:43 and generous. For Dosski, this is what
22:45 makes selfless love worthwhile, even
22:47 when it leaves us vulnerable and
22:49 sometimes goes disastrously wrong. For
22:51 him, it has the power to cut through
22:54 people's insecurity and self-destruction
22:56 and make them see that they are worthy
22:58 of respect and reveal to them the kind
23:00 of person that they could be if they
23:02 truly tried. One of the wonderful things
23:05 about Doski's novels is that almost no
23:07 one is portrayed as beyond redemption.
23:09 And everyone has the potential to become
23:12 something truly good. If only they had
23:14 this treasured kind of love. No doubt
23:16 such a love is incredibly rare. But if
23:18 even a fraction of what DSTVKI says
23:20 about its transformative effects are
23:23 true, it may be well worth striving for.
23:24 But if you thought that this was a
23:26 stretch, Dostki's demands are about to
23:29 get much more extreme. Because now he
23:30 wants us to take this selfless,
23:33 sacrificial, almost sacramental love and
23:35 expand it to encompass the whole of
23:39 humanity. Four, the universal lover. In
23:41 ancient Greece, people would use the
23:43 word agape to describe the sort of
23:45 universal divine love that Christians
23:47 would later attribute to God. This was
23:50 part of a whole set of different types
23:52 of loving that included os or erotic
23:55 love and filia or brotherly love. And
23:57 dstoyvki's radical suggestion is that we
23:59 bring about a world in which there is
24:02 universal agape and filia. That is
24:06 affection and brotherly love for all. He
24:07 himself seems to recognize that this
24:10 idea is a little bit ambitious. He even
24:12 calls one of his final short stories
24:14 exploring this idea the dream of a
24:17 ridiculous man. Here he explores someone
24:18 going through a brief but intense
24:21 existential crisis who emerges on the
24:23 other side with a completely new outlook
24:26 on life. The man discovers a wish to
24:28 work tirelessly in service to a future
24:31 where we all love one another selflessly
24:33 and openly, saying that this will be the
24:36 salvation of the world. And of course,
24:38 everyone else calls him ridiculous.
24:40 There are many theological themes that
24:41 come up in dsttovski. There's the
24:43 problem of evil, the issue of morality
24:46 without God, and so much more. But one
24:48 that perhaps appears more often than any
24:50 other is the doctrine of loving your
24:52 neighbor as yourself. And this becomes
24:54 increasingly prominent in his later
24:56 writings. In the brothers Karamazov, the
24:59 elders Osma gives us perhaps the closest
25:01 approximation of dsvki's own philosophy.
25:04 He says that we should love life and
25:06 encourage all others to do the same. And
25:09 moreover that this must be the energetic
25:10 active love that we spoke about in the
25:12 previous section. We must behave like
25:14 Aliosha and seek to serve those around
25:16 us as if they were our brothers.
25:18 Essentially, Dosski wants us to emulate
25:20 the behaviors of the previous section,
25:23 but not just towards our friends or our
25:24 partners, but anyone that we come
25:27 across. and moreover to do all of this
25:29 not begrudgingly or chishly but with
25:32 endless enthusiasm and energy and even
25:34 gratitude. This also goes some way to
25:36 making sense of what Dstvki means when
25:38 he says we are not just responsible for
25:40 our own sin but also the sins of
25:42 everyone else. He is encouraging us to
25:44 treat the hardship of life like a shared
25:46 burden. And to extend empathy and
25:48 compassion towards anyone's suffering,
25:50 even if that suffering is of their own
25:52 creation, and to recognize we're doing
25:54 this not from a place of superiority,
25:56 but because it is a privilege to serve.
25:58 This also explains how dstyki can
26:00 portray characters like the underground
26:03 man with such exquisite tenderness while
26:04 still not pretending that they are not
26:06 responsible for their actions. Dossyki
26:09 is doing in a literary way what Jesus or
26:12 Aliosha do in a literal way. He is
26:14 sharing in the trials and tribulations
26:16 of his characters without removing their
26:18 agency and through his writings he
26:20 encourages us to do the same to people
26:22 suffering in our own lives. It is a
26:24 little bit like Schopenhau's idea that
26:26 we are a community of fellow sufferers.
26:29 Dossyki wants us to recognize the pain
26:31 of other people and extend our
26:33 compassion even to those who are cruel
26:35 or self-destructive. And this attitude
26:37 closely aligns with DSTVKI's wider
26:39 philosophy. In a speech delivered a year
26:41 before his death in celebration of the
26:43 poet Pushkin, Dsstvki discusses his
26:46 vision for the future of Russia and the
26:49 world. Just as Prince Mishkin or Aliosha
26:51 or Christ serve as examples to light our
26:53 way to selflessness and universal
26:56 kindness. He wanted Russia itself to
26:58 become a symbol of universal global
27:01 brotherhood saying to become a Russian
27:04 fully means only to become a brother of
27:07 all men to become if you will a
27:09 universal man. Dosstoyvki's ridiculous
27:12 dream is of a future of love between all
27:14 people where we are all a bit more like
27:17 Aliosha Mushkin and Christ where we
27:18 would take up the demands of a
27:22 totalizing active and universal love and
27:24 follow it to the ends of the earth. He
27:26 is perhaps one of the only authors in
27:27 history to take the Christian
27:30 commandment to love all people so
27:33 seriously. For DSTVski, violence and
27:35 resentment and retribution would never
27:37 get to the root of the problems we face
27:40 as a species. He thought that instead of
27:42 leading by conquest or military might, a
27:44 brighter future could be brought about
27:47 by examples of selfless people, saying,
27:50 "Our destiny is universality, one not by
27:52 the sword, but by the strength of
27:54 brotherhood and our fraternal aspiration
27:57 to reunite mankind." This again makes a
27:59 lot of sense given Dstky's religion. For
28:01 him, the most impactful person in
28:03 history was Jesus Christ. He
28:05 accomplished more than any general.
28:07 Transformed the face of much of the
28:09 world and yet did so through the power
28:12 of his message of total love. Sure, this
28:14 idea has been corrupted and used for all
28:17 sorts of nefarious ends. But DSTVski
28:21 still believes, hopes, and dreams that
28:23 we might be able to recapture it. Viewed
28:25 in this light, some of DSTVski's
28:27 characters like Zoimma, Aliosha,
28:30 Mishkin, and more can form powerful
28:32 examples for us to follow. Personally, I
28:34 find that part of the power of great
28:36 literature is that it lends a certain
28:38 dignity to ways of living. When we are
28:41 struggling to follow our own values, we
28:42 can turn to a literary character we
28:45 admire and ask what they would do, and
28:47 suddenly we don't feel so much like a
28:49 fool. I have certainly noticed this
28:51 myself. When I am struggling to be kind
28:54 or when it seems to be backfiring on me,
28:56 I quite often call to mind the humble
28:58 Aliosha or the poor and loving Prince
29:00 Mushkin. And it certainly helps soothe
29:02 my burgeoning resentment. It helps me
29:04 realize that love is not stupid or
29:07 ridiculous. It might not always go our
29:09 way, and there are plenty of kind people
29:11 that get taken advantage of, but in my
29:13 very limited experience, it remains
29:15 infinitely better than the cynical
29:18 alternative. I still have a long way to
29:20 go to live up to even a minuscule
29:22 fraction of this kind of love. But I am
29:24 eternally grateful to have these
29:26 characters to help me on my way. But
29:28 whoever we are, cynic or optimist,
29:31 religious or atheist, we can certainly
29:32 learn a lot from this extraordinary
29:35 Russian thinker. And who knows, maybe
29:39 he's right. Maybe love truly can save
29:41 the world. Because to quote the New
29:44 Testament that Dosski valued so much,
29:47 love is patient. Love is kind. It does
29:49 not envy. It does not boast. It is not
29:52 proud. It does not dishonor others. It
29:54 is not self-seeking. It is not easily
29:57 angered. It keeps no record of wrongs.
29:59 Love does not delight in evil, but
30:02 rejoices with the truth. It always
30:05 protects, always trusts, always hopes,
30:08 always perseveres. I have to admit I
30:11 don't know if Dstoyvki is right, but I
30:14 can say I really hope he is. And if you
30:16 want to explore more of Dossyki's
30:18 philosophy, then click here to see my
30:20 analysis of perhaps his most famous
30:23 work, Crime and Punishment. And stick
30:25 around for more on thinking to improve your
