ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE GRAND INQUISITOR IN F. M. DOSTOEVSKY’S NOVEL “THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV”

Abstract

Introduction. The technocratization that a person faces in the current reality, along with increased life comfort, has also brought with it a clear threat to changing the status of a person in the world irrevocably. In the discourse of modern posthumanistic philosophy, attempts are being made not to annul the privileges of a person, but to extend them to the whole world, that is, to make suffering, the ability to question, subjectivity and other characteristics of a person belong to everyone. The Russian philosophical tradition of questioning about man throughout its existence denied and continues to deny the deanthropologization of the world and seeks to conduct a discourse about man as one who is ontologically not equal to the world and cannot be forced out of the privileged position he occupies. The purpose of the article is to touch upon the most interesting, in the author’s opinion, works existing in the world research field concerning the philosophical understanding of the “Legend of the Grand Inquisitor”, as well as to develop her own idea, which is based on an attempt to philosophically and anthropologically refract the “Legend” and to show that it bears the features of precisely Russian philosophical thought and radically denies the deanthropological tendencies of Western thought, arising from its internal logic and naturally leading it to nullify the privileged position of man in the world, and to demonstrate the possibilities that the Russian philosophical tradition provides for overcoming the anthropological catastrophe, which is so widely discussed today. Methods. The main method of the research is a comparative philosophical and literary analysis of the works of F. M. Dostoevsky, V. V. Rozanov, N. A. Berdyaev, S. L. Frank, A. Camus, Z. Freud, I. Neifeld, G. Hesse, as well as a point reference to the works of K. N. Leontiev, S. N. Bulgakov, N. O. Lossky and V. S. Solovyov. These types of analysis are aimed at identifying connotations and discrepancies in the philosophical systems of the studied thinkers, both at the level of textual analysis of their works, and at the level of studying their concepts. Textual analysis is used as an additional method. The author of the article gives a conscious preference to the comparative method, as such, which serves to achieve the purpose of the article. Scientific novelty of the research. The paper focuses on comparing attempts to conceptualize a person in the discourse of Russian and European thought. As exemplified by a number of representatives of the Russian and Western intellectual traditions, as well as a comparative analysis of their concepts. The article attempts to reflect the deep difference between the two anthropologies. In addition, the author makes an attempt to find in the philosophy of F. M. Dostoevsky those deep anthropological problems that are of a universal nature, and have found their understanding, both in the Russian and in the European philosophical tradition. Results. The author explores the anthropological configurations of the philosophies of the chosen thinkers. The article analyzes both Russian and European attempts to ask about a person, focusing their attention on interpreting the “Legend of the Grand Inquisitor”, which is part of the last novel by the Russian writer and thinker F. M. Dostoevsky. Conclusions. Russian philosophical thought, which is rooted in the Gospel tradition of comprehending man, is characterized by attempts to see person as finite, which contains the infinite. Russian philosophy in its ideas continues to defend man, his existential uniqueness and subjectivity, guaranteed by God. At the same time, European philosophy is on the path of development, in the process of which a person risks losing the privileges of existence, a posthuman, a superhuman is conceptualized, and a tendency is outlined to blur the border between a human and non-human entities.