The Corporeity Discourse and the Body “Arguments” in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Works

The subject of this research is the discourse on the body and corporeity in Dostoevsky’s works on the example of four out of his “five greatest novels”. The questions of the body and corporeity are often eliminated in philosophical studies of Dostoevsky’s works which allows researchers to conceptualize the content of his novels more easily. This tradition and its inconsistency can be revealed through a brief historiographical review. The author of the article, on the contrary, regards the corporeity as an important part of Dostoevsky’s philosophical and anthropological ideas. Thus, two main aspects of the discourse on the body and corporeity found in various proportions in the writer’s works: 1) corresponds with materialistic philosophical anthropology, and 2) matches the Christian patristic anthropological tradition. In addition, the article describes Dostoevsky’s non-formalizability of corporeity which stands above the materialistic interpretations of the man and the standardized, not problematized body. This is achieved through cultural and historical, biographical and ideological contexts of Dostoevsky’s writings. The hermeneutic analysis of the four novels texts provides an opportunity to briefly outline the concept of the body and corporeity understanding. Thus, the author identifies three modes of corporeity underlying the body problematization in Dostoevsky’s novels: the scientistic mode, the otherness mode, and the religious mode (based on the anthropological tradition of Eastern Patristics). Unlike the materialistic concepts of a onefold approach to the man, Dostoevsky offers twofold (or even threefold) concept dissecting corporeity through its most non-formalized manifestations. The body for Dostoevsky is both universal and unique. On the one hand, it complicates the corporeity conceptualization, but on the other hand, it enhances its importance in the writer’s works. The results of the research can be used to elaborate new non-reductionist interpretations of Dostoevsky’s literary legacy.

Dostoevsky, body, corporeity, Dostoevsky's philosophy, Russian philosophy, Patristic sources, beauty, disease, death, Dostoevsky's philosophical discovery