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Thursday 12 August 2021

Irwin Weil on Dostoevsky

 




Over an hour, but easy viewing if you have a liking for Dostoevsky. To my mind Irwin Weil brings out very well what a difficult man Dostoevsky was, but also his uncanny insights into the future. Almost as if he saw the horrors of the twentieth century woven into human nature and human institutions.

Weil also brings out how Dostoevsky’s insights were steeped in his Christianity, particularly his insights into the ineradicable contradictions within what we are as humans. 

He saw very clearly the dangers of not accepting and living with those contradictions and the corresponding dangers of nihilism as an empty and soulless evasion of human nature. For we atheists, Dostoevsky’s Christian genius is not a comfortable aspect of his abiding relevance to our time as well as his own.

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