The slavophile thinkers Aleksey Khomiakov and Ivan Kireevsky — examples of great theological and philosophical influences — were capable of synthesizing with a rigorous purity the necessity of a renovation of the Russian spirit, as with their notion of catholicity [sobornost], — that must not be confounded with the generic latinist term, as Khomiakov argues that the latin church lost its characteristic of universality, since latinists departed from the bosom of the universal faith by affirming the infallibility of their bishop over all Christendom — which influenced substantially Dostoevsky's philosophy, as it is made explicit by himself:[...] find a universal human ideal in themselves and by their own powers, and therefore they altogether harm themselves and their cause. The idea of universal humanity ever more wears away between them. Among each of them it takes a different type, dulls, and assumes in consciousness a new form. The Christian bond that up to this time united them loses strength with every day. — F. Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky understood with absoluteness the assimilation of western culture on the Russian society, which he criticized tenaciously in two works mainly: The Crocodile and Winter Notes on Summer Impressions. The former is a short satirical work which tells about a superior and overculturalized Russian man that, being swallowed by a crocodile — owned by a stingy and greedy German man —, adapts himself to the crocodile's stomach, and even starts to work and live his life normally inside of his stomach. The latter presents a harsh matured critique on the European culture due to his travel to Western Europe, which goes on the contrary way of common writings related to travels, since Dostoevsky revels himself with a profound attentiveness to the details concerning the very nature of European habits, specially the French and English ones. Both works presents the rationalistic and unfaithful behavior of European peoples in different ways, although its clarity denounces it with the same efficiency. Overall, the progress of individualism and the emptiness of materialism are destructive by themselves, and Dostoevsky does not fail to synthesize in his critique a tone of destructiveness, of a complete misery — promoted by those who pretend to be the saviors of humanity. His defense of Russian traditional society must not be understood separately or fragmentarily, the wholeness of his critique on the rationalistic and bourgeois materialistic European society comprises the integrality of Russian Orthodox culture.The Eastern ideal, i.e. the ideal of Russian Orthodoxy, is first the spiritual unity of humanity in Christ, and then, by virtue of this spiritual uniting of all in Christ, surely the proper sovereign and social unification. — F. Dostoevsky.
For Dostoevsky:Personality is the image and likeness of God in man and this is why it rises above the natural life... Personality is spiritual and presupposes the existence of a spiritual world. — N. Berdyaev.
It seems to me that the whole of human life can be summed up in the one statement that man only exists for the purpose of proving to himself every minute that he is free. — F. Dostoevsky.
I believe the man was a psychological genius, but is largely ignored as such. — Metaphysician Undercover
His reaction to the crisis of faith it seems was experienced by so many among Europe's intellectuals in the 19th century was to have recourse to greater faith. — Ciceronianus the White
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