Dostoevsky and the Dilemas of Contemporary Existence or of the Finitude without Redemption

Abstract

The central aim of the present paper is to present the problematic character of action in the contemporary world in direct dialog with Fiodor Dostoyevsky’s work The Possessed. In order to fulfil it, the paper starts with a principle position concerning the radical phenomenological content of literary work of art, above all the contemporary one. Second, done this differential basis for the exposition of our problem, we try to show the structural connection between three factors in the demoniac world which emerges from Dostoyevsky’s work: a peculiar reception of the French Revolution; an initial articulation of the ambient of The possessed from two peripherical figures in the main plot of the book, but completely decisive for the development of particular possessed figures; and, finally, the problematic character of action and the lack of measure present in two existential possibilities, Stavrogin and Kirilov.