“If It Were Mathematically Proved to You That Truth Is Outside Christ...”: Problem of Truth and Evil in the Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and William Shakespeare

Abstract

The paper interprets Dostoevsky's enigmatic Credo where truth is separated from God (Christ) by offering two contexts for this “profession de foi”: epistemological problematics of Modernity (as exemplified in William Shakespeare's “Hamlet”) and the development of science in the 19th century. The paper's academic novelty lies in situating both versions of Dostoevsky’s Credo in medieval nominalist theology and in the worldview typical of Modernity, while simultaneously juxtaposing them with the epistemological consequences of non-Euclidian geometry. This approach allows for considering the Credo, particularly its version in “The Devils”, as a continuation of the process of separating truth as a provable statement from truth as a divine attribute. This process started in medieval theology and it is our claim that it found its most famous poetic expression in “Hamlet”. The article demonstrates that Dostoevsky’s theologizing comprises both mystical religious experiences and formal scholastic theology as reflected in Western European literature.

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About this article

Publication history

• Received: October 27, 2021.
• Published: December 28, 2021.

Keywords

• спор об универсалиях
• трагедия «Гамлет»
• теологическая и «натуральная» истины
• Н. И. Лобачевский
• Ф. М. Достоевский
• debate on universals
• tragedy "Hamlet"
• theological and “natural” truths
• N. I. Lobachevsky
• F. M. Dostoevsky

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