Dostoevsky And His Creation - A Psycho-Critical Study (1920) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IV THE STRUGGLE FOR AN ABSOLUTE VALUE The unceasing urge of Dostoevsky's creative art was the search for an Absolute Value. The most tormenting question of his characters was: Is there a God or not ? In other words: Is there or is there not an Absolute Value towards which the will of man and mankind may be directed for the sake of a highest self-assertion ? If not then the existence of both Man and Cosmos becomes something accidental and devoid of any higher meaning. Therefore, once cognisant of that, the individual with an uncompromising ' serious conscience ' must either cease to exist, or must accept his own will as the only law, and his personal Ego as the highest Value. ' If God exists, all is His will and from His will I cannot escape If not, it is all my will, and I am bound to show self-will. . . . Because all will has become mine,' proclaims the maniac Kirillov (in The Possessed). And the nightmaredevil whispers the same thought to Ivan Karamazov: ' Since there is anyway no God, the new man may well become man-God, even if he is the only one in the whole world; and promoted to his new position, he may light- heartedly overstep all the barriers of the old morality, of the old slave-man, if necessary. Where God stands, the place is holy. . . . " All things are lawful" and that is the end of it.' But the formula, ' All things are lawful ' is in itself a negation of Value as such. Self-will, so categorically proclaimed by Kirillov, negates not only Absolute Value, but all values in general ?for they become simply caprices, casual projections and illusory creations of one's own self-will. The will, yearning for the value created by the will itself, seizes not a value, but its own self: instead of will for Value's sake, we get in essence will for will's sake, that...