Политический смысл фигуры идиота (случай князя Мышкина)

Метаморфозис. 2022. Т. 6. № 2. С. 21–33.

Sheynov T. G.

The article analyzes Hannah Arendt's views on the apolitical nature of the Christian worldview
and uses them as a conceptual framework for interpreting Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot. In the first
part of the article, the author reveals the main points concerning the opposition between the private
and the public in Arendt's theory and points out the contradictory status of Christianity in its relation
to the field of the political realm. On the one hand, the philosopher uses the reference to the book of
Genesis as an argument for the conditionality of action by man's original being in the multitude and
considers the teaching of Jesus as a special interpretation of faith as the beginning of action and the
miracle that constitutes its principle. On the other hand, Arendt draws attention to the worldlessness
(apoliticality) of Christianity due to the eschatological expectation of the end of the world as well as
the emphasis of certain personalities (St. Paul, Aurelius Augustine) on the solitude of the created
man. In its most explicit form, this ambivalence is expressed in the concept of the active good, an act
whose necessary inclusion in the world is accompanied by a demand for radical concealment. In the
second part of the article, the author demonstrates this contradiction using the example of Prince
Myshkin, a hero whose orientation combines key features of the Christian worldview: the negativity
of the author of the action in relation to the world, and the interruption of the consequences of the
action, achieved by its cancellation in an act of forgiveness.

Keywords: христианство, action, действие, Christianity, Arendt, Арендт, Ф. М. Достоевский, Dostoevsky F. M, worldlessness, Prince Myshkin, apoliticality, Безмирность, Князь Мышкин, Аполитичность