PHL 366 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Existential Crisis, Rational Egoism, Egotism
17 Jul 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
D (1821-1881): a russian novelist, short story writer and journalist, who has been recognized, along with kierkegaard, as one of the 19th century forerunners of existentialism. D was trained as an engineer, but left this profession to focus on writing, first novel poor folk published in 1846. In 1846 got involved with a christian socialist group, was sentenced to death for his involvement, ended up just getting exiled/imprisoned in siberia. Emil fila reader of dostoevsky (1906: looks to be in despair, christian symbols. Like k, d is critical of enlightened bourgeois modernity. He saw russian society undergo rapid progress and westernization, to become more secular, more scientific, more rational. But d was critical of what was seen by western modernity as progress . The enlightenment idea of human nature is too narrow rationalistic, he argued. The danger of westernization centered around its egoism: the idea that to be rational is to be self-interested.
