The work of F. M. Dostoevsky has traditionally attracted and continues to attract the attention of thinkers of various kinds. There are a large number of literary-critical, psychoanalytic and, finally, philosophical works devoted to understanding his legacy. In this article, we will focus on the analysis of one of his first works, a novella called “The Doppelganger”. It was with her that the themes of the duality of human nature in the works of F. M. Dostoevsky began. We will also analyze numerous interpretations and identify the main problems of understanding them. Attempts to comprehend the “Double” were made already during the writer's lifetime. N. A. Dobrolyubov, V. G. Belinsky, V.N. Maikov in their works drew attention to the social problems of the story. They saw in the work an attempt on the part of F. M. Dostoevsky to continue developing the type of “little man” that had previously been found in the works of A.S. Pushkin and N. V. Gogol. Among the existing philosophical interpretations, several main lines of reasoning can be confidently distinguished. Thinkers belonging to the first (N. A. Berdyaev, I. I. Evlampiev) believe that the “Double” was the first attempt on the part of F. M. Dostoevsky shows the deep antinomianism inherent in the human personality as such. Others (G. Pomerants, A. A. Ukhtomsky, D. S. Merezhkovsky, E. Ya. Golosovker, S. I. Fudel) turned primarily to the Christian interpretation of the duality of human nature. It was based on the idea of the inner man. And finally, as the last line of understanding, we can single out one according to which the double is none other than the Other for me (M. M. Bakhtin, V. A. Podoroga). Psychoanalytic interpretations (I. Neufeld, Z. Freud, O. Rank, R. Girard, A. Green, L. Monnet Dao, R. Lefort, M. Cadot, J. A. A. Catto) focused on finding in Dostoevsky all that later became the core of psychoanalysis as scientific knowledge. This article focuses on an attempt to comprehend and systematize the interpretations of the problem of the duality of human nature in F. M. Dostoevsky's novel “The Double” and the writer's work in general that already exist in the space of intellectual discourse. And also on the formulation of a new, philosophical and anthropological interpretation of the bifurcation of man.
Kholodnova K. N. The problem of the duality of human nature in the work of F. M. Dostoevsky (on the example of the novel “The Double”). Kaspiyskiy region: politika, ekonomika, kultura [The Caspian Region: Politics, Economics, Culture]. 2024, no. 2 (79), pp. 102–112. https://doi.org/10.54398/1818510Х_2024_2_102.
