Love is not a rational act in itself, yet we all do it at one point or another. As soon as love is rationalized, it becomes something else that is not as pure or powerful as love.
I'm writing a paper on The Idiot by Dostoevsky. That is all I could find of it to write about without expecting everyone to have some knowledge of this novel.
The paper's pretty sweet so far, though I now understand why all the critics we've been reading make up their own vocabulary...an example of embly's vocab:
It is here that we struggle with the manner in which the Prince loves Natasia. He describes it at one point as pity, and others around him perceive it as pity, however I would argue that the Prince does not know how to pity. In order to pity someone you must deem yourself as better or as more full of worth than the other individual, and the Prince certainly does not consider him self of more worth than others around him, in fact it could be argued that he considers himself lower than his counterparts. His love is certainly a lateral love at the very least if not an “ascending” love, it is definitely not a “descending” love that could be redefined as pity. This is certainly a Christ-like type of love, I would argue that Christ loves only laterally and not “ascendingly” or descendingly”.
I talk about Christ a lot in this paper...as if I had a clue:
Especially Christ’s love and love of Christ are an irrational love. Christ loves with out any reservations, nor any expectations, and as such love of Christ equally must be without reservation nor expectation. Yet of course love of Christ is ridden with expectations of some sort of return that cannot be defined.
Dostoevsky said that if he had to choose between Christ and the Truth, that he would choose Christ. This appears to be a completely irrational decision, if one had access to the Truth, the what need would one have of Christ? It would seem that the love of Christ is indicative of more than finding ultimate Truth
The Idiot has something of a Christ complex....he is a beautiful man...but just a man not a god or a saint or a martyr.
I currently have six pages and change...sorry this is so distinctly not about music, but my mind is currently dominated by this and only this...mostly
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5 comments:
Quoting Embly, "Dostoevsky said that if he had to choose between Christ and the Truth, that he would choose Christ. This appears to be a completely irrational decision, if one had access to the Truth, the what need would one have of Christ?"
However, what if Christ is the Truth, as He Himself claimed. Then, it would be unnecessary to choose between the two, and choosing Christ would be rational.
This I think is somewhat takening what the disjunction that Dostoyevsky makes out of context. The Truth for Dostoyevsky often meant the way the world actually is, full of misery, grim, pain, spiteful people making their lives worse for each other. Christ comes in, as does the character of The Idiot, as radically opposed to this Truth of the world, in such a way that it seems he just doesn't understand that this is the way things have to be. That is, an idea of nobility is being the pragmatist, the realist, who sees the muck of the world, accepts it, and tries to play within its rules to make a life a little less unhappy. The Christ character is just at right angles to this view, such that people do not understand what to do with them.
So it is a real bijection that Dostoyevsky presents, not a false. I would say it is the say sort of tension one finds in the first chapter of the Gospel of John.
Dostoyevsky I think struggled alot with how to make his rational, philosophical mind, so to speak, get along with how he knew one should behave in the world. In a sense, one must eschew being a cynic, even at the cost of thereby being blind to the Truth.
Wow, my speechifying up there is not so good: "I would say it is the say sort of."
my response to anonymous is:
a. you neglected to quote the line following what you quoted "It would seem that the love of Christ is indicative of more than finding ultimate Truth" which entirely changes the tone of that thought.
b. inherent with in the statement "Dostoevsky said that if he had to choose between Christ and the Truth, that he would choose Christ." is the assumption that Truth and Christ are not the same thing. Because if they were Dostoevsky would not be forced to make a decision between the two.
anyhow any statements about Christ in this post do not in any way reflect my opinion about Christ, but rather it is an analysis of a book that deals distinctly with how one might endeavor to love as Christ does, written by a man who experienced true conversion, yet has a "rational" or cynical eye for the world that surrounds him.
"In a sense, one must eschew being a cynic, even at the cost of thereby being blind to the Truth."
That's a nice way of putting it.
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