Episode #221 ... Dostoevsky - The Idiot

hello everyone I'm Steven West this is philosophies this so there's a story from doki's life that's usually one of the first things you hear about him when you start looking into his work I personally think the story hits a bit better when you already know a little bit about what he was going for in his work which at this point we do this episode being part four in the series we've been doing that said the story is about the time in dov's life that he almost got shot by a firing squad classic story I'm sure he used to tell around the campfire to all the kids and one verse of this story that we have comes from the main character of the book we're talking about today another one of the five Great novels of dovi it's called the idiot we'll talk more about the book here in a second but first let's hear this story though and understand how some of the intense experiences that Doki had in his life led to the conclusions in the rest of his work to what he thinks a good life is to his views on beauty and love and more specifically what he means when he says a now famous quote that's been associated with this book The Idiot what did he mean when he said that he thought that beauty will save the world world there's been a lot of discussion surrounding this particular quote and we'll be a lot closer to understanding it by the end of the episode here today see when Do's writing the book demons we just talked about and when he talks about a revolutionary cell that's planning stuff to potentially bring down the government in the book that's not just him sitting around you know method acting what it would be like to be a revolutionary no doeski early in his writing career really was a member of what's now known as the petrevski circle meaning he was part of one of these revolutionary groups which is part of a gives him so much insight into the psychology of these kinds of people multiple of which the characters in the book demons are based on people from this petreski circle that he knew so like any revolutionary at the time that's living in zaris Russia a Russia that's trying to ...