The Brothers Karamazov

For Yuri. Continued from parts one, two, three, four, and five.

Part six will need to be broken up into sections, so that I can release them at all, given that my workday is now 14 hrs long, with 1.5 hrs of commuting. After I am finished with the course I’ve laid out here, I’ll post them together in either a summary or a collection.

Across these sections of the sixth post, I thought it was wise to linger over the transition from the earliest writings in the New Testament vis-à-vis our themes of writing vs. speaking, the role of the heart, and the nature of basically prophetic or oracular speech –particularly the writings of St. Paul in the years following A.D. 50 and 60– towards the third and fourth century. Continue reading →

For Yuri; an afterthought to how Dostoyevsky may have replied to Gerard’s objections to the focus on tending to the heart, and his championing of economic development and rationalization of the social world as the primary route leading to the reduction of the world’s problems and, seemingly, the improvement of human nature — in which moral and ascetical practices, such as tending to one’s heart, are seen as superfluous at best. What follows below is not an argument against this (who would begrudge development?), simply an attempt at being an amanuensis of sorts. Continue reading →