Dostoevsky: The Sacred and the Profane

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The philosopher Mircea Eliade, in his classic work, The Sacred and the Profane (1957), states: “Man becomes aware of the sacred because it manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the profane” (10). Seemingly oppositional modalities, the sacred and the profane are central to the poetics of Fyodor Dostoevsky, the author of such works as Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoevsky, who for a lifetime preoccupied himself with pro and contra states of being and action, complicates the bearing of oppositionality itself. Idiots, madmen, ascetics, holy fools, buffoons, schismatics, zealous monks,self-sacrificing women, and other eccentric personalities make up Dostoevsky’s oeuvre and speak to his enduring interest in a broader understanding of the sacred and the profane, which in this course, we will examine as umbrella categories to better understand the ways in which the author complicates the relationships between them. Could this direction help us elucidate Dostoevsky’s approach not only to ethical issues and life’s “accursed questions” but also to eccentricity and otherness in general? Closely studying the contradictions and instances of symbiosis arising in each of these categories within their historical, religious, socio-cultural, and medical contexts will help us in our endeavor, as well is provide insight into our own fascination with this celebrated writer of human personality for whom perhaps the sacred was also a way of orientation in chaos.