Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky both applied Christian thought to modern existential questions in startlingly similar ways. Both took a symphonic approach to truth: Kierkegaard by writing under a series of pseudonyms, and Dostoevsky by creating a "dialogic" universe in which radically opposing voices clash. Both writers were master humorists, deploying both earnestness and irony in confronting life's cursed questions. By reading them together, we will allow them to dialogically illuminate one another as we address fundamental questions of what it means to exist in freedom and subjectivity.