Hello, everyone. I'm Stephen West. This is Philosophys This. So today we're going to be talking

about the book, the Brothers Karamazov, which means, among other things, we're going to be talking

today about the faith of Dostoevsky. Faith was a big part of how he lived his life, where

if you're someone that spent many years studying him, you know, reading the journals, the letters,

the notes of Dostoevsky, people

will often describe his view of faith as a kind of existential tragic form of Christianity.

That's the kind of thing they'll say when trying to describe his faith in all its layers,

which to a modern person who just hears that, especially if you haven't listened to these last

four episodes we've done building to this point, that can sound on the surface like it's kind of an oxymoron, like tragic Christianity,

existential questions. I mean, isn't Christianity the thing you believe in? So you don't got to be

in agony with existential dread every day. I mean, someone could say that when it comes to how

most people seem to be using this Christianity thing,

Jesus was basically a fidget spinner that had 12 disciples.

I mean, how can that ever be anything but something that helps people cope with a painful reality they can't fully affirm?

Well, if you want to understand where he's coming from with his faith,

first thing we've got to make sure we're doing is not reducing Christianity, and all of religion, for that matter, to just a superficial, lazy kind of religion that gives people easy

answers. Certainly plenty of people out there you could find that will use religion like this,

but Dostoevsky and many other people are not this kind of Christian. And it's understandable.

Sometimes just as humans will take the worst example of something we've seen Sometimes just as humans, we'll take the worst

example of something we've seen in the world and will make the entire thing into the worst

things we've seen from it. But out of respect to the history of people who have thought about

stuff on this planet, you know, if we want to honor the ideas here with religion being a big

...