EXISTENTIAL UNDERSTANDING OF THE IDEA OF FREEDOM IN CHRISTIANITY AND NEOLIBERALISM IN THE LIGHT OF DOSTEVSKY’S ARTISTIC WORLDVIEW
Abstract
Human existence and destiny are shaped by their freedom, a gift that carries the greatest responsibility and dignity.
Christianity recognises two types of freedom: Freedom of choice, the source of both virtue and vice, and spiritual freedom, the liberation from carnal passions and desires.
The human soul possesses the potential for both infinite development and perfection, as well as infinite potential for decline and degradation. Everything is determined by the values that shape the course of their life.
The modern era is the era of the disappearance of spiritual potential, ideals and values in a person, and the survival of this potential becomes the most acute existential problem. The values derived from Christianity are crucial in this salvation.
For Christianity, man is the bearer of immense spiritual power, and with this power he is able to overcome the state of spiritual decline, not to be satisfied only with earthly prosperity, and to constantly transcend towards the divine essence and values.
A divine spark resides within our dark body, and we must choose a path that turns it into the light.
The concept of freedom is the core concern of Dostoevsky's writing. All five of his novels tell us a shocking story about the terrible darkness and loneliness that surrounds the characters of these novels. And Dostoevsky sees the root of the trouble in European liberalism permeated with atheism and nihilism, the essence of which Nietzsche expressed as follows: "God is dead". The death of the Christian God has always secretly permeated European liberalism, and this was recognized by Dostoevsky before Nietzsche. In his novels, he depicts the fate of ungodly people in freedom and the fate of freedom in ungodly man, when ungodly freedom grows into arbitrariness, permissiveness, then crime, and finally either spiritual and physical death or despotism and complete slavery. Loving human beings infinitely, Dostoevsky believes that human, as the image of God, has a spiritual power with which he can overcome this terrible spiritual decline, and he sees the source of this power in Orthodoxy.
Keywords. Freedom, Coercion, Arbitrariness, Truth, Value, Conscience, Nihilism, Liberalism, Grace, Faith, Transcendence.
