The Hermeneutics of looking in Dostoevsky’s work

The looking is a fundamental component of Dostoevsky’s work. The looking is the latent element of each novel, which crosses several stages, having a non-uniform structure, but who gives Dostoevsky’s work unit. The variations of looking within this vast work, this is what we aim in this philosophical/hermeneutics analysis, because the issue of looking more than any other will allow us to decipher the physiognomy of the complex architectural created by Dostoevsky.

Regarding the work of Dostoevsky, an authentic philosophical analysis can be enforced only on the characters created by him, and that because Dostoevsky does not propose a philosophy of author, he doesn’t build a unique vision of man and of the world; instead, his heroes propose a philosophy, each of them having such a vision in the service of who they are fully committed.

To speak and write philosophical about Dostoevsky means to carefully analyze each of the important characters created by him and to try to distinguish their enigma; the writer’s artistic strength consist in the fact that he create characters detached by their author, characters who hide behind them a secret, and an analysis that ignores the autonomy of these heroes is incapable of understanding the world created by Dostoevsky.

The hermeneutics of looking considers this concern for visual, image, imaginary, different way of looking specific to Dostoevsky’s art. The way in which a certain character thinks and communicates with others is strictly related to the way in which he looks at the world and to the self.