language & recognition in dostoevsky

So in a recent post I talked about how the central that freedom has in the work of Dostoevsky. Why he sees it as being so important is that through our freedom we have to opportunity & possibility of fulfilling what it means to be human, what could be understood as the divination of man (theōsis).

Freedom allows man the opportunity for creation, without freedom then the possibility for creation is also nonexistent. That freedom necessarily has to be played out in the realm of space and time. An avenue which freedom is used is through our use of language. It is through language that we are able to escape the shell of the inner life.

Language allows us to recognize the other and through dialogue we can be recognized also. It is through speak that possibility is opened up.

Rowan Williams has described how different characters of Dostoevsky reveal themselves to others through narrative. It is this self-disclosing which opens them up to the other. In this opening the possibility of reconciliation is made possible, where it wasn’t before the dialogue.

Rowan Williams defines the inter-relation of language & freedom as follows:

Freedom is formally the capacity of the will to locate and define itself, and, as we  have repeatedly seen, it can be used arbitrarily, reactively, self-defensively and oppressively. But what all these uses have in common is that they lead to one or another kind of death. They all forget the basic insight that freedom is most clearly seen in language, in the capacity of human agents to go beyond either mere reaction to or reproduction of the world of material stimuli; and if this is the case, freedom is inevitably bound to time and exchange, since language is unthinkable without these…The other—the speaking other—becomes the condition of any freedom that is more than an exercise of the will for its own sake. That kind of exercise, Dostoevsky implies, is fatal to freedom itself in the long run, as it confines freedom to a self-limited world which ultimately collapses upon itself. Freedom as detachment or freedom as self assertion will equally lead away from language, toward the silence of nonrecognition.

What is clear in all this is that dialogue, that is real conversation where both parties are actively participating, is pointed to be being a self-less act instead of being self-ish act. What dialogue then becomes is an ongoing project, there can be no final word, because we are all continuing towards growth & self-definition.

Dialogue is an opposing force against the diabolic that we saw earlier. Language opens up, exposes one’s self to the other, whereas the diabolical desires for closure, to form barriers between one’s self and the other. Thinking of examples such as confessing one’s sin, something which requires language & the other. You find this transformation that confession makes possible within many of Dostoevsky’s works.

There is also the diabolical use of language, when one doesn’t hold to true dialogue—speaking & listening—when one doesn’t allow for self-recognition but instead builds barriers. Our speech affects the world around us, this needs to be recognized and taken responsibility for. This is need for responsibility is clearly seen in the affects that Stephan has on the others in Devils.

Also it seems you can find these same themes within the gospels of the New Testament. Also the opening statement of the gospel of John seems very interestingly applicable. Christ is the word, he is the final word.