Prot. Dionysius Dunaevsky. “With pain and melancholy it has taken root in the world...”: Metaphysics of a successful psychopath in the light of Christian anthropologytranslated

“Those people endured their steps, and therefore they are right, but I did not endure and, therefore, I did not have the right to allow myself this step.” In this short reflection, Raskolnikov is a diagnosis not only of the 19th century, but also of our everyday life. A hundred years before the terms “sociopathy” and “corporate psychopath,” Dostoevsky described the spiritual technology of burning out the conscience.

Indeed, in Raskolnikov’s coordinate system, “Napoleons, Lycurgus and …” are right not at all because their mandate was issued by Heaven. Their “rightness” is utilitarian: they were able to drown out the voice of the moral law, overcame the rebellion of God-created nature and did not go mad from blood, turning into super-efficient machines. To become a superman, you need to commit an act of spiritual castration - cut off the ability to compassion, step over your own nature.

Today this romance of the ax and Napoleon has gotten rid of the St. Petersburg dampness. Modern civilization has translated the student's metaphysical delirium into the respectable language of science and business. What Dostoevsky considered the terminal stage of a disease of the spirit is today called “absolute composure,” “emotional autonomy,” or the “killer features” of a successful leader. At personal growth trainings with the sauce of “getting out of your comfort zone”...