Money and Personality. Notes from the House of the Dead, The Gambler, The Adolescent

Information about the author:

Tatyana V. Kovalevskaya, DSc in Philosophy, Docent, Full Professor, European Languages Department, Institute of Linguistics, Russian State University for the Humanities, Miusskaya Sq. 6, 125993 Moscow, Russia.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0527-2289

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Abstract:

Taking Notes from the House of the Dead, The Gambler, and The Adolescent as its material, the article treats the topic of money in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s works primarily as a metaphysical concept instead of an economic phenomenon of everyday life. Money, “minted freedom,” is intended to replace a person’s inner personality and become that person’s external personality. The person thirsting for money envisions this replacement as a way of gaining boundless freedom that is akin to the freedom of God. In fact, however, the accumulation of money separates a person from other people and from God, deprives that person of their ability to act, of their freedom. The article analyzes the mechanisms of this phenomenon, the various forms of a person’s perception of their relations with the social and metaphysical levels of existence (a person’s “sociomythological status”) in different social strata, and their consequences for the person’s metaphysical self-determination.