Amazement confronts certainty... Russian writers talk about eternal questions

Amazement Encounters Certainty (https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674299184) “A masterful panorama of classical Russian literature and its intellectual background.” - _The Wall Street Journal_ “A wise and founder... As the best Russian literature teaches us, liberating the human will from all limits and restrictions is the path to individual and collective destruction. We should all be grateful to Gary Saul Morson for distilling this invaluable insight with such clarity, depth and eloquence.” -Daniel J. Mahoney, New Criterion Magazine “‘Wonder Versus Certainty’ is Gary Saul Morson’s literary masterpiece.” -Joseph Epstein, Washington Free Beacon Since the time of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Chekhov, Russian literature has asked questions about good and evil, moral responsibility, and human freedom with unparalleled clarity and depth. In this sweeping reflection, Gary Saul Morson details the intellectual debates that took place over two centuries of Russian writing, as the greatest thinkers of the empire and then the Soviet Union captivated readers with their idealism, philosophical insight, and revolutionary fervor. Morson describes the Russian literary heritage as a struggle between a radical intellectual elite that relentlessly followed ideology along the paths of revolution and violence, and writers who delved into the depths of the human soul. In exploring the justification for bloodshed, Morson adopts Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of “unjustification” – the idea that it is impossible to evade responsibility for one's actions. Throughout his book, Morson highlights a distinctive feature of Russian culture: how the desire to alleviate profound suffering can lead either to sincere compassion or to bloodthirsty tyranny. What emerges is a struggle between rigid fanaticism and open dialogue, between extreme certainty and a humble sense of wonder at the world's elusive complexity - a thought-provoking journey into inescapable questions.