Stavrogin and His Soul, or: The Transformation of Skepticism in the Digital Age

ABSTRACT It is not by chance that the title of this article paraphrases Gustav Gustavovich Shpet’s article “The Skeptic and His Soul” (1919). Is Stavrogin a skeptic? Yes, and the novel Demons is a narrative about how self-satisfied, self-flattering skepticism (skepticism for its own sake) leads man to devastation, to the dead end of absolute nihilism, to spiritual and literal suicide. Two circumstances lead us to this interpretation both of Dostoevsky’s novel and of its central character, Nikolai Stavrogin: the striking, contemporary “recognizability” of the story, even at the narrative level (at least for contemporary Russia), and our familiarity with materials from Shpet’s archives dedicated to Dostoevsky’s work. Handwritten notes, a synopsis of Demons, and a wealth of correspondence show how Shpet (with other Russian thinkers of his time) was immersed in the theme of transformation of skepticism against the background of Russia’s revolutionary upheavals. This immersion distinctly clarifies for us today the origins of the relevance of Demons, a novel recounting how skepticism tumbles into the void of nihilism. The article demonstrates how completely modern digital forms of self-expression and forms of “conversation” unfolding online are surprisingly commensurate with the form of social structure Dostoevsky presents in Demons. The form of conversation he found to express skeptical doubt turning into nihilism has become a reality today, vividly represented in social media, where conversation is transformed into “chat rooms.”