The philosophical idea of “the double”: what is the meaning of Mr. Golyadkin’s duality?

F. Dostoevsky’s early novel “The Double” has repeatedly become the subject of a heated dispute about the meaning of both, specific artistic techniques and the entire storyline as a whole. And the most problematic aspect of the interpretation is the phenomenon of the novel’s main character duality, Mr. Golyadkin. At present, there are two points of view prevail, that explain this phenomenon. According to the first view, Mr. Golyadkin’s duality is a poetic convention that serves to enhance the acute social motivation of the novel. According to the second view, duality is understood as a symptom the protagonist’s schizophrenia, and Dostoevsky himself turns out to be an artist of psychopathologies. At the same time, both views completely ignore the idea of the novel itself, which is undoubtedly deeply philosophical. The article is an attempt to identify and define the ignored idea of the novel, through to which the truly philosophical meaning of the duality of the hero becomes clear. To this end, the study examines in detail certain points in the novel, which seem to be extremely important for understanding the true meaning of Mr. Golyadkin’s duality, and which are usually not given the attention they deserve in the analysis of the novel. The analysis of these moments allows the author to find out the most plausible explanation of the dual role played by Mr. Goliadkin’s double and to reveal the true existential meaning of the duality’s situation in which the novel’s hero found himself.