Concerning the relevance of the philosophical anthropology of F. M. Dostoevsky

The modern society is getting complicated and diversified on the background of large-scale socio-communicative and sociocultural changes. At the same time, recently Russia has been accepting Western social and cultural values. In this regard, it is necessary to appeal to the Russian culture, in which the tremendous significance has Christian understanding of a human being, expressed in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky. His philosophical anthropology is needed in the modern society, as it has strong tendencies of dehumanization, pragmatism, utilitarianism and the loss of the idea of God. The basis and the key to understanding of Dostoevsky’s anthropology lie in the eastern patristic ideas: it is forgiving acceptance of a person not only because of who he/she is now, but also considering whom he/she can become, and whose creation he/she is initially. The life path in Dostoevsky''s works is seen as a test, a choice between good and evil. The problem of the meaning of life is of a multi-level nature, which at the individual level is to find that meaning, and as a part of the religious worldview is associated with categories of freedom, sin, righteousness and conscience. Dostoevsky believes that freedom is the ability of an individual to make the choice between good and evil, at the same time he claims there is a dark and a light sides in each person, which means there is a hope for conversion for everybody. According to Dostoevsky, the path to God starts with the realization of genuine values. The author distinguishes two basic mistakes in the interpretation of Dostoevsky''s philosophy by foreign scholars: cultural and semantic abstractions. The cultural abstraction is to consider the anthropology of the writer through the value system of other cultures, out of association with the Orthodoxy. The semantic abstraction means interpretation of Dostoevsky’s philosophy in the context of special sciences (psychology, criminology, sociology), which can help to reach the goal within a particular scientific field, but not to know the philosophy of Dostoevsky.