Religious and philosophical ideas in “The dream of a ridiculous man” by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Staying in the framework of the hermeneutic approach, this article reveals and analyses the religious and philosophical ideas of Saint Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions in the text of Fyodor Dostoevsky's short story “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”. This study demonstrates that Dostoevsky, while staying within the boundaries of contemporary culture, independently comprehended such universal ideas and problems as the origin of evil, free will, theodicy and salvation, which were first formulated in the European philosophical tradition by Saint Augustine. The author concludes that the idea of unbounded free will and universal salvation, offered by Dostoevsky who demonstrated that rejecting individual freedom is justified only for the sake of said salvation, profoundly influenced Russian religious philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov.