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Grenzenlose Verantwortung

Freiheit und Schuld bei Dostojewski und Sartre


Back to issue: Phänomenologische Forschungen 2010
DOI: https://doi.org/10.28937/1000107828
EUR 14.90


The article examines the relationship between freedom, guilt and responsibility in Dostojewski’s and Sartre’s works. Both attribute a great measure of personal freedom to man. Therefore, they do not tolerate excuses. Whoever is free, carries responsibility and gets caught up in guilt. Dostojewski’s focus is mainly on guilt, Sartre’s is on responsibility. They share the conviction that we can delegate responsibility for our actions or our way of living neither to a whole, of which we are a part, like society (the ,milieu'), nor to a part, for which we are the whole, like the ,brain' or the ,genes'. In that sense, Dostojewski’s and Sartre’s attempts at an ethic of responsibility also offer convincing arguments against determinism.