Мудрость отказа от синтеза: межкультурный диалог между полифоническим романом Ф. М. Достоевского и даосской диалектикой

Abstract

The Wisdom of Refusing Synthesis: A Cross-Cultural Dialogue between Dostoevsky’s Polyphonic Novel and Daoist Dialectics

This article offers a comparative reading of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s polyphonic novel and Daoist dialectics in the works attributed to Laozi and Zhuangzi against the background of a critique of totalizing modes of thought. Both classical European philosophy and contemporary techno-rationality tend to treat contradictions as something to be absorbed into a higher unity. In contrast, Dostoevsky’s polyphony is interpreted here as a literary practice of refusing authorial synthesis: autonomous consciousnesses enter into dialogue without being reduced to a single, harmonizing truth, and irreconcilable positions are allowed to persist. Daoist thought, for its part, articulates a different way of dealing with opposites: through the formulas of “reversal as the movement of the Dao” and the “equalizing of things”, it understands the world as a rhythm of mutual transitions and provisional equilibria rather than a teleological process ending in reconciliation. Juxtaposing these two forms of “refusal of synthesis” reveals that Dostoevsky and Daoism embody, in different registers, a common stance that affirms the multi-voiced character of reality and the value of ineradicable contradiction. The article concludes that this “wisdom of refusing synthesis” can be viewed as a foundation for an ethics of polyphony, particularly relevant in today’s globalized world with its strong tendency toward enforced unification.

Keywords: Fyodor Dostoevsky; polyphony; Laozi; Daoism; negative dialectics; Theodor W. Adorno