Course Schedule
January 27 — February 17, 2026 (4 consecutive weeks)
Tuesdays, 6:30-9:30pm
Instructor: Ruth Averbach
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot offers an intricate exploration of innocence, morality, and the complexities of human nature set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing and radicalizing Russian society. Characterized by biographer Joseph Frank as “the most personal of all Dostoevsky’s major works, the book in which he embodies his most intimate, cherished, and sacred convictions,” The Idiot follows the life of Prince Myshkin, a saintly yet naïve young man, whose goodness is continually taken advantage of by those around him. Far from being a fool, he is somebody who causes people to question their routine assumptions and values. The novel is both a philosophical inquiry and a psychological drama, where Myshkin’s naive idealism creates a mirror for the darker traits of the people around him. Dostoevsky’s novel offers piercing insight into the psychology of belief and action, and the meaning of values in the seeming Godlessness of modern life. Can true good exist in an evil world? What are the psychological and moral consequences for an individual who pursues spirituality over materiality? What do we owe our fellow man and ourselves?
In this course, we will address these questions by reading the entirety of The Idiot (in Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s translation) alongside critical examinations of the historical and cultural context of 19th-century Russia. Throughout the course, we will attend to the vital moral, philosophical, and religious questions that guided Dostoevsky’s pen: What effect would a genuinely good person have on those around him? Would he inspire them to become better people, or would his superior virtue provoke their resentment? Is it possible that good does more harm than evil? Can one truly appreciate the beauty of the human soul amid the grotesque material reality of human existence? Is anyone truly innocent or are we all guilty? And how does one truly love their fellow man in all of their imperfection?
Brooklyn Institute for Social Research is an interdisciplinary teaching and research institute that offers critical, community-based education in the humanities and social sciences. Holding courses both online and in-person (in New York City and beyond), we integrate rigorous but accessible scholarly study with the everyday lives of working adults and re-imagine scholarship for the 21st century.