Dostoevsky, Hegel, and the sequel to The Brothers Karamazov


This paper considers the sequel Dostoevsky planned to write for The Brothers Karamazov – through the sources of his wife Anna, the biographer Nina Hoffmann and A.S. Suvorin’s diary, through the novel itself, and through Dostoevsky’s post-Karamazov notes. It sees Alesha’s fate in the sequel as a “Russian socialist” who will try to build Zosima’s earthly paradise of universal brotherhood, a notion for which there are deep affinities with Dostoevsky’s ideal of a Golden Age of international socialism. It contends that Dostoevsky was influenced by Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit for Alesha’s epiphany under the “stars” – where he is at one with the universe, like the more spiritual people of the antique Golden Age – and that this episode initiates his quest to establish Zosima’s paradise on earth or Dostoevsky’s new Golden Age.