Existential Concerns in Anton Chekhov’s Short Stories

Existential philosophy addressed questions that either had been overlooked by traditional philosophy for a long period of time (e.g. the individual’s experience of anxiety in the face of death, the failure of rational thinking and science to inquire essential aspects of human life) or had resurfaced...

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Published inActa Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 83 - 95
Main Author Farkas, Aliz
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Scientia Publishing House 01.12.2022
Scientia Kiadó
Sciendo
Subjects
Chekhov
death anxiety
Existentialism
existentialist philosophy
Russian Literature
science scepticism
existentialist philosophy
death anxiety
science scepticism
Chekhov
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Summary:Existential philosophy addressed questions that either had been overlooked by traditional philosophy for a long period of time (e.g. the individual’s experience of anxiety in the face of death, the failure of rational thinking and science to inquire essential aspects of human life) or had resurfaced again following the disappointment caused by the destructions and absurdity of the two world wars in the first half of the twentieth century (e.g. questions pertaining to the meaningfulness/meaninglessness of the human endeavour and of human life in general). Russian realist novelists Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy are often invoked among the earliest existentialist thinkers, along with philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. Drawing on the works of philosophers Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, this paper will examine how the existentialist preoccupation with death anxiety, ethics, and authenticity is represented in two short stories by Anton Chekhov, one of Dostoyevsky’s and Tolstoy’s younger contemporary writers.
ISSN:2067-5151
2068-2956
2068-2956
DOI:10.2478/ausp-2022-0007