The Foolishness of Goodness: Reflections on The Idiot
Friday 14 July 2023 at 17:17
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Edited by Jim McCrory, Thursday 21 August 2025 at 23:03
Image by Copilot
When Dostoevsky set out to write The Idiot, he wanted to create a man “positively good and beautiful.” The result was Prince Myshkin, a gentle, openhearted figure who wanders through a world of deception, pride, and hunger for power. The novel asks a question that still unsettles us today: what happens when true innocence and compassion step into a corrupt society?
From the outset, Myshkin is dismissed as a fool. He speaks with a candour that unsettles, he refuses to play the games of status and manipulation, and he treats even the most broken souls with tenderness. In a society built on masks, such transparency seems idiotic. Yet it is precisely this guileless love that makes him a Christ-like figure. Myshkin does not condemn; he forgives, he sees the image of God even in the most damaged lives.
And yet Dostoevsky does not give us the triumph we might hope for. Myshkin’s goodness, instead of transforming those around him, becomes unbearable. His kindness exposes hypocrisy, his innocence shames the calculating, and his mercy unsettles those who would rather live in the comfortable shadows of deceit. The world has no place for such a man. Like Christ himself, Myshkin is rejected, mocked, and finally broken by the weight of the world’s incomprehension.
Here lies the novel’s paradox. Goodness is the highest wisdom, yet to a fallen world it looks like madness. Strength, cunning, and ambition are admired; humility, compassion, and honesty are despised. In this way, The Idiot whispers the same truth that the Apostle Paul declared: “The foolishness of God is wiser than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25).
The tragedy of the novel is not that Myshkin fails. His goodness does not fail—it shines steadily, consistently, to the end. The tragedy is that the people around him cannot accept such goodness. Nastasya, caught between self-loathing and longing for love, flees into ruin rather than rest in Myshkin’s compassion. Rogozhin, consumed by passion without redemption, descends into violence. Each character is confronted with a light too bright to bear.
So the moral of The Idiot is not a simple lesson of “be good.” It is something far deeper and more unsettling: true goodness may look like foolishness, and the world may destroy it, but it remains the only thing worth living for.
This moral speaks to us as individuals. It asks: when faced with innocence, do we receive it or recoil from it? When confronted by mercy, do we welcome it or resist it because it exposes our pride? The novel turns the mirror on us, reminding us that the beauty that could save the world must first be allowed to save us.
Perhaps, then, Dostoevsky’s “idiot” is not Myshkin at all. Perhaps it is the world—so blinded by its own wisdom that it cannot recognize love when it stands before it.
The Foolishness of Goodness: Reflections on The Idiot
Image by Copilot
When Dostoevsky set out to write The Idiot, he wanted to create a man “positively good and beautiful.” The result was Prince Myshkin, a gentle, openhearted figure who wanders through a world of deception, pride, and hunger for power. The novel asks a question that still unsettles us today: what happens when true innocence and compassion step into a corrupt society?
From the outset, Myshkin is dismissed as a fool. He speaks with a candour that unsettles, he refuses to play the games of status and manipulation, and he treats even the most broken souls with tenderness. In a society built on masks, such transparency seems idiotic. Yet it is precisely this guileless love that makes him a Christ-like figure. Myshkin does not condemn; he forgives, he sees the image of God even in the most damaged lives.
And yet Dostoevsky does not give us the triumph we might hope for. Myshkin’s goodness, instead of transforming those around him, becomes unbearable. His kindness exposes hypocrisy, his innocence shames the calculating, and his mercy unsettles those who would rather live in the comfortable shadows of deceit. The world has no place for such a man. Like Christ himself, Myshkin is rejected, mocked, and finally broken by the weight of the world’s incomprehension.
Here lies the novel’s paradox. Goodness is the highest wisdom, yet to a fallen world it looks like madness. Strength, cunning, and ambition are admired; humility, compassion, and honesty are despised. In this way, The Idiot whispers the same truth that the Apostle Paul declared: “The foolishness of God is wiser than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25).
The tragedy of the novel is not that Myshkin fails. His goodness does not fail—it shines steadily, consistently, to the end. The tragedy is that the people around him cannot accept such goodness. Nastasya, caught between self-loathing and longing for love, flees into ruin rather than rest in Myshkin’s compassion. Rogozhin, consumed by passion without redemption, descends into violence. Each character is confronted with a light too bright to bear.
So the moral of The Idiot is not a simple lesson of “be good.” It is something far deeper and more unsettling: true goodness may look like foolishness, and the world may destroy it, but it remains the only thing worth living for.
This moral speaks to us as individuals. It asks: when faced with innocence, do we receive it or recoil from it? When confronted by mercy, do we welcome it or resist it because it exposes our pride? The novel turns the mirror on us, reminding us that the beauty that could save the world must first be allowed to save us.
Perhaps, then, Dostoevsky’s “idiot” is not Myshkin at all. Perhaps it is the world—so blinded by its own wisdom that it cannot recognize love when it stands before it.