«Un’ambizione umile». Aporie di un io nel Sosia di Dostoevskij

My essay is aimed to provide the main lines of an analysis of Dostoyevsky's The Double that highlights its remarkable philosophical value. It consists in a radical critique of the outcomes of a certain vein of modernity in determining the fundamental features of human experience. Preluding Notes from the Underground and the late masterpieces, The Double also shows through its tragic epilogue how the only possibility to break the cage of solipsism and alienation to which modern conscience is condemned consists in a radical experience of Christianity, through which the subject is opened to otherness. Tragedy still remains the proper character of this experience, but it is not something passively suffered, but rather acted out, since Dostoyevsky's conception of Christianity does not consist in a simple consolation from the evil of the world, but in a path that makes the one who runs through it able to face it.