At first glance, I was thrilled by the title of László Földényi’s essay, Dostoevsky Reads Hegel in Siberia and Bursts Into Tears (Galaxia Gutenberg, 2026, Kindle Android version). Reading it more than met my expectations. Földényi’s continuous references to Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground and Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of World History accompanied the reading of the essay.

Földényi’s vision of Hegel strikes me as accurate. It is not a mere gloss on the philosopher’s idea of history; rather, it is a critique of Hegel’s idealistic rationalism, delivered with philosophical and literary finesse. Hegel, faithful to his circular system where the real is rational and the rational is real, constructs a universal history to his own measure, trapping reality within his system. Whatever escapes the system, he excludes as irrational.

“Hegel’s interpretation of history,” Földényi notes, “subordinates everything ‘divine’ to that which is under human control. Ultimately, it tacitly refers everything to the realm of politics, and a symptom of this is the attempt to find an explanation for everything. Even for that which has none. Obeying the modern process of secularization, it does not seek the unlimited divine hidden behind politics, but quite the opposite: at every moment it tries to interpret the unlimited divine (that is, what is uncontrollable for the human mind) from political points of view (p. 15).”

In reality, Hegel’s God is superfluous in his philosophical system, as his own disciples pointed out to him. It is the Hegelian man who occupies the place of God.

The clash between Hegel and Dostoevsky takes place in Siberia. Hegel begins his lectures on universal history by announcing to his audience:

“First we must set aside the northern slope, Siberia. It lies outside the scope of our study. The characteristics of the country do not allow it to be a stage for historical culture nor to create its own form in universal history (p. 6).”

Siberia does not possess the qualities to be part of the rational history he preaches. This is the very Siberia inhabited by Dostoevsky during those years, stationed there as a soldier. With one stroke of the pen, neither Siberia nor he were part of universal history. It is true that Siberia harbors horrors and precarity, but that dark side is not all that exists. He says:

“It was a great happiness for me: Siberia and forced labor! They say it is terrible and outrageous, they speak of a justified indignation… what nonsense! Only there did I begin to live in a happy and healthy way, only there did I understand myself… Christ… the Russian man, and only there did I have the feeling of being Russian, of being a son of the Russian people. My best thoughts arose back then and now they only return, though never with the same clarity! (p. 23).”

Hegel and Dostoevsky move on entirely different wavelengths.

Dostoevsky wrote in his Notes from Underground (1864):

“One can say anything about world history, anything that might enter the most disordered imagination. The only thing that cannot be said is that it is rational. The very first word would get stuck in our throat.”

Indeed, one only needs to look at universal history—both distant and recent—to realize that history does not move by dialectical laws as Hegel, and later Marx himself, maintained. Hegelian and Marxist rationalist history behaves like waves that necessarily break on the seashore. There is no room for freedom or for the personal biography of human beings with their joys and sorrows. Logical determinism leaves no space for hope, for the marvelous, or for the miraculous.

Földényi’s critique reaches modernity itself, insofar as it reduces all human events to the level of a problem—as Gabriel Marcel would put it—that is, a matter which, with the help of technology, would eventually be resolved. Nothing would escape the domain of human capacity: knowledge is power. Everything would have a solution. Happiness would not be in the hereafter; paradise is here and now.

“We find ourselves,” Földényi affirms, “in a world that is beginning to become controllable in a total way and without allowing any loophole, just as the Creator expected. It possesses divine attributes, although it is characterized precisely by the increasingly evident lack—or absence—of God (p. 31).”

Systems increase, yet happiness remains elusive. Control and over-regulation do not achieve paradise. The coldness of processes identifies fingerprints, but fails to capture the dramas, tears, and joys of flesh-and-blood human beings.

Once again, as Benedict XVI pointed out, we face the great challenge of expanding rationality and not remaining solely within logical calculation. We must recover the integrity of the human being and insist on personal dignity: each person is a whole. On this path, Dostoevsky is a fine mentor for feeling and touching what is truly human.