The Existential Experience of Pitirim Sorokin and Fyodor Dostoevsky: Common and Unique Aspects in Borderline Situations Introduction: Existential Experience as a Source of Theoretical and Artistic Knowledge The comparison of the existential experience of the great Russian sociologist Pitirim Sorokin (1889–1968) and the literary genius Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) reveals surprising parallels and fundamental differences in their reactions to borderline situations (as defined by Jaspers) — the experience of death, suffering, social collapse, and spiritual crisis. For both, this experience became an epistemological key — a starting point for constructing comprehensive systems of understanding human beings and society. However, their responses to the challenges of existence were formed in different intellectual paradigms: religiously-artistic and scientifically-sociological. 1. Common: Experiencing the Bottom of Society and Intensification of Life Both thinkers went through a profound existential crisis related to direct confrontation with death and state violence. Fyodor Dostoevsky: In 1849, he experienced the staging of a execution on Semenovsky Square. The few minutes when he was certain of imminent death became for him a "actualization of finitude", radically changing his perception of the world. The following four years of exile (1850–1854) became a plunge into the "dead house" — a social and spiritual bottom, where he studied human nature in its extreme, marginal manifestations. Pitirim Sorokin: In 1922, being already a well-known sociologist and political figure, he was arrested by the Soviet authorities and sentenced to death. Spending six weeks in the death cell in Petrograd, he daily awaited execution. This experience, like that of Dostoevsky, was a total existential shock. Later, Sorokin was deported from the country on the "philosophical ship," which became for him another form of social death — expulsion from the cultural soil. Interesting fact: In h ... Read more