•  154
    Kant on free will and arbitrariness: A view from dostoevsky's underground
    Philosophy and Literature 28 (2): 367-378. 2004.
    Are freedom, rationality, and morality intrinsically connected? Or perhaps freedom's very nature is transgression, going beyond rationality and ethics? These questions are the center of my discussion of free will and arbitrariness in Kant's late writings. Kant's interlocutor here is Dostoevsky's underground man, a passionate proponent of the Russian _volia--("freedom," "unfettered, arbitrary will"). The underground man questions freedom's relationship to rationality and moral law and insists tha…Read more
  •  32
    On the Boundary of Intelligibility
    Review of Metaphysics 58 (3): 571-584. 2005.
    When in 1792 Kant published his essay “On the Radical Evil in Human Nature” in the Berlinische Monatsschrift it had the effect of an exploding bomb. Many of those who previously embraced his ethics were shocked and bewildered. Goethe’s well-known metaphorical statement sums up the reaction: “Kant required a long lifetime to purify his philosophical mantle of many impurities and prejudices. And now he has wantonly tainted it with the shameful stain of radical evil, in order that Christians too mi…Read more
  •  13
    Dostoevsky and Kant: Dialogues on Ethics (edited book)
    Rodopi. 2009.
    "In this book, Evgenia Cherkasova brings the philosopher Kant and the novelist Dostoevsky together in conversations that probe why duty is central to our moral life. She shows that just as Dostoevsky is indebted to Kant, so Kant would profit from the deeply philosophical narratives of Dostoevsky, which engage the problem of evil and the claims of human community. She not only produces a novel reading of Dostoevsky, but also guides us to later, often neglected Kantian texts. This study is written…Read more
  •  3
    The Deontology of the Heart: A Study of Dostoevsky's and Kant's Unconditional Ethics
    Dissertation, The Pennsylvania State University. 1999.
    My dissertation explores the phenomenon of an unconditional ethical commitment, irreducible to any pragmatic, hedonistic or consequentialist considerations. To contextualize my search I reconstruct two celebrated attempts from the history of human thought: Immanuel Kant's duty theory, commonly referred to as "deontology" , and Feodor Dostoevsky's ethical perspective, which I propose to call "the deontology of the heart." I stress that these two seemingly polar thinkers are involved in a similar …Read more
  •  1
    Rationality and Fiction
    Philotheos 8 275-281. 2008.