Trust and Moral Conflict in “The Idiot"

This is an investigation of the moral status of Prince Myshkin, the protagonist of Dostoevsky's "The Idiot", especially in relation to the frequent attempts to dimiss him as a serious or credible person. The key to understanding Myshkin is to focus on his social role as a truthful person in a milieu characterised by conventionalism and social status competition. In this resect, he is comparable to Jesus of Nazareth and Borat Sagdiyev of the fim "Borat". His example shows that the attention to the other, outside of their socially established persona, is a spiritual virtue that may create a conflct with social virtues. .