This study links the careers of Russia’s three most famous nineteenth-century authors – Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Pushkin – into a single narrative.

Lina Steiner is an academic advisor attached to the Chair of Theoretical Philosophy at the Institute for Philosophy at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn.

"Studies that place Russian intellectual history in both a Russian and non-Russian philosophical context are few and far between. This volume does that and so is an especially welcome and necessary addition to the body of criticism on the Russian nineteenth-century novel."

Gary Saul Morson, Northwestern University:

"[For Humanity’s Sake]’s ideas struck me as important as well as new, and I came away with a sense of a tradition of Russian thought I had not identified as such. As a result, the three novels analyzed, and implicitly many others, acquired a new freshness. It also does not hurt that Steiner writes crisp, lucid prose, free of jargon or clotted syntax. […] We never doubt why a set of facts or interpretations is offered."

Elena A. Krasnostchekova, University of Georgia:

"A work of assiduous scholarship, For Humanity’s Sake makes a significant, original argument about a key aspect of the Russian novelistic tradition that has been very little addressed. Carefully argued and based on a prodigious amount of research, this book demonstrates Lina Steiner’s deeply impressive knowledge of an immense critical literature."

Yuri Corrigan, The College of Wooster:

"In this original and wide-ranging intellectual history, Lina Steiner situates Herder’s view of culture at the core of a tradition of personal and national character formation in Russia."

Virgil Nemoianu:

"Steiner’s extended grasp of ‘dialogism’ on the cultural and psychological level is quite welcome… The overview of the emergence of modern Russian literature and intellectual debate is excellent in its clarity and coherence."

Anne Lounsbery, New York University:
‘A work of assiduous scholarship, For Humanity’s Sake makes a significant, original argument about a key aspect of the Russian novelistic tradition that has been very little addressed. Carefully argued and based on a prodigious amount of research, this book demonstrates Lina Steiner’s deeply impressive knowledge of an immense critical literature.’