The
Parable of the Grand Inquisitor from
The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
Review:
Turgenev’s
Point: The intelligentsia must embrace a liberal path to social reform based
on Western models. That means the government must grant freedom to the serfs and
establish an economy which provides incentives for individual initiative.
Reform should be led by the educated
elite whose practical business skill is matched and moderated by humanitarian
ideals and patriotic love of country. Turgenev urges his readers to commit to
this reform movement yet pursue it with patience because real change takes
time- it relies upon the free decision of those in power to make the just
choice. Further, we must moderate any utopian expectations by acknowledging
that no change will bring us a fairy tale ending. The best we can hope for is
the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
Chernyshevky
(and Bazarov’s) Response:
Social
justice can never be achieved if we rely upon the ideals of those in power.
Liberals will use any rationale to expand their wealth and power.
Sharecropping (ie a market economy) is only slavery in a more advanced form-
humans are still regarded as property and workers are robbed of the fruits of
their labor. We buy and sell each other in a blind competitive frenzy whose
rapaciousness and ruthlessness will eventually be revealed. Let the liberals
pursue their selfish ends. Let them justify their greed. When enough people
recognize that society is built on the blind pursuit of self-interest, when
wealth has been concentrated in a tiny number of hands , when the oppression
of the poor reaches new extremes, a new consciousness will dawn. People will
recognize that their true self-interest resides in their class’ recognition
of the might of their collective will. When that great day comes, the workers
will unite and overthrow their liberal masters- and a new society will be
born- not one based on false ideals but on equality and reason. The Crystal
Palace.
Dostoevsky
dives into the debate and clobbers both the liberal westernizers and their
radical antagonists.
In the
excerpt we read for today, he explores the problem of freedom in ways which
Turgenev evades and pooh-poohs. “We must be patient…. We must not have
unrealistic expectations….We must rely on ideals and patriotism and so urge
those in power to make the right choice- to lead more compassionately and
responsibly.”
Dostoevsky
furiously interrupts, “Freedom! The problem of freedom is the problem of evil.
Social Justice! It is true that there can be no social justice in a free
society. However, the alternative may be even worse! Any society which seeks
equality must radically limit our freedom, and without the opportunity to
make moral choices, we cease to be human beings. So, who’s to blame? How have
we developed such irreconcilable contradictions? Or were we created to begin
with?” and he directs his fury, like Job, against God himself. He takes on
the ultimate liberal, Christ.
He
attacks:
Theodicy: the idea upon which all liberalism is based:
there is a just and benevolent God whose plan for the universe is good;
progress is possible; society can be improved.
Any political movement which justifies progress at the
expense of the suffering of innocents.
Liberals who justify poverty or radicals who justify
violence with utilitarian arguments of social justice.
Part II.
Book V: Pro and Contra
Chapter 4: Rebellion
The
problem of freedom is the problem of human evil. How can it be reconciled
with theology, and by extension, with the best possible political philosophy?
The
Situation: Ivan confesses to his brother Alyosha that he may opt out of an
existence in which the suffering of innocents is tolerated. He says, “I must
have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote
infinite time and space, but here on earth.”
Ivan
believes that his hope for the future depends on embracing violence as a tool
of social change, and he tests his resolve as he edges closer to arranging
the murder of his father: an aging and corrupt land owner who has committed
outrage after outrage in his life for no better reason than satisfaction of a
taste for emotional cruelty. In his most notorious misdeed he raped Lizaveta,
a simple retarded woman whom the town had adopted. Lizaveta died giving birth
to Smerdyakov, Ivan and Alyosha’s half brother. Now grown up, Smerdyakov
wants to pin the murder on the third Karamazov brother, the impulsive
Dimitri, who certainly has the motive to kill his father. The old man is
courting Dimitri’s lover, Grushenka….
[Engrossing,
Highly readable, will change your life category]
“Ivan
argues that the call to violence as a means to the goal of social justice is
the answer of reason to the Christian ethic of forgiveness, which seems, on
the observable evidence of history and human behavior, to be singularly
ineffective as a means of persuading men not to oppress their neighbors.
Though Dostoevsky had, as his letters reveal, chosen Christ in spite of
reason, he concedes that the arguments of reason can be rejected, but never
finally refuted. Ivan and his alter ego, the Grand Inquisitor, are not devils
but devil's advocates, challenging the mystery of the Christian ethic in the
name of the people whose suffering it does nothing to relieve.” (Kelly)
In this
episode of the action, Ivan takes on the theological concept of Theodicy:
(The Justice of God)
The Problem of Evil (theological)
How can God tolerate it?
The Problem of Freedom (political)
When deliberate evil becomes the ‘most advantageous advantage’, radical
restrictions on freedom become
necessary)
Ivan
creates a test case which calls into question not only the existence of an
omnipotent and benign God, but the wisdom of founding any political state on
the principle of freedom.
Dostoevsky’s
rhetorical style can be called eschatological.
[Eschatology: (f.
Gr. 
Kant’s
Categorical Imperative: He accepts
Hume’s challenge to cause and effect: we can only gauge the probability of
events using science. Because of the puniness of our order of reason, we
cannot comprehend the world as it is. And that is good because if the
nihilist dream were true and we could depend upon science to predict the
consequences of our actions with certitude, we would not then be free to
choose. Even in that situation, the Underground Man would wreck the sublime
and beautiful just to be able to say that he is a free agent But is even that
reaction free?
To test
our moral choices, Kant recommends that we imagine ourselves as God despite
the radical finitude of our capacity for understanding the consequences of
our actions.
“Act as though the
principle of your action were to become by your will a universal law of
nature.”
Invent a
universe in which you have the power to define natural law. Test out a moral,
sociological or theological position by pushing it to its logical extreme and
see if it still holds. Would your world be the best of all possible worlds?
Would such a policy be just?
For instance,
a
man is reduced to complete despair but still possesses his reason. Should he
decide to commit suicide? Kant suggests that we make the consequence of this
choice into a natural law like gravity. Should we shorten life when a longer
life span threatens more evil than satisfaction? That is unimaginable. The
world would quickly self-destruct. A
world in which people never help each other could function, but would it be
the best of all possible worlds a creative God could invent. (Nieman)
Ivan
says, “Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the
object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last,
but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny
creature -- that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance -- and
to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the
architect on those conditions?” (7)
To
hammer home his argument, Ivan rubs his reader’s face in a series of horrific
situations (drawn from contemporary news stories) with Grand Guignol delight.
(Poe was a strong influence on Dostoevsky.)
1. Blunt
irony of Richard, a young man shaped by poverty and cruelty into a murderer
who finds religion in prison, just before his execution. (3)
2.
nightmare image: a peasant lashing the eyes of a horse, Violence against the
defenseless who cannot comprehend the reason for their punishment…] (4)
3.
nightmare images of child abuse:
“At last the child cannot scream, it gasps, 'Daddy
daddy!'” (4)
The child punished by being forced down into a privy. (4)
An eight year old boy torn to pieces by owner’s hounds (5)
What has
been proven?
Even
that child’s mother may have the right to forgive her boy’s murderer for her
own suffering, but we cannot forgive because the child’s suffering has gone
unexpiated. It cannot be expiated.
Purpose?
Has Ivan simply gotten Alyosha to admit that some crimes
deserve capital punishment?
Or have we just been given permission to use any means necessary including
violence in pursuit of justice?
Or has he just proven that humans cannot be the creation of a just God? Has
Ivan justified turning in his ticket to life by revealing how unbearable
indifference to human cruelty is to a thinking person.
Or, you might use the same
evidence to say, “How can you argue that absolute Good and Evil do not
exist?” Hasn’t Dostoevsky just revealed to his gentle reader that the moral
world does exist, but not in the brain; the soul resides in more basic
functions of the human body: in our nervous system, in our guts. (See
Macbeth)
Chapter 5: The Grand Inquisitor
How does
Ivan introduce his story? What is its context?
At the
outset of his story, Ivan takes pains to place it in a tradition which
extends back to the Mystery Plays of medieval times.
[A Mystery Play] “In France, clerks, as well as the monks in
the monasteries, used to give regular performances in which the Madonna, the
saints, the angels, Christ, and God Himself were brought on the stage.” (8)
[A Mystery Play ala the Harrowing
of Hell by the Virgin which resulted in respite for the damned on Easter]
Tales of Jesus’ appearance to
saints and martyrs, even returning to
Earth, not for Judgment Day, but to commune with his suffering people. “And behold, He deigned to appear for a
moment to the people, to the tortured, suffering people, sunk in iniquity,
but loving Him like children.” (10)
And so
Jesus came to Seville on the day of a splendid auto-da-fe in which a hundred
heretics are to be burned at the stake, and the people of the city
immediately recognize him. As he heals a blind man and raises a little girl
from the dead (that little girl beaten in the previous chapter), the Grand
Inquisitor watches ‘and his face
darkens.’ (11) He orders the
immediate arrest and imprisonment of the Messiah.
That
night he comes to Jesus’ pitch dark cell and demands to know why he has
returned.
Jesus
says nothing in response to the Grand Inquisitor’s monologue, but at the end
of it he rises and kisses the old man, who has threatened to burn him alive
the following day, and the Inquisitor lets him go.
The Inquisitor’s Rebuke of Christ:
By giving people freedom, Christ
destroyed any possibility for social justice.
You have
no right to say a word! You have no right to add to your ministry of old!
“Thou
hast no right to add anything to what Thou hadst said of old. Why, then, art
Thou come to hinder us?” (12)
What was Christ’s mistake
according to The Inquisitor?
His
unwillingness to coerce faith. People must come to him of his or her own free
will.
What has
been the consequence of freedom? The Hobbesian world of all vs. all.
“But now
Thou hast seen these "free" men,' the old man adds suddenly, with a
pensive smile. 'Yes, we've paid dearly for it,' he goes on, looking sternly
at Him, 'but at last we have completed that work in Thy name….For now for the
first time it has become possible to think of the happiness of men.” (12)
How? He
is speaking of the Inquisition, of course. What sort of government has the
Catholic Church exercised? Is Dostoevsky in prophet mode here: is he
accurately describing the type of government that would emerge in Russia
during the 20th century?
The
Inquisitor reminds Christ that he had been warned about the dangers of
freedom and had not heeded those warnings. “Thou hast had no lack of
admonitions and warnings, but Thou didst not listen to those warnings.” (12)
By whom?
“Nothing
but the advice of the great dread spirit could build up any tolerable sort of
life for the feeble, unruly, 'incomplete, empirical creatures created in
jest.'”
You
remember the story from the Bible- Christ before he began his ministry went
into the desert where he encountered the Devil who gave him three
temptations.
“'The
wise and dread spirit, the spirit of self-destruction and non-existence” (12)
The Three Temptations of the Devil
Why not alter the creation so that
there is enough bread for all?
For the
nihilists (and other determinists) will argue that crime is the direct result
of poverty and hunger. What possible advantage can there be to a creation
which tolerates the misery and moral degradation which results from hunger?
“Dost
Thou know that the ages will pass, and humanity will proclaim by the lips of
their sages that there is no crime, and therefore no sin; there is only
hunger? "Feed men, and then ask of them virtue!"” (13)
As for
freedom, humans have only made a botch of it. The Inquisitor argues that the
people could never feed themselves, “Freedom and bread enough for all are
inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between
them!” (14)
Even the
prospect of freedom intimidates most people. “Without a stable conception of
the object of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather
destroy himself than remain on earth, though he had bread in abundance.” (15)
People
need to be told a reason for living. Instead of taking possession of men's
freedom, Thou didst increase it, and burdened the spiritual kingdom of
mankind with its sufferings for ever.
But
seest Thou these stones in this parched and barren wilderness? Turn them into
bread, and mankind will run after Thee like a flock of sheep, grateful and
obedient, though for ever trembling, lest Thou withdraw Thy hand and deny
them Thy bread." (13)
The Inquisitor already knows
Christ’s answer: “what is that freedom worth if obedience is bought with
bread?” Man does not live by bread alone. Christ offers heavenly bread, not
earthly bread.
Thou
didst desire man's free love, that he should follow Thee freely, enticed and
taken captive by Thee. In place of the rigid ancient law, man must hereafter
with free heart decide for himself what is good and what is evil, having only
Thy image before him as his guide.” (15)
Yet only
a few of the many millions are capable of receiving your gift of freedom; the
vast majority are too weak. What of them? Should we condemn them for their
weakness?
“Thou
art proud of Thine elect, but Thou hast only the elect, while we give rest to
all.” “With us all will be happy and will no more rebel nor destroy one
another as under Thy freedom.” (14)
So what sort of government has the
church created to address Christ’s error?
Freedom
is not worth the price, so the church, out of compassion for the limitations
of people, has built a new temple, a tower, to which the people will come and
be fed their daily bread and a purpose for living. So the church, recognizing
your error, has done what you should have dome in the first place, provided
people with a purpose to life which they are capable of achieving: obeying: miracle, mystery and authority.
The Second Temptation: Miracle and
Mystery
Demonstrate
your divinity to all by casting yourself from a tower. God will not allow you
to perish. "If Thou wouldst know whether Thou art the Son of God then
cast Thyself down, for it is written: the angels shall hold him up lest he
fall and bruise himself, and Thou shalt know then whether Thou art the Son of
God and shalt prove then how great is Thy faith in Thy Father." (15)
Tempting
God demonstrates your own loss of faith. And faith cannot be coerced because
then the people become slaves, not free agents. Instead, people must rely on
their own resources in the depths of their doubt and despair.
“Thou
wouldst not enslave man by a miracle, and didst crave faith given freely, not
based on miracle. Thou didst crave for free love and not the base raptures of
the slave before the might that has overawed him forever.”
But
people do not want faith, they want reassurance.
“But
Thou didst not know that when man rejects miracle he rejects God too; for man
seeks not so much God as the miraculous. And as man cannot bear to be without
the miraculous, he will create new miracles of his own for himself, and will
worship deeds of sorcery and witchcraft.” (16)
The Third Temptation: Authority
The Devil
takes Christ to the mountaintop and shows him the lands he might conquer if
he chose a political course for his ministry.
“Hadst
Thou taken the world and Caesar's purple, Thou wouldst have founded the
universal state and have given universal peace. For who can rule men if not
he who holds their conscience and their bread in his hands? We have taken the
sword of Caesar, and in taking it, of course, have rejected Thee and followed
him.” (16)
What you
would not do, out of inordinate respect for mankind, the church has done:
“Too, too well will they know the value of complete submission! And until men
know that, they will be unhappy.” “We shall show them that they are weak,
that they are only pitiful children, but that childlike happiness is the
sweetest of all.” (17)
The Future State: (17)
We shall provide the people with childlike happiness. We
will forgive them of sin, even when you will not—and so their lives shall be
happy even if their souls are damned
We shall allow them to sin like children and they will be
grateful when we tell them that every sin will be expiated if it is committed
with our permission.
And they will have no secrets from us. “The most painful secrets of their conscience, all, all they
will bring to us, and we shall have an answer for all.”
We will take their sins upon ourselves and face God alone
(as I am doing now) “And we who have taken their sins upon us for their
happiness will stand up before Thee and say: "Judge us if Thou canst and
darest." Know that I fear Thee not.” (18)
Christ’s Response?
“When
the Inquisitor ceased speaking he waited some time for his Prisoner to answer
him. His silence weighed down upon him. He saw that the Prisoner had listened
intently all the time, looking gently in his face and evidently not wishing
to reply. The old man longed for him to say something, however bitter and
terrible. But He suddenly approached the old man in silence and softly kissed
him on his bloodless aged lips. That was all his answer. The old man
shuddered. His lips moved. He went to the door, opened it, and said to Him:
'Go, and come no more... come not at all, never, never!'” (20)
"The
kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea." (20)
Dostoevsky’s
point?