Episode 222 - Transcript
Hello everyone! I’m Stephen West! This is Philosophize This!
So today we’re going to be talking about the book The Brothers Karamazov.
Which means among other things we’re going to be talking today about the FAITH… of Dostoevsky.
Faith was a BIG part of how he lived his life…where if you’re someone that’s spent many years studying him: you know, reading the journals, the letters, and the notes of Dostoevksy– people’ll often describe his view of faith… as a kind of existential TRAGIC form, of Christianity. That’s the kind of thing they’ll say when trying to DESCRIBE his faith in all its layers.
Which…to a MODERN person who just HEARS that…ESPECIALLY if you haven’t listened to these last four episodes we’ve done BUILDING to this point, that can SOUND on the SURFACE…like its kind of an oxymoron.
Like, tragic…Christianity? Existential questions? I mean: isn’t Christianity the thing you believe in…so you DON’T have to be in agony with existential dread every day?
I mean someone could say when it comes to how MOST people seem to be USING this Christianity thing: Jesus was basically… a fidget spinner that had 12 disciples following him around. How can that ever be ANYTHING…but something that helps people cope with a PAINFUL re ality they CAN’T fully affirm?
Well if you want to understand where he’s coming from with his FAITH…FIRST thing we gotta make sure we’re doing is NOT reducing Christianity, and ALL of religion for that matter…to just a superficial, LAZY kind of religion, that gives people easy answers.
Certainly plenty of people out there you could find that’ll USE religion like this…but again, Dostoevsky, and many OTHER people…are NOT this kind of Christian.
And it’s understandable! Sometimes just as HUMANS…we’ll take the WORST EXAMPLE of something we’ve seen in the world… and make the ENTIRE THING… INTO the WORST things we’ve SEEN from it. But out of respect to the history of people that have THOUGHT about stuff on this planet…if we want to honor the IDEAS here, with religion being a BIG part of what human THOUGHT has been over the years…well lets make a pact to try to not do that with religion… at least here for this conversation today.
In fact: if you remember the episode we just did before we STARTED this series where we talked about Keiji Nishitani and his views on the VALUE of a deeply religious QUEST… the truth is… that there’s a similarity to the ways that Nishitani saw religion…and the ways that Dostoevsky saw religion.
ONE way to think about it is… that Russian Orthodox Christianity…FAR from being some institution that Dostoevsky says we should BLINDLY commit ourselves to…it’s MORE accurate to say that Christianity: GAVE Dostoevsky a LANGUAGE he could use…to NAVIGATE the PURPOSE that he served in a larger network of being.
And this religious path he walked was very deep, it was tragic, it was existential…it was an existence that at times…was absolutely miserable for him. But then at other times: it was deeply BEAUTIFUL, probably at a level that FEW people ever get to experience.
And the level of HONESTY that this man tried to live in. The level to which he AFFIRMED, ALL of it…the good, bad, the mysterious…the level to which he tried to UNDERSTAND the different psychological FRAMINGS of reality that other people lived in…and how much effort he put IN…to NEVER idealize them or to demonize them, just so he HAD an easy way to file them neatly up in his own head…this is a level of affirmation… that can be really tough for people to relate to… when they just jump in and try to read his books off the shelf not KNOWING the kind of man he WAS.
People’ll READ his books like the Brothers Karamazov…which as we’ll see is just an enormous commentary on SO many aspects of human existence…and they’ll TURN it, as they’re READING it…INTO the kind of idealized MOVIE they’re used to WATCHING in our MODERN world. OH, this book…is a BATTLE between good and evil! This is a debate that’s going on between Ivan’s perspective and Alyosha’s perspective– NOW let’s find out what Dostoevksy thinks the RIGHT perspective is to have!
But this was NOT…at ALL what he was GOING for as he wrote it. We’ll talk more about it here in a minute but what needs to be said right now is that faith, like LOVE to Dostevsky, was not a noun. It was a VERB to him.
And to say something like Dostoevksy’s FAITH mattered to him a LOT. And to think that’s the SAME as saying that Dostoevsky's Christianity, mattered to him a lot.
Well by the end of the episode we’ll understand why this misses a BIG piece of what faith WAS to him– as an active process, and not a doctrine to believe in. What we’ll also see is how he thought that MULTIPLE, different framings of reality…MIGHT BE necessary if we EVER want to ENGAGE with our existence more fully than any ONE of these characters in the book.
That any SINGLE framing of our existence…will ALWAYS run into its built in limitations.
Anyway, the plot… of the Brothers Karamazov, shockingly I know…centers around the Karamazov family.
Another shock will be that a significant portion of the book… is dedicated to the three brothers… of the family…Dimitri, Ivan and Alyosha.
But then MORE than just the brothers… the family ALSO includes ANOTHER central character of this book…it includes their father, whose name is Fyodor.
Now Fyodor, was obviously Dostoevsky’s OWN name in REAL life…but this character he wrote into the book…WASN’T meant to be symbolic of HIMSELF…in fact he said that what he MEANT for it to symbolize…was a PIECE of something… that’s inside of ALL of us to an extent.
We’re ALL a little like this Fyodor guy in a way…because Fyodor, at least when it comes to the way he treats his family…well let’s just say he comes up short…in a LOT of ways that are completely disappointing.
For example: he doesn’t really KNOW all that well…ANY of these sons that we just mentioned. CERTAINLY doesn’t know them like you’d EXPECT a father to know his son.
See, Dmitri, his oldest son, is from his FIRST marriage. And Ivan and Alyosha are sons, that are from his SECOND marriage.
And ALL of them when they were children… he’d just leave them to be taken care of by someone else… then HE’D go out, do all his OWN stuff, the stuff he REALLY wanted to be doing…or if he WAS around, then most of the time he’d just outright neglect the kids.
And now that the kids are grown up and adults…hasn’t gotten any better. Life is still PRETTY chaotic between this family.
For example: he’s in a love triangle with one of his sons and another woman named Grushenka… so THAT’S something. He gets verbally abusive with them on a regular basis in the book, gets into scuffles with them. He gets drunk all the time, he’s the kind of guy that you’ll be out with him, he’ll be walking down the street, half in the bag… and he’ll just YELL at some stranger that he doesn’t even know that’s on the side of the road…he’s the kind of guy that OFTEN does stupid stuff like this…and then usually just ends up embarrassing all the people that are around him.
He MANIPULATES the people who are close to him to get what he wants, he ABUSES the people who are close to him when they’re inconvenient to him…
In fact you know since Dostoevsky’s talking here in the book about the role of the father in a Russian household…I was talking to a guy one time, fan of the podcast and he was from Russia. And he told me there’s an old saying in Russia, he heard it from his grandma originally, pretty COMMON for people to still use it though…the saying goes: the second worst thing that can ever happen to a Russian family…is that the father leaves. And the WORST thing that can ever happen to a Russian family is if the father stays.
Just thought that joke seemed to apply here. I mean the POINT of Dostoevsky presenting a FATHER in this way…is MORE than him just wanting a manipulative narcissist in the book to add a little flavor.
I mean TECHNICALLY the people that Dostoevsky is critiquing with this character… are a group of what he saw as self-indulgent landowners… that were growing in number during the 19th-century in Russia when he was living.
But the criticism applies more GENERALLY for him…to the GROWING number of people in our MODERN societies…that are so focused on THEMSELVES all the time, their own achievements and projects…the self-CENTEREDNESS of the modern individual subject… has led to what he thinks is a CONSIDERABLE decline in the focus people choose to put… on FAMILY relationships…LIKE the ones between father and son that he lays out in this book so much.
That if you wanted to find out what’s WRONG in a society…well one place to start is to look at the relationships… between the members of an average family IN that society.
And NOT ONLY…is looking at family relationships in this book going to be the PERFECT SITE for Dostoevsky to explore some of the darkest and most WONDERFUL things that we can do to the people we’re CLOSE to…but this ALSO becomes a PERFECT way to illustrate…one of the big MACRO level points that he wants to make in this book about how to philosophically frame the world, and THAT is: that we should think of the family…as a microcosm…of society at large.
To understand what he means here: think of a common story we HEAR from people in the modern world. They’ll say: I feel lonely most of the time. I don’t talk to my family that much. The people I AM close to…just make me feel more alone when I’m around them.
I spend MOST of my time at WORK, but you know what despite my LONLINESS… I DO, genuinely, CARE… about my fellow people that are out there in the world. And it SUCKS to have to turn on the news and see so many people out there who are SUFFERING these days.
So this person will say look ENOUGH sitting around DOING nothing…it’s time to REVOLUTIONIZE…this society that I’m a part of! Time to FIX it!
So what do I do? Well I live in a democracy. To make a difference in a democracy… means I gotta PUT in the work to become an informed voter. Which means I have to watch the NEWS and consume content that MAKES me an informed voter. And for TWO HOURS of my day EVERY DAY on the way to work, when I’m eating, whenever I get a little free time…I will DO the work…to KEEP UP on the events that are going on politically, the great BATTLE that’s going on between these two sides. I DO this…NOT because it’s fun, no no…but because it’s WHAT it takes… to make this world a better place. And quite frankly: if you’re somebody that’s NOT keeping up on all the stuff that’s going on in the news everyday…well I’m sorry, but I think you’re an irresponsible person. To care MORE about your VIDEO games and your TV shows than you do about taking responsibility for the world you live in…jeez how does it feel to look in the mirror everyday… and NOT be a part of the SOLUTION?
But Dostoevsky… looks at things in a very different way than this.
He’d no doubt appreciate this person’s THEORETICAL concern for all the people around them. But he’d also think that engagement at this theoretical level…this is NOT the most enduring way of GETTING to where it is they claim to want to BRING the world.
For example: that two hours you spend…watching a screen…getting EDUCATED on what’s HAPPENING in the world. Lets ignore the criticism that you aren’t really getting an education there, that this is REALLY just someone indulging in entertainment like MOST people do in the modern world…lets SAY someone REALLY is getting to the bottom of what’s HAPPENING at the political level.
Then just do a comparison of the two hours of someone’s day that they spend watching content…and all the good they’re doing every couple YEARS or so when they can be one vote of millions…and now imagine that SAME two hours everyday…where you instead: reflected on all the ways you are NEEDED in the world immediately around you, you know, the ROLES you play RIGHT NOW that you are in fact ALWAYS, ALREADY performing…and then imagine spending that two hours every day GENUINELY applying yourself…to being BETTER at what is NEEDED from you… by the people and things around you that co-constitute your existence WITH you.
Some QUESTIONS to ask: which one of those two are you more familiar with? Which one of those two are you more capable of actually CHANGING?
Which one of those two are you more qualified to know? In fact, you could say that when it comes to knowing how you’re NEEDED by the things around you…especially when it comes to the people…there may be no one that is MORE qualified for that task… than you are. You are in a SPECIAL position to BE there for them.
And Dostoevsky might say: imagine dedicating two hours EVERY SINGLE DAY to doing it. How would your life change? How would the lives change of the people AROUND you?
To NOT ONLY…be able to spend that time reflecting on how you fit IN to this particular life you’re living– trying to understand things more on their own home ground. But then to be able to spot weak points in your abilities, where you might want to use this time everyday to develop the SKILLS…that’ll allow you to BE there BETTER…FOR this network you’re a part of.
And the point is NOT… that Dostoevsky would EVER think we should be structuring our lives around trying to save the world ANYWAY…but let’s say you ARE one of these people that has that as a big part of the way you see the world…Well, how many of society’s problems…wouldn’t be problems if more people lived in this way? We would have strong, qualified people dedicating the time everyday…you know, MORAL people you could say…and these would be people that would intervene before many of these issues became larger problems.
The question for Dostoevsky is: if you consider yourself a revolutionary and you want to change the world for the better…which one of these two is more revolutionary? And it’s not that there’s never MOMENTS to be taking to the streets acting politically…it’s that THINK of how EASY it is, ESPECIALLY in the TYPE of societies we live in that PROMOTE self-centeredness and ALIENATE us from each other…think of the TRAP you can fall into: think of how easy it is to MISTAKE waving a sign around in the streets changing a grand total of ZERO MINDS…with being a small PART of SAVING the WORLD…think of how easy it is to think you’re CARING for ALL of HUMANITY…when you’re really just an EGO, that’s turning ALL of HUMANITY into a theoretical abstraction, so that you can try to control it.
Where your idea of LOVE and CARE for these people… ISN’T GROUNDED in any particulars about their lived experience…but just in making BROAD statements… about the abstract SUFFERING of abstract HUMANS out there… when in REALITY you aren’t fully considering EITHER of those things to Dostoevsky.
Now there’s a LOT of things you could ask BACK to this idea that’s been presented so far.
Let’s PAUSE here for a second though, with this point that he’s making about the family as a microcosm of society, the FAILURE of Fyodor TO his family in the book. Because I think his point becomes a much STRONGER one… when we consider it next to an IMPORTANT individual SECTION of this book…the section is called The Grand Inquisitor.
The Grand Inquisitor…may be one of the most famous poems, parables, whatever you wanna call it… in ALL of classic literature.
As a SECTION of the book…this is written on PURPOSE by Dostoevsky in a way where you can read it completely on its OWN… and it STILL makes total sense. In fact, there’s a lot of people who hear about The Grand Inquisitor section of this book FIRST…and then ONLY after enjoying IT…will they then get turned onto The Brothers Karamazov as a book more broadly. That’s how GOOD it is!
Anyway, here’s how it goes though. One of those three sons that Fyodor doesn’t know much about… is named Ivan. Ivan is the CLASSIC example… of a highly educated, very smart, rational, SKEPTICAL kind of person…who’s a bit TORTURED by LIVING in a world that he’s so good at critiquing and THINKING about.
See Ivan’s the kind of person…that has a HARD time believing in any religious DOCTRINE that gets sent his way, though he DOES try to RESPECT what it’s saying and does take it very seriously. Ivan also is someone that looks around him at the world…and sees the SUFFERING…of untold numbers of innocent people all AROUND him with SEEMINGLY no end in sight.
So FEELING the frustration that comes along with SEEING this kind of stuff…he tells this story in the book, called the Grand Inquisitor, as a way to put into words… what he thinks is going ON with these religious institutions and all the suffering in the world.
He TELLS it to his younger brother, Alyosha in the book, and REAL quick before we get into it what MAKES this poem so INTERESTING…is that it’s NOT just saying: look at all the suffering in the world. Therefore, it MAKES no sense for a God to exist.
No, what IVAN’S saying is something that’s in a way… far more radical than that. This is what’s sometimes CALLED by people that analyze the book: an anti-theodicy, from Ivan. What does that mean? Well, we’ve talked about MANY theodicies on this podcast over the years. The word theodicy, if you just break down the different parts of the word, it literally means justification of God.
And throughout history there have been a lot of ATTEMPTS by thinkers to JUSTIFY god.
One of the most common things that people try to justify, especially when it comes to the Abrahamic religions… is how a loving God could EVER exist…and STILL allow for what seems like a HORRIFIC amount of completely unnecessary suffering that’s going on on a massive scale.
Well again: Ivan’s not saying you shouldn’t BELIEVE in God… because this suffering can’t be rationally justified. He’s saying: even if this god DOES exist…this ISN'T a god that is worth honoring or praising ANYWAY. Doesn’t MATTER if you can rationally justify it…because any god that ALLOWS for this kind of suffering…should be rejected, if you’re Ivan.
But again the grand inquisitor gets recited in STORY FORM when its in the book.
In the story Jesus…comes back to earth…the famous second coming of Christ we’ve been waiting for is FINALLY upon us, hooray…and where does he choose to come back to when he decides to DO it? Well, 16th century SPAIN of all places RIGHT in the middle of the Spanish Inquisition.
And as the story goes: almost IMMEDIATELY… Jesus comes back…and starts performing miracles on the side of the street again…kinda like David Blaine…but THIS time when he’s DOING the miracles he doesn’t get followers…he just gets arrested when he does it.
Then not long after he gets arrested he gets interrogated by a really forceful, high level clergyman… that people IN the story call The Grand Inquisitor.
The Grand Inquisitor looks at Jesus as he’s interrogating him…and says you know what…since you’re the representative that’s available here on behalf of the creator of the universe I gotta tell you something: you absolutely FAILED… when you created this world when it comes to human freedom.
Because he tells him: it’s the POSSIBILITY of human freedom you see…that’s what LEADS to all the evil in the world. Here’s how it goes: people are born, they’re able to make choices, they inevitably are tempted by evil, then they have the freedom to CHOOSE that evil sometimes, and then innocent people by the billions, including children who have NO frame of reference for ANY of this stuff, SUFFER unnecessarily.
And look, YOU CHOSE for the universe to BE this way Jesus.
And the grand inquisitor says you’ve been gone a long time so let me fill you in on what’s happened since you left: the CHURCH has come along…and they’ve had to step in and CORRECT… for your big mistake there.
As a high ranking clergyman he says the church realized long ago…that people can either have FREEDOM…or they can have happiness…you can’t ever have both…and when it comes down to it…human beings don’t actually WANT freedom, as much as they SAY they do.
People just want full-bellies. They want happiness, and peace, and the way you ensure that is NOT by giving them FREEDOM…but by giving them: authority and miracles and mystery he says…you GIVE them a DOCTRINE to live by with strict consequences if they DON’T…and when they tow the religious LINE there…this REMOVES the whole FREEDOM thing from the equation and ends up PRODUCING a human being that is actually happy.
The bottom line is THIS for the Grand Inquisitor: institutionalized religion, the church…IS an ENORMOUS lie…but it is a NOBLE lie…it’s a NECESSARY lie…people are better off living WITH this lie, just ASK any blindly religious PERSON how great it is to be THEM everyday, they REALLY think they have it all figured OUT!
And how can Jesus, of all people, SIT there with a straight face…and not wail in agony over how unjustifiable all this suffering really is? He CAN’T justify it. In fact, go AHEAD Jesus, just TRY to…give me your argument BACK to all this stuff I just said!
At which point Jesus, staying quiet during this entire speech, listens patiently, when the Grand Inquisitor finishes…he stands up, walks over to him, kisses him on the mouth…and then walks away. A move that Dostoevsky thinks is a complete and powerful counter-perspective…to EVERYTHING that the Grand Inquisitor has just said.
Now why would that make sense, to Dostoevksy?
Well there’s a LOT here to examine. See, it’s a VERY SPECIFIC MOVE that Dostoevsky’s GOING for here…when he has Jesus NOT say ANYTHING…but just get up, and KISS the grand inquisitor.
When Jesus doesn’t SAY anything…it’s NOT like he’s just being NICE to him, you know it’s not like he just doesn’t want to DUNK on him in front of his friends.
No the POINT is…that he’s not even going to ARGUE with the grand inquisitor…because argument, is something that is ALWAYS LIMITED, to the theoretical abstract FRAMING of events in the world, which is INCAPABLE of even RECEIVING the response that Jesus is giving here.
What I mean is: Jesus is looking at the world…through a DIFFERENT kind of experiential FRAMING than the grand inquisitor is. And by kissing him…it underscores the built in limitations to the way the grand inquisitor is trying to FRAME, supposedly, ALL of human existence.
Now if that sounds confusing, well let me try to clear it up…the GOOD news is we’ve been TALKING about the possibility of this pre-theoretical framing of our reality since about episode #211 of this podcast. I’m talking about the more phenomenological, EMBODIED framing of our reality.
We’ve talked about Heidegger’s Dasein and the immediacy of experience in THAT regard. We’ve talked about his later work with his concept of letting be and its connection to the practice of attention in the work of Simone Weil.
We’ve talked about the great mystics, who throughout history, by a process of self-emptying…have tried to get to communion with something GREATER than themselves that they are connected to. We’ve talked about Nishitani and how he thinks MOST of western philosophy throughout history has gone on in the experiential framing of consciousness…and that he thinks it’s DEEPLY LACKING in these OTHER framings of our experience that he calls Nihility and Sunyata.
Well look: this is part of why Nishitani saw Dostoevsky as such an exceptional thinker from the western tradition. He seems to be going DEEPER…INTO the VALUE of these other FRAMINGS of reality…that are OUTSIDE of just theoretical abstractions.
MOST thinkers in the west never DO this.
See there’s NOTHING WRONG to Dostoevsky with arguing…OR with framing the world in terms of theoretical abstractions… and then trying to get to a better understanding of it. We NEED to do this kind of stuff.
But what he would say is: we are ALWAYS LIMITING ourselves…whenever we make the MISTAKE of believing that by coming up with abstract definitions of things in the world…you know, having grandiose conversations about HUMAN LIFE as a defined THING… and HUMAN SUFFERING as a defined THING…we’re ALWAYS limiting ourselves if we REALLY think we’re accessing everything there is to UNDERSTAND about these things.
It’s a similar move to the one that we saw from Nishitani a few decades later…the move he makes with Nihilism in his book the self overcoming of Nihilism that we talked about.
Remember what he says is that what many western thinkers have typically done…is they look at a concept like Nihilism…and they’ll approach it JUST from the abstract, theoretical framing…they’ll come up with definitions as to what Nihilism is. They’ll look at tons of different EXAMPLES of Nihilism out there in the world, throughout history, they’ll find similarities and differences between them…and then they’ll argue with each other and try to refine their definitions to capture the ESSENCE of what Nihilism is.
But remember Nishitani points out: that while this is one PIECE of Nihilism for sure…Nihilism is JUST as much, an experienced, embodied reality for a SUBJECT…that is GOING through a Nihilistic experience. His POINT was if we WANT to take Nihilism as seriously as we can…we HAVE to honor this phenomenological FRAMING of what Nihilism IS…not just stop short with having arguments about NIHILISM, as a broad abstract concept.
Well notice the similarity there to the grand inquisitor…and his broad, abstract arguments about what HUMAN LIFE is or whether SUFFERING makes SENSE or not.
Here’s one of the big POINTS for him: there’s a WAY to talk about SUFFERING…where it’s part of an abstract rational FRAMING of the world. There’s a Tsunami that takes out 10,000 people and they’re suffering. There’s a deer out in the woods somewhere whose leg gets crushed by a giant rock– there’s a WAY to have a conversation about suffering…where the goal is to work out a way to RATIONALIZE it… in some giant, utilitarian calculus you’re doing on the level of the universe.
But there’s ANOTHER way to talk about suffering…FROM this more pre-theoretical framing, where we’re simply trying to affirm the universe more as it IS…where we’re not trying to DEMONIZE suffering…we’re not trying to IDEALIZE suffering…AND when we just EXPERIENCE suffering as an aspect of our exist…suffering in ANOTHER real sense…just IS, a part of the life… of the TYPES of creatures that we ARE.
And again: FAR FROM TELLING these people that they SHOULDN’T be trying to understand suffering on these massive scales…the better question for him is NOT…how do we RATIONALIZE suffering…the question is: HOW do we find a way to authentically EXPERIENCE a world…where SUFFERING is ALWAYS…something that’s present IN it? How do we DO that? Well it is NOT by IDEALIZING the world, it’s not by RATIONALIZING it away, and it’s not by LYING to ourselves about what the world IS.
The answer for Dostoevsky is going to be FAITH…or to STRIVE through the difficulty… of learning to ACTIVELY LOVE the world, or to AFFIRM our existence, unconditionally.
Now MORE on that framing of faith and love here in a second… but first a couple loose ends to tie up here that are interesting. Notice how this ISN’T an argument… that’s trying to REFUTE the idea that suffering is unjustifiable. If Dostoevsky DID that…then that would more or less concede the point that suffering CAN be rationalized away… and it would turn the book into something more along the lines of a theodicy. But remember: he’s not MAKING a theodicy here.
For Dostoevksy…there ISN’T…a rational justification for the suffering in the world. In fact: he ACKNOWLEDGES the COMPLEXITY here… and the VALIDITY of this other FRAMING. When it comes to the arguments made by the grand inquisitor…the grand inquisitor makes some REALLY good ARGUMENTS. But again the REAL point for him that he wants us to understand here is: these are JUST… ARGUMENTS.
In fact he MAKES this point in the book… at MULTIPLE different places. There’s a character named Father Zosima whose a religious man who represents one of the voices of the SAINT in The Brothers Karamazov… remember like we’ve been talking about every Dostoevsky novel has characters that embody the perspective of the madman and the saint. Well Father Zosima is one of the SAINTS in this one, and he has a REALLY great conversation with a woman named Madame Koklakov along these same lines.
She tells him about her OWN existential struggle… how she’s really BOTHERED by the question of what happens after you die. Similar to Ivan… she’s ALSO really bothered… by all the suffering she sees in the world. She wishes she could do MORE about it.
And Father Zosima says back to her when they’re talking: look I hear you. He validates what she’s saying and says that he’s ALSO felt this. He says these can be some of the hardest things to try to reconcile when you’re living mostly in this way of framing things.
But he says to her: I can’t OFFER you any WORDS…. or an EXPLANATION that will rationalize this stuff away for you. The ONLY thing I can offer you he says as a man that is LIVING a deeply religious life…is to say that WHEN you approach the world…MORE from the experiential framing of LOVE instead…then it’s NOT that you GET a rational EXPLANATION for why all this suffering exists or for what happens after you die…it’s that FROM that framing of LOVE…the PRESENCE of suffering or the mystery of death…REQUIRES less of an explanation. Because suffering becomes a REALITY to be EXPERIENCED, not just an intellectual PROBLEM to be SOLVED. Not everybody has the LUXURY of being IVAN like this.
Now this is ALSO where we benefit from having read the OTHER four of his novels that we’ve covered so far.
Because we know by THIS point…that when a SAINT figure in one of his books is talking about LOVE…they are NOT talking about a SUPERFICIAL kind of love. To say I’m going to live life in a more loving way towards the people and things around me…that DOESN’T mean that you’re going to go out…and start doing more nice THINGS for people. COMPLIMENT people more. Hold the DOOR open for them. Radiate more loving patience in everyone’s direction.
No, loving the world around you is not becoming a CARTOONISHLY nice person.
ACTIVE LOVE…like the kind that Father Zosima is talking about in the book…and the kind of love symbolized by Jesus when he KISSES the grand inquisitor…this is a way of FRAMING our experience…in a way that tries to affirm EVERYTHING about it, as unconditionally as we can.
So the grand inquisitor in the story…is NOT STUPID for the arguments he’s making. He’s not even WRONG…he’s just framing reality in an incomplete way, one that has blind spots. So Jesus RESPONDS to this person… with love…by MODELING the exact COUNTERPOINT…that the grand inquisitor NEEDS from him in this moment. In other words this moment ISN’T about JESUS to Jesus…he’s considering how he is NEEDED most and how to best fulfill that ROLE. Kind of like what Dostoevsky was saying about how we can be towards our FAMILY earlier.
And think of how this kind of love applies to an actual situation you might find yourself in:
You look out at the world…and whether it's your best friend, or your child, heck even the local swamp that’s got a lot of LITTER inside of it and its gross…the point is to SEE these things…NOT in some IDEALIZED way where we think about how they SHOULD be all the time. The swamp SHOULD be CLEAN! My child SHOULD be better at MATH! My best friend SHOULD be better at knowing what to SAY here! The universe SHOULD have a plan that all this suffering’s a part of!
We DO this kind of thing so OFTEN when we frame things in terms of theoretical ABSTRACTIONS and try to control them…but to LOVE… is to AFFIRM things as they are…and therefore to LOVE is to SEE things AS they are. To EXPERIENCE things on their own home ground.
Love…is the orientation of care we have TOWARDS this world we live in…when we TRULY seek to understand it… on its own terms.
And look if you’re Dostoevksy: just SAYING THAT…is ONE thing. But if you wanted to actually LIVE more in this way…it’s CLEAR that to Dostoevsky: this is NOT going to be an EASY THING for someone to just start doing. You don’t just flip a switch on… and all of a sudden you’re LOVING everything.
No it’s a very PAINFUL thing at times… to love the world around you as it is.
Things are often frustrating… and disappointing… and MORE than that AFFIRMING these things as LEGITIMATE pieces of a network that you’re embedded in…that often ISN’T something that comes with a lot of CREDIT that you get for DOING it.
I mean when you’re PATIENT towards someone close to you for example in a moment that they’re struggling in…to Dostoevsky: love is something that often goes on behind the scenes.
It's something MOST people don’t even notice, they’re UNGRATEFUL for the love they DO have…it’s something most people ONLY notice years later. You think back to something your mom did for you and you realize oh…THAT’S what she was doing.
And again: in the TYPE of societies we live in that INCENTIVIZE getting RECOGNITION for things, where to be VISIBLE and SEEN is what VALIDATES your EXISTENCE…Dostoevksy would NO doubt see this as a unique challenge…that we all have to overcome to an extent during our own time.
Now, NOTICE the similarities here…to the shift in experiential framing that we heard about from Keiji Nishitani. Where an important piece of what an authentic religious quest is ALWAYS aiming for…is this SHIFT in perspective from thinking: how do the things in the world serve me…to for what PURPOSE do I exist in this larger network. That’s the religious QUEST for Keiji Nishitani.
Well I hope it’s OBVIOUS here the similarities to this active LOVE that’s being described in the book.
Because WHEN you do the work to actually SEE the world in this way…then Dostoevksy says that things like compassion, and patience, and forgiveness, these become things that AREN’T some MORAL PERFORMANCE you’re putting on everyday…just because you know they’re the right things to DO, so you better DO them!
No, they START to become the genuine way that you orient yourself towards EVERYTHING around you…because you INCREASINGLY see how everything around you is a PART of you. It’s co-constituting you.
The ILLUSION of separation that’s so COMMON in our modern societies… gets LIFTED. And then at THAT point: to purposefully HARM something else AROUND you…would be the equivalent… of stabbing your left hand with a fork… so that your RIGHT hand can get a piece of chicken. Harming something around you…is ultimately just you harming yourself, in this framing.
See the Grand Inquisitor is RIGHT in a way: it MAY BE that HUMAN FREEDOM…is something LEADS to more SUFFERING in the world than there may OTHERWISE be. But Dostoevsky would say that freedom …is BOTH the CAUSE of suffering...as well as the ONLY way to love, or have faith or gain ANY possible, ENDURING, connection TO the world around us.
Where he’s coming from is: I can’t be FORCED…to AFFIRM something about the world. It HAS to come from an authentic place of FREEDOM… or else without that, if I’m just forced to do it by a church or something…it just becomes me following orders. I mean imagine being commanded by someone else… to LOVE something. You can’t do it.
That’s PART of why Dostoevsky puts FAMILY relationships on display so much in this book…you know, weathering the frustration that you’re no doubt going to face when TRYING to love like this…this is easier and more AVAILABLE to someone…probably when you practice with your immediate family, friends, the things you know BEST.
To say this another way: I AM a kind of being…that suffers. I just AM. And through a specific KIND of suffering, reflected on in a specific KIND of way… new skills, perspectives, new ways of connecting with the world around me…these are things that are REVEALED to me THROUGH that suffering.
I mean if you were filtering the world through more of an idealist lens here: You can meet a really strong, interesting person who’s had a rough life…and you can look at that person and have an attitude of PITY towards them. Oh, I’m so sorry you had to GO through all of that! NO one should have to face that kind of stuff. And it’s a nice sentiment, and there’s a certain kind of idealistic truth to it. But a person that spends their whole life RUNNING from suffering, getting BAILED OUT whenever they would OTHERWISE be forced to PUSH themselves…that will likely end up BEING… a very shallow person.
That said: it’s not like Dostoevsky’s GLORIFYING suffering either here. I mean keep in mind… this is someone that suffered from epilepsy all his life…he’s having seizures and medical events as he gets stressed out writing these books that we’ve been talking about. On TOP of that this is a guy…who lost multiple children both at very early ages and the stories that his wife writes about him in her diaries…he was absolutely CRUSHED by it. Combine that with a LIFETIME of struggling with gambling problems and to a lesser extent: drinking too much.
Anyway: he’s not glamorizing suffering, but he IS saying that someone that has never had to FACE difficult realities, or has had the privilege to live in an idealistic framing of the world for most of their life… this is likely to be someone uneducated on the limits of what a human experience can BE like.
You know it’s IN this way that Love is described by Father Zosima in the book…as a kind of TEACHER. Love is a kind of KNOWLEDGE I think he says at another point. In other words love is a GATEWAY INTO this more immediate connection to being…and it’s a particularly beautiful one of these gateways because love really is something that’s available to almost anyone… REGARDLESS of their lifestyle. There just ALWAYS IS a collection of things around you that are tempting to idealize.
But think of the strength…of being able to affirm anything, AS a starting point. And having that be a SKILL that you work at… EVERY DAY.
Now on THAT note…ONE thing that needs to be underscored when I SAY this…is that love is not JUST a teacher. The ACTIVE part of active love… is very important here as well. And the KIND of COMMITMENT that it requires…is on the level of something that to Dostoevsky…REALLY only makes sense to describe as FAITH.
Now OF COURSE there’s a HISTORY…of talking about faith and reason as things that are mutually exclusive. And there’s MORE than that a long history in the west of breaking things down in very dualistic ways where we say that…here’s a DOCTRINE called reason…here’s ANOTHER doctrine called faith…and ONE of these doctrines has to be SUPERIOR to the OTHER…so GIVE me an argument for which one is BETTER.
But as I said at the beginning…faith is more of a VERB than it is a NOUN to Dostoevsky. Faith in other words for him was MORE along the lines of how Kierkegaard viewed faith from around this same time.
See Kierkegaard saw faith… as CERTAINLY a concept that is important in religious conversations…but faith was even MORE to him…just part of the anatomy of human decision making and living our LIVES every day. We HAVE to make decisions based on faith. What decision can EVER be MADE on perfect information?
It’s a very HUMAN TRAP to fall into when we’re overindexed on this rational, abstract framing of the world. You can argue with yourself INFINITELY about what the perfectly CORRECT thing to DO is…but you can also just spend your entire life ARGUING with yourself up in your head but never taking action on anything. This is what Kierkegaard called being lost in the infinite.
But to Dostoevksy: doing ANYTHING meaningful in the world…REQUIRES an act of faith. It requires us recognizing…that we DON’T know everything all the time. And more than that that it’s okay: we SHOULDN’T know everything all the time to be able to make a decision. The REAL challenge lies in STICKING to the path you’ve chosen…when you’re INEVITABLY going to run INTO things that are frustrating, difficult, horrifying…ALL the things that are ALWAYS going to be a part of this world we’re living in. Faith is the COMMITMENT REQUIRED…to LIVE in a framing like this long enough to uncover what it has to show us. But, BECAUSE of how DIFFICULT doing this is in PRACTICE…with all the challenges that will come UP every day…
while FAITH is required on the COMMITMENT side of this to Dostoevsky…it is a faithful commitment to active LOVE that he thinks is crucial…and this is the framing he thinks is MOST embodied by the character of Alyosha in the book…though it’s clear he had a lot MORE he wanted to EXPAND on in this area. He had plans to write a SECOND part of the Brothers Karamazov following MOSTLY Alyosha…but he DIED before he could write it.
Now it’s clear by the end of the book that there’s no winners here for Dostoevsky. I mean…it’s clear he thinks the message of Father Zosima and his student Alyosha is the what you’ve most likely missed in your life in the modern world if you’re COMING to this book, but the idea that Ivan has been destroyed here and…and is totally wrong…that’s just too simple of a take.
Remember: with an entire career behind him of writing in characters like Raskolnikov or the underground man…he COULD have made IVAN into somebody that was a complete moral failure…but he DIDN’T…no, in fact he purposefully MAKES Ivan in this book a very respectful, THOUGHTFUL version of somebody overindexed on a rational framing of the world. It’s clear he saw a lot of VALUE in what Ivan was bringing to the conversation.
And someone can say back to this: okay but…which one did he REALLY believe in though? I mean you can SAY that he sees the value in BOTH of these ways of framing things…and that’s very PEACEKEEPING of you we should give you a nobel prize or something. But you CAN’T live in doubt…AND in faith simultaneously. It’s a paradox. He HAD to choose ONE of these BY DEFINITION.
But is that true? Is doubt NEVER a part of living in faith? Or is faith the iterative battle that goes on every day AGAINST the possibility of doubt to serve a higher purpose? Dostoevsky once said that he only ARRIVED at faith VERY LATE in his life…and he says he got there through a FURNACE of doubt. That was the word he used.
Couldn’t it genuinely be that SOME days he felt like Ivan… and other days he felt like Alyosha? Can’t faith and commitment… be stronger some days more than others…and can’t doubt argument…be more NEEDED on some days more than others…especially considering the existential, tragic complexity of his own personality?
Belief in something…this IDEA of whether somebody Believes or they Don’t believe…it’s actually an incredibly bizarre thing when you think about it.
And look this book the brothers karamasov is an absolute MONSTER in terms of characters and plot…even the philosophical themes are impossible to cover in a single episode.
And there’s always room to talk about this book more or other smaller books by Dostoevsky, I’m ALWAYS open to what people are interested in hearing about…we can talk about the novels of Albert Camus, which are highly relevant in this conversation, we can talk about Kafka for all I care just let me know: but I think NEXT episode at the VERY least…I want to get back to the Kyoto School with this NEW perspective we have on Dostoevsky FRESH in our minds.
Specifically: I want to talk about the concept of nothingness…at a deeper level than we ever really have. I want to show why some people think that if Dostoevsky steered into this direction that MOST western thinkers never even touch…what happens if you KEEP STEERING in that direction…do you go off a cliff? Or do you discover something… that you only see GLIMMERS of in the GREATEST moments of Dostoevsky.
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As always, thank you for listening. Talk to you next time.
