The diabolical deception of those who deny freedom

During a lunch with his brother Alëša, before recounting the famously well-known parable of the Grand Inquisitor, Ivan Karamazov discusses at length his own views on God and faith. He asserts that it is a specifically Russian preoccupation, one shared only by young Russians, and that individuals must reflect on such questions before reaching the age of thirty, after which there is only time left either to forget them or to take one’s own life.

Anyone who thinks this way may be many things, but they certainly cannot be an atheist. In Ivan there is a spiritual fanaticism, a delusional need for meaning that claims to be rational whilst in fact being entirely blinded by the desire to understand that which inevitably lies within the realm of mystery. Ivan has an extraordinarily pretentious and, at the same time, demeaning conception of God. If God is not comprehensible, then He is not worthy of being loved. In this sense, one is reminded of the idea of children’s suffering, which Ivan considers irredeemable. There can never be any revelation so powerful, he believes, that it could justify the suffering of even a single child; nothing can justify it, nothing can encompass it within itself and atone for it.

It is a fierce faith, yet one tainted by a sort of Enlightenment-era obsession; it requires explanation. At the start of the conversation, in fact, he tells his brother that he will soon be setting off for Europe, even though he knows that everyone there is dead – that is to say, that history has already passed. But he will weep at those graves – presumably those of the philosophes, those of Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau. Perhaps, in particular, at the latter’s. Ivan is undoubtedly the most modern character in The Brothers Karamazov, the one to whom today’s readers feel closest. His apparent rationalism is not indifference – far from it; rather, it is a form of emotionalism so radical, a way of experiencing the world so profound, that it becomes unbearable to him. His supposed nihilism – which is not really such – stems from a lack of mediation with the world.

Everything must be resolved here and now; otherwise, this is proof of the world’s fundamental unsustainability. And even if there were a God somewhere else who watches and observes and will one day save us, that is irrelevant. Because the suffering here is irreparable. At one point, addressing Alyosha, he says: ‘It’s not that I don’t accept God – understand this point clearly: it is the world He has created, this world of God, that I do not accept and cannot bring myself to accept.’ Ivan is a rebel against pain; he cannot accept that suffering exists in the world. Even if one day everything were to find an explanation in some form of universal harmony, for him all that would be worth absolutely nothing. Here we seem to hear the echo of the voice of Mersault, Camus’s “L’Étranger”, who was an avid reader of Dostoevsky, when, in the one moment in which he truly appears human, he lashes out at the prison chaplain whilst awaiting execution. It is no coincidence that, in 1938, Camus took part in a stage adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov, playing the very role of Ivan.

Nonetheless, there is another passage in the dialogue between Alyosha and his brother in which it becomes clear how a line of reasoning such as Ivan’s – stemming from a seemingly gentle and rational despair, thirsting for justice, but which will ultimately end in a total nervous breakdown caused by an inability to accept the world – can give rise, even with the best of intentions, the worst political ideas aimed at bringing the kingdom of heaven down to Earth: ‘What I need is a supreme punishment; otherwise, I shall be forced to annihilate myself. And let it be a punishment not in infinity, indeterminate in place and time, but right here, on this earth, and let me see it with my own eyes’. It is precisely in this obsession with an entirely immanent theodicy that lies the demonic deception of those who wish to renounce freedom in exchange for security in this life—which will ultimately be the central theme of the tale of the Grand Inquisitor.