PHI 3882 Paper 3 Fall 2009

The big lesson to draw from these papers is that you must be ready to deal with the complexity of Dostoyevsky's writing.

Consider the following:

Since the beginning of religion there have been believers and there have been skeptics. Believers have done everything they could to teach the ultimate message of their faith, while skeptics have always tried to prove that a message of faith usually goes against the rules of logic.

Students often like to begin papers with claims that something has been the case "Since the dawn of time..." or "Since the beginning of humanity..." or, in this case, "Since the beginning of religion...." It sounds impressive; where better to begin than at the beginning? Many myths begin in this way, and children's stories begin with "Once upon a time...." But, although you are free to write about the nature of myth, your paper should not be a contribution to mythology. It should be researched carefully, based on evidence. The beginning of religion is prehistoric - there are no sources to tell us whether, in the early days of religion, there were also skeptics. You could, of course, research the earliest surviving texts to contain traces of religious skepticism. Certain texts from the Vedas (the oldest Hindu scriptures) can be interpreted as expressions of agnosticism in response to the awesome mysteries of the universe. However, what we have here is not research, just speculation.

Of course, despite the "Since the beginning..." this opening is really telling us how the writer perceives the characters in The Brothers Karamazov, but still it is misleading. The suggestion seems to be that there are two types of people, believers and skeptics. Believers always try to spread faith: they are never half-hearted, or lazy. There are no believers who take faith for granted. Anyone who has faith makes it their main task in life to spread that faith. Then there are skeptics. They are always motivated by logic. So believers are emotional, skeptics are logical. Ivan is a skeptic, so he must be logical:

Ivan's advanced logical thought does not really allow him to accept the existence of God, simply because he cannot find any logical explanation for any such existence.

As far as I can see, this gets Ivan's character completely wrong. The most memorable passage in which he expounds his views is the parable of the Grand Inquisitor, which is the outline for a poem he plans to write. So he is a poet, not a scientist or a logician. He refuses to place his faith in God because he can only conceive of God as a calculating tyrant, who allows children to suffer for the greater good.

The vision of religion that Ivan rejects is Leibniz, although he does not mention Leibniz by name. Leibniz was a master of logic - he discovered calculus independently of Newton - and he thought that God, bound by the limits of logic, would create the best possible world, but necessarily, even the best possible world must contain some suffering. In other words, Ivan is rejecting a supremely logical vision of the universe because he cannot accept it emotionally.

There is a certain stereotype of atheists as being highly intelligent in scientific matters but lacking in emotions, cut off from the rest of humanity. Dostoyevsky is breaking away from that stereotype: he gives us an emotional, poetic atheist, who is unable to have faith precisely because he loves humanity. But if you start out with the simplistic view that skeptics always rely on logic, you will miss out on the very factors that make Ivan such an interesting character, and in doing so, you overlook the very qualities that set Dostoyevsky apart from most other novelists.

From another paper:

Ivan represents utmost logic; Ivan manages to analyze situations through cold methodology. He does not permit emotions to interfere with the discussion and evaluation of his conclusions.

The error is the same: can you really say that the Ivan of Pro and Contra is not guided by his emotions?

Here is a much better description of Ivan from another paper:

Outwardly he appears to be a highly rationalistic and pragmatic man so sure about his atheistic views that he expresses them openly at the slightest chance he gets. Examples of this can be seen when he relates 'The Grand Inquisitor' to Alexei, the accounts of the speeches he gives at social gatherings and the sarcastic article he wrote about the Church's jurisdiction. In reality, it is shown that he is in  fact insecure about his true beliefs and to a certain extent only following the intellectual trends of the times. One of th;e few able to see though him is Father Zosima, who is able to discern in the contrast between the ideas expressed in Ivan's article and those usually expressed in his public speeches the ideological and spiritual uncertainty Ivan is privately going through as seen in this quote...

It is no coincidence that this more accurate account of Ivan is backed up by references to the text, culminating in a quotation from Father Zosima. I don't doubt that you've all been reading the book, but when you make a pronouncement about a particular character, you should review the evidence and see what it adds up to. Ivan's encounter with Zosima indicates that his public persona of a rational atheist is not the whole story.

 The word "Outwardly" at the start of this paragraph is an important qualifier, or to be precise "Outwardly he appears to be..." is an important qualifying phrase, that is it signals to the reader that what we are getting in this sentence is not the whole story. Qualifying phrases like this are often over-used, because students often use such expressions to cover themselves from possible errors.  For example, one student writes of Ivan that '...he does not necessarily care if any of them will die." Here, "necessarily" is a qualifying phrase. The writer isn't sufficiently confident to state categorically that Ivan doesn't care, so the statement is watered down by this extra word. If it turns out that we can show Ivan cares, one could always say "I didn't say he doesn't care, I said he doesn't necessarily care." Similarly, to say that Zosima is 'one of the few' who sees through Ivan leaves open the possibility of some other character who also sees through him without mentioning anyone specifically. But "Outwardly he appears to be..." is not an indication of a lack of confidence. It does not cover a lack of knowledge of a lack of confidence, but an awareness of complexity - the contrast between appearance and reality.

The complexity goes beyond the characters Dostoyevsky creates, and encompasses the lessons he wants us to draw and the way he teaches them. This should be recognised in your conclusions. 

Dostoyevsky is telling us here that faith and love are two interconnected sentiments.

A twelve year old child could probably tell me that faith and love are interconnected sentiments. The trouble is, the word 'interconnected' is just so vague. Love and hate are interconnected, as are anger and grief. The interesting question is how the two are connected. Could it be that without faith, there can be no love? If Dostoyevsky can demonstrate that, it would be interesting. Everyone agrees that love is something good, but some philosophers (e.g. Sam Harris) think that faith is bad. If there is no love without some kind of faith, then there is an argument that could be used against Harris. But of course, it is not easy to demonstrate that without faith there can be no love - showing that this particular type of connection exists is a much more difficult task than asserting the obvious truth that the two are interconnected in some unspecified manner.

Another example:

Without some degree of control the absence of God, or better yet the absence of fearing God, can make someone a danger to society. In the end I would like to think that Zosima's words of wisdom are more of a forewarning; to forgive and continue living life or suffer the consequences of your actions.

For every action has a reaction; and the absence of forgiveness is the true absence of love. And if your actions lead to another's reckless actions then it is your morality that enters conflict for you are the cause for chaos to take place and that burden is heavier and more consuming than would have been forgiveness.


The final sentence needs re-writing. Rather than 'enters conflict' I would write 'causes conflict' and rather than 'would have been forgiveness' you should have 'forgiveness would have been.' The first of these changes effects the sense significantly. The point is that Ivan has some responsibility for his father's death; had his actions been different, Fyodor would not have died. To avoid repetition, one then has to think of some other word instead of 'cause' for 'cause for chaos'. One could say that Ivan is the catalyst for chaos, for example. The second change is a matter of producing a sentence that sounds natural in English.

The difficulty with this concluding paragraph is that it does nothing more than take sides with Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky thinks that non-belief has dangerous consequences. Ivan, the non-believing brother, contributes to his father's death and then goes insane. But a non-believer reading the novel would reject the idea that this is an inevitable consequence of non-belief. A friend of mine wrote a novel in which there is a football match between Manchester United and Real Madrid. I urged him to make Manchester United win the match. But of course I was joking: anybody can make their team win a fictional game, but so what? It is just a novel. What Dostoyevsky has to do is present the connections between lack of faith and insanity, or between faith and love, in such a way as to persuade us that this really is the truth about human nature, and that is a difficult task. This final paragraph doesn't tell me whether Dostoyevsky has presented anything that would make an atheist think twice - it only states what his conclusion is in the simplest terms (atheism is dangerous because fear of God is one thing that keeps us from performing evil acts) and then endorses it, saying in effect 'That's what Dostoyevsky thinks, I think so too.'

Incidentally, the fictional match between Manchester United and Real Madrid ended in a draw.

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