The Light of “The Brothers Karamazov”
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This book is also notable for me in that I fundamentally disagree with one of the author’s main idea - that humans need religion as a source of morality. At least, that’s how I interpreted Ivan’s fate - he went mad trying to make sense of the world without God, purely through a rational lens. This disagreement with the author doesn’t matter to me though, because the book is a work of art. That much was clear to me, even as I was turning the pages for the first time. The vitality and detail of each of the characters, especially Dmitri - only a great artist could do that.
I also wonder how Dostoevsky would have felt, if he had written his book 150 years later. While our world was far from perfect, it is far from the universal misery of Tsarist Russia, where serfs starved to death. I feel like you can’t make sense of life in those circumstances with religion explaining why there’s so much pain in the world, so I understand where he was coming from. But would he still have felt the same even if life was substantially better for most people?
Lastly, if anyone can explain to me - why do they call Agrafena Alexandrovna Grushenka? Is this a standard nickname for Agrafena, like Alyosha is for Alexei? I feel like everyone in the novel just took the name for granted, like it was normal to call someone a little pear.
I think in Dostoyevsky's world it's not just religion that is necessary but specifically God: "If there is no God, everything is permitted". Which is a different question, e.g. I agree with you on the part where one can get by without God, but I also think that religion is necessary in a sense that any set of beliefs complex enough to guide you through life is indistinguishable from one.
> Lastly, if anyone can explain to me - why do they call Agrafena Alexandrovna Grushenka? Is this a standard nickname for Agrafena, like Alyosha is for Alexei? I feel like everyone in the novel just took the name for granted, like it was normal to call someone a little pear.
Apparently so, it's hard to tell for sure because the name had completely fallen out of fashion. I was about to write you that I never met anyone who come by that name, however I started reading about it and was quite surprised to learn that Grunya is another short name for Agrafena and one of my great-grandmothers had that name. Never heard anyone call her Grushenka though.
I feel like I have a set of principles that boils down to “treat people how you would want to be treated”. But those principles don’t cover situations like the one Dostoevsky or his characters found themselves in.
This is a fundamentally gentler world than the one he lived in. Maybe in this world we can rely on the State preventing situations where “Everything is permitted”, as Ivan was worried about. Maybe people aren’t as desperate as the people were in Tsarist Russia. They’re not exposed to as much violence, and so don’t feel compelled to commit that themselves.
In that sense very little had changed since Dostoyevsky's time. Or since Homer's time for that matter.
From my perspective, the State’s capacity to enforce the will of the people has improved dramatically. People both then and now would have wanted no indentured servitude, no starvation, better healthcare, safety from violence and so on.
But governments can actually deliver on most of those to a reasonable degree now. In that sense “everything is permitted” is limited by what the state will allow you to get away with. Is murder permitted? Yeah, but you’re probably getting caught. Is littering permitted? Same. We don’t need a belief in God to prevent people from committing crimes against their fellows. Less violence, less starvation, fewer children dying.
People haven’t become better, but the world has become gentler. Whether a person believes “everything is permitted” or not, there’s a lot less permitted now than back then. A simple morality of “I’ll follow the laws of society”, which you have to do anyway, is probably good enough to make a stable society.
On some level, this makes the Brothers Karamazov feel a bit less timeless. It feels like those difficult questions Ivan was grappling with aren’t eternal, just a problem of the circumstances he was living in. If he lived in 2025 he’d probably just be an atheist and he wouldn’t lose his mind over it. It doesn’t matter to me thought, the book is still a masterpiece.
Thank you for discussing this with me. This book is a bit niche so I can’t remember the last time I got to discuss it with someone.
I am bad at tracking things like character's surnames already when books call people by different names, I probably wouldn't have been able to enjoy the book as much as I did without this help.
Another thought I had been having when reading the book was that Dostoyevsky uses insanity and especially insanity caused by stress way too often, it's a major plot device in his books while it's so rare in real life. However now I observe many of my friends (especially single ones) slowly going insane in various ways and I don't anymore think that it's rare. I guess mental health becomes scarce as you get older just like the physical health, just didn't expect this to manifest itself around the age of 35.
Is there a good film or TV production available?
Free to download from Standard Ebooks for anyone interested: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/fyodor-dostoevsky/the-brot...
Popularity is another matter, but then literary fiction has never been popular, almost by definition, compared to genres: romance, mystery, etc.
What I find quite problematic is how it fully inverts what the Grand Inquisitor is about through its oversimplification. Its not an indictment of Christ, it’s about an indictment of Christ, but in fact it‘s Christ who is exposing the institutional church , how Ivan views it, with the only thing it ironically doesnt ‘t expect of him: a deeply Christian act
Alyosha is quite literally introduced as the hero of the novel, so saying his presence pales in comparison to Dimitry and Ivan is kind of weak. I‘d agree that his spectacle pales in comparison to his brothers, but his presence not at all.
I don't think Dostoevsky's Christianity is genuine. It feels about as genuine as Hegel's Christianity. To both of them it's just a convenient prop where their actual ideas take center stage
Every nihilist main character that he writes follows this pattern where they do something really bad, then destroy themselves as some kind of act of penance. This is the only way that conversion happens in his books. But in this case, it's obviously just a way of processing guilt (and reenacting the author's trauma from near execution most likely)
Maybe I'm psychologizing religion too much, but I don't think religious belief is genuine if it's rooted in some kind of (obvious) psychological trauma
The one thing that stands out in Dostoevsky is the psychological depth of the characters, especially in Demons
Dostoyevsky himself never goes that far in his books but I feel that the direction is set pretty clearly. It could be that I'm reading my thoughts into his works though.
I can agree with that his books often suggest that God is the only sane way to survive, but I don‘t agree that this reduces him to only a useful necessity.
Ironically the conclusion you are making aligns very closely with what the Grand Inquisitor is preaching to Christ. And as the Grand Inquisitor is Ivan’s story, and not a plot in the book, I feel like Dostoyevsky is tackling that exact topic very prominently in the book on multiple levels. Especially through the response of the kiss.
I assumed that among other things it requires just accepting that God exists whether we need him or not. The practicality of having God around seems off to me, but in the end I'm not a genuine Christian myself so it's hard to judge.