Abstract
Ivan Karamazov is frequently used, and misused, in discussions concerning the problem of evil. The purpose of this article is to correct some pervasive misinterpretations of Ivan’s statement, as found in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. I criticise some common misinterpretations, as exemplified in the theodical work of Marilyn Adams and John Hick, as well as the more nuanced interpretation of Stewart Sutherland. Though Sutherland’s interpretation is the strongest, it nevertheless misses the mark in identifying Ivan as a positivist. I argue that Ivan Karamazov is not a positivist, but a romantic, and a hopeless one at that. We should, therefore, not read Ivan as stating an argument for the non-existence of God, but instead see him as a representative of a very particular and robust form of non-cognitive atheism.
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Notes
I must confess that I am picking on John Hick a little here, as he does not make too much out of the example of Ivan Karamazov.
For a wealth of evidence regarding this point, consult Joseph Frank’s peerless biography Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time. (Frank 2010, pp. 788–92).
‘...the mind I have is a Euclidean, earthbound one, and so how are we to make inferences about that which is not of this world?’ (Dostoevsky 2003, p. 307).
See, e.g., Ivan saying to his brother: ‘...how have Russian boys run the show up till now—a certain kind of boy, that is? Take this fetid inn, for example, this is where they gather, huddled in corners. They have never seen each other in their lives before, and when they get out of the inn they’ll never see each other again for forty years, well, but what of it, what are they going to talk about now that they’ve snatched a minute or two in this inn of theirs? About the question of the universe, what else? Is there a God, is there such a thing as immortality? [...] it would be hard to imagine anything more stupid than the things with which our Russian boys occupy themselves these days.’ (Dostoevsky 2003, pp. 305–6).
Later, Frank comments: ‘Dostoevsky expresses his trepidation over whether his reply to this “negative side” of his work will be “a sufficient reply. The more so as the reply, after all, is...only an indirect one...an artistic picture...There are a few of the monk’s precepts in response to which people will absolutely yell that they’re absurd in the everyday sense, but in another, inner sense I think they [Zosima’s precepts] are right”.’ (Frank 2010, p. 800).
We must note, too, that references to this Romantic literature feature prominently in Ivan’s speech, and they are said with the most honest feeling that we find in Ivan. There is no trace of irony when he quotes these lines.
For this, see (Dostoevsky (2003), pp. 306–309).
When asked what he knows, regarding an instance of terrible evil, Ivan replies: ‘That I don’t understand anything... And that I don’t want to understand anything now, either. I want to remain with the facts. I decided long ago not to understand. If I understand anything, I shall instantly be untrue to the facts, and I have decided to remain with the facts...’ (Dostoevsky 2003, p. 318).
Dostoevsky writes in a letter to his brother, ‘To know nature, the soul, god, love...These are known by the heart, not the mind.’ Cited in (Frank (2010), pp. 56–57).
For this, see the excellent and revealing exchange between Alyosha and Ivan on p. 302 of The Brothers Karamazov: ‘To love life more than its meaning?’ ‘Most certainly; to love it before logic, as you say, especially before logic, for only then will I understand its meaning.’
References
Adams, Marilyn Mc Cord. (1999). Horrendous evil and the goodness of god. New York: Cornell University Press.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. (2003). The brothers Karamazov, trans. David McDuff. London: Penguin.
Frank, Joseph. (2010). Dostoevsky: a writer in his time. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hick, John. (1966). Evil and the god of love. London: Macmillan.
Sutherland, Stewart. (1977). Atheism and the rejection of god: contemporary philosophy and the brothers Karamazov. Oxford: Blackwell.
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Betenson, T. Ivan Karamazov is a hopeless romantic. Int J Philos Relig 77, 65–73 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-014-9487-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-014-9487-9