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December 5 2024
19:49 EST
Fyodor Dostoevsky, (adapted) Vasily Perov, 1872, oil
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Introduction to Philosophy
Dostoevsky, "The Problem of Evil"
Abstract: The death of an innocent child is seen to
be an inescapable objection to God's goodness.
- Why does Ivan think that children are innocent and adults
are not? Why does he think we can love children when they are
close, but we can only love our neighbor abstractly?
- Does the General deserve to be shot for turning his hounds
upon the child? Explain an answer from a religious point of view.
- What does Ivan mean when he says, "I hasten to give back
my entrance ticket."
- List five or six possible explanations which are sometimes
taken to account for the death of an innocent child in a universe
created by God
- What does Alyosha mean when he says to Ivan, "That
is rebellion"?
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) is a Russian novelist whose works anticipate
existential psychoanalysis.
- Several biographical points should be briefly mentioned.
- Both parents died before Dostoevsky graduated from a military
engineering academy in St. Petersburg.
- He was arrested, sentenced to death, but after a mock execution
and a commuted sentence, he was sent to a Siberian penal colony
for four years.
- Dostoevsky suffered from epilepsy; he experienced a conversion
experience to Christianity.
- Aside from the brief early acclaim for Poor Folk, he
did not receive literary fame until several years before his
death.
- His influence is profound upon twentieth century writers and
philosophers.
- In the Twilight
of the Idols, Nietzsche writes, "Dostoevsky, who,
incidentally, was the only psychologist from whom I had something to
learn; he belonds to the happiest windfalls of my life…"
.
- "The Problem of Evil" as discussed in The Brothers
Karamazov:
- Notes are arranged in response to the questions stated above in
reference to the chapter
"The
Problem of Evil" in Reading for Philosophical Inquiry.
- Why does Ivan think that children are innocent and adults
are not? Why does he think we can love children when they are
close, but we can only love our neighbor abstractly?
- Innocence, for Ivan, has to do with the intention of an act
rather than the outcome of an act. The child is innocent
because the child did not intend to hurt the hound. Since an adult
can intend do harm when there are not harmful consequences, an
adult cannot be experientially innocent as a child could be.
- We can love our neighbor abstractly in the sense that all
people have the same nature, but once we come to know the
foibles of our neighbor, we lose sight of human nature.
People in general share no disagreeable qualities; specific
persons have specific disagreeable qualities which can
distract us from loving them. Children have not yet developed
the adult idiosyncrasies such as mistrust, greed, and cruelty.
Dostoevsky seems to see naivety as innocence and the
consciousness of adults as awareness of right and wrong.
- Does the General deserve to be shot for turning his hounds
upon the child? Explain an answer from a religious point of view.
- "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an
eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, do not resist
one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right
cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any one would sue
you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well;
and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two
miles. Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse
him who would borrow from you. You have heard that it was
said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who
persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who
is in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on
the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust."
(Matthew 5:38:45.)
- "If men fight, and hurt a woman with child, so that
she gives birth prematurely, yet no harm follows, he shall
surely be punished accordingly as the woman's husband imposes
on him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if any
harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye,
tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn,
wound for wound, stripe for stripe." (Exodus 21:22-25.)
- What does Ivan mean when he says, "I hasten to give back
my entrance ticket?"?
- Ivan says he accepts God simply. He apparently believes in
a classical Euclidean creation: there is an underlying order
and meaning to life with an eternal harmony with regularity
and law.
- It's the world, itself, created by God that he cannot
accept.
- Ivan doesn't accept the world, and he states he will take
his own life. He reveals the feeling, "Stop the world, I
want to get off."
- List five or six possible explanations which are
sometimes taken to account for the death of an innocent child in a
universe created by God.
- The problem described by Ivan is the example of a child, as his
mother is forced to watch, being torn apart by hounds set upon
him by the master. Ivan asks how can we account for the suffering
of the child.
- Eternal harmony: Suffering and evil will vanish like a
mirage at the end of the world. Just as seeing the individual
colors of the rainbow does not indicate to us that all colors
taken together produce white, so likewise seeing the
individual events of live does not indicate to us that all
events taken together produce the whole picture of the
universe.
- Consciousness: "Good" and "evil" are polar
concepts—without sin we cannot have known good and
evil. (In Christianity, the eating of the apple represents
the origin of consciousness.) Without the possibility to do
harm, people could not be conscious of what is good—people
would not be people, but robotic.
- Trust Alone: The suffering of the innocent child is simply
beyond human understanding. I.e., it's absurd. The
problem of evil is a mystery because Christianity is not an
idea but is essentially a nonintellectual way of life.
as it is.
- Freedom: Given paradise, people preferred freedom.
It's our freedom which makes us people as opposed to other
natural processes. The existence of evil is
the price paid for free choice. Human beings qua
human beings could not choose only the good. (A crucial question
Dostoevsky suggests is whether people actually seek freedom. Moreover,
would God allow freedom of choice in the afterlife?)
- Future Harmony: Evil events will produce something
better in the future for others (e.g., consider cases
where there is a "necessary evil" or cases where
the ends justify the means.) For example, my suffering today
will produce a better world for my children and others
in succeeding generations. The world course is getting better and
better—we are overcoming evil before the final redemption
at the end of the world.
- Paying for father's crimes: We all share
responsibility for what has happened in the past. "The sins
of the father are visited upon the sons." (Source of the
quotation results from a violation of the second Commandment:
worship not a graven image. "For I the Lord thy God am a
jealous God and visit the sins of the fathers upon the
children unto the third and fourth generation." Cf.,
Deuteronomy 5:8-10 and Exodus 20:5.)
- Saving the world from a future evil: The child
would have grown up to sin (perhaps be a mass murderer).
By his death by the hounds, the world is saved from his
future evil deeds.
- Suffering is necessary for the price of truth: No
truth can be won without overcoming evil is some form. Some
kinds of good can only originate from evil events.
- Additional oft-cited accounts for the problem of evil
do not address the cases of the suffering of an innocent child
and do not address the cases of nonmoral evil such as
flood, tornado, and earthquake.
- God's punishment for evil behavior: God is a just
God and punishes unrighteous behavior which leads human beings
either to repentance or rebellion.
- Evil is a test or trial: Evil is necessary for improvement of
the soul, spiritual growth, and testing faith.
- Evil does not exist: Evil is an illusion or a lack of
the being of goodness. Evil arises arises at the disappearance of
goodness.
- What does Alyosha mean when he says to Ivan, "That is
rebellion"?
- Alyosha is suggesting that Ivan has forgotten that there is a
God who could forgive the guilt resulting from the death of
the child.
- For Ivan no just God would permit a crime like the suffering
of an innocent child. Ivan believes God is just, but he rejects
the world God has created.
- The crucial aspect of Dostoevsky's approach to the problem of evil in
the Brother's Karamazov is how can we believe rationalizations of
solutions in the face of the horrors of natural atrocity and the death
of a small child.
Notes
- 1. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Twilight
of the Idols Hertfordshire, U.\K.: Wordsworth Editions,
2007), 77.↩
Further Reading:
- The Brothers Karamozov A
Website from Dartmouth College summarizing a variety of materials relating
to Dostoevsky's novel including translations, introductions, study
questions, exercises, and additional links.
- Dostoevsky, a
Review An extraordinarily
insightful explanation and analysis of Dostoevsky's life and works in an
thoughtful review of Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky: The Mantle of the
Prophet by James Wood for The New Republic, reprinted by
Powell's Books.
- Problem
of Evil. Extensive summary approaches to the problem of evil in
philosophical, literary, and religious thought by Radoslav A. Tsanoff
in the Dictionary of the History of Ideas.
- Stephen
Law on the Problem of Evil. This interview on Philosophy Bites with Stephen
Law, Heythrop College, University of London, editor of Think, by
David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton provides a concise exposition of the
logical and the evidential aspects of the problem of evil. The discussion
includes the questions of what makes a belief reasonable, whether God
exists, theodicy, free will, and nonmoral evil. Law concludes that it
is unreasonable to believe in the existence of a wholly good or wholly
evil god.
- “Theodicy”
Leroy E. Loemker's entry in the Dictionary
of the History of Ideas maintained by the Electronic Text
Center at the University of Virginia Library discusses the
problems raised by the presence of evil in the universe and the
presence of a wholly good omnipotent God. Both philosophical and
theological theodicies, together with their criticisms, are
presented.
- Tragic
and Comic Visions in The Brothers Karamazov: Joyce Carol
Oates examines the psychology and the ideas of the novel from the point
of view of Dostoevsky's creativity.
“And, truth to tell, nothing was more important on
earth than a child's suffering, the horror it inspires in us,
and the reasons we must find to account for it. In other manifestations
of life God made things easy for us and, thus far, our religion
had no merit. But in this respect He put us, so to speak, with
our backs to the wall. … Thus he might easily have
assured them that the child's suffering would be compensated
for by an eternity of bliss awaiting him. But how could he
give that assurance when, to tell the truth, he know nothing
about it? For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness
can compensate for a single moment's human suffering? He who
asserted that would not be a true Christian, a follower of the Master
who knew all the pangs of suffering in his body and his soul.”
Albert Camus, The Plague trans. Stuart Gilbert (New York:
Random House, 1991), 224.
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