Theodicy and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov The problem of reconciling an omnipotent, perfectly just, perfectly benevolent god with a world full of evil and suffering has plagued believers since the beginning of religious thought. Atheists often site this paradox in order to demonstrate that such a god cannot exist and, therefore, that theism is an invalid position. Theodicy is a branch of philosophy that seeks to defend religion by reconciling the supposed existence of an omnipotent
God Answers the Questions Presented by Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment In Dostoevsky's novels pain and some heavy burden of the inevitability of human suffering and helplessness form Russia. And he depicts it not with white gloves on, nor through the blisters of the peasant, but through people who are close to him and his realities: city people who either have faith, or secular humanists who are so remote from reality that even when they love humanity
The Grand Inquisitor The Grand Inquisitor reflects Fyodor Dostoevsky interest in religious and political issues. Dostoevsky uses the voices of his characters to express his views on the legitimacy of the Roman Catholic Church and role of religion in society. The story centers around the conflict between the Grand Inquisitor and Jesus. Jesus returns to Earth during the Spanish Inquisition, when in which Jews and Muslims were forced to convert to Christianity and were murdered if not devoted in
Argument in The Brothers Karamazov Dostoevsky makes a strong case against Jesus in "The Grand Inquisitor": Jesus did not love humanity sufficiently to care for the greater good of the race. The majority of people, according to the Grand Inquisitor, are weak and "like sheep." Jesus prized freedom of faith above all else, and because he cared more for that freedom than for the happiness of people, the Grand Inquisitor and the Catholic Church, as led by he Inquisitor, reject Jesus
The Problem of God in Devils and The Brothers Karamazov In contemplating the creation of the novel The Idiot, Dostoyevsky wrote in a letter to A.N. Maikov that he hoped to focus the work around a question "with which I have been tormented, consciously or unconsciously all my life--that is, the existence of God."1 Dostoyevsky's personal struggle with the question of faith, and also his own experience with trying doubts as a believer, are manifested in the characters he writes. A large
concepts in Dostoevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov is the concept of free will. It is important to the novel because of the overall theme that everyone is responsible in some way for everything that happens. Also, it makes the novel more interesting because it essentially lets the characters run around doing whatever they like. However, there is one character in the novel who does not exercise his right to free will like the other characters do. Alyosha, who Dostoevsky calls his “hero”, is granted free
LITERATURE AND POLITICS: THE IMPACT OF FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY Dostoevsky and the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor, by Vasily Rozanov. Translated and with an Afterword by Spencer E. Roberts. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1972. Pp. xi. 232. $12.50. Political Apocalypse. A Study of Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, by Ellis Sandoz. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971, Pp. xviii. 263. $13.50.* ostoevsky's great novels have spawned a vast library of critical 1/literature
Dostoevsky as Performer Storytelling and reading aloud played a valuable part in young Fyodor's life, influencing his own later successful writing endeavors as well as his performance of literature. His nanny and wet nurse introduced the Dostoevsky children to folklore and lives of the saints through the stories they told. Nanny Alyona Frolovna "told the children stories of ancient Russia, of Saint Sergey of Moscow subduing a bear by the power of his holiness, of heroes and legends and folk
This notion is similarly echoed in Fyodor Dostoevsky's work of literature The Brothers Karamazov, particularly in the sections entitled "Rebellion" and "The Grand Inquisitor". In these sections of this novel, Ivan poses the viewpoint that to forgive suffering, especially that which takes place on such a grand level as found within the world at large, would be morally unacceptable as well as akin to a tortured man choosing to love and idealize his torturer (Dostoevsky). The principle point of convergence
society. It seems that Skinner advocates the same processes which Huxley criticizes in Brave New World: he believes that humans should be manipulated to increase their happiness, so that the "terrible burden of freedom" to which Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor refers is not a burden that individuals have to accept. Therefore, although Walden Two purports to describe a Utopian society, I think that it describes more of a dystopian one, although it is certainly a more insidious and subtle dystopia than