Evil in an Earthly Paradise: Ivan Karamazov’s “Dialectic” Against God and Zossima’s “Euclidean” Response

EVIL IN AN EARTHLY PARADISE: IVAN KARAMAZOV'S "DIALECTIC" AGAINST GOD AND ZOSSIMA'S "EUCLIDEAN " RESPONSE IN BOOK FIVE of The Brothers Karamazov Ivan launches an attack against "the idea of God" which (though a great part of its appeal is unmistakably emotional) has often been thought by Dostoevsky's critics to be unanswerable on purely rational grounds.1 In 1891 Vasily Rozanov called Ivan's" dialectic"" directed against religion" the most powerful that had ever been enunciated and asserted that " one of the most difficult tasks of our philosophical and theological literature in the future " would " undoubtedly " be that of constructing " a refutation of this dialectic." 2 Forty years later E. H. Carr stated categorically that Ivan's indictment of God" is not 1 Ellis Sandoz (Political Apocalypse: A Study of Dostoevsky's. Grand Inquisitor [Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1971] p. 109, fn. 17), observes: " The problem of theodicy in Ivan's presentation of it is, in fact, not so 'unassailable' as Dostoevsky believed it to be." Although Professor Sandoz recognizes that Ivan's argument may be logically refuted, he does not identify its vulnerability, and he repeats the widespread and mistaken belief that Dostovsky himself thought Ivan rationally invincible. What Dostoevsky believed to be " unassailable " was not Ivan's attack against God but rather his "thesis" that "the senselessness of the suffering of children " leads logically to the conclusion of " the absurdity of historical reality," not the absurdity of "God's world" (my italics; see the letter of 10 May 1879 to N. A. Lyubimov in Jessie Coulson, Dostoemsky: A Self-Portrait [London: Oxford Univ. Press, 196~] p. ~~O). The only study I have seen that argues the rationality of a major part of the theocentric position in The Brothers Karamazov is the valuable and persuasive essay of Roger L. Cox in Between Earth and Heaven; Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, and the Meaning of Christian Tragedy (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969). Cox's essay, however, though it provides a much-needed corrective to the usual view of its subject, focuses upon the Grand Inquisitor's indictment of Christ and is not directly concerned 'with " the problem of God." • Vasily Rozanov, Dostoevsky and the Legend of the Grand Inquisito'I', trans, with an afterword by Spencer E. Roberts (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 197~), pp. 107-08, 108-09. 567 568 ROBERT V. WHARTON answered, and could not be answered, on the rational plane," q thereby indicating that he believed Rozanov's anticipation of an eventual refutation of Ivan to have been vain. Since Carr virtually all major Dostoevskyans have repeated either his view that Ivan is unanswered within The Brothers Karamazov itself or his view that Ivan is unanswerable in actual fact. Representative of those critics who belong to the first group are Rene FiilOp-Miller, who thought Dostoevsky believed the answer to Ivan to lie "in a truth that speculative logic could never grasp-the proof of God through Christ; " 4 Avrahm Yarmolinsky, who thought the novel as a whole "no more a logical answer than is the section on Zossima; " 5 and Richard Peace, who perceived Zossima's response to Ivan to be based upon" revelation" and "non-Euclidian logic." 6 Among those prominent Dostoevskyans who have insisted that Ivan's position is logically unassailable are Ernest Simmons, who believed that " on a purely rational basis, as Dostoevsky recognized, Ivan's thesis is absolutely unanswerable;" 7 Eliseo Vivas, who was certain that " Dostoevski knew perfectly well that in his own terms Ivan could not be answered; " 8 Edward Wasiolek, who thought Ivan's rebellion "deep and powerful and unanswerable ;" 9 Konstantin Mochulsky to whom Ivan's argumentation seemed "completely irrefutable;" 10 and Robert •Edward Hallett Carr, Dostoevsky (1821-1881): A New Biography (London: G.eorge Allen and Unwin, 1931), p. 289. •Rene Fii!Op-Miller, Fyodor Dostoevsky: Insight, Faith and Prophecy, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Scribner's, 1950), p. 57. 5 Avrahm Yarmolinsky, Dostoevslcy: His Life and Art, 2nd ed. (London: Arco Publications, 1957), p. 385. •Richard Peace, Dostoyevsky: An Examination of the Major Novel,a (Cambridge : Cambridge Univ. Press, 1971), pp. 278, 276. 7 Ernest Simmons, Dostoevsky: The Making of a...