Wages of Evil: Dostoevsky and Punishment

Afterword

170 IN THE OPENING CHAPTERS of The Brothers Karamazov , the Karamazov “discordant” (nestroinoe) family gathers in Zosima’s cell (BK, 31). As the protagonists wait for Dmitrii, who is late, conversation turns to Ivan’s recent article on the church and state. Ivan’s summary of the article and the discussion it prompts are Dostoevsky’s response to an actual publication on ecclesiastical courts by M. I. Gorchakov.1 In his article, Ivan argues that the state is a fundamentally pagan institution inimical to the spirit of Christianity embodied in the church. He goes on to outline three possibilities for the resolution of this conflict.2 The first involves the transformation of the church into the state advocated by liberal progressives who see this transformation as an evolution of a lower form of civilization into a higher one. If the church mounts resistance and refuses to cooperate, it becomes, in the second blueprint, relegated to a little corner within the state where it can exist quietly under close supervision. Presumably , this state of affairs already predominates in the West. In the third option , it is not the church that becomes the state but to the contrary, the state evolves into the church, becoming “nothing else but the Church” (BK, 62). In the words of Ivan, this alternative presents “the direct and chief aim of the whole further development of Christian society” (BK, 61). It is less clear whether Ivan, a scientist and an atheist, speaks in earnest than it is that he speaks in this case for Dostoevsky, who sees the stateturned -church as a distinctly Russian political ideal. That Ivan’s ideas are shared by his creator is clear not only from the fact that they are also held by Zosima, Dostoevsky’s “truly perfect man,”3 but also because Dostoevsky states them in his own voice in A Writer’s Diary’s last entry and in his notes to it (Pss, 27:720).4 Significantly, to clarify Ivan’s political philosophy, Dostoevsky relates it to the problem of punishment, illustrating the evolution of the state by reference to an evolution in punishment’s philosophy and practice. “If everything became the Church, then the Church would excommunicate the criminal and the disobedient and not cut off their heads,” Ivan explains (BK, 63). The Afterword Afterword 171 “mechanical” punishment administered by the state will become replaced by the only truly effective punishment, which lies in the acknowledgment of guilt in the criminal’s own conscience. Ivan’s reference to the mechanical punishment resonates with arguments of the jurist O. A. Filippov. In an 1864 article published in Dostoevsky ’s Epokha, Filippov argued that the reason public opinion has little power to positively affect one’s behavior has to do with society’s atomization: the individual’s view of himself as something separate and disconnected from society and of society as something alien to him. The fault, moreover, lies not only with the individual. Filippov implies that society itself is no less apathetic and indifferent to the moral lives of its members. Its failure to mobilize the full force of public condemnation even with respect to convicted criminals stems from its overly formalistic, juridical view of crime.5 In what looks like an extension of Filippov’s argument, Ivan further suggests that the separation of legal norms from spiritual and moral values is a feature of a modern secular state unhallowed by genuine Christian commitments . In a fragmented society that has lost communal beliefs and shared ideals, it is easy for criminals to evade the judgment of their conscience by privately arguing to themselves that they have only transgressed against human laws but not against the church and Christ. “‘I stole,’ he says, ‘but I haven’t gone against the Church, I am not an enemy of Christ’” (BK, 63). When “everything becomes the church,” however, such prevarications will no longer be possible. Mechanical, state-imposed punitive measures will then be replaced by internal, self-imposed private punishment in one’s own conscience. Zosima agrees with Ivan.6 To him, “the only real, the only deterrent and pacifying punishment” lies in “the acknowledgement of one’s own conscience ” (BK, 64; translation modified). Only by shedding the conventional understanding of crime as an encroachment on the laws of the state and society and by redefining it as a violation of “Christ’s law,” is it possible to perceptibly curtail crime and to increase the chances of effecting moral reform in the individual...