Book 2: An Inappropriate Gathering
Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2011 4:00 am
The Brothers Karamazov
Book 2: An Inappropriate Gathering
Book 2: An Inappropriate Gathering
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This is one of the main philosophical debates from The Brothers Karamazov, and from Crime and Punishment, where the main character Raskolnikov holds a similar view. Dostoyevsky uses it to explore the widespread cultural malaise of nihilism, the idea that nothing matters. Dmitri gets heavily into a nihilistic frame of mind when he goes on his spree after the encounter with his father. I think it rests on the distinction between ultimate values and human values. Ultimately, nothing matters and everything is lawful. Humanly, everything matters and the law is lawful.Kevin wrote:everything is lawful.
OK but (and I don't doubt your interpretation to be the more accurate one) but I don't see Raskol as being a nihilist at all. The point is made that without a belief in God (in both stories) there is no objective base of morality. In this limited sense then Raskol was probably a nihilist up to the terrible coda of the book. But he is determined to fill the vacuum of nihilism with something, antything, that a) works to his advantage and b) affords him some measure of justification. He determines that he is justified in murdering the moneylender because he is younger, stronger, smarter and so on... he remains an ethical creature - not because his ethics are something that is commendable but simply by his need for his actions to be justified in his own mind. I contrast contrast Raskol's murder of the moneylender with what I think is the most memorable scene of the book - which is a dream - in which a man is beating a horse because it is unable to carry its assigned load. (and of course a somewhat similar scene is mentioned in The Brothers Karamazov) The justification given by the man is that he owns the horse. Well blah blah I know... skipping a lot of steps in order to spare anyone who happens to read this... and myself... it's the same morality at work in these two situations! It's the one that says might makes right. This is what Dostoyevsky sees as being the lone alternative to the objective ethical standard that religion is able to offer. It's a formulation of the line that some will say for why they are believers - because I have to be.Robert Tulip wrote:This is one of the main philosophical debates from The Brothers Karamazov, and from Crime and Punishment, where the main character Raskolnikov holds a similar view. Dostoyevsky uses it to explore the widespread cultural malaise of nihilism, the idea that nothing matters.Kevin wrote:everything is lawful.
I'm with you on the first sentece. I'm not sure what the second one means.I think it rests on the distinction between ultimate values and human values. Ultimately, nothing matters and everything is lawful. Humanly, everything matters and the law is lawful.
I don't see that a belief in God (and IIRC it's not the christian God that Marcus Aurelius would have been referencing) - but I certainly may not be recollecting it correctly at all. I just vaguely recall reading somewhere about Aurelius and how he was hard on the christians... or not. It doesn't matter anyway since the point is, or seems to me to be, that only with the concept of God can there be an objective basis for determining what is right and what is wrong. Yes! I just looked it up and my memory is in this instance spot on! Marcus Aurelius was indeed a persecutor of christians. I'm still trying to get what you mean with this: whatever happens is the will of God by definition, therefore there is no ultimate basis for our human views that one thing is good and another thing is evil. I'm having trouble because, as I think Dos argues, the importance of God is simply that it does give an ultimate basis for humans to objectively classify things as ethically good or bad. It doesn't matter so much that God exists as it does for everyone to agree that He does. Doesn't Dos routinely mingle the absurd with the gritty? It was mentioned elsewhere in this forum how Kolya's pronouncements can be at times jarring since he is just a young kid - absolutely! I can think of no better author with which to illustrate the point that a reader has to be willfully insane when reading a work of fiction. What's the point of stories that aren't true? Do you remember that question? What's the point of stories that are true? I can, perhaps, see the butterfly, or some particular level of hell, or Black Beauty trotting along the countryside, and so I might learn something in spite of my knowing better. There wasn't even a murder Dos is saying that the argument about God is all wrong. It's not a matter of proofs or evidence for or against the actual existence that matters but rather it's the theoretical existance upon which everything depends. That's what I see in it anyway. I am concerned however in that that is my own outlook... I'm probably reading a lot into it.Robert Tulip wrote:Thanks Kevin, you ask what I meant by "Ultimately, nothing matters and everything is lawful."
The stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius held that whatever happens is the will of God by definition, therefore there is no ultimate basis for our human views that one thing is good and another thing is evil.
I don't think that's what Dos meant by it... which doesn't mean that your view is wrong of course. I just think I'm on it like a Beagle on a pot roast.... everything is lawful refers to human morality not the workings of gravity and so on... the Bible says God said Let there be light and then a few days later he created the Sun and the stars... Dos was aware of this. Everything is lawful because of a refusal to believe in Kant's philospohy in which lying is always wrong, because God says so, and remains so no matter how much of a knot you have to tie yourself in to defend the consequences of reckless bouts of honesty.Things are good and evil only relative to human concern. We are human, so this means that humanly we have to demarcate between good and evil, but the ultimate logic is that the universe continues regardless of whether humans are here to see it, so ultimately it does not matter if we prosper or fail. The workings of ultimate law are just the physical laws of the universe. We can try to break those laws, or imagine that God might break those laws, but there is no evidence of anything occurring contrary to the laws of physics. In this ultimate sense, what I meant by 'everything is lawful' is that everything follows the natural laws of physics.
Step back a moment from your own perspective and say something about what you think Dos meant by everything is lawful. Alyosha would disagree with your last sentence while Ivan would most likely agree. Dmitri?We can actually choose to break human law, but the consequences for us are entirely within the scope of natural law. It is not a law of the universe that says murder is wrong.
But if the stories about hell are needed, or even just beneficial, then there is a moral imperative to lie about it and say Yes, they are true! Isn't this what Dos is arguing for in the book?We often confuse human law with ultimate law, because we wish to give extra force to human law, for example by inventing stories about hell. But the philosophical logical distinction remains, and provides a basis for us to understand the basis of human law.
Yes, that is logical, because the concept of God is used to provide an objective validation of our subjective opinions, to invest them with ultimate force and emphasis. The trouble is, whether this imagined objectivity of values has anything like the objectivity of facts. It does not. Values are subjective, not objective. We cannot say “objectively” that it is better that humans flourish through the universe than that we go extinct by cooking our planet. This “better” is a subjective opinion, a value statement that only gains its impression of objectivity from the emotional horror we feel regarding extinction of our species. The concept of God is the basis for the metaphysical objectivity of values, so without God, values are just opinions, and everything is lawful.Kevin wrote: the point is, or seems to me to be, that only with the concept of God can there be an objective basis for determining what is right and what is wrong.
Here are a couple of sample comments from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius:
I'm still trying to get what you mean with this: whatever happens is the will of God by definition, therefore there is no ultimate basis for our human views that one thing is good and another thing is evil. I'm having trouble because, as I think Dos argues, the importance of God is simply that it does give an ultimate basis for humans to objectively classify things as ethically good or bad. It doesn't matter so much that God exists as it does for everyone to agree that He does.
At Dmitri's trial, the prosecutor describes Ivan Karamazov asPresident Camacho wrote:Dostoyevsky recognises the danger in Ivan's 'everything is lawful' idea in the way it helps to unhinge Smerdyakov... whywhywhywhywhy
Smerdyakov had earlier raised this question with Ivan in their Third And Last Interviewone of those modern young men of brilliant education and vigorous intellect, who has lost all faith in everything. He has denied and rejected much already, like his father. We have all heard him, he was a welcome guest in local society. He never concealed his opinions, quite the contrary in fact, which justifies me in speaking rather openly of him now, of course, not as an individual, but as a member of the Karamazov family. Another personage closely connected with the case died here by his
own hand last night. I mean an afflicted idiot, formerly the servant, and possibly the illegitimate son, of Fyodor Pavlovitch, Smerdyakov. At the preliminary inquiry, he told me with hysterical tears how the young Ivan Karamazov had horrified him by his spiritual audacity. ‘Everything in the world is lawful according to him, and nothing must be forbidden in the future—that is what he always taught me.’ I believe that idiot was driven out of his mind by this theory, though, of course, the epileptic attacks from which he suffered, and this terrible catastrophe, have helped to unhinge his faculties. But he dropped one very interesting observation, which would have done credit to a more intelligent observer, and that is, indeed, why I’ve mentioned it: ‘If there is one of the sons that is like Fyodor Pavlovitch in character, it is Ivan Fyodorovitch.’
This 'everything is lawful' theme recurs throughout the book, first mentioned at Chapter VI. Why Is Such A Man Alive? (p47)
“You were bold enough then. You said ‘everything was lawful,’ and how frightened you are now,” Smerdyakov muttered in surprise. “Won’t you have some lemonade? I’ll ask for some at once. It’s very refreshing. Only I must hide this first.” And again he motioned at the notes....
Smerdyakov articulated in a shaking voice ... ‘all things are lawful.’ That was quite right what you taught me, for you talked a lot to me about that. For if there’s no everlasting God, there’s no such thing as virtue, and there’s no need of it. You were right there. So that’s how I looked at it.”
“Did you come to that of yourself?” asked Ivan, with a wry smile.
“With your guidance.”
“And now, I suppose, you believe in God, since you are giving back the money?”
“No, I don’t believe,” whispered Smerdyakov.
(480)
Ivan explains his theory to Alyosha at the end of the Grand Inquisitor (194)Ivan Fyodorovitch ... solemnly declared in argument that there was nothing in the whole world to make men love their neighbors. That there was no law of nature that man should love mankind, and that, if there had been any love on earth hitherto, it was not owing to a natural law, but simply because men have believed in immortality. Ivan Fyodorovitch added in parenthesis that the whole natural law lies in that faith, and that if you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism. That’s not all. He ended by asserting that for every individual, like ourselves, who does not believe in God or immortality, the moral law of nature must immediately be changed into the exact contrary of the former religious law, and that egoism, even to crime, must become not only lawful but even recognized as
the inevitable, the most rational, even honorable outcome of his position. From this paradox, gentlemen, you can judge of the rest of our eccentric and paradoxical friend Ivan Fyodorovitch’s theories.
In Ivan's conversation with Satan (499), the devil saysI “There is a strength to endure everything,” Ivan said with a cold smile.
A “What strength?”
I “The strength of the Karamazovs—the strength of the Karamazov baseness.”
A “To sink into debauchery, to stifle your soul with corruption, yes?”
I “Possibly even that ... only perhaps till I am thirty I shall escape it, and then—”
A “How will you escape it? By what will you escape it? That’s impossible with your ideas.”
I “In the Karamazov way, again.”
A“ ‘Everything is lawful,’ you mean? Everything is lawful, is that it?”
Ivan scowled, and all at once turned strangely pale.
I “Ah, you’ve caught up yesterday’s phrase, which so offended Miüsov—and which Dmitri pounced upon so naïvely, and paraphrased!” he smiled queerly. “Yes, if you like, ‘everything is lawful’ since the word has been said. I won’t deny it. And Mitya’s version isn’t bad.”
Alyosha looked at him in silence.
I “I thought that going away from here I have you at least,” Ivan said suddenly, with unexpected feeling; “but now I see that there is no place for me even in your heart, my dear hermit. The formula, ‘all is lawful,’ I won’t renounce—will you renounce me for that, yes?”
Alyosha got up, went to him and softly kissed him on the lips.
“That’s plagiarism,” cried Ivan, highly delighted. “You stole that from my poem. Thank you though.
“every one who recognizes the truth even now may legitimately order his life as he pleases, on the new principles. In that sense, ‘all things are lawful’ for him. What’s more, even if this period never comes to pass, since there is anyway no God and no immortality, the new man may well become the man-god, even if he is the only one in the whole world, and promoted to his new position, he may lightheartedly overstep all the barriers of the old morality of the old slave-man, if necessary. There is no law for God. Where God stands, the place is holy. Where I stand will be at once the foremost place ... ‘all things are lawful’ and that’s the end of it! That’s all very charming; but if you want to swindle why do you want a moral sanction for doing it? But that’s our modern Russian all over. He can’t bring himself to swindle without a moral sanction. He is so in love with truth—”