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Quote of the Day: The Brothers Karamazov
The following quote is about Alyosha’s decision to become a pious and devout man.
As soon as he reflected seriously he was convinced of the existence of God and immortality, and at once he instinctively said to himself: “I want to live for immortality, and I will accept no compromise.” In the same way, if he had decided that God and immortality did not exist, he would at once have become an atheist and a socialist. For socialism is not merely the labor question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth.
Reading Russian literature is a heavy lift intellectually but it has its benefits. It makes the reader understand that nothing is new under the sun (or the son for that matter).
Published in General
And yet, it always ends in Hell on Earth.
Particularly Dostoevsky.
Arahant, it’s good to see you back. I missed you. I had to ask complete strangers how to get around the Ricochet site.
Amen….I love it and I think because it is a “heavy lift” I can take new things away from it every time.
It’s interesting that The Brothers Karamazov has been described as having a deep influence on many writers and public figures. C. P. Snow writes of Einstein’s admiration:
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I’m currently reading the same book (just finished the Grand Inquisitor) and agree. This is my second time through the book, and I’ve benefited by being older and by not having it assigned as a text in a classroom!
I admire you. I needed to take the class to get through it. It’s not something you can turn on and follow easily while playing on your Iphone.
I like Brother’s K more than Anna Karenina.
Just so happens I first read this post this afternoon while having coffee in a coffee shop named Brothers K. Any writer who draws the admiration of the likes of Albert Einstein, Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand deserves serious attention. I’m currently finishing Crime and Punishment, mostly because Andrew Klavan keeps mentioning it in his podcast. Also highly recommended is The Possessed (sometimes translated as the The Demons). It’s as if Dostoyevsky had a crystal ball and saw far into the future. He is as much ‘our contemporary’ as is Shakespeare.
I loved Crime and Punishment, but Brothers K intimidates me. Maybe I’ll tackle it one day.
I always thought that the money quote from The Brothers Karamazov was Ivan’s anguished realization that:
“If God does not exist, then all things are permitted.”
True. But is the opposite also true? If all things are permitted, then God does not exist. We seem to have descended to a society/culture/civilization where all things seem to be permitted. Please talk me out of this puzzle.
The Bible is replete with the tales of times where people behaved like that.
Didn’t work out well.
If “permitted” means not forbidden by moral law, and if moral law requires a moral lawgiver, then yes.
In some weaker sense of “permitted,” I think the answer is no.
Aristotle’s ethics doesn’t involve moral law; it just involves the proper functioning of the human being. His good moral advice is like good medical advice: It helps us function properly and makes us happier by functioning properly, but that doesn’t make us guilty if we don’t take it. And Aristotelian ethics doesn’t require a G-d as far as I can tell.
But moral law is different; that does make us guilty. And I think moral law does require a moral lawgiver.
But don’t some philosophers (thinking of the 19th century pragmatist John Dewey) confuse Aristotelian ethics with morality? They would have mankind responsible for all the “moral law” existing in a society? Humans are always responsible and Dewey thought that the pragmatic value of God’s existence meant humans could take a “moral vacation.” If twentieth century history demonstrates anything it shows that type of thinking does not work out well.
Doubtful. Even where possibly right, probably oversimplified.
For one thing, Dewey largely follows William James. James is probably the first person to point out that some people advocate a “moral holiday.” See http://ricochet.com/571398/qotd-on-elimination-of-ethics-do-leftists-take-moral-holidays/. Not likely that Dewey would allow himself to think that way. (To be fair, Dewey does seem to follow Hegel a bit more than James and is probably a bit more of an “arc of history” thinker.)
But to get closer to the point. What do you mean by “confuse Aristotelian ethics with morality”? Aristotelian ethics is about morality.
OK, you clearly caught me trying to punch above my weight on this one. What started as a riff about my favorite idea from Brothers Karamazov got itself involved with Aristotle. Your comment that: “Aristotle’s ethics doesn’t involve moral law” confused me. I wrote John Dewey when I meant William James and I was totally unaware of your prior post on moral holidays from last November. I’m not going close to Hegel. Several glasses of wine with dinner did not help me out at all. I was really trying to get to something like “God exists to prevent all things from being permissible” even when they are certainly possible. William James’ kind of moral responsibility produces monsters. I think we kind of agree on that.
As was Fyodor Dostoevsky .
Good advice for all of us.
No, not really.
James only covers ethics directly in this one talk, “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life.” “MPML” is problematic for various reasons, but I doubt whether this is one of them.
Short cartoon version of “MPML” here. My article on it here. Video abstract for that article here.
Maybe we agree that moral law requires a moral lawgiver. We probably agree that without G-d there’s no guilt for doing anything wrong. We probably agree that G-d prevents all things from being permissible.
And we probably agree that arc-of-history philosophies tend to be pretty bad.
It’s been at least 47 years since I’ve read any William James. The mind is alert but the body forgets. I’m going to sign off on this one. 73s to all.