Existential Struggles in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazovi

I’ve come for your crosses, Sonya.

After all, it was you who told me to go to the crossroads;
what’s the matter? Now that it’s come to the point,
have you got cold feet?ii

Dostoevsky’s novels have historically served as a rich fount for engagement by philosophers.
Many such as Lev Shestov, Friedrich Nietzsche and Mikhail Bakhtin (as well as scores of 20 th
century Existentialist philosophers) found things to like – and at times dislike – about this
Siberian ex-convict. Nevertheless, it remains troubling that commentators despite
recognizing its philosophical richness have been unable to distill from Dostoevsky’s prose
any clear-cut philosophy and at times resign to the position that Dostoevsky gave voice to a
number of unmediating philosophical points of view. As a result, some have emphasized that
such ‘polyphony’ is the central characteristic of Dostoevsky’s thought. Mikhail Bakhtin
famously noted, for instance, that “a plurality of independent and unmerged voices and
consciousnesses, a genuine polyphony of fully valid voices is in fact the chief characteristic of
Dostoevsky’s novel”iii . This means not only that the different characters of the various
novels are expressing certain philosophical ideas, but also that they themselves are the
product of a number of dialectically interacting ideas. Other commentators take recourse to
Dostoevsky’s personal correspondence and diary where he clearly favors a Russian Orthodox
perspective on religion/morality, and gradually held less socialist and more Tsarist political
views. Because of this, James Scanlan opines that while Dostoevsky’s prose is “dialogical in
style”, it is “monological in substance”iv, and so argues that there is a singular philosophical
point of view to be abstracted from Dostoevsky’s writings.

In a nutshell, some authors thus claim that Dostoevsky’s novels are characterized by
a great number of philosophical positions without any overarching, comprehensive
philosophy and others find that Dostoevsky did hold certain strongly Christian-inspired
philosophical theses that beget, albeit subtle, expression throughout the novels. The former
position is troubled by the difficulty of accounting for some of the obvious Christian

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characteristics of the ultimately more successful of Dostoevsky’s characters (e.g. Alyosha
Karamazov, Rodion Raskolnikov). The latter position has difficulty accounting for the large
amount of (often favorable) credit and due attention that is given to non-Christian
characters (e.g. Ivan Karamazov, The Underground Man). I will engage this debate with
regard to one central concern that runs throughout numerous of Dostoevsky’s novels,
namely the existential condition of the human agent that enables redemption. I will, in
particular, tackle this question from the viewpoint of Alyosha’s redemption and Ivan’s
submission into madness in The Brothers Karamazov.

Redemption is a difficult to define concept, but, for Dostoevsky, this implies the
possibility for an authentic and self-assured existence that does not lead to death, suicide or
madness. By providing a new perspective on Dostoevsky’s perspective on soteriology, as
taking place in what I will call ‘existential struggles’, the demerits of both approaches
outlined above can be resolved. I will, namely, show that Dostoevsky held that only in, by
and through certain existential struggles (that are never conclusively settled) is one able to
lead an authentic existence. The path to redemption then necessarily includes and is
sustained by a myriad of different, interacting perspectives since only through these agonal
interactions can redemption be found. There is accordingly a fairly univocal view with regard
to soteriology to be found in Dostoevsky’s prose, but that point of view necessitates a
plurality of self-standing perspectives. Three aspects turn out to be central to authentic
existence, which are metaphorically described in the story of the onion (see below): (1)
Authentic existence implies a level of faith that is buoyed not by ‘big things’ such as miracles,
but small gestures and seemingly mundane happenings can suffice; (2) Authentic existence
implies a proper mode of receptivity to a given, in the sense that one must be willing to be
‘illuminated’ by mystical experiences or revelation; (3) Authentic existence involves a social
project that takes responsibility for the guilt ‘of all for all’, which is very different from
Dostoevsky’s alleged pre-Siberia socio-paternalism. To make these claims, I will first
generally detail what exactly I understand by such existential struggles (section 1).
Afterwards, I will comprehensively delineate how such existential struggles occur in two of
the protagonists of The Brothers Karamazov, i.e. Alyosha and Ivan. I will do so first by
showing what the challenge is that they face (section 2) and how Alyosha manages to
resolve it by adhering to the abovementioned three aspects of an authentic life, while Ivan

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does not (section 3). Similar arguments can be made with regard to other of Dostoevsky’s
characters, but restraint of space limits this paper to these two.

1. Existential Struggles in Dostoevsky’s Novels

Dostoevsky’s novels are of a peculiar sort since while few question their literary qualityv,
they are arguably also saturated by thought-provoking philosophical content. This
philosophical content is not obviously presented in abstract discursive deductions and
argumentations, but as incarnated and dialectically communicating ideas. In other words,
Dostoevsky’s characters are the result of a number of incarnated philosophical ideas that
navigate and develop throughout the life of their host. The life-project of most of
Dostoevsky’s characters then consists in to constantly oscillate between their bedrock
principles (and their consequences) where the outcome of their lives makes up the general
conclusion of their philosophical theory. Reinhard Lauth notes this as that “[the character’s]
life teaches where their theory leads to”vi; and, Michel Eltchaninoff suggests that
Dostoevsky’s characters “are possessed by their idea, their explanatory vision of the world.
The ideas are profoundly lived by the characters”vii.
One typical characteristic of almost all of Dostoevsky’s major characters is that their
philosophical principles are never at ease, but are given expression as an inner cognitive and
emotional struggle. This struggle might initially be perceived as a psychological chasm
between two extreme philosophical positions, but can also be productively employed as a
‘chiasm’ (a place of meeting) if the character manages to navigate these properlyviii. For
instance, Alyosha Karamazov seems initially divided between faith in Slavophile religion and
the nihilistic despair following up on discovering that his mentor (Father Zossima) is
decaying; Ivan Karamazow appears split between scientific rationality and faith in some kind
of justice; Rodion Raskolnikov oscillates between perceiving himself as a superhuman
‘Napoleon’ and his guilty conscience; Prince Myshkin is torn between his unconditional
loving acceptance of everyone and his Romantic love for Filippovna Natasya Barashkova and
Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchin. The tension between these ideologies is never sublated
dialectically, which is something Bakhtin phrases as that the ideas are “discussing and

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interacting, but never merging”ix. However, and this is something Bakhtin does not address,
these tensions can become productive of a higher self by being the enabling condition for a
psychological revolution.
Dostoevsky himself gives voice to the extremely split nature of his characters at
Dimitri Karamazov’s trial – there calling it the Karamazov-condition to oscillate between two
extremes:
As a rule, between two extremes one has to find the mean, but in the present case
this is not true. The probability is that in the first case he was genuinely noble, and in
the second genuinely base. And why? Because he was of the broad Karamazov
character – that’s just what I am leading up to – capable of combining the most
incongruous contradictions, and capable of the greatest heights and of the greatest
depthsx.
Accordingly, Dostoevsky never openly surrenders the inner tension in his characters to any
higher (rational) scheme or metaphysical theory, but uses the agonistic tension so as to
show what ways of life are more authentic. No one doubts that certain lifestyles beget more
sympathy from Dostoevsky (who doubts that he identifies more with Alyosha Karamazov
than with the Underground Man?), but the genius of Dostoevsky is to eschew cautiously
from proposing a final solution of the most desirable outcome. He retains a vital sense of
authorial distance from his characters by keeping them always at a distance from any lasting
justification. The reason for leaving the dialectic open-ended has to do with Dostoevsky’s
particular take on soteriology, namely that existential turmoil is the conditio sine qua non of
redemptionxi.
Numerous of Dostoevsky’s characters are involved in an open dialectical dialogue
with their own ideas sometimes up to the point of autistic self-obsession. Robert Jackson
phrases this as the tell-tale pattern of Crime and Punishment, i.e. the “dialectical of
consciousness in Raskolnikov”xii. The danger of focusing too univocally on Raskolnikov’s
existential struggle as a ‘dialectical of consciousness’ is that such a reading tends to obviate
the open character of Raskolnikov’s development into a fixed trajectory of moving beyond
indeterminacy towards full self-realization through action. In other words, Raskolnikov’s
inner dialogue is then easily read as a kind of Hegelian self-development where the prior
ideological state (confidence) strongly contradicts the aftermath (confusion) thereby
logically opening the way for a higher form of existence beyond these tensionsxiii. Such

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readings downplay the open dialectic that moves back and forth between two opposites
without sublation. Ksana Blank helpfully illustrates the open nature of the dialectical
dynamics of Dostoevsky’s philosophy by means of the duck/rabbit image in Gestalt-
psychology: both points of views are correct, but a certain point of view is more potent since
it more comprehensively captures reality (i.e. seeing both the duck and the rabbit)xiv.
The existential struggle takes place between such self-sustaining extreme points of
view, but in this very struggle, Dostoevsky employs a specific structure to think about
redemption. The most pertinent struggle that occurs in The Brothers Karamazov is between
two different approaches to reality. In the first, the human agent has a scientific,
instrumental approach to reality. From this tack, what happens in the world is the
consequence of simple deterministic, causal laws and there is no such thing as a guiding
providential hand through history. The second, competing approach more equivocally hopes
and has faith that there is goodness in the world and that mankind is capable of great things.
While this latter approach necessitates Christian faith in Providence, it similarly projects
responsibility upon individual human agents for their moral character. In other words, this
latter approach suggests that through mystical openness to certain values that might even
conflict with the subject’s own autonomy can the agent be redeemed. Some have
formulated the pressure between these approaches somewhat simplistically as a clash
between self-serving rationality and gracious faith. Victor Terras captures this, in fact, as one
of the central themes of The Brothers Karamazov: “The encounter between intellectual
brilliance and simple Christian wisdom is a central theme in The Brothers Karamazov” xv.
Terras emphasizes, however, that Dostoevsky does not rely on ‘Intellectual brilliance’ and
professes a dire need for simple Christian faith. I think this oversimplifies things.

The reader is often naturally drawn to the conclusion that Dostoevsky is an

(irrationalist) apologist for Christian faith. His correspondence regrettably often only serves
so as to further corroborate this point of view. For instance, in a famous letter to Natalya
Fonvizina, Dostoevsky emphasizes his adherence to Christian belief over the ‘truth’: “If
someone were to prove to me that Christ was outside the truth, and it was really the case
that the truth lay outside Christ, then I should choose to stay with Christ rather than with the
truth”xvi. Even though this clearly states that Dostoevsky personally prefers a Christian life-
style over ‘intellectual brilliance’, Dostoevsky nevertheless retains a sense of authorial

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distance which enables him to sustain neutrality in his novels that lets the ideological straits
of his characters naturally develop. But even more importantly, Christian faith is, in
Dostoevsky’s view, itself not delivered from the kind of turmoil that enables redemption, but
even necessarily includes for Dostoevsky a certain level of doubt and uncertainty: “The
hosanna must be tried in the crucible of doubt”xvii. Simple faith will then not solve the
problem. One typical characteristic of the dramatic plot of Dostoevsky’s novels is namely
that the agent that continues upon a more rationalist life are largely unsatisfied (e.g. Alexei
Ivanovich), mad (e.g. Ivan Karamazov) or death/suicidal (e.g. Arkady Svidrigaïlov, The
Ridiculous Man, Ippolit Terentyev). Those who are saved, often through the graces of a
woman, tend to embrace romantic love (Rodion Raskolnikov) or a Christian life-style
(Alyosha Karamazov). They consequently live their redemption in and through the
experience of active love. Their redemption is bought in and through an existential struggle –
even an existential crisis – that continues on throughout their lives but also creates the very
possibility of redemption that has to be reaffirmed in their social project.

The redemption of Alyosha Karamazov (and madness of Ivan) is highly informative in

this respect. Alyosha’s redemption occurs after being confronted with a Biblical text, namely
the story of the Wedding at Cana (John 2: 1-11) – interestingly, Rodion Raskolnikov is ‘saved’
after a confrontation with a reading of the Resurrection of Lazarus (John 11: 1-46). Because
of the prominence of these biblical texts, the reader would naturally be inclined to think that
their respective redemption was affected by the confrontation with these texts which
inspires ‘simple Christian faith’. This is, however, a misunderstanding of the events leading
up to their redemption and a proper reading of these passages illuminates that while their
redemption is facilitated by these Biblical texts, it is their existential turmoil and propensity
to Christian openness that prefigure and enable this redemption. As I will point out,
redemption is not found in the merely passive acceptance of God, but more importantly in
the existential turmoil of a complex human individual that struggles with his or her ideas,
emotions and convictions. They subsequently acquire an outward peace over the inward
struggle in a social project that embraces the ‘guilt of all for all’.

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 2. The Struggles of Alyosha and Ivan Karamazov

The psychological development of the brothers Ivan and Alyosha throughout ‘The Brothers
Karamazov’ reveals a telling story on the subject of such existential struggles and
redemption. Alyosha is usually represented as a kind-hearted, faithful human being with
unconditional trust in the goodness of God. Ivan, however, would be of a more rationalist
and socialist persuasion while having a hard time reconciling the belief in a benevolent
divine Father with the myriad of atrocities that rage across the world. However, Ivan and
Alyosha are not as easily defined as these initial presuppositions would make us believe. In
fact, the frame of mind that dominates each respective brother surreptitiously broods
underneath the other brother’s dominant traits.

Alyosha, or Alexey Karamazov, is a “lover of humanity” and a “well-grown, clear-eyed

young man of nineteen, radiant with health […] thoughtful and very serene” xviii. As a Russian
Orthodox enthusiast, he fanatically admires his Elder, Father (starets) Zossima, the sickly
spiritual leader of the local monastery. On an early public appearance, Father Zossima sets
the tone for the challenges that Alyosha (and Ivan) will face throughout the novel. The Elder
engages with a number of believers that have come to repent their sins and listen to his
counsel. Initially, Father Zossima delivers a hopeful message of a gracious and all-accepting
God:

Fear nothing and never be afraid. And don’t worry. If only your penitence fail not,
God will forgive all. There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the
Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to
exhaust the infinite love of Godxix.

Accordingly, Father Zossima preaches and lives a life of faith and repentance. The scene
quickly turns towards more existential issues as one woman confesses that she suffers from
a lack of faith. This confession already prepares Alyosha’s ordeal where he will be confronted
with the limits of his own faith as well as Ivan’s self-conflicted dialectic between faith and
proof, which finds its apotheosis in his hallucinated dialogue with the Devil (see below).

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Father Zossima immediately warns against using rational arguments so as to recover faith,
since things such as the afterlife and God’s grace are principally beyond the reach of human
understanding. In Zossima’s view, “there is no proving [religious beliefs]”, which, however,
does not exclude that the human agent “can be convinced of [these]”, namely by the
“experience of active love [for humanity]”xx. Father Zossima believes that by mimicking
God’s agency (mystical love and philanthropic service), the human agent can be deeply
convinced of God’s grace. This is the kind of agency that Alyosha fairly consistently has
exhibited throughout his life but will be existentially challenged in the months to come.

In the much discussed chapter ‘Rebellion’, Alyosha’s brother Ivan poses a striking
challenge to Alyosha’s life based upon faith and service, namely the diabolical atrocities that
are committed on almost a daily basis by people everywhere. Ivan’s myriad of examples
detail in particular the horrifying suffering inflicted upon children that in no way deserve
such malicexxi. Ivan is struggling with these things himself despite being of a more rationalist
bend: “With my earthly, Euclidian understanding, all I know is that there is suffering and that
there are none guilty; that cause follows effect, simply and directly; that everything flows
and finds its level”xxii. Nevertheless, he finds such a purely causal account of suffering
unsatisfying: “I know that, and I can’t consent to live by it! What comfort is it to me that
there are none guilty and that cause follows effect simply and directly, and that I know it – I
must have justice, or I will destroy myself”xxiii. This issue, whether crime/vice is to be
explained by social and empirical factors, was already a major theme in Crime and
Punishment. Ivan appears then to be oscillating between two points of view with regard to
evil and justice: on the one hand, he knows that these are to be explained physically and
sociologically as the consequences of certain stimuli, but, on the other hand, he feels the
need for there to be moral responsibility and ultimately even justice.

What particularly plagues Ivan is the problem of evil: how can a good, all-powerful
and all-knowing God condone evil to be inflicted upon those who in no way deserve it?
Western theology has two possible solutions to resolve the problem of combining God’s
alleged goodness with such evil in excess of guilt. Modern and Platonically-inspired
philosophy usually perform some form of ‘Theodicy’ where such evil is a part of a divine plan
and, if perceived from a more comprehensive vantage point, a necessary good in the
eschatological development of human beings, society and reality as a whole. Ivan blocks

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such a strategy since he emphatically insists that there is no way that any amount of benefit
can possibly outweigh the sacrifice of even a single child: “Why, the whole world of
knowledge is not worth that child’s prayer to ‘dear, kind God’!”xxiv Ivan’s disagreement with
Theodicy is not so much motivated by theoretical considerations, but by practical concerns
since he cannot live in accordance with Theodicy or at least finds such a mode of living
existentially unsatisfying and disrespectful towards human suffering. Alyosha suggests a
different recourse, namely a more Augustinian line of argumentation, that suggests that evil
is principally the result of free agency, but can be atoned for and forgiven – ‘not a sin so
great that it exhausts the infinite love of God’ – in Jesus Christ, “the One without sin and
[God’s] blood”xxv. Jesus’ self-chosen martyr-death on the cross is able to justify any sin and
by taking up Jesus’ sacrifice into the Christian’s heart (‘conversion’), even the most depraved
human agent can find redemption. When we come to the crossroads, we have to decide
whether we welcome Christ into our rational egoism or whether we keep insisting on the
dualism between faith and reason.

In response to Alyosha’s solution, Ivan wagers his well-known challenge (‘The Grand-
Inquisitor’) to the historical development of the Catholic Church as more in line with the
Devil than with Christ. This church, in other words, failed to properly follow Jesus’ example
of freedom/responsibility and therefore is impotent to justify the excessive amounts of evil
in the world. Ivan illustrates this by showing how the Church has procured the hearts and
minds of people not primarily by a message of freedom, atonement and responsibility but by
‘bread’, ‘miracles’ and ‘worldly power’. In the Biblical narrative on the ‘Temptations of
Christ’ (Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, Luke 4:1-13,), Jesus rejected all three of these since
they would, at least partially, undo the freedom and responsibility of the particular believer
to turn towards God. Accordingly, the generic Christian believer is, because of the doings of
the Church, more a slave to dogma, than a follower of Christ. Already in this early dialogue,
the seeds of doubt and conflict are planted in Ivan and Alyosha, who will respectively
struggle with pressure from a more faith-based Christian life and more sober, objective logic.
While the narrative leaves, at the end, many possible outcomes possiblexxvi, it is generally
reckoned that Alyosha finds some form of reconciliation while Ivan becomes mentally
unstable.

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 3. To be ‘Tossed an Onion’: Redemption for the brothers?

The conclusion of The Brothers Karamazov appears to be that Alyosha manages to procure
an authentic existence while Ivan does not. Such authentic existence is the result of
redemption from, what some have called, the ‘rational egoism of the apparent self’ towards
the ‘mystical grace of the authentic self’xxvii. The main source of this state of self-enclosed
egoism is, according to Dostoevsky, the rationalism of the Modern West that does not reject
faith as such, but forces faith to stand before the tribunal of reason. As such, the Western
tradition has given rise to a dualism between faith and reason which Dostoevsky attempts to
undermine. Some have, in my view mistakenly, identified the opposition between faith and
reason as the tell-tale motive in The Brothers Karamazov, which in turn has obscured the
narrative’s intentions of showing the primal porosity between rational thought and faith.

The dualism between reason and faith is, according to Dostoevsky, a typically
Modern invention that resonates powerfully in the Western Christian churches. In his view,
Roman Catholicism has degraded into a sense of trite rationalism and Lutheranism
altogether rejects reason in favor of blind faith. Dostoevsky does not subscribe to either of
these positions, but sides, in this regard at least, with Eastern Orthodoxy. Turning to their
different understanding of ‘dogma’ is a helpful way to illustrate the difference between the
Eastern and Western perspective on the relationship between faith and reason. From the
Western point of view, the dogmas of the Catholic church are the way human beings
attempt to render comprehensible the nature of God (e. g. Trinity, incarnation, resurrection,
spirit); from the Eastern perspective, however, these dogmas are the way God illuminates
human beings through grace about His being. As such, the Eastern perspective emphasizes
that there is a revelation before human beings attempt to render God comprehensible. By
then accepting divine illumination in the appropriate way, human agents can experience a
transformation (metanoia) as more porous, truthful and authentic human beings. In the
Eastern perspective, redemption consists first in the acceptance of divine inspirationxxviii. The
difference with the two dominant Western perspectives is that, on the one hand,
Catholicism would, according to Dostoevsky at least who was likely thinking of some versions
of Scholasticism or Jesuitism, allow for an uninspired rationalist self-transcending of human

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beings and, on the other hand, Protestantism would stop short at divine revelation by
refusing the possibility for this to inspire natural and rational agency.

A different illustration of the porosity of faith and reason in the Eastern tradition is
how evil occurs as the self-exclusion of the human being from God through refusing either
faith or reason (which necessarily must cooperate in human agents). The separation
introduces the human agent into the realm of ‘Death’ which can be overcome by the victory
of ‘Life’ enabled by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the Eastern perspective, the
resurrection of Christ, and so His victory over ‘Death’, even paves the way for the deification
of humanity – as Vladimir Solovyov calls it, ‘divine humanity’ or ‘godmanhood’ – by re-
infusing humanity with a trace of divine Sophia (wisdom)xxix. Through Christ’s grace,
humanity is given the possibility to transcend by allowing for justification of original sin and
attain a state of saintly holiness. Obviously, Dostoevsky’s philosophy is not a simple
repetition of Eastern Orthodoxy. In fact, as Lonny Harrison more comprehensively argues,
Dostoevsky’s philosophy appears to be a mixture of Eastern, Slavophile Orthodoxy and
German Romanticismxxx. While then this theological framework is helpful in clarifying some
aspects of Dostoevsky’s soteriology, a proper account of the subject matter must come in
medias res, namely by the story told to Alyosha by Grushenka about the onion.

Alyosha gradually starts having a crisis of faith when Father Zossima begins to
decompose and reek after his death. There was at that time a belief in Russian Orthodox
Christianity that holy men do not decompose after their death and were even likely to emit
“a sweet fragrance”xxxi. When, however, Father Zossima started to decay, Alyosha was
brought to “a crisis and turning point [in] his spiritual development, giving a shock to his
intellect, which finally strengthened it for the rest of his life and gave it a definite aim” xxxii.
This happening was a shock to Alyosha since he had deeply admired and even emulated
Father Zossima, who now turns out to be just another frail human being. What particularly
vexes Alyosha is how the faith of the other monks reveals to be weak when shaken by simple
physical facts. Alyosha himself even starts to doubt whether there really is truth to his
Christian faith (or perhaps whether it is tenable at all) if even Father Zossima proves
insufficiently holy. In other words, Alyosha’s primary bedrock principle is shocked by the
confrontation with a physical fact; the reverse will occur to Ivan, namely that his general
allegiance to physical facts is shocked by an equivocal sense of faith. Since Alyosha has a very

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strong ‘will to believe’, he would rather disbelieve his senses than deny the occurrence of a
miracle. His faith did not derive from witnessing a miracle, but preceded it: “Faith does not
[…] spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith”xxxiii. Yet, after having recognized that
a miracle was not going to occur, Alyosha briefly flees the monastery and indulges in certain
forms of debauchery that were removed from his normal character (such as drinking vodka).

He winds up at the house of Grushenka (one of the sources of strife between his
father and Dimitri) where he is regaled with a mythic story that anticipates his future
redemption. The story goes that a rather wicked peasant woman was plunged into hell after
her death because she “did not leave a single good deed behind”xxxiv. Her guardian angel
pleaded her case to God and mentioned that “she once pulled up an onion in her garden […]
and gave it to a beggar woman”xxxv. The guardian angel had to take that onion and attempt
to pull out the woman from the fiery lake. The guardian angel held out the onion to the
woman and exclaimed a pivotal phrase: “Catch hold and I’ll pull you out”xxxvi. The wicked
woman was grabbed by other damned souls and in her attempt to kick these off, the onion
broke.

What is important about this story is threefold: first, faith and redemption is not
sustained by means of grand, worldly things such as miracles. These do not need a ‘rock’ to
be its foundation (Roman Catholicism), but can be inspired by something as simple as a small
token of kindness. Alyosha is not rejuvenated because he suddenly experiences a miracle,
but because he relinquishes the need for one. He opts to follows Zossima’s suggestion that
one can be convinced of Christian doctrine in practice without proof. Second, the angelic line
‘Catch hold and I’ll pull you out’ is particularly central to Dostoevsky’s understanding of
redemption. The authentic life that follows from redemption consists in properly reacting to
something that is being offered. Alyosha must, in other words, develop a sense of porous
openness to divine mystery, and not, like Ivan, search to prove or sustain Christian doctrine
through rational argumentation. Accordingly, the story illustrates that Alyosha’s redemption
will consist of finding an appropriate way to deal with something that is offered to him, i.e.
both his existential struggle with the fact of Zossima’s decomposition and the epiphany of
divine compassion (the Wedding at Cana). The divine epiphany of the Gospel enkindles
something that was already at play in Alyosha, namely a profound desire to be receptive of
God’s grace. So instead of having the Gospel changing Alyosha, we find that Alyosha must

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have changed himself first before being able to accept divine illumination from the gospel. A
highly similar thing happens to Raskolnikov who experiences redemption after Sonya reads
him the story of the resurrection of Lazarus. Raskolnikov had himself come to a crossroads
(an image that abounds in Dostoevsky’s works, particularly in The Brothers Karamazov)
where he had to make a decision: either continue his megalomaniacal rational egoism in his
quest to be a Napoleon or become receptive to the transcendent value emanating from
human beings, to him epitomized in the love of Sonya. Finally, Alyosha takes up a social
commitment in his authentic life of Christian faith by being ‘guilty for all of all’. The active
experience and emulation of divine love will become the bedrock principle of Alyosha’s
agency. The narrator of the story already hints to this when he describes the reason for
Alyosha’s torment: “He needed no miracles at that time, for the triumph of some
preconceived idea […] The fact is that all the love that lay concealed in his pure young heart
for everyone and everything had, for the past year, been concentrated – and perhaps
wrongly so – on one being, his beloved elder”xxxvii. Alyosha’s desire was wrongfully directed
at a singular human being, thereby forgetting that proper love and admiration is more
appropriately directed at “everyone and everything”xxxviii.

By properly re-attuning his demeanor, Alyosha will be able to find a more authentic
existence. This comes to him first by conversing with Grushenka but more powerfully so by
sitting close to Zossima’s corpse while listening to the Biblical story of Canaxxxix. Accordingly,
Alyosha experiences a release by letting go of his fixation on one person and embracing the
whole of reality. He does not do this in the devilish spirit of the Grand-Inquisitor by a
paternalistic noble lie, but by venturing into the world in order to help carry the burden of
other people. Something similar dawns to the ‘Ridiculous Man’ in the short story Dream of a
Ridiculous Man. This suicidal person opens up to the epiphany of a profound faith in the
goodness of humanity:

It is an old truth, but this is what is new: I cannot go far wrong. For I have seen the
truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing
the power of living on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal
condition of mankind. And it is just this faith of mine that they laugh at (…) The
consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is
higher than happinessxl.

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 After his years in Siberia, Dostoevsky personally lost faith in the socio-paternalist
answer to human suffering, which he somewhat hesitantly supported as a member of the
circle around Vissarion Belinski and later Mikhail Petrashevsky. Rowan Williams cogently
points out that the Grand-Inquisitor poem is a first step in answering the question how a
faith-based, Christian life-style can be operative in the worldxli. If Christ is not to be found in
‘earthly Euclidean logic’, then how ought Christians operate in the world? The Grand-
Inquisitor answers this question by prioritizing earthly compassion over divine love as he is
the one that suffers freedom so that the rest of humanity can find happiness in their
bondage: “Did we not love mankind, so meekly acknowledging their feebleness, lovingly
lightening their burden, and permitting their weak nature even sin with our sanction?”xlii.
Dostoevsky abandons this solution and now favors a more eschatological answer wherein
Christ’s agapeic love can be experienced in the world. Through the revelation of divine
presence (the Incarnation and the Bible), authentic surrender to God is possible because
God has begotten a face in Christ – much like redemption becomes possible in the Eastern
tradition because of the Resurrection of Christ. As Williams phrases Alyosha and Father
Zossima’s counterpoint to the Grand-Inquisitor: “Alyosha’s kiss gives the entire story a new
twist. Gratuitous acceptance in the face of rejection has become possible because of Christ;
he has not, after all, asked the impossible but has changed the scope of what is possible”xliii.

To fully comprehend the psychological process behind Alyosha’s redemption, it is

helpful to now turn to Ivan’s slow regression into madness. As the narrative unfolds, the
main event of the novel occurs, namely the violent murder of Fyodor Karamazov (the father
of the brothers). All evidence points into the direction of another Karamazov, namely Dimitri
who lived at odds with his father and had somewhat of a passionate nature. Dimitri had
threatened his father, he fought over money and love with him, he needed a certain sum of
money and he was seen walking away from the scene of the crime covered in blood. Later in
the story, however, the perpetrator of this patricide is revealed to be the illegitimate son
Smerdyakov. Smerdyakov divulges this bit of information to Ivan after a number of
conversations. Alyosha had always suspected Smerdyakow, but Ivan had initially attributed
this opinion to “an exaggerated feeling of love and sympathy for Dimitri”xliv. After their initial
conversation, Ivan stays assured that Dimitri is the perpetrator of the crime, but his opinion
changes when Smerdyakov accuses Ivan of wanting his father dead. Ivan had, namely, left

14
the house on the eve before the event while knowing very well that evil things were afoot.
While initially responding violently, this engenders doubt in Ivan about his own feelings
towards his father’s death: “Yes, I expected it [i.e. the murder] then, that’s true! I wanted
the murder, I did want the murder! Did I want the murder? Did I want it? I must kill
Smerdyakov! If I don’t dare kill Smerdyakov now, life is not worth living!”xlv Smerdyakov
ultimately confesses to the deed, but incriminates Ivan at the same time. In fact, he goes so
far as to turn himself into an obedient executioner of Ivan’s plans. The psychological
development of Smerdyakov is in itself an interesting subject since he too is going through
‘hell’ (e.g. the heath in his room is unbearable to Ivan) and passes in and out of a delirium.
Perhaps Smerdyakov is being haunted by guilt in a similar way that Rodion Raskolniov – the
protagonist of Crime and Punishment – was haunted by a guilty conscience (also going in and
out of a delirium). The alibi that Smerdyakov had put forth, i.e. that he had passed out from
an epileptic attack, really only occurred after the fact. Dostoevsky himself famously had his
first epileptic seizure after he was told the news of his own father’s violent death.

Dostoevsky does not provide much more insight into the psychological development
of Smerdyakov, but we are told how Ivan is attempting to deal with his newfound and
perhaps underserved guilt. The way he will ultimately fail to deal with this guilt further
illustrates the threefold notion of redemption and how this relates to existential struggles in
The Brothers Karamazov. As illustrated above in his attitude towards justice, Ivan is cross-
pressured between, on the one hand, a more sober rationalist point of view that adheres to
proof and simple cause/effect relationships and, on the other hand, certain more ambiguous
desires such as to find justice and, as we will see now, undeserved guilt. This cross-pressure
can be illustrated by a twofold perspective Ivan could have entertained in Dimitri’s guilt prior
to learning about Smerdyakov’s involvement. Dimitri would have probably been driven to his
act by a number of psychological, emotional and sociological causes that largely arise from
his father’s ill-treatment of himxlvi. Accordingly, if Dimitri really had killed his father, his
responsibility for this would be minimal since he could not possibly have made na
autonomous decision in committing this act. Nevertheless, Ivan still acknowledges that those
guilty of a crime need to be punished, even if different influences beyond their control
propel them. This was a major theme in Crime and Punishmentxlvii: Alyosha was able to

15
believe in the innocence of Dimitri, not because he had learned about Smerdyakov’s
involvement, but because he had a strong will to believe.

After finding out about Smerdyakov’s (and allegedly his own) involvement in the
death of his father, Ivan falls into a delusional and feverish dream where he imagines a
conversation with ‘the devil’. The reason why Ivan remains unable to make that leap of faith
and use his existential struggle as a springboard towards a more faith-based life that
embraces his own guilt is powerfully illustrated by this conversation. The first lines spoken by
the devil here already offer an important insight:

‘Don’t believe it then,’ said the gentleman, smiling pleasantly. ‘What’s the good of
believing against your will? Besides, proof is no help to believing, especially material
proof. Thomas believed, not because he saw Christ risen, but because he wanted to
believe, before he saw.’xlviii

Ivan’s entire conversation with the devil in fact revolves around the concepts of proof and
belief. At certain occasions in the conversation, the Devil attempts to convince Ivan that he
actually exists and at other points in the conversation he tries to convince Ivan that he is a
figment of his imagination. The reason for this confusion is revealed early on: “Does proving
there’s a devil prove that that there’s a God?”xlix If there would be a God, than a faith-based
perspective on both justice and the innocence of his brother would be justified. Ivan is
probably remembering Zossima’s and Alyosha’s point that there is not a sin so great that it
exhausts the love of God, if the guilty one is honestly repentant. Since Ivan is confronted
with an underserved guilt of which he cannot rid himself, it would rationally make sense to
adopt Christian religion. Obviously, it does not work this way. Dostoevsky was an admirer of
the work of Blaise Pascal who, in his famous wager (pari), shows that Christian religion is a
prudent choice given a potential fate of eternal bliss or eternal torment. Pascal realized,
much like Dostoevsky, that genuine faith does not spring from the rational realization that
Christian faith would be beneficial to have. The initiation into faith happens, in the Eastern
tradition, by a willingness to passively open up to divine mystery. Because Ivan’s fails to
relinquish his rationalism, he fails to sincerely adopt Christian religion.

The devil in Ivan’s nightmare could rightfully be understood as an aspect of Ivan’s

psychology, which he himself also signals: “For it’s I, I myself speaking, not you”l. The

16
rationalist Ivan is then here facing his cross-pressured ideologies through schizophrenic
hallucination. The devil represents his delicate psychological state gone awry, now
tormenting poor Ivan in his struggle to have faith, but for which he lacks the resolve since his
rationalism bars the possibility to open up to divine mystery. In fact, the very problem is that
he tries to prove how faith would be justified, while Father Zossima had already argued
earlier in the novel that there is no use to proof regarding transcendent affairs, only
conviction. In as long as Ivan lacks the full-blooded authentic conviction that befell Alyosha
in a moment of mystical openness, he is forever doomed to a schizophrenia in which he
cannot take sides since he will always side against himself. The devil is then the expression of
a lower, baser side to Ivan’s psychology that torments him in his unnerving oscillation
between his rationalism and faith. Even the devil emphasizes that proof is no use to
believing; or better, proof will only invigorate one’s belief if it is able to anchor unto a prior
will to believe. One is able to see the miracle only when one already believes in miracles. The
main problem with Ivan then turns out to be that he keeps insisting on substantiating his
redemption with proof – which reinforces the dualism between reason and faith – instead of
welcoming divine agapeic love (like Alyosha). In that way, the revelation of divinity in the
story of Cana to Alyosha was able to invigorate Alyosha’s will to believe; however, since
Ivan’s will to believe is weak, there is no amount of proof that will sway him to have faith
and he is unable to experience the same redemption that Alyosha felt when he fell to the
earth: “He had fallen on the earth a weak soul, but he rose up in strength” li

To put Ivan’s ordeal in different terms, the devil makes Ivan face the repercussions of
his initial point of view with regard to Christian religion, namely that the elite knowledgeable
few are moved by compassion to bear the responsibility for all. If Ivan namely would come
forth and defend his brother Dimitri, he would as a consequence implicate himself in the
murder of his father. At this point, Ivan is the ‘knowing elite’ that can act out of compassion
for the other, but gets stuck in a self-obsessed, rationalist discussion of his potential guilt.
Even though Alyosha has done no wrong, he is able to embrace the ‘guilt of all for all’ while
Ivan is not able to let go of his casuistry that bars the possibility for him to open up. This
teaches us that two approaches to faith are deeply mistaken. First, ‘simple Christian faith’,
which looks for miracles and remains existentially unperturbed by competing thoughts,
which has to undergo a full-blown existential crisis: “The hosanna must be tried in the

17
crucible of doubt”lii. Alyosha had to fall from grace so as to genuinely be graced. Second, ‘dry
rationalism’, which is exemplified by Ivan’s inability to let go of his rationalism despite his
serious competing desire for justice leads to a psychological schizophrenia from which he
might never escape. The solution to Ivan’s predicament is neither irrationalist fideism, since
Ivan lacks the ‘will to believe’, nor rationalism, since ‘proof is no good to believing’: what
might have saved Ivan would have been to use his existential struggle as a springboard
towards moving beyond a focus on reality as not pointing to transcendence; or, logic being
an aspect of a Christian metaphysics which grants the possible porosity for the acceptance of
transcendence. This is not at all removed from Dostoevsky’s personal convictions since
Dostoevsky consistently argued against any theological framework that emphasized the
absolute transcendence of God. He preferred to think about God as both immanent and
transcendent: “[Dostoevsky] is not satisfied with the traditional dogmatic conception of God;
he tries to understand God Himself as a kind of being that is ‘supplementary’ in relation to
man, not opposed to him. From a transcendent absolute, God turns into the immanent basis
of the empirical individual person”liii. Alyosha was enabled to accept and come to terms with
his mystical experience since he was already infused by divine love and a passionate mystical
zeal. And Ivan appears unable, although some equivocal hope remains for him at the end of
the novel, to reconcile himself in his existential turmoil because he appears to be unwilling
to acknowledge the divine mystery at work within him.

4. Conclusion

Few would doubt that Dostoevsky was a powerful psychologist with a talent for depicting
characters with deep existential unrest. Friedrich Nietzsche even acclaimed Dostoevsky with
the sobriquet of being the “only psychologist who had anything to teach [him]” liv. Despite his
psychological depth, many simply read him as apologizing for a fideist form of Orthodox
Christianity: those that embrace Christianity are saved, those that do not are doomed. In this
essay, I have explored in what way Dostoevsky introduces an existential dimension to
redemption. In his view, redemption can only come from struggling with extreme
perspectives on reality. These existential struggles are central to many of Dostoevsky’s

18
novels (although, not to all of them), especially to The Brothers Karamazov. What becomes
abundantly clear from my proposed soteriological reading of The Brothers Karamazov is that
simple, unperturbed, self-complacent fideism is not Dostoevsky’s philosophy. This did not
work for either Alyosha or Ivan. On the one hand, Alyosha’s faith had to be ‘tried on the
crucible of doubt’ and sustained by means of internal certainty; on the other hand, Ivan
could not bootstrap himself into religious faith by the rational consideration that such faith
would be highly beneficial to have. Openness to divine mystery is then a first, but not
sufficient, step for an authentic life. This has to be complimented with a social project that
does not fail to recognize the intimate, perhaps underserved guilt we bear of all, for all. As
such, Dostoevsky’s soteriology in The Brothers Karamazov is a delicate mixture of the
Eastern Orthodoxy emphasis on the porosity of faith and reason, the Romantic invocation of
divine inspiration and socialist commitment to interpersonal responsibility.

i
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the conference ‘Re-Imagining Human’ (2014) of the
International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture in Leuven (Belgium). My gratitude goes to William
Desmond, Henning Tegtmeyer, Hanna Vandenbussche and the anonymous reviewer of International Journal for
Philosophy of Religion, for their comments and suggestions.
ii
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Transl. D. McDuff (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 622.
iii
Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Transl. by C. Emerson (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1984), 6.
iv
James Scanlan, Dostoevsky the Thinker (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 4.
v
The famous exception to this is Vladimir Nabokov, writer of ‘Lolita’: Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions (New
York: Vintage International, 1973). Interestingly, when Dostoevsky was apprehended for his involvement with
leftist groups, he was questioned by one General Nabokov, the great-granduncle of Vladimir Nabokov.
vi
Reinhard Lauth, Die Philosophie Dostojewskis (München: Piper Verlag, 1950), 18, my translation
vii
Michel Eltchaninoff, Dostoïevski. Roman et Philosophie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998), 69, my
translation.
viii
Malcolm Jones very helpfully calls these cross-pressures: Dostoyevsky after Bakhtin. Readings in
Dostoyevsky’s fantastic realism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990), 77 ff.
ix
Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 26.
x
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. Translated by C. Garnett (New York: Signett Classics, 2007),
810).
xi
What such redemption exactly entails remains obscure in most of Dostoevsky’s novels. Dostoevsky was
primarily a psychologist of the mental development of characters up to their redemption. With regard to Crime
and Punishment, Rowan Williams rightly points out that this book “does not end with an unambiguous
statement of Raskolnikov’s repentance and conversion: he is still on the threshold of anything like recognizable
Christian faith […] There is always more to be said” (Rowan Williams, Dostoevsky. Language, Faith, and Fiction
(Waco: Baylor University Press, 2008), 114-115).
xii
Robert Jackson, The Art of Dostoevsky (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 198.
xiii
Ibid., pp. 90 ff. Cf. also Anthony Cascardi, The Bounds of Reason. Cervantes, Dostoevsky, Flaubert (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1986), 107 ff.
xiv
Ksana Blank, “The Rabbit and The Duck: Antinomic Unity in Dostoevskij, the Russian Religious Tradition, and
Mikhail Bakhtin,” Studies in Eastern European Thought 59 (2007) 21-37.

19
xv
Victor Terras, Commentary on the Genesis, Language, and Style of Dostoevsky’s Novel (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 2002), 42.
xvi
Quoted in: Malcolm Jones, “Dostoevskii and Religion,” In The Cambridge Companion to Dostoevskii, ed. W.
Leatherbarrow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 155-6.
xvii
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, transl. Constance Garnett (New York: Signet Classics, 2007), p.
743.
xviii
Resp.: Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 16 and 25.
xix
Ibid., 55.
xx
Ibid, 60. Victor Terras mentions Father Amvrosy (1812-1891), Father Zossima of Tobolsk (1767-1835) and
Tikhon of Zadonsk (1724-1783) as possible sources for Dostoevsky’s description of Father Zossima (Terras,
Commentary on the Genesis, Language, and Style of Dostoevsky’s Novel, 29). While he is definitely one of the
more important and influential characters throughout The Brothers Karamazov (particularly in his influence on
Ivan and Alyosha), he lacks the spiritual turmoil and existential struggle that typifies Dostoevsky’s most
engaging characters. This is why numerous commentators suggest that Father Zossima lacks an authentically
psychological dimension as he would be Dostoevsky’s “perfect man”: e.g. S. Linner, Starets Zossima in “The
Brothers Karamazov”: A Study in the Mimesis of Virtue (Stockholm: Almqvist, 1975), p. 37. Such lack of
existential turmoil appears uncharacteristic of Dostoevsky’s deeply-psychological style and accordingly the
character of Father Zossima has a certain independence from the rest of Dostoevsky’s characters.
xxi
Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 269-275.
xxii
Ibid., 276.
xxiii
Ibid.
xxiv
Ibid., 274.
xxv
Ibid., 278.
xxvi
Most readers would generally believe that the proper response to the Grand-Inquisitor and the problem of
evil comes in Father Zossima’s last dialogue (Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 321-374). Zossima argues
that Modern man misunderstands freedom as the ability to embrace trivial and nonsensical desires. Instead, he
believes that true freedom consists in renouncing all insignificant things and embracing the monastic life, which
will lead towards a sense of ‘responsibility for all’. For a comprehensive discussion: Timothy O’Connor,
“Theodicies and Human Nature. Dostoevsky on the Saint as Witness,” in Metaphysics and God, ed. Kevin Timpe
(London: Routledge, 2009), 175-187. While this is a central aspect of the resolution, my focus here is to show
that this perspective tends to downplay the importance of ‘struggle’ in coming to such redemption.
xxvii
Lonny Harrison, ‘The Numinous Experience of Ego Transcendence in Dostoevsky’. Slavic and East European
Journal 57 (2013) 388-402.
xxviii
For a concise summary of the Eastern Orthodox church on this issue: Oliver Clément, L’église orthodoxe
(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1961) pp. 32-37.
xxix
Solovyov’s lectures on divine humanity were attended by both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy: Vladimir Solovyov,
Divine Humanity. Translated by Peter Zouboff (Hudson: Lindisfarne Press, 1995).
xxx
Harrison argues that Dostoevsky was influenced by the German Romantics who wanted to return the
apparent self of rational egoism to a higher self. This was done by a rebirth through illumination, which
resounds of the Romantics sense of Heimweh in which they yearned for a lost unity wherein they could find
peace. For instance, William Wordsworth rhymed in his Lines Composed above Tintern Abbey (1798): “But
trailing clouds of glory do we come / From God, who is our home” (Harrison, ‘The Numinous Experience of Ego
Transcendence’, 388-402). One pressing difficulty with this reading is that it misses the perennial struggle that
accompanies authentic existence, which is exactly something the German Romantics wanted to escape.
xxxi
Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 380.
xxxii
Ibid, 378.
xxxiii
Ibid., 25.
xxxiv
Ibid., 405.
xxxv
Ibid.
xxxvi
Ibid., 406.
xxxvii
Ibid., 389.

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xxxviii
Ibid.
xxxix
Ibid., 414-419.
xl
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man. And the Little Orphan. Translated by C. Garnett (New
York: Dodo Press, 2004) p. 30.
xli
Williams, Dostoevsky, 26-33
xlii
Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 292
xliii
Williams, Dostoevsky, 32
xliv
Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 698.
xlv
Ibid., 714.
xlvi
Fyodor Karamazov could very well be one of the most loathsome inventions in all of world-literature. More
so, Dostoevsky could have very well modeled Fyodor to his own father Mikhail Dostoevsky who was known for
his violent and abusive treatment of his serfs, particularly their young daughters. When his serfs were fed up
with this abuse, they waylaid his carriage and forced vodka down his throat until he died. When Fyodor
Dostoevsky received this news, he allegedly experienced his first epileptic seizure – something that will plague
him and many of his characters throughout their lives: Paul Strathern, Dostoevsky in 90 Minutes (Chicago: Ivan
R. Dee, 2004).
xlvii
Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, 304 ff.
xlviii
Ibid., 736.
xlix
Ibid.
l
Ibid.
li
Ibid., p. 419.
lii
Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 743.
liii
I. I. Evlampiev, “Dostoevsky and Nietzsche: Toward a New Metaphysics of Man,” Russian Studies in
Philosophy 41 (2002) 7-32.
liv
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005) p. 219.

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