Dostoevsky and The Current Thirst for Moral Condemnation.
Ivan Karamazov is undoubtedly one of the most complex characters of Dostoevsky; to explain him we have to go back to world literature, philosophy, psychology and so on.
But according to Dostoevsky's letters, the author also wanted to turn Ivan into an important emblem. The emblem of Russian rebellion, radicalism, and nihilism. Dostoevsky allowed Ivan to formulate questions and responses that the whole book was expected to unravel and clarify.
What is Ivan’s main challenge according to the author? It is the moral rejection of God. Not scientific, not philosophical, but moral.
And how does Ivan formulate it? Very simply and very relevantly to today's intellectual predicaments. Ivan simply wants to stick to the facts without exploring their context, circumstances, or various perspectives. That's exactly what he asserts: My mind is simple (he calls it Euclidean) and I want to remain with the fact. And I refuse to listen to any explanation because it is immoral to listen to them in front of violence and abuse. That's all.
And don't today's critics and self-appointed leaders of both social and traditional media do the same? The just want to stick with the facts. Trump is the felon; Russia embarks on unprovoked invasion; Israel is not even a country but a genocidal machine that destroys children.
That's all there is to it. Moral virtue signaling accomplished through the suppression of context and perspectivism.
And, of course, that's exactly what Job and his silly friends tried to do as well. Sticking to the facts, rejecting the mystery, the complexity, the obscurity. They wanted to judge rather than abstain from judgement. They wanted to curse rather than understand. They didn't want to get puzzled by the mysterious universe. They wanted to condemn and dismiss it, and then organize it into something clear and rational. Exactly what Ivan’s Grand Inquisitor tried to do.
Dostoevsky understood Russian youth better than most. Their idealism, their maximalism, their yearning for "a quick feat" and easy solutions.
So Raskolnikov takes an ax, plotters in Demons organize riot and murder, protagonist of Adolescent decides to become immensely rich, Ivan rejects God and declares that everything is allowed.
Dostoevsky who learned his subtexts, contexts, and perspectives in exile, in prison, under the gun, and through intense study of both people and the Bible, Dostoevsky knew how seductive, and yet how inadequate and self-defeating this insistence on facts outside the context was.
Ivan begins to act irrationally and violently and eventually goes insane. He hates people yet wants to save them. He needs God, yet rejects Him, he wants to understand yet refuses to understand, he wants to kill his father yet doesn't want to do so.
Alternatives that Dostoevsky sets up are rather clear. Travel, study, talk to people, observe, explore, get the context or hysterically stick to the facts, and get lost in the labyrinth of condemnations, intellectual and moral paradoxes, violence, self-justifications, and self-hatred.
Of course, the starry-eyed Russian youth didn't listen much to Dostoevsky’s warnings, rejecting him as some sort of Right-Winger savant, who knows something about psychology, but is totally out of touch on the issues of politics. They preferred to listen to the two-bit demagogues, who pretended to know all the context and all the subtext there is to know. They went on with terrorism and terror, revolts and violence. At least, Ivan Karamazov had a decency of going mad, before degrading himself by embracing such a path.
