Having tackled the growing hydra of socialist radicalism through his previous major novels, Fyodor Dostoevsky set out in The Brothers Karamazov to address what he saw as the fountainhead of the mid-century Russian ideological shifts: the loss of faith in the the gospel and in the Orthodox Church as the means established by Christ to display that gospel to the nations.
To be sure, Dostoevsky saw this loss of faith primarily in the upper-class intelligentsia and the later populist youth. The former, the Westernizers of the 1940s-60s whom Dostoevsky pilloried in everything from Notes from Underground to The Devils, had intended to enlighten the peasant class—part of which involved relieving them of their superstitious belief in Christ’s divinity and Christian morality. The latter generation of 1870s Populists broke from the amoral nihilism of that generation (in no small part due to Crime and Punishment and The Devils) and instead venerated the peasants’ simple way of life and native morality; however, refusing to acknowledge their source in Christ and the Russian Orthodox Church, the populists still maintaining secular aims.
Dostoevsky’s response to both groups was to advocate a return to the fullness of the faith in Orthodoxy, which could satisfy all needs of the human individual, both physical and transcendent. However, having previously been a radical himself, Dostoevsky was ever willing to pursue this goal through a conciliatory approach, especially if he might thereby rescue some readers from the contradictions and potential disasters of radicalism. He does this in The Brothers Karamazov by taking seriously a primary objection to Christianity: the problem of evil.
Ivan Karamazov: The Problem of Evil
He articulates the problem of evil through Ivan Karamazov. In Book Five, Chapter V, “The Grand Inquisitor,” Ivan follows up his description in the previous chapter of the senseless abuse of children (all gathered by Dostoevsky from real-life newspaper stories) to his little brother Alyosha, a would-be priest, with the one of the most famous stories-within-a-story in world literature. These chapters, according to Dostoevsky’s letters, are among the most important in the novel. They lay out the problem of evil and its refutation—through a parallel story-within-a-story: Book VI, The Russian Monk, which presents the life and sayings of the local monastery elder Fr. Zosima, compiled by Alyosha long after the novel’s events.
Acknowledging himself as no philosopher—to say nothing of his being an Eastern Orthodox Christian, who generally eschew Western theory-forward approaches in favor of ascetical practice and theosis as proof of the faith—Dostoevsky does not merely present logical arguments for or against Ivan’s atheism. (Indeed, one of the greatest aspects of this self-proclaimed atheist is that it is debatable whether Ivan believes his own professed atheism. He often waffles in, and at times regrets, his stance and, like Dostoevsky’s previous protagonists, is horrified upon seeing his stated beliefs actually lived out by Smerdyakov. Furthermore, Ivan often fits less the title of Enlightenment philosophe and more that of Romantic hero in protest against an unjust God whom he nonetheless believes in.) Rather, Dostoevsky addresses Ivan’s problem with evil not with a matching argument and polemical story, but with the life of a saint.
Fr. Zosima: A Holy Life
In Book VI, The Russian Monk, Dostoevsky breaks from the novelistic form and uses, instead, the mystical, timeless mode of hagiography. Because it is ordered by a moral message rather than causal events or their concomitant psychological elements, such a mode has struck many critics as dismissable, being unrealistic or simply jinned up. Dostoevsky acknowledges this in a letter to Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the Russian Orthodox Church’s representative in the Tsar’s cabinet: “Something completely opposite to the world view expressed earlier appears in this part, but again it appears not point by point but so to speak in artistic form. And that is what worries me, that is, will I be understood and will I achieve anything of my aim?”
Nonetheless, by answering the problem of evil with a holy life lived in spite of evil, he tells his assistant editor, Dostoevsky intends to show “that a pure, ideal Christian is not something abstract, but graphically real, possible, standing before our eyes, and that Christianity is the only refuge from all its ills for the Russian land,” and, presumably, for those of the rest. In short, Dostoevsky answers the world’s evil with holiness—with the saints alive in every generation of Orthodoxy that allow the Church to call itself “Holy” in the Nicene Creed and by whose theotic prayers and actions it redeems a fallen world.
The Russian Monk, however, goes beyond merely presenting one exception to evil. Contrary to the atheist-materialist-socialist arguments (then and now) that people and their actions are merely effects of environment, Dostoevsky maintains that part of the image of God in man is an inalienable individual moral agency. Thus, the redemption shown in Fr. Zosima’s story is available to all. Far from presenting merely one anecdote, The Russian Monk transforms all characters in The Brothers Karamazov into potential likenesses of Christ and His redemption of the world.
As Nathan Rosen argues, this opposite pole of “The Grand Inquisitor” defends the faith not through rational argument but through aesthetic fullness—by presenting a man who embodies in his own life the story and truth of Job. According to Rosen and other sympathetic critics, Zosima’s story, “is the literary equivalent of a precious hallowed old church icon,” and as such it renders the rest of the novel, broadly, and Alyosha’s path, specifically, into the realm of iconography—the tradition that, following Christ’s being the first Icon of God the Father, reveals the truth of the gospel through aesthetic incarnation.
Grushenka: Dostoevsky’s Magdalene
And, yet, at the time of the novel’s events, Alyosha is not as sanguine as the later Alyosha who recorded Fr. Zosima’s life. Indeed, between his conversation with Ivan (and the discovery of his own unsuspected resentment of God it revealed) and Fr. Zosima’s non-miraculous death*, his faith is quite shaken. He is, thus, primed for either a full loss of faith or a restoration in the chapters preceding “Cana of Galilee,” which Dostoevsky describes to his assistant editor as “the most significant [chapter] in the whole book.”
Having felt his faith shaken by Ivan’s “poem” and the circumstances of Fr. Zosima’s death, Alyosha reverts to the way of life he knows to be native to himself as a Karamazov: sensual degradation. Agreeing to go with the atheist student Rakitin (who’s just been wishing to trip up Alyosha so he might gloat) to the home of his father and eldest brother’s paramour, Agrafena “Grushenka” Svetlova, Alyosha intends to…do whatever Dostoevsky’s readers might infer from the author’s 19th-century understatement.
Grushenka immediately catches the mood and starts to flirt with the boy. Any other time she would have been more than willing to get her claws in yet another Karamazov male—especially the one who, by his purity, represents the moral opposite of her supposed fallenness. Although she conceals some secret joy altogether different from her vengeful persona of seduction, Grushenka begins to play the harlot she knows Alyosha considers her to be. “She suddenly skipped forward and jumped, laughing, on his knee, like a nestling kitten, with her right arm around his neck. ‘I’ll cheer you up, my pious boy.’”
And, yet, far from falling to her ways, Alyosha discovers that Fr. Zosima’s teaching was not altogether without fruit. “This woman, this ‘dreadful’ woman, had no terror for him now, none of that terror that had stirred in his soul at any passing thought of woman.” Furthermore, he soon learns that the joy hidden beneath her flirtation springs from the recent discovery that the man who had seduced and abandoned her as a teenager is returning, and that she is willing to forgive him.
This turn of events has emptied her impulse to reduce Alyosha to her fallen position. “It’s true, Alyosha, I had sly designs on you before, for I am horrid, violent, but at other times I’ve looked upon you, Alyosha, as my conscience…I sometimes look at you and feel ashamed, utterly ashamed of myself.” No doubt this shame had driven her late desire to cause Alyosha’s fall.
However, just as Ivan’s description of the suffering of children primed the way for the denial of Christ in “The Grand Inquisitor,” Grushenka’s act of forgiveness for being seduced as a young girl is the prelude to her—and Alyosha’s—redemption. For, after overthrowing nearly a decade of resentment in the name of forgiveness and reconciliation, Grushenka finally learns of the death of Fr. Zosima. “She crossed herself devoutly. ‘Goodness, what have I been doing, sitting on his knee like this at such a moment!’ She started up as though in dismay, instantly slipped off his knee and sat down on the sofa.”
Witnessing such an immediate response of reverence begins the restoration of Alyosha’s faith. To Rakitin, who is still proud of having delivered Alyosha to Grushenka, Judas-like, for 25 rubles, Alyosha says, “look at her—do you see how she has pity on me? I came here to find a wicked soul—I felt drawn to evil because I was base and evil myself, and I’ve found a true sister, I have found a treasure—a loving heart. She had pity on me just now…Agrafena Alexandrovna, I am speaking of you. You’ve raised my soul from the depths.”
The paired forgiveness and reverence of Grushenka, the person Alyosha least expected to show such things, provides the miracle he was waiting for: the manifestation of Fr. Zosima after death. For, besides her forgiveness of the officer, in fearing what effect her own seductiveness might have had on Alyosha Grushenka displays Zosima’s core message. Assuming one’s own moral responsibility—not merely for one’s actions, but, according to Fr. Zosima, for all men’s actions—is the whole means of acquiring the likeness of Christ, and Alyosha sees Grushenka, of all people, practice it.
From the Orthodox perspective, in thus fulfilling her innate human image of God with behavior according with His likeness, Grushenka has become a living icon, as Christ, the first Icon, had been. Grushenka’s is the miracle of a Magdalene conversion, manifested before Alyosha’s eyes, and it primes him for his own symbolic incarnation of Fr. Zosima’s—and the unnamed Christ’s—message, spirit, and way of life in the climactic next chapter.
Alyosha: A Living Icon
Ultimately, each reader must decide for him or herself whether Dostoevsky’s answer to the problem of evil, indeed, answers it. Many critics have considered Ivan’s objection to Christianity insurmountable. Leaving aside possible confirmation bias in such academic interpretation, things are, admittedly, not helped by the response’s seeming so obscure—even arguably interrupting—especially to Western audiences that have generally foregone monasticism, iconography, and veneration of saints since the Reformation and subsequent Enlightenment.
However, the true answer to evil, according to The Brothers Karamazov, is not a simple one-and-done response provoking a change of mind (though Alyosha’s realization in “Cana of Galilee” of the Orthodox sacramental view of creation involves just that). Rather, it is a disposition and way of life depicted first through Fr. Zosima, then the redeemed Grushenka, and finally through a not much older but very much wiser Alyosha, who through the rest of the book follows his Elder’s direction in living out the gospel in the real world, amidst but not stifled by its temptations and evils.
And, indeed, when Alyosha meets the fourteen-year-old self-described radical, Kolya, who both parodies Ivan and represents a serious ideological influence on his younger friends, he is unperturbed. Doing what Dostoevsky hoped, himself, to do with The Brothers Karamazov, Alyosha redirects the good-hearted youth’s radicalism into a simple and more impactful Christlike love of the least of these—specifically, the smallest, Ilyusha—and he manifests the humble confidence and tranquility not merely of his former elder, but of Christ and His sacramental life.
*It was considered a proof of a holy man’s life that his body did not decompose post mortem; the lack of such incorruptibility in Fr. Zosima leads Alyosha to doubt whether, as Ivan has lately denied, a God of justice exists. Ironically, by expecting a grandiose miracle to meet his spiritual crisis, Alyosha discovers that he is little better than those described by Ivan in “The Grand Inquisitor” who are too weak for the moral freedom (and responsibility) inherent in Christianity. It also reveals Alyosha’s desire to defer his moral responsibility (an antiChristian impulse in Dostoevsky) to the holy man’s direction.
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Between Nihilism and Cottagecore; a Generation Lost
As much as I have gotten tired of talking about this virus, it is important to address the following; Covid-19 has had disastrous impacts on Generation Z. Whether we like to admit it or not, Gen Z is based on a culture of avoiding social interaction, virtual relationships and a general pessimistic outview of life.
The confinements we found ourselves in due to the pandemic, led us to migrate from real human life, to the material world of virtual interaction. Although this might not have seemed to be such a problem for a generation which shows great aversion to in-person interaction, however this was anything but the case.
The best way one could analyse and scrutinise the essence which makes up a millennial, one wouldn’t have to look further than from the structureless abyss which we know as the internet.
This period of lockdown has in a weird way reversed some of the progressive stirrings taking place within the subconscious of a Gen-z individual. This overload of isolation– encompassed by a general lack of social gatherings, in-person learning and cultural legacy has led this generation to ever so slightly and in a gradual manner, become more sensitive to the present late-civilisational decay which is surrounding them.
This can be seen through the different aesthetic styles promoted online. Such aesthetic styles include retrowave, post-modern, steampunk, fantasy ect. The obsession with such aesthetics does not necessarily stem from visual pleasure. Rather, it offers an escapist utopia for those stuck in a dull and grey world– from a world characterised by social media expectations, lockdowns and a general nihilism which cakes like dust any aspirations present.
An aesthetic which quickly rose to popularity during the last two years was Cottage Core. In essence, as an aesthetic it is composed of greenery and flowers surrounding a traditional cottage, with women dressed in a white modest dress taking care of the house, the plants, the washing up, the children. It truly is a return to a life which Gen Zers never experienced– and given the way in which our economic structure is heading, will never have the inherent right nor pleasure to experience.
This traditionalist aesthetic takes us back to the roots of what once was the foundation of the state (the family actually has existed long before the concept of the State, I would argue it is the foundation for building communities)– a nuclear family based on distinctive parental roles, a time when marriage was based on or rather seen desirable / the main goal of a marriage was to bare children and create a legacy– offspring to whom you can pass down your faith, beliefs and nation. It brings with it a breath of neo-romanticism.
Such a fact carries with it a certain level of irony of course. The fact that the internet and technology are used to make and spread such images, is rather ironic given the fact that it is this very internet and technology which stripped this idyllic life away from us. Virtual citizens who have bloodshot eyes, social anxiety and an all around lack of will to persevere, find an escape in such aesthetics. This aesthetic comes part and parcel with an affinity for historical period dramas, a subconscious desire to leave the city and a longing for a family to nurture and raise.
As T. Howard interestingly noted, “the aesthetic is self-consciously escapist and Cottage Core can be thought of as one of many expressive forms of post-Sexual Revolution trauma in the West.”.
The Covid-19 lockdowns led many Gen Zers to realise that with the leisure of open bars, theatres and clubs being taken away from the equation, the only thing which is left is the skeletal facade of a city– one which highlights so perfectly the metamorphosis of our decaying civilisation. What was left once such establishments were shut down? A reminder of the lives Gen Z were robbed off.
The seed of cultural Marxism has undoubtedly been sowed within the hem of the 21st century. This can be witnessed through the manifestation of Cancel Culture. Being a member of Gen Z automatically prevents you from being able to criticise the western social revolution of the 20th century (in the same way a black man or woman cannot criticise the BLM movement).
No matter how far Gen Z idealogues strive to stray away from what is natural, normal and traditional, in reality human nature and desires do not change. They are constant within the subconscious– no matter how hard the fight to push against them is. This is why the number of Gen Z anti-feminists is growing. Young women across the globe are realising what they lost– or rather, what has been taken from them.
Feminism might have not been merely an organic movement which hoped to foster equality for all, but rather an orchestrated ploy by powerful men in order to reduce women’s prospects of domestic fulfilment. Going to work and building a career is now seen as the ultimate form of self-liberation. Tell me, how can feminist groups look women in the eye and tell them they are better off as wage slaves, rather than as homemakers?
For the sake of clarification, I am in no way slandering women who work. If anything, they do not have a choice as our economy does not support such roles. However, I am criticising the fact that women can no longer stay at home and raise children– a reality which only came about once women entered the workforce. Late capitalism delights as this; more labour, more production, more money.
Furthermore, women are thought to feel empowered by showing off their bodies in the quest to acquire more money. Is that really all we have to offer our young daughters? Real empowerment comes from perseverance, faith and modesty. Women have been stripped of their dignity and identity, to be replaced by gender theory which promotes the idea that any individual can be a woman– regardless of anatomy.
This idea is further fuelled by the growing number of men who appropriate womanhood in their quest to “transition” providing the world with a very sexist and misogynistic view of what womanhood really is– reducing us to shopaholic hair obsessed women who care more about their clothes and nails than the future of their societies. How incredibly offensive it is to be a woman and be told that a biological man is just as much as a woman as you are.
With a growing interest in the traditional– even within the local context you see a revival of interest in Maltese traditional architecture, in folklore music and in cuisine, one is left to wonder whether or not this will manifest in a full fledged shift within the ideological attachments of Gen Z. The harvest is indeed plentiful, yet the labourers remain few.
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Oligarchic Oafs
British cultural critics, in my opinion, suffer from an insularity which prevents them from connecting the events of their own country to any wider patterns of civilisation. This is truest for those who are the most correct with their criticisms. Take for example Theodore Dalrymple, whose 1998 article Uncouth Chic in the City Journal was prophetic in diagnosing a distinctly British pathology. I give a lengthy quote to showcase the depth of his description:
“The signs — both large and small — of the reversal in the flow of aspiration are everywhere. Recently, a member of the royal family, a granddaughter of the queen, had a metal stud inserted into her tongue and proudly displayed it to the press. (…) Middle-class girls now consider it chic to sport a tattoo — another underclass fashion, as a visit to any British prison will swiftly establish. (…) Advertising now glamorizes the underclass way of life and its attitude toward the world. Stella Tennant, one of Britain’s most famous models and herself of aristocratic birth, has adopted almost as a trademark the stance and facial expression of general dumb hostility to everything and everybody that is characteristic of so many of my underclass patients.”
Dalrymple lays the blame for this “uncouth chic” on moral relativism: “… since nothing is better and nothing is worse, the worse is better because it is more demotic.” This much may be true, but it sidesteps an important matter. There’s an area where the British remain elitists: money. Whatever relativism now reigns upon our morality, it has areas of preferred emphasis. With manners we are relativists, but with cash we are a nation of absolutists who think being rich is better than being poor. Indeed, the very need to transform the uncouth into a type of chic (a word meaning sophisticated and fashionable) betrays such a mindset. Nobody is demanding unfashionable uncouth trash.
To be an elitist about your wallet and a vulgarian about your manners. I wager this combination isn’t accidental but vital. The latter flows from the former.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle, who defines a lot of things near-finally, defines an oligarch as someone who is both wealthy and has a wealth-based idea of goodness. That is, an oligarch isn’t just rich; he thinks being rich is identical with being good. This is why he thinks only the rich should hold political office, for example. So, it’s not that money is the root of all evil and the rich the wickedest. The one who has his character in order only benefits the more money he has, because he understands money as a tool for acquiring other goods. The oligarch grasps for money like an idolum and hates anybody who doesn’t have it.
But why does the oligarch think this? Hasn’t he observed all the good poor people in the world? Is he blind to the honest pauper? Aristotle’s answer is simple: the oligarch thinks money equals goodness because he thinks living well is gorging every appetite with no limit. “For where enjoyment consists in excess, men look for that skill that produces the excess that is enjoyed”[ii]. In other words, if the good of life is endless pleasure, and endless pleasure needs endless money to buy it, the good of life requires endless money. Those without money are unable to get endless pleasure, so the oligarch looks down on their lives as inferior.
The collection of norms we call “etiquette” or “manners” have emerged organically over a long period. Some are obviously arbitrary or meant to exclude people unjustly (the outmoded and snobbish dress code of “no brown in town” comes to mind). But a great many are there to limit personal behaviour, to channel action into a disciplined pattern.
Why chew with your mouth closed? Because it shows consideration for your fellow diners. Why take small bites? Because it controls you to eat at a healthy pace. Why not deliberately get drunk? To not impair your reason. Why avoid constant use of foul language? To show that your mind dwells on higher things than bodily functions. In all these there’s a standard of excellence, mental or physical, drilled into the person through control of their actions.
It’s a principle properly summarised in a line from Confucius: “Therefore the instructive and transforming power of ceremonies is subtle; they stop depravity before it has taken form, causing men daily to move towards what is good, and keep themselves farther apart from guilt, without being themselves conscious of it.”.
Is there then any reason for an oligarch to cultivate manners? I think none of weight. An oligarch might make a show of good manners, if he thinks this displays wealth. But once the cultural association of money with good manners is gone, he’ll stop this act. An oligarch who sees money as the means to swelling himself with pleasure actually has an incentive not to cultivate manners. Why would he cultivate something designed to limit his appetites? If the purpose of eating is to shovel as much food into your mouth as possible, and not to nourish yourself, then you can dispense with the cutlery, even possibly the plate.
But this leads to a further thought. Money for its own sake is necessarily vulgar because any constraint on it points to a standard other than pleasure. If we accept that the manners and etiquette we call aristocratic have developed over time as a way of disciplining wealth into excellence, then an oligarchy engorged on pleasure must reject them. Rather, manners that the underclass have adopted out of lack of correction or poverty now become the fascinations of the rich. A poor man wears ragged jeans because he can’t afford anything else. An oligarch wears designer torn jeans because money compels him to wear whatever he wants however he likes it. The expression of “general dumb hostility” which Dalrymple notes, may have been born from the Hobbesian nightmare of a slum; but for an oligarch, it’s the hostility of wealth to any external correction.
In an oligarchic society the top and bottom begin to resemble each other in customs even as they drift apart in income, and even as the top despises the bottom. We may explain the vulgarity of British elites in terms of class guilt, demoralisation, or political posturing. But the issue remains that love of gold doesn’t protect you from barbarism. It’s the passion that unites the highest emperor with the coarsest bandit.
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Economic Bondage Against the Family (Magazine Excerpt)
In his 1936 Essay on the Restoration of Property, the author Hilaire Belloc recalls an image he had read two decades before and reproduces to the best of his memory. I’ll adapt it: imagine a single machine that produces everything society could possibly need. If this machine is owned by the collective, through a caste of bureaucrats, we have socialism. Everyone who tends the machine are regularly doled-out what they allegedly need by this bureaucratic caste. If the machine is owned not by many but by just one man, we have monopolistic capitalism, of the type resulting from complete laissez-faire. Most people work the machine and get a wage in return so they can buy its produce. Some others are employed in entertaining the owner, and all the rest are unemployed.
Belloc doesn’t say it, but we could imagine that working the machine involves just pushing a button repetitively. If technology did advance to the point that all which humans need could be provided by one machine, surely it could be worked by merely pushing one button repeatedly.
I rehearse this second-hand image because through it Belloc makes a point: these are capitalism and socialism as “ideally perfect” to themselves. If such a machine existed, this is what each system would look like.
Both monopoly capitalism and socialism share an agnosticism about the role of property and work in human life. Neither ideology views work nor property as ends in themselves but only means to further ends. For the socialist this end is consumption. Material needs are more important than freedom. To borrow again an image from Belloc, socialists view society as like a group stranded on a raft. The single overwhelming concern is not starving, so food is rationed and handed out according to a central plan. Perhaps a man finds fishing fulfilling and would lead a happy life honing the fishing craft. Maybe he would benefit from selling fish for a profit so he can support his craft. But the circumstances are extreme, so the group take collective ownership of his fishing rod and collective charge of distributing the fish. It’s for this reason that socialism is so appealing to ideologies that see existence as struggle.
For the monopolist this end is profit. Money-making is the only purpose of economic activity, separate from any human need or fulfilment from work. Property is good only if it generates money; not because it has any fixed purpose within human life. Work also is good only if it generates money, and if profits can be increased while reducing the amount of work needed, this is preferable. This is the reasoning Adam Smith uses to create the production line. The goods produced, further, also have no value apart from the profit they create.
Neither system recognises that humans are rational animals who flourish by both having and using private property as an extension of their intelligence. Thus, if a machine existed which could produce everything needed for life by repeatedly pushing a button, both systems would adopt it and consider themselves having achieved perfection. Everybody (or almost everybody) could be employed doing the same repetitive activity, differing only on the matter of whether their employer is private enterprise or the collective.
The worker pushing a button is akin to one working on a conveyor belt in a factory, or in bureaucratic pen-pushing. His livelihood consists in a single repetitive and mindless task which requires little intelligence to perform. A craftsman, on the other hand, creates something from start to finish by himself or as part of a team effort with other craftsmen. Intelligence runs all through the activity. Making a teapot, fixing a car engine, building a house, or ploughing a field, each requires applying a design with one’s hands, that has already been worked-out by one’s mind.
Another effect of this agnosticism involves the consumer. The sort of consumption monopolists think about is a limitless glut happening in a social vacuum. It is want unrelated to need, because the only way we can truly specify need is by defining a fixed purpose for human life. Human needs, on an ancient view, relate to the kind of life humans must live to be truly happy and flourishing. So, we need food, water, shelter, and other commodities. But we also need to exercise our uniquely human faculties, like creativity, aesthetic appreciation, imagination and understanding. We also need to know how much of a good or activity to have. After all, eating until we pass out isn’t good for us, and to sit around imagining all day may run into idleness.
As a result, neither system has much room for organic human community at the local level. Such communities depend on need which goes beyond the mere satisfaction of material wants. Work, for example, is more than just a way to get what we need to live. It’s a vocation, which taps into our rational human nature, and gives us joy through creating and shaping our surroundings.
This is an excerpt from “Nuclear”.
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