The Grand Inquistor Dosteyevsy
"THE METAPHYSICAL MEANING OF THE LEGEND"
from THE GRAND INQUISITOR
from THE GRAND INQUISITOR
by ANTANAS MACEINA
[The first edition of The Grand Inquisitor appeared in 1946; a
second corrected edition was published in 1950, by Venta press, in
Germany. The excerpt translated here is taken from the second edition. A
German translation, Der Grossinquisitor, appeared in 1952.
The Grand Inquisitor is the first volume of the author's Cor Inquietum series,
devoted to the elucidation of the relations between man and God as
these are manifested in the world we live in. In this series, the topic
is approached through the medium of literature. Maceina believes,
according to the essay "Philosophy and Poetry" which was added as an
introduction to The Grand Inquisitor, that poetry and philosophy
are essentially the same thing since both are intended to express
existence, although they do this in different ways. Thus, the contents
of a poem are, in a sense, already philosophical. The task of the
philosopher is to transform the intuitive, direct experience of reality
present in poetry, into a reflective understanding. The Grand Inquisitor is thus based on the belief that in Dostoevskii's poem, the legend of the grand inquisitor which he included in the Brothers Karamazov, there lies a metaphysics of history.
The selection which follows is taken from the first part, titled "The
Meaning of the Legend" and is the third section in that part. The first
section is concerned with the "psychological meaning" of the legend. We
are told that the legend does express Ivan Karamazov's attitude towards
God, so that the legend can be understood psychologically, as another
device used by Dostoevskii to describe Ivan's personality. Ivan, while
admitting that God exists, believes the world which God has created to
be absurd. The legend shows that even Christ Himself, who came to close
the breach between the world and God, perpetuates the absurd order begun
by God. Where is the absurdity? Christ came to bring men freedom, but
human nature is too weak and cannot stand it. Men are too weak to live
in accordance with the teachings of Christ. Human nature cannot bear
them. Men desire happiness, contentment, the satisfaction of bodily
needs, yet Christ brings freedom and a constant struggle. Hence, history
will turn around and the order Christ tried to establish will turn into
its opposite. The inquisitor is the agent of this. He takes away men's
freedom in exchange for happiness, and thus "corrects" the work of God.
This is Ivan's indictment of God. But yet, as Alyosha observes, instead
of an attack, it turns out to be an apology for Christ. The inquisitor,
who has turned away from Christ to satisfy human wants, turns out to be
the villain.
This suggests that another interpretation is possible. This
interpretation is stated in the second section, on the moral meaning of
the legend. The legend is a criticism of the Catholic Church. The Roman
Church has turned the teachings of Christ into their opposite. The
Church has abandoned Christ and is now following the devil. The Church
has succumbed to the temptations which the devil made to Christ in the
desert. Maceina admits that this censure is part of the meaning of the
legend. However, the legend cannot be interpreted simply in these terms.
As a censure, it would be a defense of Christ against the inquisitor
who has perverted His teachings, something which is out of character for
Ivan. What then is the final meaning of the legend? It is a symbolic
portrayal of the tensions found in human history.
These tensions are portrayed through the conflict between Christ and the
inquisitor, identified by Maceina with the antichrist. The inquisitor
is a man who has lived in the desert and has suffered much, who loves
man, who is an idealist and is willing to sacrifice himself for the
happiness of mankind. Why is the inquisitor, then, Christ's opponent?
Because, in spite of what he publicly professes, the inquisitor believes
neither in God nor in immortality. What he does, it now appears, he
does not because he loves men, but because he has realized that there is
no God and that death ends all. But in such a case, why burden men with
freedom of conscience and a freely chosen faith? Why not rather give
them bread, by authority silence their consciences, and allow them to
sin?
In history, we find a tension between the principle of Christ, human
freedom and dignity, and the principle of the inquisitor, bread and an
easy conscience. Maceina holds that, whatever may be true in principle,
in this world freedom and happiness are incompatible in practice.
Happiness is something we cannot obtain in this world, but yet, often we
are ready to give away our freedom in order to obtain happiness.
The tensions of history are repeated in each individual man. Every man
is both a rebel and a slave. The teachings of Christ are intended to
save man the rebel, the inquisitor appeals to man the slave. Trans.]
If we wish to understand the deepest meaning of the legend of the Grand
Inquisitor, we must begin not with any single element, not with any
single idea in it, but with its totality, with its complete structure.
Separate elements, separate ideas, even the separate parts, are only
ways in which this totality develops and manifests itself concretely.
These support the totality, they bring it out into the open, but they
are not this totality in its essence. The totality lies deeper. It is
that inner tie, that invisible but real form which unifies the separate
ideas, binds them together into one whole, and thus contains the deeper
and final meaning we are seeking. What then constitutes the wholeness of
the legend of the Grand Inquisitor? What is the internal tie, the
internal form, from which the separate ideas and the separate elements
arise?
The careful reader of the legend can observe that Dostoevskii's tale is
nothing else than a somewhat extended interpretation of the three
temptations of Christ in the desert. Before beginning his public life,
Christ was led by the spirit into the desert to endure three temptations
of unusual significance. (Cf. Mt. 4.:1-11) In the gospels, the story of
the temptations is told briefly and in a simple manner. Nevertheless,
its meaning is profound. Because of this, it has always attracted the
attention of thinkers, and more than one theologian and philosopher has
undertaken to explain it. Dostoevskii also did this: in his legend of
the Grand Inquisitor he tried to gain insight into the meaning of the
temptations and give them a broader and deeper perspective. It is true
that he did this not by means of rational reflection and abstraction,
but through a concrete poetic image; however, no essential changes take
place here. The legend of the Grand Inquisitor, while it is a work of
poetry, becomes an interpretation of the three temptations.
Even at the beginning of his speech, the inquisitor mentions certain
"admonitions and warnings" made to Christ, to which, however, He had not
paid attention, which He had not heeded. These "admonitions and
warnings" puzzle even Alyosha, the first hearer of the legend. He
interrupts Ivan's narrative and asks: "what is the meaning of 'You did
not lack admonitions and warnings'?" To which Ivan replies: "this point
is the most important one so let the old one speak."1 The
speech lasts to the end of the legend. The whole legend of the Grand
Inquisitor is one great and long speech by the old man. But this speech
is nothing else than an analysis of the admonitions and warnings already
mentioned, an attempt to show that Christ by not listening to them made
an irreparable mistake. These admonitions and warnings are the three
temptations which Christ had to endure in the desert, as the inquisitor
himself in his speech clearly reveals.
"The dread and wise spirit, the spirit of self-destruction and
non-existence, the great spirit talked to You in the desert. As the
books say, he tempted You." Those admonitions and warnings originated
with this spirit, who gave Christ a sign not to act in accordance with
His own principles, but to follow his advice. But Christ rejected the
spirit's suggestions because He considered them to be temptations. "You
must not tempt the Lord your God" (Mt. 4:7)2 was
Christ's clear reply, followed by the words "vade, satana" (4:10).
Christ understood the admonitions and warnings of the spirit of the
desert not as signs originating in being itself and thus worthy of
consideration, but as coming from a deceitful mind and thus to be
rejected even without any deeper reflection. And really, Christ does not
analyze the devil's suggestions. He does not even criticize them. He
simply rejects them, saying three sayings having an eternal meaning:
"Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the
mouth of God"; "You must not tempt the Lord your God"; "You will
worship the Lord your God and Him alone will you serve." These three
sayings are three gestures by which Christ rejects the three suggestions
of the spirit of the desert. In the presence of the tempter, Christ
acts as the Lord of being. He views the essence of being and sees the
lie of the spirit of the desert. For this reason, He brushes him off,
like dust from His sandals.
But the inquisitor regards all this in a different way. Here, as
everywhere else, he tries to "correct" Christ's attitudes and actions.
He regards the desert spirit's suggestions to Christ, not as
temptations, not as lies, but as the most profound truth which has ever
been uttered in the world. For this reason, he begins to analyze this
"truth." When presented with the temptations, Christ did not pause for
even a second. But the inquisitor devotes to them the whole of his long
speech. "As the books say," he begins, "he tempted you. But is that so?
Could anything truer be said than what he offered to you in three
questions and what you rejected and what the books call "temptations"? I
tell you, if there has ever been on earth a real miracle, never seen
again, a miracle like a storm, it took place on that day, on the day of
the three temptations. The statement of those three questions was itself
the miracle." The inquisitor rightly feels that the appearance of the
temptations was the really decisive thing. Not only the fate of Christ
but of the whole world depended upon Christ's attitude towards them. As
at no other time in history, that day mankind was at the crossroads: to
follow the way of Christ or that of the spirit of the desert. Without
any hesitation, Christ chose in accordance with his divine essence and
rejected the temptations. However, this did not abolish them. The way
once sketched out by the spirit of the desert remained ever alive and
enticing. Even more, this way slowly infected the concrete everyday
existence of mankind, slowly spread, turning mankind away from the path
of Christ, and now, after fifteen centuries the inquisitor is able to
announce to Christ that he has "corrected" His teaching, that he has
heeded the temptations and made them the basis of this "corrected" life.
The tempting by the spirit of the desert is not only a specific event
which once affected the person of the historical Christ; the spirit's
scheme is also an essential force at work in history, an essential
aspect of history. It is always a living option which constantly tempts
mankind. The spirit's appearance in a desert of Palestine was only its
total concentrating in the presence of the God-man. He, like sin and
death, was destroyed in his essence. However, he remains and acts in his
concrete manifestations. Mankind in its history must experience what
Christ experienced in the desert. For this reason the inquisitor asserts
that if it were possible that these three questions had disappeared
without a trace from all books, if it were necessary to think them up
again and replace them in those books, then it would be hardly possible
to find anything which "in its force, power, and profundity" would bear
even a distant resemblance to the question posed by the "great and wise"
spirit, even if for this task we were to gather "all the wise ones of
the earth, rulers, priests, scientists, philosophers, and poets." The
three questions expressed the whole subsequent way of mankind. By means
of them, the most secret fate of man was stated. In them, that side of
human nature from which Christ turned away, that side upon which He did
not build His teaching and so — in the eyes of the inquisitor — was
defeated, reveals itself. Since he faces Christ as the "corrector" of
His teaching, as the judge of His allegedly unwise behavior, the
inquisitor is an apologist for the three temptations.
Thus in his speech he undertakes to analyze the temptations. That speech
is very systematic. He explains the temptations one after another,
points out the importance for man of each one, and sketches out what
would have taken place if Christ had heeded the spirit of the desert.
His whole speech is a subtle and profound explanation of the
temptations. But it is at the same time the content of the legend.
Everything that Ivan relates before the inquisitor's speech, interjects
in its course, or adds once he has finished is significant but not
really essential. All of that belongs to the framework of the legend, to
its setting, throws light upon one or another of the legend's thoughts,
provides a sharper background, but does not alter its meaning. The
essence and meaning of the legend lies in the speech of the inquisitor.
But this speech, as was said, consists of an explanation of the
temptations. Thus, the legend of the Grand Inquisitor becomes an
interpretation of these temptations. It is molded around these
temptations as its essential content. The three temptations are the
bases of the legend, the contents of the legend, for which all the
external clarifying circumstances are shaped. The matter of the legend
is not the psychological fact that Ivan wishes to justify his attitude
towards God and the world; this is only its motive. It is not the moral
censure of Catholicism; this is only an illustration. It is instead the
metaphysical meaning of the question posed by the "great and wise spirit
of the desert." The legend of the Grand Inquisitor is a symbolic
extension of the fourth chapter of the gospel according to Matthew.
But in themselves, what are these three questions or three temptations?
The inquisitor himself answers this: "In truth, in those three questions
the whole subsequent history of mankind is brought together into one
whole, and foretold. In them are stated three things in which meet all
the unsolved historical contradictions of human nature. At that time," —
the inquisitor continues — "this could not be known, since the future
was not understood. But now that fifteen hundred years have passed, we
see that in those three questions everything has been foretold
correctly, and that nothing can be added to them or taken from them." In
other words, the temptations of Christ are a summarized vision of the
history of mankind, while the history of mankind is the development of
these three temptations and their concrete manifestation in life. What
at that time took place in the desert takes place every day in the
history of mankind. In the three temptations are hidden the
contradictions of human nature, which grow and develop in the course of
history. The three temptations are like a seed which slowly grows into
the immense tree of history. For this reason, the inquisitor when
talking about the importance of the temptations and the need to replace
them if they were to be lost mentioned the "three words, three human
phrases which would express the whole of future history." In the opinion
of the inquisitor, not even all of the world's wise men, philosophers,
and poets could construct such sentences. But the spirit of the desert
thought them up and in this way expressed the whole future history of
the world.
Here we reach the final meaning of the legend of the Grand Inquisitor.
As we said, the inquisitor's speech constitutes the substance of the
legend. But the speech itself consists of the exposition and explanation
of the three temptations. In this way, practically in a syllogistic
manner, it follows that the ultimate, the metaphysical purpose of the
legend is to depict the history of mankind and to reveal the
contradictions of human nature raging within it. Using the three
temptations, Dostoevskii presents before us the way of mankind which
began with Christ and will end in the complete breaking up of the world.
Christ stands at the beginning of this way, and at the end. As he
concludes his speech, the inquisitor clearly refers to the second coming
of Christ and to the last victorious confrontation with the same three
temptations, as they had manifested themselves in human history. "Men
say," the inquisitor says, "that You will come again and triumph again;
that You will come with your chosen ones, with the proud and powerful."
This final coming, as we will see later, disturbs the inquisitor, and he
is preparing for that meeting. But at present, the meeting still seems
far away and thus the inquisitor still has time to "correct" the
teaching of Christ. The tempting of Christ began in the desert. In the
world He has redeemed, this tempting lasts forever. At the end of time,
it will be finally rejected. But until this takes place, the threat of
the temptations, the danger of heeding them, is great and perfectly
real. More than one really surrenders to them; more than one worships
the spirit of the desert and accepts its suggestions; more than one bows
before it, so that he may obtain bread or have his doubts settled by
wonderful and mysterious signs, so that he may be united to the mass of
mankind even by force. The whole history of the world is full of such
obeisance. The whole of history is full of contradictions, filled with
the conflict between Christ and the spirit of the desert. In the legend
of the Grand Inquisitor, Dostoevskii depicts for us this conflict. On
that day in the desert, two opposed principles came face to face. From
this confrontation, Christ emerged victorious, opening up a new path for
the whole world. However, what would history be like if the spirit of
the desert were to win? What would the picture of human life be like if
in history the suggestions of the tempter were to triumph, if history
were to be determined by them? These are the questions which are
answered by the legend of the Grand Inquisitor.
Thus, the ultimate and most profound meaning of the legend hides not on
the psychological or moral level, but on the metaphysical one. In its
essence, the legend is nothing but a poetic expression of Dostoevskii's
philosophy of history. It is true that Dostoevskii develops his views on
history in a concrete form, using the experiences of one individual;
develops them not in concepts, but images. But these images signify a
higher reality. They symbolize human life, life as it develops in the
tension between Christ and the spirit of the desert. The legend of the
Grand Inquisitor is a poem, as Ivan titles it at the beginning, but a
poem in the highest sense historical, for its object is the whole
history of mankind. It is at the same time a tragedy, as it is called by
Alyosha, but a cosmic tragedy, for the struggle is a struggle between
the deepest elements of the world. Through the mouth of Dimitri
Karamazov, Dostoevskii at one point says that God and the devil are
battling in the human heart. The legend of the Grand Inquisitor portrays
this battle. Its center is man. Everything turns here upon the
happiness and freedom of man. Just because man is the center, in him
meet and battle the elements of the cosmos itself: God and the devil,
Christ and the spirit of the desert. Man must bear their struggle in his
being and in his life. The heart of man, the very depths of his
essence, provides the battlefield. In the legend of the Grand
Inquisitor, this field gains cosmically historical aspects. Dostoevskii
portrays the struggle between God and man not in psychological terms, as
does Mauriac for example, but cosmically, transferring the action of
his tragedy from the narrow psychological level to the cosmic stage of
human history.
H. Rickert in his work on Goethe's Faust has said that Faust is
the last truly cosmic work created in modern Europe. This remark is not
quite accurate because the legend of the Grand Inquisitor, in its
cosmic scope, its problems and in its tragic character, does not take
second place to Faust. On the contrary, in our view, this work is even more cosmic than Goethe's Faust. The tensions of human nature, which in Faust are
confined more to the moral level, in Dostoevskii's legend achieve a
metaphysical meaning and thus gain both in profundity and in breadth. Faust is
more the ethical drama of a single person; the legend of the Grand
Inquisitor is a metaphysical tragedy of mankind as a community. Goethe's
Faust seeks happiness through knowledge; the man of Dostoevskii's
legend seeks it through freedom. But freedom is tied to a deeper aspect
of human nature than is knowledge. Without doubt, it is dramatic to
study philosophy, law, medicine, even theology and to confess to being
as ignorant as before; without doubt it is dramatic to begin with a
great thirst to know and end with the claim that "we can know nothing at
all." However, it is tragic to place one's freedom at the feet of
another, so submit one's power of decision and one's conscience to the
will of another, to bury one's personality in an ant heap, and for all
this pay with peace and happiness. Dostoevskii develops this tragedy not
from the limited perspective of a single man but from that of the whole
of mankind. Sergei Bulgakov, in his Philosophy of Economics, saw
man's apocalyptic drama precisely in the fact that in the course of
history an ever increasing number of men will decide in favor of their
physical needs. Physical survival will finally become the highest
purpose, for the sake of which truth, freedom, love, beauty and all
other spiritual things will be sacrificed. The time will come, it is
perhaps not very far away, when bread will become the supreme and final
ingredient of human happiness. The inquisitor of Dostoevskii's legend is
the symbol of this apocalyptic man. In him, the tensions between spirit
and matter reaches its highest pitch. In essence, he does not reject
the teachings of Christ. He recognizes and admits their nobility and
divine character, but he considers the teachings to be too difficult for
human nature and hence decides against Christ. He places bread before
freedom. And thus in him the cosmic tragicness and apocalyptic strife
become especially sharp. These cosmic elements are revealed here in all
their breadth and with infinite terror.
Every more extensive and distinctive historical period has produced some
one work which expresses the spirit and basic attitudes of that period.
The Middle Ages are crowned with the Divine Comedy of Dante, the Enlightenment with Goethe's Faust; the
legend of the Grand Inquisitor becomes the crown of recent history. In
his work, Dante gathered up and expressed the unity of medieval life,
its hierarchical structure, its vertical orientation towards God. In his
work, Goethe gathered up and expressed the longing for moral life which
arose in an individualism marked by an ever more dissolute spirit.
Dostoevskii in his legend gathered up and expressed the life of man who
has turned away from God and has lost Him. The period of modern history
is the hour of an especially intense warfare between God and the devil.
In it, these two elements are especially sharply separated and in
conflict with each other. The most recent history has been a renewal of
the dialogue between Christ and the spirit of the desert. In his legend,
Dostoevskii gathered up and expressed the tensions of this history. In
the legend, man's idealism, his endless love for weak and suffering
humanity, his suffering and courage are brought out into the open, but
at the same time also, his succumbing to a lower essence, his constant
use of lies and deceits, his trampling of conscience, and finally, his
total unbelief in God or the immortality of the soul. Here, man is shown
filled with profound contradictions which ultimately destroy each other
and reveal the tragedy of historical life in all its horror. There are
no more frightening characters in the world's literature than the
inquisitor of Dostoevskii's legend. He is not a demon whose "real
mileau" is evil, as in the case of Goethe's Mephistopheles. The
inquisitor is a man, a suffering and searching man, dying for mankind
and for the sake of mankind engaging in a final battle with Christ. If
the works of Dostoevskii, as is maintained by Merezhkovskii3 and Ivanov4,
are not epics, not novels, but tragedies, then the legend of the Grand
Inquisitor is the most tragic of them; and within the legend, the most
tragic figure is the inquisitor. As was said, he is a symbol of
historical man on his way to the apocalyptic solution. He is the symbol
of man who travels through time, of man whose life develops and takes
place in time. The whole of the history after Christ finds voice through
him. The historical road of mankind is painful and tragic, for it is
the way of the conflict between Christ and the spirit of the desert.
This conflict has taken place in all ages. But our times experience it
in a special way. In Dostoevskii's legend this way is depicted. For this
reason, this work has a metaphysical significance which goes beyond the
domains of psychology and of ethics. For this reason, it is the peak of
Dostoevskii's creativity.
The following chapters of this study will attempt to unravel the
separate strains of this significance, point out their relations and
foundations, and, in this way employing the symbolic images of this
great poem, recreate Dostoevskii's metaphysics of history.
1. [Quotations from the Brothers Karamazov are translated from
the Lithuanian version of Maceina. The English translation by Constance
Garnett, published in the Modern Library, was consulted. Trans.]
2. [Biblical passages are translated from the Lithuanian text used by Maceina. However, the translator relied heavily on the Jerusalem Bible, published by Doubleday & Co., in 1966. A translation in contemporary English was chosen, since there is no "Biblical Lithuanian" corresponding to the "Biblical English" of the older English versions. Trans.]
3. [Dimitri] Merezhkowski, Tolstoi und Dostojewski, 1903 [German translation].
4. Ivanov, Dostojewski, 1932. [This could be a reference to a work by Vyacheslav Ivanov, translated into English as Freedom and the Tragic Life, New York, 1952.]
2. [Biblical passages are translated from the Lithuanian text used by Maceina. However, the translator relied heavily on the Jerusalem Bible, published by Doubleday & Co., in 1966. A translation in contemporary English was chosen, since there is no "Biblical Lithuanian" corresponding to the "Biblical English" of the older English versions. Trans.]
3. [Dimitri] Merezhkowski, Tolstoi und Dostojewski, 1903 [German translation].
4. Ivanov, Dostojewski, 1932. [This could be a reference to a work by Vyacheslav Ivanov, translated into English as Freedom and the Tragic Life, New York, 1952.]
- The descriptive argument of the Grand Inquisitor.
- Human beings can be divided into two groups, according to whether or not they can and do handle freedom.
- The criteria of this division are:
- Whether or not a person can and will handle freedom.
- Whether or not this freedom is manifest in action.
- When one does the division it turns out that the groups are:
- Tens of thousands can and do handle freedom.
- Thousands of millions do not.
- This argument is
advanced by the inquisitor not on the basis of bias or assumption, but
on his observation of human behavior in his time and in history.
He argues that the masses, the thousands of thousands, have demonstrated:- An excessive general failure on consistently achieving even subsistence in food.
- An impossibility in bearing the burden of responsibility for important moral decisions.
- A desperate need for unity and a marked inability to live with differenc.
- The criteria of this division are:
- Human beings can be divided into two groups, according to whether or not they can and do handle freedom.
- The Grand Inquisitor analyzes this data to mean:
- Most humans are by nature incapable of handling freedom, of taking care of their basic needs, of accepting the moral responsibility of conscience or of living with differences. He arrives at this conclusion since his observations suggest that this has been the pattern of human behavior from the beginning of human history.
- He does believe there is a relatively small group (tens of thousands) of people who are different -- BY NATURE -- and who can do for themselves, handle responsibility and conscience and not only live with difference, but even create it. Again, he appeals to experience, being able to cite these people in human history.
- A few notes to elucidate his claims:
- There is a powerful case to be made, especially up to Dostoevsky's time, that the masses of humans did not do a very good job of providing for the basic necessities. Life from the beginning of human history until very recently was, for the thousands of thousands, very harsh indeed, a genuine struggle for existence, where only a small minority made it into their 40s and life for most was extremely difficult.
- The masses of humans have not been impressive in their honest (authentic) ability to take moral responsibility upon themselves. Human history is filled with various appeals to transcendence, necessity, magic and the occult, evil forces like Satan or demons, or human powers like kings, armies, invaders etc., all of whom were claimed to have been the reasons why people did what they did. Also natural forces -- storms, droughts, sickness, various natural disasters -- have frequently figured in explanations of why things were they way they were. The open personal acceptance of responsibility for the way things were has been typically reserved to those people who would obviously fit into the inquisitor's class of the tens of thousands.
- The masses of humans have had an exceptionally bad record of dealing with difference. The history of humanity is filled with constant wars and struggles where the difference of another group was said to be the motivating factor in the violent struggle. Claims that people worshipped the wrong gods, or lived the wrong sort of family life, or practiced wrong social practices, said or believed the wrong beliefs etc. Marxists would have us believe that economic struggles are really lurking just beneath the surface and that these other reasons are simply false justifications. Freudians would have it otherwise. Whatever the deepest reasons, the inquisitor seems correct that the constant pointing up of unacceptable DIFFERENCES does seem to be the primary justification given time and time again in human history.
- The inquisitor's claimed "humanistic" response to this situation:
- The inquisitor believes that he and many like him are among the tens of thousands -- those capable of and demonstrating the ability to achieve material ends, take moral responsibility upon their shoulders and live with difference.
- The inquisitor believes he loves people and that this "natural" condition of humans causes the thousands of thousands great suffering and anxiety and constant war.
- By coming forward in a loving act of sacrifice, the inquisitor and any like him, take the responsibility upon themselves for getting things done, making moral decisions and keeping peace. This is enormous work and an awesome responsibility.
- However, it is rather easy to get the thousands of thousands to allow them to do this. All they have to do is DELIVER. That is:
- Provide basic material subsistence and comfort.
- Make the moral decisions for everyone.
- Work toward a unified world of sameness, where no one has to confront difference. (For the thousands of thousands to have to confront difference would mean they might have to question whether they or them were living "rightly," and they'd have to face moral responsibility, something they are naturally incapable of doing.)
- In following this humanistic task, the inquisitor and other such "humanists" must watch out for any members of the tens of thousands group. They threaten to disturb the tranquility of the thousands of thousands, thus plunging them back into misery. Thus, in the name of the greater good for the greater number, and the greater good for the NATURALLY helpless, the inquisitor and other such "humanists" must be prepared to be brutal, even to the extent of burning a 100 heretics a day if it takes that to insure domestic tranquility and provide for the common good.
- An existentialist reply to the inquisitor.
- The situation is much as the inquisitor describes it. There do seem to be two groups, each which behaves much like the inquisitor describes.
- However, the existentialist rejects the view that either group is as it is by NATURE. Then why? Heidegger argues that there is a tendency in humans to take things easy and make thing easy, a tendency toward inauthenticity. However, if once people can come to confront this inauthenticity, then they have the potential to escape into authenticity, or at least more authenticity than before.
- How
does one break out of inauthenticity (the way of life of the thousands
of thousands) and into authenticity (the way of the tens of thousands)?
The existentialists would believe that several things might help:
- Existentialist theory and literature. These are ways to bring the existentialist critique and alternative to people's attention and try to lure more people away from inauthenticity. They would also accept that other philosophical positions might do this too.
- Existentialists are realists. They don't really expect that the thousands of thousands will race to authenticity. But, they believe their experience does not show that people cannot change over. People actually do. Thus people are not in their camp by NATURE. Change is possible and experienced.
- The hope seems much more to be that the tens of thousands may well become hundreds of thousands though the efforts of existentialists and other authentic people. However, they do recognize that it is unlikely that most of the thousands of thousands will ever change.
No comments:
Post a Comment