Giovanni Hobbins 12/5/11 IDS 385 Final Paper

Dostoevskys Theology: Unity through Antimony in The Brothers Karamazov

Table of Contents Pg. 2 - Thesis Pg. 3 - Part I: The Faith Pg. 7 - Part II: The Doubt Pg. 12 - Part III: The Antimony Pg. 18 Works Cited

A recent study by famed Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky found that the mind releases a rush of dopamine not when we receive a reward, but rather, in anticipation of it. More interestingly, when the chimps being tested were only half as likely to receive their reward after a given task, the anticipatory dopamine rush was even greater. Apart from singlehandedly refuting nearly all of what we thought we understood about motivation in psychology, Sapolskys study points out a remarkable characteristic of humankind. To our very neurological core, we are geared to mitigate a world of challenges and conflict. So great is our natural affinity for desire that even when we finally receive our reward, our mind does not chemically reward us, we grow disinterested and move on. In this sense, we are only happy when someone or something resists us; we need conflict and opposition to find balance and happiness. Hundreds of years before Sapolskys dopamine tests, Fyodor Dostoevsky studied and characterized the nature of man with similar, though far less scientific

mastery. Much to the chagrin of our delicate Western sensibilities, Dostoevskys literary world is deeply flawed, horrifically violent, and psychologically unstable. In his novels, the lives of his protagonists are often characterized by suffering and social paralysis. His novels find themselves in cold, unfriendly cities with immense class divisions, poverty, and unlimited debauchery. The author takes no pains to soften the harsh blow of real life, if anything, he amplifies the misery. Yet in all this, perhaps because of extreme natural doses of dopamine, the Dostoevskian hero prevails. Despite every opposition, every reasonable doubt, intrinsic optimism remains in the form of a relentless belief in God and the goodness of mankind. It follows that Dostoevskys theology, as evidenced in his masterwork The Brothers Karamazov finds its final and ultimate unity through opposition and paradox. Through his own experiences and the influence of his contemporaries, Dostoevsky held specific views on the existence and nature of God. The gospel of humility, the holy fool, and redemption through suffering pervades Brothers as force of unstoppable good. Characters like Father Zosima, Dimitri Karamazov, and Alyosha Karamazov symbolize and actualize the good of mankind peddling Dostoevskys personal beliefs along the way and setting the stage for a great philosophical debate. As in life, with great faith comes great doubt and with chapters like The Grand Inquisitor Dostoevsky challenges the whole of religion with legendary saliency and wisdom. Characters like Ivan Karamazov, Smerdiakov, and Fyodor Karamazov characterize different forms of evil and sin. Some scholars claim (Morson 473), Dostoevskys doubt actually overpowers his faith in Brothers. This paper will argue that Dostoevskys conception of theology, along with his conception of world and its

people as a whole, is chaotic, often violent, and eternally in a state of conflict and opposition. Dostoevsky scholar Ksana Blank uses the phrase antimonic unity to define this precarious balance. To have great good, great evil must challenge it. To have faith, one must have the freedom to doubt. Despite all the good man is capable of, innocent children suffer, great atrocities are committed, and a single idea can corrupt a nation. Dostoevskys theology and the world of Brothers do not speak of extinguishing evil or chaotic Armageddon. Instead, the world is and should be a beautiful opposition of the awful and the magnificent, the kind and the sadistic, the Alyoshas and the Smerdiakovs.

I: The Faith

The ideology behind The Brothers Karamazov is most evident in the arguments and actions of its characters. Dostoevsky sets the stage for a perpetual moral debate by engaging his characters in discourse. The protagonist Alyosha embodies all that is good in the world while his father, Fyodor Pavlovich, is similarly extreme in the opposite direction. Through his characters, Dostoevsky sets down his theology. In his Dostoevsky: His Life and Work, Historian Konstantin Mochulsky identifies two major theological influences in the authors life. Dostoevskys view of God and his relationship with man, though momentous in all of Russian literature, was articulated more clearly and pedagogically by philosophers like V.S. Solovyov and N.F. Fyodorov.

Mochulsky claims Dostoevsky was influenced largely by two Russian philosophers during the conception of Brothers. The most prominent influence and a close personal friend of the author, Solovyov, was a young Russian thinker that gained renown with his Crisis of Western Philosophy, Philosophic Principles of Integral Knowledge, and a famed lecture series given in Petersburg called On God-manhood. Solovyov thought that salvation was brought about by God and man in tandem. Unlike many orthodox believers, Solovyov felt man was endowed with the ability to save himself through great faith, discipline, and good will. Dostoevsky found many of his own thoughts and religious ideology in the work of the young, spiritual Solovyov. Everything from the thinkers angelic appearance to his profoundly spiritual personality was inspiration for Alyosha in Brothers. Solovyov believed, as did Dostoevsky, that Russia had a specific spiritual and religious mission. Mochulsky explains, The lecturer violently attacked Western civilization, which had culminated its development by affirming the atheistic individual, and he believed that Russia would bring life to those elements that were dead in their hatred through a loftier principle of reconciliation (Mochulsky 567). In Brothers, Dostoevsky exemplifies the atheistic individual through the characters and intellectual framework of Ivan. Ivans submission to the Western individualist, secular paradigm leads him to jaded resignation and moral angst. Solovyovs theology sought to realize faith not only in God but in man as well, 'both these faiths faith in God and faith in man are united in the sole, complete, and integral truth of God-manhood (Mochulsky 567). Solovyovs ideology and feelings on utopic theocracy were a direct influence on Ivans intellectual makeup near the end of the novel as well.

The work of another philosopher, N.F. Fyodorov, can be seen to expand Dostoevskys personal theology. Mochulsky argues that Dostoevsky and Solovyov, through their constant collaborative inquest, mutually discovered and were influenced by Fyodorov. Unlike Solovyov, Fyodorov was not a prodigious personal friend of Dostoevskys. A follower of the thinker sent Dostoevsky an account and summation of the Fyodorovs The Philosophy of the Common Task. Dostoevsky went over the work with Solovyov and the two mutually sympathized with the work, describing it as, the human spirits first move along the way of Christaccepting it categorically and without discussion (Mochulsky 568). Fyodorov championed a movement for forming a spiritual brotherhood - a classless society with no economy or government. Fyodorov, reduces to a paradoxical proposition: the joining together of sons for the resurrection of their fathers. Men live divided and their spiritual forces are paralyzed by enmity and conflict. One must do away with the struggles between governments, peoples, classes; a classless society, a single family, a brotherhood must be created (Mochulsky 568). Given to their Russophilic roots, Dostoevsky and Solovyov fully agreed with Fyodorov despite the somewhat outlandish nature of his ideology. Fyodorov also identified the father-son relationship as integral in the spiritual revolution of mankind. For him, the father and son relationship had lost its pure, filial qualities and had become subject of resentment and belittlement. Dostoevsky takes up this this issue intimately in Brothers. In the context of Fyodorovs theology, patricide exemplifies the increasingly perverse nature of man. At the center of the novel is a fateful patricide, symbolic of mans downfall and crucial in defining the authors theological assertions. Characters like Smerdykov and Fyodor Pavolovich, patricidal

maniac and hedonistic buffon, represent the people that Fyodorov think are poisoning the world, destroying pure non-sexual filial love and embracing base sexual lust. In conceiving Brothers, Dostoevsky drew from a specific theological ideology and uses motifs to place the novel firmly within this belief system (Strem 16). Essayist George Strem describes this uniquely Dostoevskian moral climate in his The Moral World of Dostoevsky. For Strem, humility is the first and foremost virtue for Dostoevsky. It is the virtue by which man begins to lose himself in order to retrieve himself in God (Strem 15). In Brothers, humility is characteristic of the wise and good-natured. Father Zosima, though revered by everyone, espouses an attitude of collective responsibility and extreme humility, each one of us is guilty before everybody for everything, and I am more guilty than anybody else" (Dostoevsky 125). Alyosha Karamazov personifies humility through his actions rather than in an intellectual capacity. He is one of Dostoevskys coveted holy fools, naively mitigating a world of debauchery and deceit all the while keeping his innocence and incorruptibility intact. Strem identifies the humble hero as a keystone in Dostoevskys moral framework, by exalting the humiliated, Dostoevsky intends to show; moreover that man is a complicated being, that the soul of even the lowest individual contains lofty elements. Since the humiliated may be Gods favorites, it is a great sin to revile them (Strem 16). Another important motif contributes to the tangible theological climate of Brothers. In all of Dostoevskys novels, suffering plays a significant role as an agent of revolution and spiritual salvation. As Dimitri put it during his trial for the death father Karamazov, I want to suffer, and by suffering I shall be purified (Dostoevsky 383). Strem claims Dostoevskys fixation with criminals is due to the

suffering associated with committing a crime. In Brothers, Father Zosima bows before Ivan, sensing the impending suffering before him. For Dostoevsky, those who suffer are favored by God and when one sins, only suffering can redeem him. Additional motifs like the Christ figure, the Devil, and Nietzsches Superman permeate the authors work and serve to further Dostoevskys religiously-informed novelistic framework. In this way we can discern a particular Dostoevskian theology and consequently, the form of the authors faith. The influence of Solovyov and Fyodorov is evident throughout Brothers and helps to build a basis for the novels moral climate. Powerful and consistent motifs like suffering and humility reinforce Dostoevskys spiritual belief system and seem influenced by Orthodox Christianity.

II. The Doubt

As Strem explains, Dostoevsky postulates that man, proud of his social and technical achievements, tends to emancipate himself from God, nay, to substitute himself for God (Strem 19). Subtly, Strem identifies the core of Dostoevskys model of doubt. Total freedom, a world without laws is mentioned by three characters on varied occasions in Brothers: Fyodor Pavolovich, Smerdiakov, and Ivan. Unlike their peers, a relentless need for freedom and a feeling of untouchability affects the perspective of these men. In Dostoevskys legendary Grand Inquisitor, the question of mans freedom is taken up to the utmost and poetic degree. Through this seminal question, Dostoevsky introduces a significant notion of doubt to The Brothers

Karamazov. With Ivan, the author has free reign to articulate his greatest and darkest reservations in an intellectually sound, compelling way. Dostoevsky culminates his doubt with the image of Ivans devil. As strongly as Dostoevskys theological message resonates, an important spark of disbelief and even atheism is clear in the moral debate raging throughout Brothers. In the famed Rebellion passages, Ivan approaches Alyosha from the opposite side of spiritual spectrum. Having immersed himself in academia and having embraced the secular, individualistic tenets of Western intellectualism, Ivan departs from his Russian roots in favor of a reasoned, if somewhat cynical approach to understanding religion. In his Dostoevskys Devil: The Will to Power, Michael Stoeber identifies the problem of freedom as crucial to understanding Dostoevskys theology in Brothers. The Grand Inquisitor himself tells Jesus, didst though forget that man prefers peace, and even death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil? (Dostoevsky 235). For Dostoevsky, God gave man freedom so that he might love Him by his own will. Yet, in the eyes of Ivan and the novels basis for doubt, this freedom makes most men base and impious. But for the elite few, a notion Stoeber adamantly parallels with Nietzsche, freedom allows for philosophical liberation, the culminating goal for both Ivan and Nietzsche is a voluntaristic utopia of joy intrinsic to the selfovercoming and will-enhancement, in a dynamic environment of ongoing creativity and insight (Stoeber 32). In his enlightened state, Ivan sees the world for what it is: intensely cruel and intrinsically flawed. Conversing with Alyosha, Ivan cites the innocent children, pointless deaths, and the absurd, contradictory nature of religion, I positively maintain again that there is a peculiar characteristic in much of humanity

 this love of torturing children, but only children (Dostoevsky 209). Banal cruelty is of particular to Ivan, whose cynicism is drawn to extremes of evil. In constructing his Grand Inquisitor, Ivan summarizes the gist of Dostoevskys own skepticism. Stroeber explains, Dostoevsky considers the principle of primary will necessary to human existence and the religious ideal; tragically, however, it is intimately linked to the devil the source of evil in human nature. Nevertheless, in the way that it illustrates the negative and disquieting moral consequences of the very religious skepticism Dostoevsky so powerfully portrays, this symbol also lends considerable support for his religious vision (Stoeber 28). Ivans devil further personifies doubt and evil for Dostoevsky. Arther Trace describes a similar condition in Dostoevskys text in his Furnace of Doubt: Dostoevsky and The Brothers Karamazov. Trace extends Ivans dystopic vision, no adequate reason to perform good deeds either, especially deeds that cause the kind of sacrifice and pain that must be continually endured in order to keep civilization from unraveling (Trace 107). A conception of evil plays an important role in realizing Dostoevskys doubt throughout Brothers. The author approaches the subject of evil naturally and organically. Beginning with the novels opening Karamazov family memoir, the presence of great and imminent evil is obvious. In those opening passages, Dostoevsky describes a domestic history of forced marriage, adultery, extreme parental negligence, death, and countless other tragedies. Yet in a bit of typical Dostoevsky genius, the source of this great sadness, Fyodor Pavlovich, is made light of, portrayed as a somewhat likeable buffoon despite some his more irredeemable traits. Dostoevsky views evil as an extremely real and natural part of life, equating it

with characters in Brothers on several occasions and with striking clarity. The author takes great care in drawing a caricature of evil, elaborating it especially with Ivans Inquisitor. Arguably Dostoevskys most direct representation of doubt, the Inquisitor does not even reject the existence of God and Christ, but prefers to nullify them on principle and spread theism in order to control the masses. Ivans famed conception of evil manifests doubt through a logical process but nonetheless resuls in great tragedy and corruption the carnage of the Inquisition. Not at all impressed by the second coming of Christ, the Inquisitor spares no time in silencing his captive, and Thou hast no right to add anything to what Thou hadst said of old. Why, then, art Thou come to hinder us? For Thou hast come to hinder us, and thou knowest that (Dostoevsky 217). This brand of evil is so convinced if its own logic, it no longer has any need for the pillars of faith on which it was founded. The Inquisitor doubts so thoroughly and with such intellectual vigor that he can live according to a Christian philosophy in which he no longer needs God or Christ. Indeed, the Second Advent, presumably longawaiting by all Catholics, is inconvenient for him, I shall condemn Thee and burn Thee at the stake as the worst of heretics. And the very people who have kissed Thy feet, tomorrow at the faintest sign from me will rush to heap up the embers of Thy fire (Dostoevsky 217). With great violence, Dostoevskys man of evil wants to dispose of his savior and resume burning human beings. Here, Dostoevsky pushes evil to its limits, giving it the advantage of convincing logic and great, sweeping power. The cold deduction and persuasive nature of Ivans Inquisitor argument is testament to the authors own rich and multi-faceted doubt. As all good thinkers, Dostoevsky does not rule out the possibility of truths that place his long-held beliefs in difficulty.

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For Ivan and the author, a world with no consequences, robbed of God and morality is an unnervingly persistent possibility. Dostoevskys repeated use of Nietzsches ubermensch exemplifies this facet of the authors doubt. Perhaps having personal experience, Dostoevsky describes many of his characters as split or undecided; Raskolnikov is the best example but very similarly, Ivans moral ambivalence that leads to indirect patricide in Brothers. A further characterization of evil is evident in Ivans devil. In a dream-like delirium, Ivan encounters a uniquely Dostoevskian sort of devil. According to classics scholar Kevin Corrigan, Dostoevsky reveals Platonic influences through characterization of Ivans devil. More specifically, Corrigan contends a direct parallel with the Timaeuss Platonic Receptacle and Platos understanding of underlying contrast in everything. Like the Platonic Receptacle, the devil bears a semblance of reality which proves at a second glance to be without substance. The Receptacle is a principle of false appearance. Once can never say of the things which appear in it that they are, for they have no permanent reality (Corrigan 2). Corrigan points out the similarities between evil for Plato and Dostoevsky. Both thinkers portray an ambiguous, even untrustworthy sponger-like character in evil. A striking similarity with ancient Pagan beliefs is evident, further suggesting the advanced nature and rich intellectual foundation of Dostoevskys doubt. The author draws on classical conceptions of evil later elaborated on by Plotinus. Corrigan sees that Dostoevsky equates evil with a certain falseness and uncertainty, we are locked from the start into a situation in which there is no possibility of any certainty, rest or resolution and which, in its devastatingly quiet and insistent way, bears all the marks of hell

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(Corrigan 4). Corrigan extends the concept of evil into Dostoevskys literary and philosophic world on a whole. Evil, as convincing and even logical as it is, remains a constant but subordinate truth for Dostoevsky. Although there is no way to quell it definitely, evil is ultimately placed in eternal conflict with forces of good. In this way, Dostoevsky places a Russophillic but unorthodox faith in contrast with a complex, neo-Platonic conception of evil. At times, Brothers is rife with doubt and evil. Characters like Ivan, Smerdiakov, and Fyodor Pavlovich manage to personify evil in its many dimensions and persuasions. Dostoevsky packs a lot into his doubt, filling pages with polished thought-experiments like The Grand Inquisitor and detailed, Platonic conceptions of the devil. Ultimately, doubt provides the antimony needed for Dostoevskys ultimate unity.

III. Antimony

Through Ivan, Dostoevsky creates ideological opposition. Every character in Brothers interacts with this ongoing debate in some capacity. In the case of the socialist Rakitin, his ideological role, though historically foreboding, is somewhat peripheral to the battle of good and evil boiling over throughout the novel. Other characters like Alyosha and Ivan engage directly with the most significant questions Dostoevsky poses. To further the tangible climate of ideological warfare present in Brothers, the author makes broad use of paradox to characterize the Dostevskian fictional landscape. As Gary Morsen claims in his Paradoxical Dostoevsky, the author uses paradox to illustrate psychological truths at variance with received models and

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seemingly, with the reason of the person who exhibits them (Morson 471). An atmosphere of embattled consciences is evident here; characters like Ivan grapple with doubt and imperfection. In Dostoevskys world of Brothers, paradox reigns: the holy fool, the depraved clown, the patricidal intellectual, the noble drunk, the crusading benefactress, and so on. Often in the novel, the true nature of things turns out to be paradoxical. Morson uses the example of, Ivan Karamazov seems to hate God for not existing. Personifying the impersonal just because it is impersonal: this paradox surely derives from a gratuitous but psychologically plausible ascription of agency (Morson 473). Even the nature of doubt in Brothers contains paradox. A more obvious example is the stench of the dead body at Zosimas funeral; paradoxical for the superstitious, disapproving masses. It is as if Dostoevsky sees the world as an elaborate assortment of opposing forces, each pairing reaching an antimonious balance unto itself despite its disparate parts being constantly in conflict. Because the author views paradox in everything, he consequently sees peace and unity in the conflict of paradox. By its very nature, paradox assumes a sense of peaceful coexist between its two opposing parts. In this way, Dostoevsky places at the center of his work an understanding of conflict that does not resolve itself, but remains perpetually a deadlock. Morson, like Bahktin, felt paradox was essential to the multi-layered, polyphonic Dostoevskian narrative model. Dostoevsky scholar Ksana Blank described this condition in Dostoevskys work as antinomic unity. For Blank, Dostoevsky is an inherently dialogic author and though his work is affected by his fervent personal faith and Christianity, his theology is described through expressed antinomies (Blank 23). More specifically,

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oppositional relationships like good and evil, beauty and cruelty, and faith or doubt are functions of a unified whole. In all the paradox and conflict, there is balance and peace. Blank points to other Russian thinkers that influenced Dostoevsky with similar views, Florensky considers contradiction to be a fundamental property of the Truth (Istina)Florensky asserts that the Inner Truth is self-contradictory, that it presupposes the possibility of its own negation (Blank 26). Florensky thought the principle of peaceful, downright supplemental opposites was inherent to any true religious understanding. His formulations of antinomies were supported by significant contemporaries like Berdjaev, Lossky, and Semen Frank. Lossky viewed the unsolvable nature of the antimonies as an opportunity to engage the mystery, motivation for religious curiosity. Dostoevskys greatest critic, Mikhail Bakhtin, claimed the polyphonic, dialogical truth was created by Dostoevsky and had no precedent. In Blanks conception of Brothers, opposites form a single unity and cannot exist without each other. The pros et contras involved in the external dialogue form a single, antinomic Truth (Blank 24). Blanks unity is not an original idea. Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev viewed Dosteovsky in a similar light and even cared to extend Bakhtins principle of polyphony in Dostoevskys to full-on, philosophical conceptions of the spirit, man, and freedom. Berdyaev sought first of all to understand Dostoevsky as a thinker. He believed Dostoevskys intellectual merit to far surpass that of Tolstoy or even Goethe. Berdyaev felt Dostoevskys clarity and logic were rare for his time, calling him the first psychologist and citing his contributions to rudimentary epistemology. More

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importantly, Berdyaev saw in Dostoevsky an unwillingness to exclude certain arguments, for him this delirious excitement, so far from inhibiting thought, fulfilled it, in such a way that ideas and their dialectic follow a dionysiac rhythm. Dostoevsky is drunk with ideas, for in all his books ideas intoxicate, but in the midst of it all the fine edge of intelligence is never blunted (Berdyaev 34). Coming from an era Berdyaev calls Dionysian, Dostoevsky is able to apply cold, discerning intellect to a veritable storm of ideas, each more convincing than the last. This ability to draw unity from a conflicted system that does not exclude anything or inhibit any thought, is, according to Berdyaev, a major tenet of Dostoevskys theology and thought in general. Berdyaev points to the authors characters as proof of this internal discussion, each protagonist looking in dialogical relation with himself, questioning himself, "a centrifugal and centripetal movement among human beings runs through all the novels" (Berdyaev 44). Dostoevsky focuses on man and freedom to get across the conflicting nature of his world-view. For the author, mans spirit is constantly in a state of revolution and discord. For the Dostoevskian protagonist, freedom tempts him into evil and depravity. In his pursuit for good, once man has set his foot upon the road of self-will and self-affirmation," Berdyaev argues, "he must sacrifice the primacy of spirit and his original freedom and become the plaything of necessity and compulsion" (Berdyaev 82). To achieve peace, man must engage his internal tension and fight against his baser desire for primacy. Dostoevsky builds his whole understanding of happiness around this human condition. Indeed, his characters are in essence sickened by the contrast within them, seeing all things around them in relation to an internal battle. Ivan exemplifies this in Brothers. The consequences of his moral

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ambivalence laid bare in the patricide of his father, Ivan spirals into incredible sickness and psychological exhaustion. Berdyaev calls this tension, a centrifugal and centripetal movement among human beings runs through all the novels" (Berdyaev 44). Ivan cant help but view everything in relation to the questions raging within him. Berdyaev examines this internal conflict and finds it to be common across the whole of Dostoevskys thought, there was a dash of the spirit of Heraclitus in him: everything in heat and motion, opposition and struggle (Berdyaev 12). The philosopher identifies contrast as crucial to nature of Dostoevskys world. Great evil and great good are at once in harmony and in discord, his conception of the world was in the highest degree dynamic, and we must look at it in that way; the internal contradictions of his work will then vanish, and it will verify the principle of coincidentia oppositorum (Berdyaev 13). Again, the notion that from conflict emerges a great peace and unity is brought to light. Dostoevsky was not interested in any sort of intellectual or spiritual resolution. His world-view, and consequently his theology, is built on realism and a willingness to entertain any notion, no matter how offensively persuasive it may be. From the Inquisitor to Ivans devil, Dostoevskys doubt takes many forms. At times, like in the case of Fyodor Pavlovich and Smerdiakov, evil is disgusting and cruel. At other times, evil is prescient and logical seemingly having the author and consequently his readers convinced. But as Berdyaev contends, all of this is part of Dostoevskys greater plan to produce a unified world in which the great faith of Zosima comes to a comical and harmless meeting with the equally momentous, buffoonish evil of Fyodor Pavlovich. For only together does

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either caricature hold any weight. Truth is revealed through contrast for Dostoevsky and his theology follows this basic tenet. Unlike the ideologies of Western thinkers, there is no finalizability or closedness (Blank 30) in Dostoevskys theology. The constant fight and the relentless questions are not meant to cease, there is no answer. Ivan and critics of Dostoevsky are concerned with finding the obvious and irrefutable explanation. Blank claims characters like Father Zosima are comfortable with the uncertain and oppositional nature of everything, Zosima sees through Ivans problem from the start: he notes that if the contradictions cannot be resolved in Ivan in a positive way, they will never be resolved in a negative way either (Blank 33). Implied in Zosimas simple wisdom is a basic acceptance of an imperfect unity. The theology of Dostoevsky is made unique by this particular trait of his novels. As an Orthodox Christian, Dostoevsky had many reasons to believe in an absolute, unforgiving truth. Yet despite this, his novels tell of a different reality, one in which light only exists in its contrast with the dark.

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Works Cited

Berdyaev, Nikolas. The Destiny of Man, trans. Natalie Duddington. New York: Harper & Row, 1960.

Blank, Ksana. "The Rabbit and the Duck: Antinomic Unity in Dostoevskij, the Russian Religious Tradition, and Mikhail Bakhtin." Studies in East European Thought. 59.1/2 (2007): 21-37. Print. Mochulsky, Konstantin. Dostoevsky: His Life and Work. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1971. Print Corrigan, Kevin. "Ivan's Devil in The Brothers Karamazov in the Light of a Traditional Platonic View of Evil." Forum for Modern Language Studies 22.1 (1986). Print. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, and Susan McReynolds. Brothers Karamazov. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010. Print. Florensky, P. (1996). The pillar and the ground of truth, trans. by Yakin B., with an introduction by Gustafson, R.F., Princeton: Princeton University Press. Morson, Gary. "Paradoxical Dostoevsky." Slavic and East European Journal. 43.3 (1999): 471-494. Print. Stoeber, Michael. "Dostoevsk'ys Devil: The Will to Power." Journal of Religion. 74.1 (1994): 26-44. Print. Strem, George. "The Moral World of Dostoevsky." Russian Review. 16.3 (1957): 1526. Print.

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