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The Brothers Karamazov
Here, around p680, Dostoyevsky introduces Claude Bernard as Dmitri's bete noir. He will use “Bernard” as a pejorative term to describe someone of the “new” scientific type. (And may I say that that is a biography worth reading). He is indeed a good person to represent the type of person Dostoyevsky dislikes. Hell, I dislike him too. He is also an excellent example of the Socratic influence that Nietzsche rails against in The Birth of Tragedy. He embodies both the rational ideals of science and the cruelty of vivisection. One could easily see him as the heir of Descartes, in this respect.
p680 [Dmitri to Alyosha in prison] “Why is it all over with me? Mm! . . . . The fact is . . . If you take it as a whole, I am sorry to lose God -- that’s what it is.”
“What do you mean by ‘sorry to lose God’?”
“Imagine; inside, in the nerves, in the head -- that is, these nerves are there in the brain . . . (damn them!) there are sort of little tails, the little tails of those nerves, and as soon as they begin quivering . . . That is, you see. I look at something with my eyes and then they begin quivering, those little tails . . . And when they quiver, then an image appears . . . It doesn’t appear at once, but an instant, a second, passes . . . and then something like a moment appears; that is, not a moment -- devil take the moment! -- but an image; that is an object, or an action, damn it! That’s why I see and then think, because of those tails, not because I have a soul, and am some sort of image and likeness. All that is nonsense!... It’s wonderful, Alyosha. This science! A new man’s arising -- that I understand. . . . And yet I am sorry to lose God!”
...
“...’But what will become of men then,’ I asked him [Rakitin], ‘without God and immortal life? All things are lawful then, they can do what they like?’ ‘Didn’t you know?’ he said laughing. ‘A clever man can do what he likes,’ he said...”
Here we are yet again. I am so close to inserting Oliver Sacks' "A New Vision of the Mind" here that I can hardly stand it. Instead, I'm going to repeat that paragraph above, where Dmitri talks about perception, when I cover Sacks following TBK.
p683 “...Alyosha, these last two months I’ve found in myself a new man. [Not, I should make clear, the "new man" of science he was just talking about] A new man has risen up in me. He was hidden in me, but would never have come to the surface, if it hadn’t been for this blow from heaven... I am afraid... that the new man will leave me. Even there [in the mines], in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict or murderer by my side. And I may make friends with him... One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict... one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are all to blame for them.... [Here he goes back to the “babe” of his dream] All are ‘babes.’ I go for all, because someone must go for all... Oh, yes, we shall be in chains and there will be no freedom, but then, in our great sorrow, we shall rise again to joy, without which man can’t live nor God exist. For God gives joy; it’s His privilege -- a grand one. Ah, man should be dissolved in prayer! What should I be underground there without God?... If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter him underground. One cannot exist in prison without God; it’s even more impossible than out of prison...”
...
p685 “Yes, life is full, there is life even underground,” he began again. “You wouldn’t believe, Alyosha, how I want to live now, what a thirst for existence and consciousness has sprung up in me within these peeling walls... [I’m assuming Dostoyevsky is drawing on his own experience in Siberia here, but I wonder at his using the mercurial Dmitri as his mouthpiece. Aside from this speech, there’s no indication that the character Dmitri really changes. I don’t doubt for an instant that, if he were set free at the end with what was left of the 1,500 roubles he would have gone off and had another party. ] I seem to have such strength now, that I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and repeat to myself every moment: ‘I exist.’ In thousands of agonies -- I exist. I’m tortured on the rack -- but I exist! Although I sit alone -- I exist! I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, I know it’s there. And there’s a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there. Alyosha, my angel, all these philosophies are the death of me. Damn them!...”
...
“You see, I never had any of these doubts before: it was all hidden away inside of me. It was perhaps just because ideas I did not understand were surging up in me, that I used to drink and fight. It was to stifle them in myself, to still them, to smother them... It’s God that’s worrying me... What if He doesn’t exist? What if Rakitin’s right -- that it’s an idea made up by men? Then, if He doesn’t exist, man is the king of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God?... [This notion that man is “good” with God is a mystery to me, and Dostoyevsky even puts this in Dmitri’s mouth.] Who is man going to love then? To whom will he be thankful?... Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says that one can love humanity instead of God. Well, only an idiot can maintain that... But after all, what is goodness? Answer that, Alyosha. Goodness is one thing with me and another with a Chinaman, so it’s relative. Or isn’t it?... A treacherous question!... it’s kept me awake for two nights. I only wonder now how people can live and think nothing about it. Vanity! Ivan has no God. He has an idea...
...
p686 “I said to him [Ivan], ‘Then everything is lawful, if it is so?’ He frowned. ‘Fyodor Karamazov, our father,’ he said, ‘was a pig, but his ideas were right.’ That was what he said... That was going one better than Rakitin.”
...
Again, this notion that God, and in particular the Christian God, is behind all law drives me nuts. The absence or presence of “God” has no effect on the relevance of the Golden Rule, for example.
It's Always Worth While Listening to a Clever Woman
I missed the best place to put this -- following Bk V. 7. "It's Always Worth While Speaking to a Clever Man", these are Pavel's words -- so I'm going to latch onto Rakitin's line above about a clever man doing what he wants.
Germaine Greer is currently in trouble for saying that trans-women are not really women. University students (the Cardiff University Women’s Society, no less) don’t want her to speak on campus because they don’t like her views.
I’ve found Ms. Greer to be worth reading, or listening to, since she first started publishing. I don’t always agree with her, but The Change and Sex and Destiny are two books I frequently recommend to people. She has a knack for making you examine ideas you thought were well settled. And isn’t that what universities are supposed to do.
The question of what “exactly” a woman is -- and isn’t -- is a can of worms I wouldn’t open... and I can think of a good reason she should be reluctant to open it as well. But it probably is a good topic for university students to be thinking about. Another good question would be “Who should be allowed to marry?” Gay marriage has been much in the news of late, but this question should go much farther than just same sex marriage. Perhaps the better way of phrasing the question is: “Who should be prevented from marrying?”
This latter question would incense many more groups, but both questions are timely and in need of further consideration. One of the side effects of living in our nihilistic/Mephistophelian world, is that when old assumptions are tossed out new norms must be agreed upon. Neither Dostoyevsky nor Greer may be pleased by the result.
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