Search Results (4)

“Rebellion” and “The Grand Inquisitor,” two adjoining chapters in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, are usually read as a contest between two theologies: theodicy and anti-theodicy, freedom and obedience, Christ and institutional power. This article reads them instead as a contest between two forms of power over human life, what Foucault called biopolitics: power directed at the life of populations rather than at territory or law. Using Foucault’s account of pastoral power as a vocabulary for care exercised over each soul and the flock as a whole, and Agamben’s analysis of how modern government inherits its structure from theological models of providence, the article argues that Ivan’s rebellion treats suffering as a scandal no providential plan can absorb, while the Inquisitor’s program turns vulnerable life into the object of administration. Ivan’s tortured children do not literally fit the Roman category of homo sacer, the figure who could be killed but not sacrificed; they occupy a structurally analogous position as lives included in creation as the price of “eternal harmony” yet excluded from any justice adequate to their suffering. The Inquisitor’s three temptations, bread, miracle, and authority, function as pillars of biopolitical rule: managing material needs, capturing consciousness, and deciding who belongs to the community. Christ’s silent kiss neither refutes nor replaces the Inquisitor’s regime; it briefly suspends the apparatus by treating the speaker as a body rather than as a function of power. Building on Solovieva’s reading of the Dostoevsky–Agamben relation, this article shifts attention from the Inquisitor as a corruption of Christianity to the Inquisitor as the limit case of pastoral care when care becomes total administration. The result is a revaluation of the Grand Inquisitor legend: Dostoevsky presents Christianity as internally exposed to the risk that solicitude, compassion, and the promise of happiness may become techniques for governing life. Full article

John Cottingham argues that traditional university modules in the philosophy of religion take us into a ‘very abstract domain that is often far removed from religion as it actually operates in the life of the believer’. This paper makes four moves based on Cottingham. First, it argues that the application of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s methods supports and facilitates a shift to the anthropological in the philosophy of religion (as evidenced in the work of Mikel Burley). Second, literature is examined as a tool for doing the philosophy of religion, following Danielle Moyal-Sharrock’s notion of the literary text as surveyable representation. Three works are investigated, namely Silence by Shūshaku Endō, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the Gospel of John. It is argued that, far from being merely illustrative of religion, story is (in its widest sense) constitutive of belief. Third, it is shown how Wittgenstein’s remarks on mysticism in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus can be read as a transmutation of literary writing that creates a non-abstract mysticism of the world. Wittgenstein’s remarks are placed in dialogue with Angelus Silesius’s poetry and Leo Tolstoy’s The Gospel in Brief. Fourth, the relevance of Wittgenstein to the current debate on cultural Christianity is brought out. Philosophers of religion must take leave of the abstract, if only to return to it and to view it differently. Wittgenstein’s thought is too important to ignore in this venture. Full article

This paper problematizes the now widely accepted concept of Dostoevsky’s dialogism, which alleges the ‘Author’s’ equal empowerment of all his characters. Using examples from Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Zholkovsky focuses on instances of ‘scene-staging’ based on the ‘scripts’ devised and enacted by some characters, that are ‘read,’ with varying success, by their targets. He documents the resulting ‘discursive combat’ among the characters, with special attention paid to those ‘playing god’ and thus, the more ‘authorial’ among them. In several cases, the would-be ‘divine’ manipulation is shown to be consistently subverted by the Dostoevskian narrative. However, in one instance, where Aliosha Karamazov charitably scripts Captain Snegirev’s behavior, the ensuing discussion of this episode, in Aliosha’s conversations with Lise Khokhlakova, upholds Aliosha’s right to play god with the Other—“for the Other’s own good”, of course (not unlike the Grand Inquisitor). Full article

Turning to the novels, Les Misérables, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Plague, this article focuses on theist–atheist encounters within fiction as guides and challenges to contemporary atheist–theist dialogue. It first provides a discussion of definitions pertinent to our topic and a reflection on the value and limitations of turning to fiction for the study and development of theist–atheist dialogue specifically, and interreligious dialogue more broadly. In examining each of the novels, I will first provide a very brief historical context of when each novel was written, the time and place the covered scenes transpire in the novel, and the authors’ positions toward religion(s) when writing their books. I will close the article on some lessons to glean from these fictional dialogues for contemporary theist–atheist dialogue. Full article