Authors

Alina Wyman¹;  ¹ New College of Florida, United States

Discussion

In “Pro and Contra” Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov announces that, like all foolish Russian boys, he will skip small talk, moving straight to life’s fundamental questions, such as “is there God and immortality?” The teasing tone of this telling statement soon gives way to philosophical seriousness in subsequent chapters. Ivan’s irrational desire to believe in immortality, which he experiences on the visceral level, is in conflict with his rational rejection of immortality, resulting both from his scientific education and his peculiar ethical stance that demands a rejection of God and his unjust world. This painful suspension between two conflicting value systems, noted by Zosima, is reminiscent of the Underground Man’s internal conflict, revealed in his desperate insistence on the possibility of a subjective response to the tyranny of a subjectless universe, also a characteristic feature of Ivan’s argumentation in “Rebellion.” Both characters experience a conflict between the most potent will to freedom and the most lucid realization of its empirical impossibility. German phenomenologist Max Scheler points out that such a discrepancy between the conceptual and the empirical levels of reality usually triggers the most powerful ressentiment reaction. Using relevant theories of ressentiment (Scheler; Nietzsche) and empathy (Scheler; V. Solovyov), this paper will examine Ivan’s seemingly contradictory reflections on Christian love and empathy in a world with and without God and immortality, to discern a consistent platform for a philosophy of rebellion. Arguing for an important continuity of “underground” mentality in Dostoevsky’s post-Siberian novels, I will link Ivan’s existential stance to that of the Underground Man and other metaphysical rebels.