This week, I was tasked with reading the first Book of The Brothers Karamazov, along with Chapter 4 of Frank and 1.5 of Dugin. In reading Dostoevsky’s famous novel, I was thoroughly impressed and enthralled with it, enjoying every sentence and chapter. The Brothers Karamazov, in my analysis, blends elements of both realism and philosophy within its narrative fabric throughout Book I. Book I spent most of the first five chapters as most novels do, introducing the characters and their complexities and stories. Its characters are richly complex, delving into intricate psychologies while also serving as vessels for various ideas and concepts. These chapters vividly demonstrate this fusion, where each character, meticulously portrayed, embodies deeper abstract notions and beliefs, illustrating the interplay between realism and philosophical symbolism. This can bee seen in the following: “The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact,” (Dostoevsky 23). This excerpt from the fifth chapter of the first book casts a critical light on a particular trait attributed to atheists and nonbelievers: their tendency to engage in mental intricacies to uphold their disbelief even when faced with undeniable evidence. Indeed, this point in the novel is applicable to Dugin’s philosophical conversation on both Christianity and Nietzsche. In this case, one can connect it to Nietzsche. Dugin said, “Because Being became the function of values, we find ourselves in the space of total nihilism, having lost absolutely everything that at one point connected us to beings and ourselves,” (Dugin 124). This leads to an insightful and interesting discussion on nihilism and atheism. While both reject the concept of a divine authority that dictates a single set of moral values over the universe, they treat the concept of morality itself very differently in regards to its meaning in the present world. In The Brothers Karamazov, a character such as Ivan seems to doubt God and Christianity as he repeatedly insists that he is not responsible for the actions of anyone but himself. That is a nihilist behavior, as he rejects an afterlife, he rejects a moral authority in real life.
Conversely, this observation within Dostoevsky can also be applied in reverse to believers, as they may interpret events as acts of God even when they can be logically explained. This could be in conjunction with Dugin’s text on Christianity, when he writes, “By doing so, Heidegger wants to prove that Christian theology remains within the framework of beings, i.e., in the space of ontology, and dogmatically closes off the possibility of a breakthrough to fundamental-ontology,” (Dugin 111). The novel doesn’t imply that individuals, whether believers or unbelievers, are incapable of shifting their faith or whether or not human nature and humanity are shaped by religion, as can be seen in The Brothers Karamazov. Nevertheless, this quote underscores the challenge of such a conversion, given the strong attachment individuals have to their belief in Christianity.
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