Per Caritatem

Both Dostoevsky and Nietzsche emphasize the importance of embodied life, of living fully in this world, and both issue stern warnings against living for the sake of abstract ideals or realms that may in fact have no connection with reality.  Of course the critiques of both authors, while sharing the similarities noted above, are wildly different in their respective details given the radically dissimilar and even opposed worldviews embraced by each.  Dostoevsky is a Russian Orthodox Christian and his Christian faith influences the over-arching vision of his novel just as Nietzsche’s atheism informs his work and the message he communicates.  In this essay, I highlight both the similarities and differences of both thinkers with regard to embodiment, compassion, pity and related topics via analysis of selected passages, which focus on the verbal exchanges and relational interactions of Alyosha and Zarathustra in the context of their respective narratives (Brothers Karamazov and Thus Spoke Zarathustra).

Twenty-year old, Alexey Fyodorovich Karamazov, most often referred to by his Russian diminutive, Alyosha, is introduced early in The Brothers Karamazov, as the cassock-clad “future hero of the novel.”[1] Alyosha is the third son of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and had been living in a monastery for the past year.  Though he was more than willing to spend the rest of his life in a cloistered environment, his most highly esteemed and dearly loved elder, Fr. Zosima, had, prior to his death, sent him back into the world to be an agent of good, carrying out a mission marked by active love toward all human beings.  Both Fr. Zosima and Alyosha are in many ways the Christ-like figures of the novel, as both have incarnational ministries that push them to enter into the sufferings and struggles of individuals from all walks of life.  Of all the people in Alyosha’s life, Fr. Zosima by far plays the most important role in molding Alyosha’s character and mindset.  Fr. Zosima is not an abstract ideal for Alyosha; rather, he is someone with whom Alyosha lived in close quarters on a day to day basis. Alyosha witnessed firsthand how Fr. Zosima’s faith shaped and directed both his own life and the way in which he treated others.  Whether peasants in their sufferings, fellow monks who despised the elder, or Fyodor Pavlovich playing the buffoon, Fr. Zosima strove to see the good in others and to view all human beings with respect and dignity given their creation in God’s image. Because of his intimate friendship with Fr. Zosima and a shared Christian faith, Alyosha likewise developed an ability to focus on the positive traits of the various individuals he encountered-including those who perplex him with their contemptible behavior.  This is not to suggest that Alyosha is naïve and ignorant of the evil in the world and the evil that co-exists in human hearts (including his own by his own admission).  Although quick to acknowledge that evil cuts through all human hearts in our present postlapsarian state, Alyosha is nonetheless keenly aware of the active love and power of God’s grace-grace that transformed Fr. Zosima, and grace that continues to change and motivate Alyosha and any individual open to receive it.  This optimist-leaning view of humankind is not a hollow, sentimental optimism, but an optimism that produces hope because of God’s active grace at work in human hearts. Alyosha’s hope-filled orientation to the world and humankind contrasts sharply with Zarathustra’s (and Nietzsche’s) more pessimist-leaning view of human beings, which seems to operate out of suspicion and a lack of trust.

To be sure, Zarathustra has his own version of something like good and evil cohabiting in the human heart.  For example, in part IV of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, we are presented with eight types of individuals with whom Zarathustra interacts and invites to his cave.[2] Whether considering kings, the leech, the magician or the voluntary beggar etc., we find that each possesses character traits that both attract and repulse Zarathustra.  For example, Zarathustra seems to admire the way in which the leech-a kind of specialized scientist-pours himself passionately into his work.  Yet, these specialists become “inverse cripples,”[3] who, though having great expertise in one area, lack wholeness as human beings.  Nietzsche metaphorically depicts such unbalanced individuals as “human beings who are nothing but a big eye or a big mouth or a big belly.”[4] Thus, perhaps Zarathustra’s encounters with these various types of individuals could be understood as Nietzsche’s awareness of something along the lines of Dostoevsky’s insight, viz., that humans are (in their present state) neither fully good nor fully evil.  Undoubtedly, the two thinkers would strongly disagree over precisely what good and evil are and whether evil might someday be eradicated from human experience and by what means.  In short, in their respective ways, both Dostoevsky and Nietzsche recognize that humans are a “mixed bag,” simultaneously exhibiting both virtuous and vicious characteristics.  Nonetheless, Dostoevsky’s openness to grace and the transforming power of love fosters hope that good has the potential to overcome the evil in the world and in our own hearts.

Notes

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[1] Fyodor M. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. Ed., Ralph E. Matlaw and revised (Garnett) trans., Ralph E. Matlaw.  New York:  Norton, 1976, p. 12.  (Hereafter, all citations from The Brothers Karamazov refer to this edition and translation).

[2] Friedrich W. Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche. Ed.and trans., Walter Kaufmann.  (New York:  Penguin, 1982), pp. 360-79.  (Hereafter, all citations refer to this translation).

[3] Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 250.

[4] Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 250.