Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor

Welcome back to the new thing. My name is David Barr and looking at his always as my good friend, Alex, pretty hard to announce. Doing well, about to join the Jesuit order and start getting some converts. Converts to you.

Anybody wanna persecute? Yes. In particular, after David Barr was my inquisition, because I don't believe he's a believing Catholic. Well, the Jesuits came to Paraguay a long time ago.

I always liked the Jesuits. I know the conservators' conflicts still, like whatever reason, but they were the kind of intellectual order of the church. I have an audience for this, but I just don't care. How you doing, Greg?

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. I'm doing pretty well. It's nice to see you guys. Nice to see you too.

Are we doing an episode on the Spanish Inquisition? Is that what we agreed to tonight? That seems like a bad idea. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, we're doing one on the great inquisitor. Oh, that seems like a good idea. Yeah.

Who's the idea was that? I think it was your idea. Oh, well, all right. Did I get it?

And we had to obey, because you were a real talk about the podcast. Real sad and a roll out of the podcast. Yeah. Yeah.

So what is this? I mean, I was just like it, right? Curious. You just got to do it out and we all said yes, but we didn't sort of get it.

You didn't jump at it actually. I've taught it before, so I thought, easy for me. Why not? That's my most beautiful one.

Is it really? Yeah. Who keeps it? I'll do that in my last few readings.

I've always skipped the shot. I've always hated this chapter. It's like, it's a standalone, right? Just like you can teach.

In fact, it's published as a standalone, too. Is that one? Oh, OK. Yeah, you have that?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dusty or something.

I remember in a book called The Idiot, whose main character is, you guessed it, an idiot. Yeah. One point goes into this 15-page long soliloquy about the injustice of the death panel. Deep psychological thing that's exactly what Dusty has to be himself, too.

It was originally condemned to death at one point. And then he made people create an alien in the fire, it'd be a lot of mine. Yeah. And they never recovered from it.

Yeah. The last minute they rescinded it, and it really had a fever. So he puts this speech in his idiot's mouth. I'm like, not an idiot for this moment, right?

But yeah. So you wonder to what extent these standalone pieces of Dusty obviously are him kind of editorializing. Were some of these books published, seriously? Yeah.

Yeah. I believe this helps to explain partly. He had, you could buy this. And I think two volumes.

He had a publication where he just wrote stories for it called The Writers' Diary or something like that. I read it when I was really into Dusty Obscated, and undergrad. I read all of it. The guy got really into him in undergrad too.

Yeah. Yeah. I was depressed. What about you?

I don't know. I found him on Dad's shelf or something. I like Tolstoy. But you know, you get to do last few minutes kind of done.

Yeah. All right. Punishment was probably my favorite novel for the longest time. It's still definitely like number one, number two, up there for me.

I'm a good cautionary tale because I've heard you. I am that old woman with her trinkets across the street. She keeps me and she's just, you read the book, and then you think, you don't be so hard on yourself. Yeah.

You're very hard on themself. So too, what you hard on? And we need the retention. We're not doing crime and fire.

No. Not for the police. What passes from the brothers' camp? Do you have any data I asked you a whole time about it?

Not trying to be on spot. Do you need any folks at home should know about Dostoyevsky? I mean, this is his, the brothers' camp is office is great work. Has written nine years, was completed nine years before his death.

He died 18 years. A year before his death. Or two years? A year before his death.

So he died in 1881. This is published in 1880. The brothers' K. So this is a standalone that is popular in other standalone is notes from the underground or the underground man.

Sometimes it's translated. People talk about Dostoyevsky like he's an existentialist. I never really knew it. I think Walter Kaufman maybe even has a book, Existentialism from Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky or I'm messing up with it.

But it's titled, Do You Know What I'm Talking About? Yeah. And he, I mean, also, Nietzsche parades Dostoyevsky for his psychological acumen. It's a pretty remarkable fact.

But yeah, I mean, he's quite deep. Like you get a sense, you know, I don't know. It feels so modern because the characters are in such a crisis. Like deep existential crisis and wrestling with their views of the world.

You know, but it's a brother's care. I read it when I was an undergrad. It's stunning, but very difficult. I mean, it's a difficult one.

You know, quite a bunch of me. You spend so much time in my school in college. I was head that you feel like you get comfortable with a little bit understanding, you know what he's thinking. But Brother's K is a massive book with, you know, maybe with three, four, maybe even five main characters.

And if you call him somebody a karamazov, like it's permeated into public consciousness to a limited extent, probably more in Russia. I'm still curious. I have to, I'd be curious next time I talk to Russian. What are his statuses over there?

I think like he told me, I'm still the big three. But I don't know. I was always, I'm sorry. No, no, no, no.

Just a small point. I was always surprised when I learned that kind of punishment was written before Nietzsche was publishing. Because it always seemed like a response to Nietzsche in so many ways. Which is very impressive.

Yeah. I mean, it's tough because you always want to ask, well, what's the status of this religious redemption? Is this a character flaw? Or is this a great, great feature?

And that's, I think, maybe the interesting part of the relationship. Why did you pick up the other king? Trippy told because I didn't finish it last time. That's fair.

Where did you stop? Where did you stop, Greg? I stopped maybe about halfway through. I started reading it in like July or August and then the semester started and stuck with it down.

It's kind of, it happened to me with Ducky Hote three or four times. Yeah. It's a lot of like, yeah, I mean, same thing with crime punishment. I remember I was younger when I started reading it, but I remember I had two or three failed starts before I was able to actually make it through it.

And then it became exhilarating and I reread it. But I had the hardest time, honestly, I had the hardest time getting into it the first time. Yeah. I read it.

I wrote it through the Russian, he used to the patron mick, and so there was some naming, but like so complicated. The way to do that for any listeners is the sandwich Shakespeare to start reading it. There's Al-Yosha, but he's also like three or four other things and it'll just click with you probably about him. It'll be fine.

I remember being so confused. And then also the habit of putting... He was from the blank district and it's like S. That blank D blank S.

Yeah. It's just like, why did he do that? It's a street. I never understood that.

Yeah. My favorite character. I don't know, maybe there's a legal proviso like, you know, just in case there's a guy named Raskal's and called him like, you know, whatever. They just know, like there was this guy who is really hardcore in the drugs and marine women, his name was DPE, you know, they just they could fill it in for themselves, the folks at home.

Yeah. There was this guy, Smirdia, Kofemi Breyer, who did things to Elizabeth and the local farm animals. Right. See, and you can fill it in for yourself.

Let's get into this. We got criticized for too much chit chat by somebody online. So maki, yeah, let's go. Some pseudo, some pseudo.

Yeah, some pseudo. There's my one type of plot overall, I can sit you I can tell you sort of where we are. I just out of class. Are you great?

So in the part for tonight, we're reading two chapters from part two, book five, chapters four and five, chapter four is called rebellion. And chapter five is probably the most famous part of the text and maybe the most famous part of literature period called the grand inquisitor. What's happening? I can just do the immediate saying, so two of the brothers, Alia and Ivan are basically just having a conversation.

So I was struck by how much it's like a platonic dialogue. The brothers meet in a tavern or a restaurant depending upon the translation. And they just start talking. And it's a really, if you get ends chapter four rebellion with a sort of explicitly theological argument or debate.

And then the grand inquisitor, Ivan, the cold calculating brother, he just tells a story which he explicitly calls a poem. It meant I think to sort of show the grounds of his disbelief and Christianity. I think that's about all that we need for the beginning. You identified Ivan with the grand inquisitor was that just a miss if I did that, I mean to you want my insight there.

You were always one of my questions, actually, these two characters, Jesus and the grand inquisitor, Stephen, some way to parrot reflect the two brothers have a conversation about them. I mean, I'm jumping way ahead. You see a lot of people in the poem going to the music. Sorry, I didn't use it.

In the story about the grand inquisitor, Jesus is silent. And Aliausia is mostly silent for the duration of Ivan's recounting of the story. They're two interruptions, actually. But so Aliausia seems, I mean, it seems like the grand inquisitor is a kind of Ivan character, except an Ivan who's internalized the problems.

And Aliausia is a kind of Christ-like character. It seems maybe. I don't know. But the reason is because the Jesus kisses the inquisitor, then Aliausia pleagirizes and kisses.

Yeah. But let's think of that back. Wasn't there like some explosion at a dinner before where Ivan declared? Wasn't that a convent earlier in the book?

He's invited Aliausia's at an ask to mention that. Yeah. Is that Aliausia slated to join the orders? He was like the father.

Aliausia is the novice. He's studying under a sort of very famous esoteric sage named Zosita. Yeah, that's right. And he is very worried that the whole family is coming to mind.

And his father does everything he kind of worried about. He kind of, there's a pot, like essentially a punch-up. Yeah. And I think, so there's a kind of confrontation here, sort of, or like a settling of accounts, or coming to terms with one another.

And Ivan says, early on, look, I don't really know you've had that well in a way. Like I was four years older, you know, and when there's a big gap between siblings, sometimes you don't really know each other. And you kind of become more acquainted. And one of the chapters is the brothers become acquainted or the brothers getting to know each other or something like that.

Yeah. And so there's a, there's a kind of coming to terms. And it ends up being quite a deep conversation. And they talk about how the Russians are always raising these eternal questions in their taverns and stuff.

And it becomes that way because Ivan confesses quite early on, he just cannot, even if he can see it's all the principles of Christianity, he has something at bottom in him that cannot affirm it, right? Or he cannot go along with it. That has to do with human suffering and the problem of the Odyssey, right? The justice of the gods or the Odyssey.

Reading Homer's Odyssey. And he wants to do anything to that pun in his book on that. Oh, is that right? Yeah, he says the Odyssey is about the Odyssey.

Right. It's yeah, which he's right about. Yeah. So what is the Odyssey for the sake of nature at home?

Why did that happen? The Odyssey go and why do you get things happen to people? Right? If God is just, if the God is supposed to be just how come, you know, you can understand that.

Yeah. So how come certain great evils are unrequited, right? And unpunished. Right.

And Ivan, I mean, he begins by saying, I don't understand his love, your neighbor. I'm a larky. Right. This is too difficult.

I can understand loving humans in the abstract, but loving particular people is problematic. Yeah. But then what he does is he says, the problem you write is human suffering. He says, look, all the ocean brother, I can't, I can't stomach all this suffering in the world and help me to understand how there's a God that allows all the suffering.

I'll tell you what, I'll leave out all the adult grown up suffering in the world and I'll focus only on young people, children. And he gives six examples of he collects these stories, which is sort of weird, like newspaper clippings and other kinds of things about people doing terrible things to children. Yeah. And it's really weird.

And the gist of it is that these adults typically doing very, very nasty things to children. And basically the question is how could a just God allow these innocent kids who have not yet eaten from the apple and the knowledge of good people? How can a just God let these kids suffer? The first example though is actually an adult.

He talks about a murder or a robber that he knew in prison who killed children, but then subsequently came to love children once he was in prison. The rest of the stories are actually about adults harming children. But the first puzzle actually is about an adult and how that why does this adult who's killed kids actually turned to love them once he's in prison? Yeah.

Yeah. And that's, I mean, that's interesting because that's the whole duality that in the same human being, there's this tenderness towards the cruelty and that there's this cruelty to children to show some deep evil. The way he uses that one time, and this is where you see Dostoevsky's reacting in part to current trends. He says he has a small Euclidean mind.

And this is that. Yeah. And what he's referring to there is, you know, developments, I mean, the Russian mathematician, Nick Wylowichowski, had really not so recently, but close enough, there's kind of a seismic thought at the time, had sort of developed a new sort of theory of parallelism, you could say. And so I think this is really helpful for understanding how he's viewing the question of the Odyssey or the justice of God, which is that, you know, normally when you think of parallels, generally it's Euclidean, which is how we all think that which is you take a line, have two lines coming out of it, perpendicular, right angles, and they will never meet.

And those are parallel lines. If you talk, I don't mean my wife, huh? Is that how it is? I'm just general.

They're my head. Keep going. Anyways, so if you deviate inwards, even slightly, according to Euclid, the fifth posture in the first book of Euclid's elements, they will eventually meet, right? Well, Wylowichowski comes along.

So 2000 years after Euclid, it says, well, do we know that they will? Yeah, obviously, it goes in five degrees, 10 degrees, you can try it and you'll see where they meet, you know, two lines of funny. But what if he's just like the slightest little bit, right? And he shows that, you know, if you take that, there is a point where the angle is small enough, that little deviation is small enough that you're actually don't know, right?

You're uncertain. And there's a kind of uncertainty about these lines. And he defines parallel lines, where they go from the cutting to the non-cutting, right? That moment of uncertainty, where you don't know if they'll, if they'll meet.

And so now there's strange things here that happens, which is the further apart those lines are, the greater the deviation is going to be for the parallelism, meaning, you know, if they're two inches apart, that deviation from regular parallels, Euclid parallels is going to be very small, but if they're like 150,000 miles apart, it's going to be quite a bit larger, which means as a line gets closer, the angle between the lines gets larger and larger and closer to right angle. So there's all sorts of, I think that's helpful because in your head, when you think about that, it seems like the line has to be curved or crooked, you could say, but according to the grand vision of things, it's straight. And that's a way of thinking about the Euclidean mind, right? We want everything to be completely just and straight, according to our mind, but things seem crooked.

The assurance is that somehow this is straight in the mind of God. And that, that I think gets at his dilemma is that he can't envision this world, everything seems crooked and he's being told to stay know the crooked line is straight, the unjust thing is ultimately just in the final moment, and he can't wrap his head around that. That's really good. One of the things he can't wrap his head around is how children can be guilty or something like this, right?

And I confess I'm deeply sympathetic to that as well. And it sort of plays into my liberal sentimentality's classical liberal anyway. But I will say, like, there's all this new research now that you might really examine some of it's worth anything. But it suggests that trauma actually can be passed down readily, which is kind of amazing, if it's true, right?

But like, like alcoholism can be passed down. If you've had bad things in your past, apparently can affect the next generation, so on. So there might be some way in which this is sort of, I mean, definitely not to put you in mind. But there may be some way, because we sort of like think that you're born in your sort of blank slate, you're brand new.

And so therefore, some of your parents or grandparents didn't affect you. But we now know that most obvious case, right? Like, if your parents are on drugs, literally, that can affect you, feel alcohol syndrome. But apparently not even that extreme, apparently things even 10, 20 years prior to birth can affect you.

So I mean, I realize this is maybe I'm trying to make even this Euclidean, but there is some way in which it doesn't seem right that people should have to deal with things that parents can have parents were seven generations back and done let alone Adam or something like this. Yes, since the father, I suppose, right. But I think there's, I don't know, but I mean, like, then you're stuck in the weird situation saying, well, because the father was an alcoholic and this kid will eventually be an alcoholic or like, whatever, that they deserve to be torn apart by dogs. Like, where are these?

No, no, that's not tough for it. But I think there's no way it reminded me of a little bit is in Augustine's confessions. And he's like, I was so sinful as a baby, like, hitting my mouth and stuff like that. It's like, and that's, that's strange.

Even those like mild sins, if you call a child that doesn't know, but maybe it's, if human nature deep down is not innocent, that's a premise of items of you is that children are innocent children. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I confess, like, this is one of the hardest chapters to read for me, the fourth chapter. I mean, there's the examples of, and by the way, there's something, I mean, I try to check the footnotes. Some of these examples seem actually to have been based in reality, but some seem to have been imagined by Dosei, I see it's a pretty sinister. They are.

It's pretty broad. It's having kids and it's definitely, it's different. Yeah. Which one, so I'll just give you the examples and you guys tell me which ones like, I mean, maybe it's even wrong to read them out loud.

But the one is the, I mentioned already, the adult who murdered, who robbed a home, but emerged from kids and then subsequently loved to tell them that the kids who was in prison. But there's this Bulgarian's account of the nasty things that these Turk Muslims did, which was bayon knitting children. And then playfully getting a child to play with the end of a gun, the barrel of a gun and then shooting the child in the face. That's number two.

The weird one was this example, there's nothing to do with children, by the way. So there's another one doesn't mean to do with children. It's this guy who was a murderer named Richard who repented and became a Christian. And they all gleefully march him to be executed.

That's a weird example. I don't know what's going on. He was kept illiterate. Right.

Right. Oh, right. Oh, as a child. That's okay.

As a child, and he could not speak. He could not read and they wouldn't feed him. So he tried to dig slop. And then the people who teach him to read and write are these crazy Christians who were like, well, you're sinful.

You're sinful for stealing from the pigs. We're going to teach you how you're sinful. This guy who doesn't know anything is like, oh, I'm so horrible. I'm so happy to meet the Lord.

It's just like, yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah. That's pretty good. Yeah.

The fourth example is a poem. So not an actual case. The author, I'll butcher this Russian name is Necrosov. He writes a poem about peasant who flogged a horse to death, even flogging its eyes.

That's a strange example. That one. There's no children there, is there? I don't think so.

The animal. Yes. Yes, the animal. Okay.

So children and animals. The fifth example I found the worst, David might find it humorous because it is sick to pray. So I don't know what's wrong with him. He's literally laughing in tears right now.

And that's just not appropriate, David. But it's an educated gentleman and his wife. And they flog their child, saying that they're smarting her, which I'd forgotten that smarting meant like you're trying to make some smarter. They're found not guilty and quirt for her death.

But that's not the sickest most depraved stop laughing. That's not the sickest most depraved part. They smear her face with feces and make her eat it. Right.

Like, none of us are laughing. And you're you're you know, it's an obvious glean your voice. And then the last you're done. He keeps going.

What's the last other? I didn't dance. Those ask you to not me. I think it's disgusting.

It's sick. The other one's the little girl who's torn apart by dogs because she had thrown a pebble at some dogs of a military man. And he was a boy. Was a boy?

No. And then the general orders his dogs to tear him apart. You must have been thinking of another incident that you're familiar with outside of text. You guys are sick.

So let's jump into the quiz. All right. We've got a sense of this. It's children.

And he makes clear he could give adult examples. But for children, it's like enough, right? They're innocent. No, right.

So we're transitioning guys using before the line. I've got this one, which is not the standalone. Yeah. It was just Johnson's Darnette.

And then you had this team that have our husband wife for consciir. That's the one I'm using. That's that's apparently superior translation. That's the one I've heard about domain translation for me.

Yeah. But I've heard other things that listeners should consult weekly standard did a review of husband, wife's, you know, translating skills and how they go about doing it. I think they just collate a bunch of different versions. And he's translated it.

And then one of them translates out of Russian and they're wanting to English and then double checks it to make sure that it's like basically like polishes it so that it comes out more fluid. So it's kind of a wife polishes it. I think the wife is the one who does the translation. Okay.

But look at the weekly standards. I said he was taking the school, but you're right, Greg, he just celebrated it as well. I mean, I don't know what this is the problem with. And I mentioned this with respect other things.

We had Indian philosophy on which I'm carrying and we're going to do Confucius at some point. I mean, with Greek and French and these other things in German and Farsi, obviously, with Alex, we know what translations but was Russian. I just, you know, you're completely dependent on the translator. I have the same couple translating on the translator and crime punishment.

But anyway, that's what I'm using. It's a vivir and Volokonskiir. And they also do told somebody they've been systematically knocked. Oh, is that right?

Oh, yeah. In the community, they've done like, Google, they've done a lot of stuff. I think they did that. So yeah, it's a Google short story.

So yeah, they're doing, they do just, I have to say, he's told story stories. So they're systematically knocking. You know, knocking these down. It's great.

I make it killer. Just like Rastan Olikov. Let's get into the Granny Quisitor. I'm not for great stir.

Let's do it. Yeah, great. I'm fired tonight. I'm sorry.

I'll just give you back. Just a few background. Fair enough. Fair enough.

Nice job. Nice job. Thanks. That reference the autotave to fame.

The Granny Quizor is Ivan's story. It takes up almost all of Chapter 5. It's called a poem by Ivan at the end of Chapter 4, although it's not in verse, it's in not a poem. It's so much fantastic.

And he says he's memorized it. So the whole thing he just recounts, which is kind of a little incredible. It's the story. Here's my outline of it.

Chapter 5, Ivan gives a preface. He gives some prefatory remarks. Then he describes the actions of Jesus and the actions of the Granny Quizor. Part 2, part 3, he discusses the conversation between the Grand Inquisitor and Jesus, although I use the word conversation in quotes because Jesus never speaks.

That ends. And then there's a conversation with Alioshua and Ivan. Twice, Alioshua interrupts Ivan's account of the conversation between the Grand Inquisitor and Jesus. What's going on?

Just a very quick summary. This is set in Spain. It's still at the height of the Spanish Inquisition, which nobody expected. And what's going on is that the Grand Inquisitor is 90 years old and Jesus reappears precisely as he had been when he was alive.

So he's ostensibly in his mid-30s again during the same age as he was during his three-year ministry on Earth. And he starts performing miracles that are somewhat much more of a miracles recorded in the gospel. The Grand Inquisitor, here's Telvus, these miracles. He has Jesus imprisoned.

He says, I'm not sure who you are. Tell me who you are. No, never mind. I don't want to know who you are.

It's pretty clear. He knows who he is. And then he has a very long, again, quote-unquote, conversation where he explains to Jesus why we don't need you anymore. We have to get rid of you.

In fact, we're doing just fine without you. Not just we're doing just fine without you, but we've greatly improved because we're better than you. You could not have accomplished what we, the Catholic Church, have accomplished, which is actually helping human beings, mankind. It ends.

And then there's a conversation between Alioshua and Ivan. Those are the main details of it. I mean, feel free to add some stuff if I'm assuming. Yeah, let's just not really adding but sort of flushing it out a bit.

Sure. The main contention that the Grand Inquisitor makes is that Jesus gave in rejecting the desert the three temptations, right? Turns stones into bread to be saved from this fall, which is so the first is a miracle. The second he says, the mystery and the third is subject to the devil and then you'll be able to rule all of mankind, right?

And so authority, right? He rejects all three miracle mystery authority as the Inquisitor puts it. And in doing that relies only on human freedom, right? Human beings have to freely choose.

And the Inquisitor's point, which is laid out at length, but at its core, it's quite a subtle but startlingly clear point, is that human beings are not capable of living with this freedom, right? If you could command goodness through miracle mystery or authority that you reject that, you're essentially saying, I want freedom, and freedom means freedom to be evil, in effect, right? So the freedom turns out to only be a bad thing because it directs people in the direction of being bad and or leaves open the possibility of being bad. And so it's a kind of indictment of freely chosen faith, I guess you could say, right?

Now you have to, it's too much for human beings who are at bottom to evil or have this dependent secret evil. Maybe I'm reading the text, but I also took it to be a critique of Jesus insofar as it seemed to be implying that what Jesus wants is to be loved freely. The whole one of the reasons that Jesus wants people to be free is so that they can freely choose them. So it's in a way, it's a weird sort of vanity thing too, not vandy is not quite the right word, but I don't know.

That people want to be loved freely and not as a result of proportion. There's a kind of indictment of the fact that this is almost like an elitist viewpoint. It's almost like a democratic sentiment that the equals are asked, which is like, most human beings can't do this. It's only very rare people.

Why do you want your elect to see puts it right? The elect only what do you want? When in fact, you know, most people need another means it actually reminds me a little bit of the end of the ethics, Aristotle's ethics, where he says some people have the correct moral education and they love the noble and therefore they can follow my arguments and their interests and they'll develop themselves correctly. I can supplement that kind of political education with the education, moral and philosophic education, I'm here sort of outlining the sketch of it.

But at the end, he says, most people know any laws, they need threats, they need to be compelled to be good. And so you need a turn to the regime, right? And what laws are best and try to detail regime that flushes people, they're compulsive in the right direction. It's certainly is almost like a kind of Aristotelian point or kind of natural right or different types that he's that he's objecting on the basis of the basis of the equation.

It's funny because you were maybe to say something about the character of our souls, but you were sort of drawn to Aristotle and naturally I was drawn to Machiavelli because I took Ivan or I guess the Grand Inquisitor to be saying that, look, Jesus, your little dog and ponytail wasn't successful until the Catholic Church came along and put some arms behind it and put some real world effectiveness behind it and actually started trying to improve the lives of people. Like you turned down worldly authority, you know, miracles to make bread and actually that's what will actually materially improve you man may not live by bread alone, but actually people need bread, dude. And you know, you don't want any worldly authority, but the only way Christianity has affectionately come, the effectual truth of Christianity to help people is once the Catholic Church was in charge, like we sort of have authority over actual rulers and it's only now that we've been able to like you only mess things up. We finally figured it out and we're actually helping people.

Yeah, we're burning some heritage at the stake, you know, can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs, right? They're bad eggs anyway. And even worse than that, he, I mean, he goes even so far, this is worse, not a risk to say him at all, which is that there's a deep Christian sentiment to this. I just only know that there's like the few in the many, right?

Yeah, yeah. But the few now turn against Jesus, they seem to be ones who accept all the sins, right? So like the innocent person who's compelled to be a Christian and granted a little bit of sentiment absolved by the church, you know, against, against maybe, you know, the Lord's wishes, those few are in effect, damned, but there is, but his argument, and this is the, I think where it gets even more subtle and a bit more difficult to kind of wrap your head around, his argument is that in defying Christ in this way, they've actually saved their souls the way they're correcting their greater than Christ in their, in their benevolence, right? That's the argument.

Yeah. No, that's right. If you actually want to do goodness, really have to learn to do not good or something like this. So it's a mocky night, right?

Yeah, I just have a few questions. Like, I know there's a lot more here, obviously, but like one of the most obvious questions to me, I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on it. So it's not fair. I apologize.

But how is this a poll? I mean, it's made up. That's at least, I mean, that's just in that basic sense. Yeah, it's like a construction.

I think the point you were suggesting earlier is really good. And maybe you can expand on this grade. But the idea that the basis of, and he says this is something stubborn to me, it's not rational. It's got arguments.

The arguments, I think he thinks are not decisive. It's just, I think that he believes he kicked out of him. And he's also, it seems like he's trying to get confirmation from Aliyosha that this is correct, right? But it seems like the basis, the reason my call at a poll is like the best he can do is contrived the story that speaks irrational, stubborn irrationality.

No, that sounds right. I wonder if, you know, I don't know what Dostese is up to, obviously, but this seems to me like the plea of someone who desperately wants to believe. This reads to me almost like glaucon's attack on justice, right? The guy who most desperately wants to believe in justice paradoxically is the guy who's most capable of making the greatest assault on justice.

And here, I was saying glaucon, no, no, I know you're paralling it. So he paralleling, which is Euclidean, I mean, but yeah, that what Ivan is doing is trying to help me see that I'm wrong. Aliyosha, how was my younger brother, I mean, I can see him sort of dismissing his naive and this, that the other, but also like, help me to understand why this is explained to me. Why did children suffer?

Because he says a few times, right? Like, I'm not sure I don't, you know, this, that the other, and I don't think he says exactly I would like to believe, but he says something along those lines, I'll try to find it just in all of it. But it's interesting how there are many points. It's been some of your since I read this, but you're getting me excited to be muted.

I recall so many points in the novel where Ivan is just needlessly aggressive with Aliyosha, especially considering how just gentle his, it's like the gentler Aliyosha remains or becomes, and the more even keel he remains, the more violent Ivan becomes in the face of all this. And you're right at it, the trays are kind of like a yearning for, it's like quite his own current or whatever's going on. Otherwise, he gives, you know, like the meat tree does a sh**. Right.

I recall because I was so stuck in his name or something like this, like, oh, well, sometimes dogs just tear children apart. That's just, you know, that's just the way the world, right? He wants to forget. He wants to embrace.

He doesn't want there to be suffering in the world, right? I mean, and so there is this like he, he wants there to be this, I mean, the problem with the Odyssey, I suppose, I think Alex kind of seems like he teased this out a little bit was you want there to be this kind of perfectly, Euclidean justice. You want God to make everything right. And it's hard to live in a world where you look around and children, for example, suffer without any apparent point whatsoever.

And then you, and then on the other hand, of course, and this is what most young people who are disillusioned with the church will fall into, just look at sort of the nastiest things that the church has done. And that's an obvious grounds for rejecting faith. I mean, and the, of course, the inquisitions are number one, or maybe number two, up there and things, the list of things that the church has done. If you're so pious and so holy, and this is in the name of God, how could you be burning people alive at the stake for their own salvation?

It just doesn't make any sense. It's like this weird, these weird pies, cruelty, so again, Machiavellian. Can I connect the road? Okay, back up your point about Ivan?

But I want to do two big questions that I have coming out of this, which is, originally the grand Inquisitor says twice in the beginning, and at the end of his speech, I'm going to kill you. And he even adds his statement with Dixie. I've said it, right? It's been pronounced, right?

Jesus then kisses him, he's silent till he kisses him, and he sends him away. He doesn't kill him ultimately. And it said, ultimately, that he, the kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea. And so, and so it seems like the inquisitor on the one hand, Stixter's idea, but he, if we take the kiss, I think it's open to a term, but we take the kiss, it's sort of like, I forgive even you, right, who's perpetrated this great evil against my whole endeavor.

That must mean something to him. And he sticks to his evil, he's convinced of it, but the kiss matters to him for the rest of his life, right? This is a great act of forgiveness. And in a way, now, how do we, is that Christ endorsing?

Is that Christ forgiving? How does Ivan Ivan understand this? But then Al-Yosha kisses him. So two questions.

One, why does the kiss get him to change his mind about killing him? And then two, what's the meaning of Al-Yosha's plagiarism as Ivan? But is that, and let me lay out just two possibilities. Is that Al-Yosha saying, I agree with your poem and I'll play the Christ thing figure in this, and I'll give you the forgiveness you wanted?

And so he kind of, it's him saying, I get it. You are de-doubtting Christian, and so I love you. Or is it, I don't know, what's the meaning of that kiss? If it can't help it, I can't help it be reminded of Judas's kiss, right, as well.

But I don't know, that's not that she doesn't particularly understand. I didn't catch this Al-Yosha kissing, I'm like, I confess I missed that. Yeah, it's the very end. It's like a really striking moment where, if that kiss means I will play the Christ, your grand Inquisitor, it's in a way, maybe it's him saying, I agree with everything you've said, and I bless you for your struggle with your faith.

But I'm gonna go back, I'm gonna go off and live my life. Because he says that he says at the beginning, let's talk, and then let's never speak, he can't let's separate. Maybe once before I kill myself, I'm 30, there's another parallel to Jesus, right? He's imagining living about the same time.

But he says, let's have this. And so there's a kiss that had to departure in both stories. And maybe that's a way of saying, I have an understanding of your struggle. I see the problem of God's justice.

I mean, I take a different path of faith, I suppose, right? And maybe that makes a crisis of act. Is Christ doing the same thing to the grand inquisitor then? I don't know what he's doing.

It's difficult to forgive this, a blessing. Good job, he figured it out. Like he refuted me, go ahead. I mean, one of this is just a critical way just now.

I mean, like the grand inquisitor is 90 years old. One of the miracles that Jesus performs is I think it's an Aramaic, even in the text here, tell the child to rise up, stand up. There's again, this children old man thing, I think playing here. And it's almost like Jesus kissing the grand inquisitor returns into a kind of childlikeness.

I realize the culture is you kiss adults, but it's a much more common thing for an adult to kiss a child that seems to me in this kind of way. I don't know. So the grand inquisitor in his way maybe is like Ivan as far as they both still have this moral core or some kind of longing for belief and what's good. I mean, Ivan says if God is dead and everything's permitted, this is perhaps one of the most famous lines.

But Ivan doesn't therefore permit himself to do whatever he wants, and he still finds some of these things disgusting. And the grand inquisitor as terrible as he is, obviously, we're obviously not, he's not portrayed anything like a sympathetic light. But I mean, what's driving him is a kind of dissatisfaction with the words and teachings of Christ alone and actually making people's lives better. I think we're encouraged only to see this old crusty, uncompromising man who doesn't see what's good before him.

But what drove him there, right? He's like, hey, look, this is actually, I'm trying to help people here. I don't know. Yeah, he says he's at the tail end of like a 7,800 year project, right?

This is a long time. So I want to ask two sort of closing questions. Warren, do you think I mean, it's a very famously read passage. And it's I think partially this is powerful statement of the problem.

Do you think it deserves to be among the foremost treatments of the problem of the Odyssey? Does it really get at the difficulty? And the second question, where playful is, what would you do if Jesus showed up and then and then kissed you, Greg, for mid amid all your sins? I'd pick to the first question.

These people don't make themselves. I have to do it. Right. Can you say the first question again?

I'm sorry. I guess. I mean, it's kind of like, oh, yeah, is it a good? Yeah, sorry.

Is it deserve like, let me take the most extreme? Yeah, is it up there with Jill? Like, does it? But it might be the most it might be the best treatment of this question by merely human hands.

And here's what I'll say. I mean, this is too poetic, but I think it's it's maybe the best presentation of the problem. I don't know that it provides a satisfactory solution. And here's so you were right.

I only want to focus on that. Granny Quizr chapter and you're right, Alice DePere with the preceding chapter. I think the two chapters together are actually really, really good on this. I think the granny Quizr alone doesn't quite do it.

But I don't know that I don't think those guys can try to fix it. I don't think he tries to solve their answer. If I were being poetic, I would say it seems like those to ask the readers and lays out these problems for us and then kisses us. Like, it's he can't solve it for us.

I mean, clearly, it's going in the direction of the fake answers to this problem. But he doesn't try to answer it for us. In a way, it's just trying to make sure that here's this deeply pious man, Dosefsy, who is well aware of and can lay out perhaps more clearly and more devastatingly than anybody else, the problem of God's justice. I think it's masterful.

It's good. Yeah. It's a very good way. Perful understanding we have to see what happens to the characters given their decision.

Right. She has obviously on at least one basic level needs. Okay, I understand you're starting with your faith. So if you live your life, I'm going to part with you and live my life.

And shortly after this, you get a chapter on the teaching of Zosef in my book, Sex, the elders also on the priest that educates Al-Yosha. Right. So you do get a counterpoint sort of counter narrative, that of the problem. Maybe that's something we should have read.

But in any case, you know, we didn't read a single line, by the way, that's kind of amazing. We usually read a lot of the taxes. It's true. Yeah.

Oh, well, I had some passages, but I'll think you're saying, you're so guilty. Kiss me. Kiss me. No.

Do you want to kiss me? Be my evaluation. I think this really happens so many times. I'm going to take a crack at your second.

There's a serious answer to your second question, which was meant in joke. But I turned the question back around you guys. Is it worth where we think it is and what would you do if Jesus? Look, I will say that one of my favorite characters in the gospels is Saint Thomas.

And when Jesus comes back, he's, you know, this is where the outing comes from. He sort of says, no, I don't believe it. I need to see your wounds. And there's this famous, excellent Caravaggio pain, the incredulity of Saint Thomas.

I just, you know, who knows what, if you ever encounter something like this or anything close to this, but I imagine my response would be doubting. I mean, the grandquiz are doubts momentarily, although he can't quite bring himself to doubt it. I think doubt would be the problem. I imagine this really is a character in forgetting his name in judges who does the same thing.

He demands some kind of a bunch of science for that. And he's among the most, but he's one of that. I'm forgetting his name. I just talked about it.

It's not Jeff, though. It's, uh, is it kidding? I think it's kidding. Yeah.

Or is Paul McCartney's a kid, kid? You know that song? Yeah. No, no, no, no, kid Jim's Bible.

All right. We're really got to stop the stock. We're good. We're good.

We're good. We're good. We're good. Is it worth it?

Is it worth it? You said your favorite novel? You said you skip this part. Yeah.

Yeah. It's always been too confusing or like too heavy. And I just I mean, some college conversation late at night. But I'll probably return to them more seriously.

I mean, I never really knew what to do with it. Yeah. I mean, that's a good point. They are like, young men, they're like teens and twenties.

Right? And they're in a restaurant tavern, publicly drinking something, you know? Yeah. I just so intuitive.

Yeah. Yeah. Can I read a one line from early on? This is from chapter three.

Actually, we didn't read any of this. I'm sorry. I said everything's permitted. That's in the text.

That's true. Uh, I told a buffet. I told a buffet. When I was a young person, I had no idea what that meant.

I was like, what is not tote? Yeah. So he says here, uh, it's different for other people. But we in our green youth have to settle the eternal question anymore.

That's what we care about. Young Russia is talking about nothing but the eternal questions now. Just when the old folks are all taken up with practical questions. Why have you been looking at the expectation for the last three months to ask me what do you believe or don't you believe at all?

That's what your eyes are in saying these last three months, haven't they? Perhaps so smile out of your show. You're not laughing at me now, are you? But a little further, he says, uh, in this thinking tavern, for instance, they meet and sit down in a corner.