My Review of The Karamazov Case: Dostoevsky’s Argument for His Vision by Terrence W. Tilley. London: T&T Clark, 2023

 Whether created by God or Darwin, our world is rife with problems. While some do their best to adjust or even benefit from the world’s failures, others want to remedy them. The Brothers Karamazov offers a great variety of human responses to all sorts of religious, moral, or social challenges that world’s imperfection generates, evaluating their efficiency, social benefits, or the impact on an individual. TerrenceProfessor Tilley considers the novel’s unfolding in a way that highlights the beneficial effects of Zosima’s and Alyosha’s responses whereas Ivan’s anger, self-laceration, and withdrawal---as logical, empirical, or consistent as they are---hardly benefit anyone, Ivan included.

While Book V of the novel “pull[s] no punches in … attacks … on the reasonableness” of our world and its Creator (1), the rest of the novel undermines Ivan’s arguments, offering “a profoundly realistic understanding of how we can live in this defaced icon of the world.” (pp. 1, 2). Tilley assigns Alyosha and Ivan into the camps of realists and materialists, respectively, explaining that: “realists … recognize the world as … a ‘fractured icon’ of divine loving presence … and not only observe the same world the materialists do but also work to repair the defaced icon of the world” (p. 51). Rather than blaming God for the state of the world, “an Orthodox realist repairs the icon of the world so God’s love can be and be seen as present in and through the world.” (p. 149). (Judaism can take an exception to the concept of “Orthodox realist,” since “repairing the world” is one of the tenets of modern Judaism, but that’s a question for theologians to settle.).

The novel becomes a testing ground, where various “patterns of belief,” such as realism, materialism, or sensualism, are explored from all sorts of perspectives. Atheistic and nihilistic arguments promoted by Ivan or Rakitin are undermined not by verbal arguments or logical proofs, but by actions and outcomes. According to Tilley, Alyosha’s approach provides the most productive way of confronting the world’s mysteries and contradictions: “the novel argues for Zosima’s and Alyosha’s realism. In displaying materialism, sensualism, superstition, and manipulation as patterns of belief, feeling, and actions that constitute patterns of faith, it argues against them.” (p. 50).

What makes Ivan’s and Alyosha’s responses so different? To answer, Tilley relies on Dostoevsky himself, who from the start of his novel, described Alyosha as “realist,” whose “insatiable heart” drives him to action … and faith. Zosima puts it like this: “Strive to love your neighbor actively and indefatigably. Insofar as you advance in love you will grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul … this has been tried. This is certain.” (pp. 48--49).

The thrust of Tilley’s study is to demonstrate that Brothers Karamazov provides a thorough argument in favor of Alyosha’s version of realism. The trajectory of various characters in the novel illustrates that this “idealistic” realism is more real, practical, and rational, than the materialism of Ivan. Two central chapters of Tilley’s monograph explore the characters’ propensity to conversion, that is, their ability to expand their horizons: “Conversion can be, and for Dostoevsky often is, a reasonable response to challenging events … [while] resistance to conversion is a failure to accept realism” (p. 6). Tilley elaborates that conversion “‘make[s] sense. … Realists change ... when confronted with evidential conflict or inconsistencies” (p. 57). Furthermore, “each convert becomes incorporated into a community of realists, ‘a living body of truth and love imbued with the spirit of sobornost'’” (p. 72).

The materialists of the novel---despite challenges or opportunities---“fail to be open to adaptation or conversion,” revealing “psychology rigid enough to be unreasonable and thus as unconvertible as any other irrationalist” (p. 79). Here, Tilley clearly refers to the paradox that Dostoevsky belabored on various occasions: the irrationality of reason. Among the conversions that Tilley discusses in his book, he is particularly insightful about Kolya Krasotkin, an early disciple of Rakitin. As the result of his interaction with Alyosha and Snegirev’s family, Kolya is transformed.

For Tilley, a realist recognizes that “each of us is guilty for everything before everyone” (p. 8). Markel’s, Zosima’s, or Dmitry’s conversions reveal to them their “solidarity in guilt” (p. 74). In his rebellion, Ivan washes such guilt from his hands, “refusing to participate in the world” (p. 88). For Tilley, this rejection of God’s creation is emblematized by Ivan’s actions, such as pushing away, striking, withdrawing, hiding, and otherwise, removing himself from the rest of the humanity, and Tilley interprets “the tale of the onion” in a similar spirit.

What makes characters like Dmitry or Kolya Krasotkin cross the Rubicon and join the camp of realists, as opposed to Rakitin, Ivan, or Ferapont? To put it differently, why do some readers recognize the spiritual dimension of the novel’s actions, while others view them with the cynical eye of Rakitin, fanatically reducing everything to its most basic materialistic components? The concept of “restoring the defaced icon of the world,” to which Tilley frequently returns (pp. 2, 148--49), contains one reason behind materialists’ failure to become realists. It is the failure to see beyond the disfigured image of the world; there is no desire to restore anything, as they no longer recognize God’s design in either people or the world.

Discussing Dostoevsky in terms of patterns of faith, conversions, sobornost', and polyphony, hardly breaks new grounds in terms of Dostoevsky’s scholarship; yet, the study will be of great help to everyone who reads Dostoevsky’s challenging novel for the first time and is confused by its view of the world’s mysteries and contradictions. Organizing characters along the axis of “patterns of belief,” and seeing the impact of these patterns upon their fates, will help readers to orient themselves in the labyrinth of novel’s moral, social, and religious issues. Tilley is to be commended for reminding us that alienation, cynicism, and self-destruction await all sorts of Dostoevsky’s characters; the realists, however, have a chance---in the words of Zosima---to “bless life and make others bless it -- which is what matters most.” It is this task of blessing through misfortune that the best of Dostoevsky characters accomplish so successfully.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/russ.12596