It is said of Ivan Karamazov, from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov,” that if there is no God, everything is permitted.
In other words, if one were to take Friedrich Nietzsche’s self-contradictory claim that “God is dead” at face value, then one is free to do whatever one wants.
Dostoevsky’s ingenious portrayal of a dysfunctional family life — and subsequently of human condition — in “The Brothers Karamazov” is why I always say that literature is a far richer source for ethics and morality than any religious scripture.
The distinction between morality and sense of ethics promoted in literature and one that is found in the margins of religious scripture is that literature forces one to question one’s own convictions and ardent beliefs.
But religious morality simply takes the Zoroastrian form of dichotomy of good and evil — everything that originates from the celestial being is good, anything that does not is evil.
"Do good and be rewarded handsomely, do evil and be punished accordingly" is essentially the motto that so many religions of the world have used to control the masses. I could concede that if control is what we are after, the method and its motto have worked rather well.
However, if conscious analysis and self-awareness of one’s own conduct is what we aim for, then there isn’t much analysis to be found in religious morality.
It is surely true that if one were to presume a state of lawful conduct, of rules and regulations, the absence of a law-enforcer could lead to chaos and destruction. That seems to be one of the prevailing themes in Dostoevsky’s “Brothers Karamazov.”
But I don’t agree, and neither did Dostoevsky. This argument fails to consider countries in the world like Iceland where many of the people are religious agnostics.
It isn’t my intention, not in this column at least, to sound preachy and theological. We are, as a species, aware of our ultimate destiny; as W.H. Auden once wrote, “Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.”
It seems as though (for the lack of a better word) fate has dealt us a very unfortunate hand: We can fold our cards, become all deterministic and conduct ourselves either in hopes of an eternal reward or fear of punishment; or we can embrace our ultimate demise by reading literature and making the most of it while it lasts.
To paraphrase Douglas Adams, the author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” it is possible to live life without resorting to devotion of saints and sages. “Great literature,” as the great American critic of the 19th century, Ezra Pound, once wrote, “is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.”
I must conclude by saying that we must read literature, and not just as homework. Literature, dear reader, is not just beneficial for the enrichment of one’s own senses, but a matter of vital national security: to quote Johann Wolfgang van Goethe, “the decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.”
Reach Sohail at sbayot@asu.edu
