The Grand Inquisitor On The Nature Of Man Analysis

Freedom and Life as we know it Freedom can mean a variety of different things to different people. To some, freedom may mean political equality, self-ownership, choosing what to believe in, or committing actions without restraint. However, how much freedom do the citizens of this world actually own? Fyodor Dostoyevsky gives his readers different perspectives about freedom in his story of The Grand Inquisitor on the Nature of Man, while Viktor Frankl insists that everyone has an inner freedom that no one can take away in his novel Man’s Search for Meaning.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born in Russia in 1821, when Russia operated in a serf and landlord system until 1861. Growing up, Dostoyevsky saw many political and social issues that affected
people all around him, as well as himself. In 1849, Dostoyevsky was sentenced to death for involvement in revolutionary activities, but his sentence was changed to hard labor at a prison camp in Siberia (Goscik 2013). Dostoyevsky had a love for literature and explored the human psychology in the political, social, and spiritual context of Russia during his time. Written in Dostoyesky 's later years, The Grand Inquisitor on the Nature of Man is a parable told by Ivan to his brother Alyosha from the novel The Brothers Karamazov. The Grand Inquisitor on the Nature of Man takes place during the Spanish Inquisition, where Spain attempted to purify its country by banning other religions besides Catholicism and punishing heretics. Christ is reborn on earth, and as he walks through the streets, people gather around him as he performs miracles by healing the sick. However, his salvation is interrupted by the cardinal, who then arrests Christ. The cardinal comes to Christ late in the evening to explain to him why Christ was taken as a prisoner and why he cannot let Christ continue his works. Christ 's silence and the Grand Inquisitor 's compelling arguments leave the reader questioning his or her own beliefs and perspectives of the world.
The Grand Inquisitor believes that people do not want freedom, and that they would rather have happiness and security on earth. In the beginning when Christ first starts performing miracles, the people all congregate to him: “The people are irresistibly drawn to Him, follow Him” (Dostoevsky 1948, 22). This scene shows an example of exemplary power. Christ does not need to say anything; yet, everyone gathers around him and wants to follow him. The Grand Inquisitor shows a different type of authority when he comes to arrest Christ: “And such is his power, so completely are the people cowed into submission and trembling obedience to him, that the crowd immediately makes way for the guards, and in the midst of deathlike silence they lay hands on Him and lead Him away” (Dostoevsky 1948, 24). Dostoevsky shows the contrast between authorities between the Grand Inquisitor and Christ. People flocked to Christ, but they moved away from each other at the arrival of the Grand Inquisitor, insisting that they do not want freedom. If the people wanted to be free, they would have continued to follow Christ, and they would not have split. The Grand Inquisitor arrests Christ because if Christ were allowed to go free, he could contest the Church’s work to lift the burden of free will from mankind. The Church made the people think that they have freedom, but really took their freedom from them in exchange for security on earth: “For fifteen centuries we have been wrestling with Thy freedom, but now it is ended and over for good. Dost Thou not believe that it’s over for good? Thou lookest meekly at me and deignest not even to be wroth with me. But let me tell Thee that now, today, people are more persuaded than ever that they have perfect freedom, yet they have brought their freedom to us and laid it humbly at our feet” (Dostoevsky 1948, 26). Christ gave humanity the freedom to choose to follow him or to disregard him by rejecting the three temptations, but the Grand Inquisitor says that almost no one is strong enough to be faithful and those who are not faithful will be damned forever. He says that Christ should have taken power instead of giving people a choice, and in exchange for their freedom, given them security. If Christ would have done this, the people who were too weak to follow Christ would still be damned, but at least they would have happiness and security on earth instead of carrying a burden of moral freedom. The Grand Inquisitor says the Church has taken the peoples’ freedom, but has given them happiness on earth, even though they will be damned in the afterlife. In the first temptation, Satan told Christ that if he were actually the son of God, that Christ would turn stone into bread to satisfy his hunger, but Christ refused by saying that man should not live by bread, but by the word of God. The Grand Inquisitor says that Christ should have not offered freedom of choice, but instead, given them freedom of hunger. He goes on to say how mankind’s faith is weak when hungry: “’Make us your slaves, but feed us.’ They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious” (Dostoevsky 1948, 30). The Grand Inquisitor insists that man would rather feel full than have their freedom and that having freedom and bread is impossible. He also says that: “So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship. But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it… This craving for community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship they’ve slain each other with the sword” (Dostoevsky 1948, 31). He says that as long as man is free, they are fighting each other about their beliefs, but they desire a common God to worship together. Because Christ gave them the freedom to choose, man could not achieve that community of worship. He goes on to talk about Christ’s second temptation when Satan told Christ to throw himself off of a pinnacle to prove that he was who he was. Christ refused, saying that he could not tempt God. The Grand Inquisitor thinks that this was the wrong decision and that people need to see miracles in order to be content with their faith. The third temptation was power as Satan offered Christ control of all the kingdoms in the world, but Christ still refused. The Grand Inquisitor says that since Christ did not take this power, the Church did in his name because it is the best and most secure order for mankind. The Grand Inquisitor says: “There are three powers, three powers alone, able to conquer and to hold captive forever the conscience of these impotent rebels for their happiness—those forces are miracle, mystery and authority” (Dostoevsky 1948, 33). By rejecting these temptations, Christ rejected the forces to make mankind happy. The Grand Inquisitor finishes his arguments, and Christ’s reaction is walking up to him and giving him a kiss. The Grand Inquisitor sets Christ free, but tells him to never return.
While reading The Grand Inquisitor, I questioned myself how we define what is right and what is wrong, and the power of faith.
The Grand Inquisitor is taking away the peoples’ freedoms and telling them they will be saved in the afterlife, when really he is working under Satan. However, the Grand Inquisitor is committing his actions through his love for the people. He believes that what he is doing is the right thing to do, but it is not the most moral thing to do. Christ is supposed to have lived a sinless life, so the Church could not have had a reason to arrest him. By arresting him for sins against mankind, it shows that the Church’s role is an effective way to guide human action, but not a way to encourage men to believe more strongly in religion. Christ and the Grand Inquisitor do not agree because they each have different values. Christ said no to the temptations to give mankind freedom to choose what is right and wrong, an important ability of man. However, the Grand Inquisitor values living in comfort, but the path is already chosen for the follower. The Grand Inquisitor thinks that rejecting the temptations is insisting that mankind rejects certain securities and that it is a burden on mankind to reject these securities. Although the Grand Inquisitor’s views on his love for mankind make sense, the kiss that Christ gives him changes the logic. The Grand Inquisitor tells Christ how Christ does not care for mankind by making them suffer, but his kiss
represents an act of love and forgiveness, giving faith the upper hand even when the Grand Inquisitor’s argument is more rational.
The Grand Inquisitor may believe that mankind cannot handle freedom, but Frankl has his own views on the topic. Viktor Frankl was born in Vienna, Austria in 1905. Frankl did many great things towards bettering human kind with psychology, such as organizing cost-free counseling centers for teenagers and working at a suicide ward for women (Boeree 2006). In 1942, Frankl was arrested and brought to a concentration camp, where he faced inhumane horrors. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl analyzes the psychiatry of the people in the concentration camp. His experiences in the concentration camps led him to develop a revolutionary approach to psychotherapy known as logotherapy. He explores the feelings and mentalities that were expressed and concludes that no one can avoid suffering, but they can choose how to cope, find meaning in it, and move on with their lives with a purpose. The first part of the book tells about Frankl’s experiences in the concentration camp, while the second part goes into detail about logotherapy.
Frankl describes three phases in which everyone at the concentration camps faced: shock, apathy, and disillusionment of life.
Shock occurs during the initial admission into the concentration camp. The prisoners saw alarming sights during their train ride of “long stretches of several rows of barbed wire fences; water towers; searchlights; and long columns of ragged human figures” (Frankl 2006, 9). Frankl experiences feelings of horror during his first arrival of a concentration camp and had no way of preparing himself for what he was about to experience. Arriving at camp, many prisoners faced a delusion of reprieve by seeing some of the healthier inmates, but “little did we know then that they formed a specially chosen elite, who for years had been the receiving squad for new transports as they rolled into the station day after day” (Frankl 2006, 10). The prisoners were stripped of everything they had, even their names, and they soon realized that the camp was soon to be a lot worse than expected, leading to the next phase of apathy. Apathy was the longest phase for Frankl and the prisoners of camp. Apathy was used as a defense mechanism as Frankl says the prisoners were: “insensitive to daily and hourly beatings. By means of this insensibility the prisoner soon surrounded himself with a very necessary protective shell” (Franikl 2006, 23). If a prisoner exhibited any signs of anger or annoyance, they were beaten almost to death, so apathy was strongly enforced as a
defense mechanism. Prisoners became desensitized to the atrocities happening around them as Frankl says: “Disgust, horror and pity are emotions that our spectator could not really feel anymore” (Frankl 2006, 22). They regularly witnessed beatings and death among the inmates and none of it came as a surprise any longer. Frankl also uses an example of looting the deceased as a moment of apathy: “After one of them had just died, I watched without any emotional upset the scene that followed…the prisoners grabbing the remains of a messy meal of potatoes…wooden shoes…genuine string” (Frankl 2006, 22). This scene shows the circumstances the inmates were put up against in order to survive. The inmates started to lose interest in their own names, their fates and their history. Frankl says that they became numbers, and “the life of a number was irrelevant” (Frankl 2006, 53). After being released from camp life, the former prisoners had trouble clutching their own freedom: “’Freedom’—we repeated to ourselves, and yet we could not grasp it. We had said this word so often during the years we dreamed about it, that it had lost its meaning. Its reality did not penetrate into our consciousness; we could not grasp the fact that freedom was ours” (Frankl 2006, 88). They had all looked forward to their liberation so much, that when the time came, it was far less striking as it was expected to be. Upon release, they felt a strong desire for retribution as well: “They became instigators, not objects, of willful force and injustice. They justified their behavior by their own terrible experiences” (Frankl 2006, 90). The inmates were angry with their treatment in camp, which is understandable, but Frankl contested retribution with his beliefs that “no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them” (Frankl 2006, 91). During these three psychological stages of camp life, Frankl came up with his conclusions on freedom and finding the meaning in life.
Frankl learned from his experiences that humans hold an inner freedom that cannot be taken away, no matter the circumstances and that man can withstand anything, as long as he has a deeper meaning to his life. Even with hostile conditions such as starvation, lack of sleep, and various mental stresses, Frankl emphasizes that man can preserve a trace of spiritual freedom. Frankl states: “…everything can be taken from man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way” (66). Frankl believes that even under such harsh conditions in the concentration camp, man still had the freedom to alter the way he behaved towards a situation. Every day he was faced with choices, and within those choices, he was able to decide if he wanted to keep his inner freedom or to give it up and be molded into a typical inmate. He witnessed martyrs in camp that proved that this inner freedom existed and made their lives purposeful: “Who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread” (65-66). These men had everything taken away from them, but they still chose to act in this way. Frankl also realized that the individuals that survived the concentration camp had a deeper meaning to their life and looked to the future for support. The ones that lost faith in the future were doomed. Frankl expresses: “The death rate in the week between Christmas, 1944, and New Year’s, 1945, increased in camp beyond all previous experience. In his opinion, the explanation for this increase did not lie in the harder working conditions or the deterioration of our food supplies or a change of wealth or new epidemics. It was simply that the majority of the prisoners had lived in the naive hope that they would be home again by Christmas. As the time drew near and there was no encouraging news, the prisoners lost courage and disappointment overcame them. This had a dangerous influence on their powers of resistance and a great number of them died” (Frankl 2006, 76). More people began to die around Christmas time, not because of harsher conditions in the camp life, but because of their thoughts that they would be returned home by Christmas. From experiences like these, Frankl says that a change in attitude in life is necessary to survive. Frankl believes that suffering is an inevitable part of life, but it is also necessary. The way in which man takes in his fate and suffering that it entails will give him more opportunities to add a deeper meaning to his life. Frankl says: “When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden” (Frankl 2006, 78). He also goes on to exclaim how important finding meaning in life is to the existence to man: “A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any how” (Frankl 2006, 80). If man knows why he exists, then he can overcome anything.
Although both of these authors have contrasting views on freedom and life, they both leave a compelling argument. In Frankl’s book, he says that humans will always have an inner freedom that cannot be vanquished and can create a meaning in life for that individual, while in Dostoevsky’s book, he suggests that peoples’ freedoms are limited and people only think that they are free. Bibliography

Boeree, George. 2006. Viktor Frankl. http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/frankl.html (accessed February 2013).
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. 1948. The Grand Inquisitor on the Nature of Man: New York: Macmillan Publishing Company
Frankl, Viktor. 2006. Man’s Search for Meaning: Boston: Beacon
Gocsik, Karen. Biography. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~karamazo/bio01.html (accessed February 2013).