Are All Things Permissible in the Absence of God? - Excerpt from "The Brothers Karamazov" - Dostoyevsky

Everything Would Be Permitted

By Stephen Alexander Beach

(711 Words)

A Few Brief Words
In this passage from Book II of The Brothers Karamazov the family is gathered in the meeting room of a monastery to consult with the elder monk Zosima over a family dispute. In the meantime while they wait for everyone to arrive there transpires lively conversations about the nature of Church-state relations, ideals government, Christianity and Socialism, and likewise too in the passage recounted below a famous idea from Dostoyevsky, that in the absence of God all objective morality disappears. 

Through the mouth of his characters Dostoyevsky expresses the radical consequences that would follow from mankind's loss of belief in God and the immortality of each human soul. Philosophically, this would seem to be true as objective morality is based on a teleological structure rooted in the objective nature of things. This objective nature of reality fundamentally requires a metaphysical view of essences and an ultimate metaphysical source of all things, namely an ultimate, self-existing being. Historically, Dostoyevsky was certainly vindicated as to this point and his characterization as a prophetic mind is apt here as well. Just think about the late 1800's and first half of the 1900's where man claimed that he was free from God and could remake morality however he pleased. The Social Darwinists, the Communists, the Nazis, Fascists, etc. ... all of them rejected a notion of objective morality in favor of some type of ideological utopia which needed to be implemented at all costs. 

Certainly there are many Materialists and atheists today who claim that they can be moral people. Some are even trying to create a morality based in the scientific method. I would argue that as individuals they can be moral, but only because they are unconsciously borrowing that morality from Greek philosophy or Christianity. If they lived in accordance with the implications of their philosophy, there is only power that's left. And so I agree with Dostoyevsky that scientific materialism/atheism cannot be the foundation for morality, as it permits all things to those who have the power to do them, just as in the animal kingdom all things are permitted to those with the power over the jungle. 

The Passage - Book II Ch VI
"'Generally, again, I ask your permission to drop the subject,' Pyotr Alexandrovich repeated, 'and instead let me tell you another anecdote, gentlemen, about Ivan Fyodorovich himself, a most typical and interesting one. No more than five days ago, at a local gathering, predominantly of ladies, he solemnly announced in the discussion that there is decidedly nothing in the whole world that would make men love their fellow men; that there exists no law of nature that man should love mankind, and that if there is and has been any love on earth up to now, it has come not from natural law but solely from people's beleif in their immortality. Ivan Fyodorovich added parenthetically that that is what all natural law consists of, so that were mankind's belief in its immortality destroyed, not only love but also any living power to continue the life of the world would at once dry up in it. 

Not only that, but then nothing would be immoral any longer everything would be permitted, even anthropophagy. And even that is not all: he ended with the assertion that for every separate person, like ourselves for instance, who believes neither in God not in immortality, the moral law of nature ought to change immediately into the exact opposite of the former religious law, and that egoism, even to the point of evildoing, should not only be permitted to man but should be acknowledged as the necessary, the most reasonable, and all but the noblest result of his situation. From this paradox, gentlemen, you may deduce what else our dear eccentric and paradoxalist Ivan Fyodorovich may be pleased to proclaim, and perhaps still intends to proclaim.' 'Allow me,' Dimitri Fyodorovich suddenly cried unexpectedly, 'to be sure I've heard correctly 'Evildoing should not only be permitted but even should be acknowledged as the most necessary and most intelligent solution for the situation of every godless person'! Is that it, or not!'" 1

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1 - Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. Pevear and Volokhonsky translation