Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor is an idealization. This man, with such infinite love for mankind cannot exist. He too would be subject to his own mandate of the rejection of freedom in favor of subjugation by an omnipotent other. He too would also burn to receive earthly bread, and while in such inevitable circumstances, circumstances inherent in the human condition, he would be unfit to head his own monopoly by these same standards. He would fail his own ideal.
However, the idea he represents is remarkably potent because this interpretation of human nature is as substantially prevalent in our society of today as it was in the atmosphere of the author’s own time. The Grand Inquisitor says, “Oh, never, never will they feed themselves without us! No science will give them bread as long as they remain free, but in the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us: ‘Better that you enslave us, but feed us.’” (Dostoevsky, 253)
In fact, this is a universal constant, relevant to some degree at any time in which multiple individuals come into contact. However, the alleviation of freedom represented by the Grand Inquisitor, and his triumvirate of miracle, mystery and authority, will not be, and cannot be, carried out by an individual. No individual is exempt from the desire for bread. It is a machine, a machine with no head, which we will turn to for our supply of earthly bread.
The Grand Inquisitor is a synthesis of various ideas and understandings. He is the ghost in the machine. He is the spirit that drives every successful political/religious system. He is at the root cause for our desire to be controlled, not controlled overtly, however, but controlled in essence, controlled in the way that, in order to appease our bodies, we must sleep and eat, that is how the spirit of the Grand Inquisitor blesses our minds and souls with subjugation. He says, “For only now, has it become possible to think for the first time about human happiness. Man was made a rebel; can rebels be happy?” (Dostoevsky, 251) The Grand Inquisitor is the coagulation of that desire to remedy our rebelliousness, to remedy our freedom.
The supposed freedom we are in possession of and hold as an ideal is in fact a veneer. The Inquisitor speaks, “Know, then, that now, precisely now, these people are more certain than ever before that they are completely free, and at the same time they themselves have brought us their freedom and obediently laid it at our feet.” (Dostoevsky, 251) We feverishly choose to ignore the multitude of restrictions placed upon our every action.
However, absolute freedom is impossible. Only at a moment of complete inaction, a state which is impossible as a living being, could we be absolutely free. As soon as we take one action, which of course must occur at some instance, we are rejecting another. While we take action, we have established our trajectory. We are temporarily locked on our path and are incapable of a decision and are necessarily not free.
In order to regain our freedom of decision, we must stop and choose again. Therefore, our freedom exists only in that moment within which we decide. We can only ever possess the shadow of freedom, and never its absolute form, which would be possible only at a moment of complete and absolute stillness, and thus, according to Plato’s Socrates, who was so enamored with forms, this earthly freedom is therefore insignificant.
The preoccupation with freedom is simply a rejection of the undeniable saturation of control inherent in life itself. We are subject to time and causality, the laws of physics, physical and mental limitations, bodily rhythms, social restrictions and environmental tribulations. When we leap, we fall. And, when we fall, we hurt. We as human beings attempt to escape our environment and thus invent the concept of freedom which undoubtedly would not exist were it not for our collective obsession.
Keeping this in mind, there is very little difference between one option and an another option that poses as a plethora of options. For example, we can choose what to eat, but to live, we must eat. This is an option that merely appears to be a decision among many. The image of the Grand Inquisitor is only an extrapolation of this reality. The Grand Inquisitor is being brave and taking this situation to its logical conclusion. He rips away the mirage. He will hand us our earthly bread and tell us to eat. We are no longer tortured by choices.
And here comes the machine with no head, embodying the spirit of the Grand Inquisitor which we yearn to be enslaved by. This machine, this artificial intelligence, this firm execution of will, can be spotted within the corporation, within “the system”, within the group in which no individual person (and we are assumedly individuals) makes a decision. It is present in capitalism. Is it present in fascism. It is the large scale expansion of the inevitable result of two inescapably contradictory (to some degree) personalities coming into contact with each other. It is the exaggerated enlargement of the spirit of personal contact.
Our desire to be controlled in this way is a result of our jaded desire to connect with our fellows. When we connect or attempt to connect to another person, it can’t be a strictly selfish contract. We must acquiesce some of our will. We must sacrifice our freedom to that individual or those individuals with whom we are making contact. When that ideal individual is not accessibly present, we turn, or are forced to turn, to an artificial replacement. This artificial replacement is what the Grand Inquisitor offers.
The Grand Inquisitor is the spirit of the group at a scale of depersonalized harmony. He represents the machine that channels input and output and can make demands of us, but at no point does it ever have a head. It possesses a perfection which individuals do not possess. It is a set of guidelines which, having no source, are infallible. But, in our naiveté, we often don’t know whom to connect with. Instead of having imperfect connection with another individual, we opt for the same kind of connection with the machine. We opt for nothing.
We have created the machine that enslaves us, the home for the Grand Inquisitor’s spirit. The Grand Inquisitor remarks upon our precocious act, “And since man cannot bear to be left without miracles, he will go and create new miracles for himself.” (Dostoevsky, 255) Yet it is, once cemented into reality, completely external from us, its creators. This machine which remedies our freedom is any kind of system, any system of rules which must be acquiesced to. These rules are its body. But, having no consciousness other than its administrative capacity, it has no self-aware will. Its will is passive while still remaining paramount. It makes demands of us without any genuine purpose.
And so, we have our so desperately desired connection. However, the channel is unidirectional. We acquiesce to the machine, and it cannot respond to our sacrifice. This kind of relationship holds a certain kind of perfection because the system can never be wrong, it is infallible and we must adapt to its rhythms, not vice versa.
The Grand Inquisitor speaks from the non-existent head of the machine, “They will marvel at us, and look upon us as gods, because we, standing at their head, have agreed to suffer freedom and rule over them — so terrible will it become for them in the end to be free! (Dostoevsky, 253) He holds himself to be magnanimous the same way that the proponents of yielding to a system hold the set of restrictions that constitute the system to be benevolent. The system will always produce the anticipated result. The system is reliable. It provides us with ordered connection to an imaginary community. Yet, the machine acts as a filter, and when our lives are based upon the system, we are unavoidably limited in our action. The machine demands certain input, input that meets its guidelines to output what we need, our bread. Our obedience is its primary requirement.
The machine then constantly aims to limit our autonomy for the cause of its own autonomy. The Grand Inquisitor comments, “But do you see these stones in this bare, scorching desert? Turn them into bread and mankind will run after you like sheep. grateful and obedient, though eternally trembling lest you withdraw your hand and your loaves cease for them” (Dostoevsky, 252) The machine will gradually need our input less and less until finally the spirit of the Grand Inquisitor himself becomes superfluous and our existence is no longer requisite. The gradual acquiescence of our freedom eventually leads to our termination.
The Grand Inquisitor, non-existent in reality, is the theoretical head of the machine and without him, without his purpose, the machine becomes nothing more than a monster with an unquenchable hunger for human autonomy. We exist because we are autonomous. Without our freedom, without our divine affliction, we would not be present.
Work cited: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Farrar, Straus and Giroux Edition, 1990.