“Blog” 11

The Brothers Karamazov, Book 7, Chapter 2 page 362

Martin Heidegger, Part 2.1 page 197

Discussion Question for both: 

In the Geviert, man recognizes the fourfold truths (sky, gods, men, and earth) without actually being. In this way, the Geviert opens up to us. How does Alyosha accept the Geviert without “accepting his world” – one of the arms of the Geviert itself?

• Fourfold truth of sky, gods, men, and earth
  • Contrasts western Christian tradition of the threefold truths of father, son, and holy spirit (the Holy Trinity)

• “I do not rebel against my God, I simply ‘do not accept his world’” (Dostoevsky 362)
  • Alyosha’s ownership of God as “my God”
  • Grounded in God’s organization, but denial of His plan
    • Alyosha cannot believe the reaction to Zosima’s death
    • Lack of acceptance to Zosima’s death paralleling Alyosha’s lack of acceptance in  the goodness of men 

• Alyosha accepts food and drink, exhibiting rebelliousness
  • Friends as couriers of evildoing or sinning

• The sky and the world as two separate entities
  • Sky: the world as cosmos, order, and natural organization
  • Earth: the place of being for men, our known existence in space

• Being without knowing
  • “…through its existence in the terror of absolute loneliness, at the outmost distance from all beings, in the experience of the abyss–it is then that we will encounter the entire Fourfold simultaneously, it is then that it reveals itself to us.” (Dugin 196)
  • The Geviert is not a physically map, but something that exists to be revealed to us
    • Similar to God’s plan as being unknown, but understood to us over time (western Christian tradition)
    • Men can be (state of naturally existence), but still not be opened to the fourfold truths

• Alyosha is distracted, warn out, and can be influence in his current state
  • What role does Grunshenka play?
    • Freedom from god’s world
    • Attraction to another being

• Zosima was Alyosha’s moral beacon through relational identity
  • Student – teacher relationship
  • Abandonment of moral sturdiness by Alyosha
  • In loneliness, Alyosha should have the entire fourfold truths revealed to him
    • Why is his reaction to rebel?
      • Internal struggle and alternative desires