An Existential Refutation of the Grand InquisitorIn The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky presents two competing views on humanity and its road to salvation: father Zosima’s and Ivan Karamazov’s. Ivan presents his view to Alyosha through a poem that describes a time when Jesus Christ himself returned to the world during the Spanish inquisition, but, instead of being worshipped by the church, is thrown in prison by the Grand Inquisitor. The Inquisitor launches into an impassioned monologue, berat...

An Existential Refutation of the Grand InquisitorIn The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky presents two competing views on humanity and its road to salvation: father Zosima’s and Ivan Karamazov’s. Ivan presents his view to Alyosha through a poem that describes a time when Jesus Christ himself returned to the world during the Spanish inquisition, but, instead of being worshipped by the church, is thrown in prison by the Grand Inquisitor. The Inquisitor launches into an impassioned monologue, berat...

The ProblemIn the course of his philosophical inquiry in Fear and Trembling into the biblical story of the Binding of Isaac, Soren Kierkegaard proposes a concept called the teleological suspension of the ethical. Some individuals, writes Kierkegaard, dubbed the knights of faith, are “higher than the universal” and are exempt from general moral obligations for reasons incomprehensible by principle to others living in the universal (95). They are then free to commit immoral acts in the name of ...

The ProblemIn the course of his philosophical inquiry in Fear and Trembling into the biblical story of the Binding of Isaac, Soren Kierkegaard proposes a concept called the teleological suspension of the ethical. Some individuals, writes Kierkegaard, dubbed the knights of faith, are “higher than the universal” and are exempt from general moral obligations for reasons incomprehensible by principle to others living in the universal (95). They are then free to commit immoral acts in the name of ...