Dostoevsky vs. the Marquis de Sade

Modern Age, Fall, 2004 by John Attarian

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Ivan Karamazov gives Dostoevsky's most extensive presentation of Sade's thought. Personifying the Sadean philosophe, Ivan, as paraphrased by Peter Miusov, presents Sade's philosophy early in the novel:

  ... there was no law of nature that men should love mankind ... any
  love on earth ... was not owing to a natural law but simply because
  men have believed in immortality ... the whole natural law lies in
  that faith ... if you were to destroy in mankind the belief in
  immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life
  of the world would be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be
  immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism .... for every
  individual who does not believe in God or immortality, the moral law
  of nature must immediately be changed into the exact contrary of the
  former religious law ... egoism, even to crime, must become, not only
  lawful but recognized as the inevitable, the most rational, even
  honorable outcome. (27)

The summary formulation, Sade's formula for liberation--"If there is no God, all things are lawful"--is the novel's central thematic problem and appears repeatedly. There is no God and no immortality, Ivan declares, only "absolute nothingness." Like Raskolnikov, Ivan manifests Sadean isolation, intellectual pride, and chilling detachment from others. Early on he tells Alyosha that it wouldn't take much for Dmitri to murder his father. "God forbid!" Alyosha replies in horror. Smiling, Ivan asks why God should forbid it. "One reptile will devour the other. And it will serve them both right, too." Ivan's Sadean appeals to determinist Nature, his belief that man is a natural egoist wishing evil on others, his refusal to put moral bounds on his desires and imagination, and his nihilist devaluation of human life, emerge when he tells Alyosha that men decide who is worthy to live on "grounds much more natural" than worth, and that everyone has the right to wish for another man's death. "Why lie to oneself since all men are like this and perhaps can't help being like this." (28)

Echoing the lovelessness of Sade's libertines, Ivan opens the chapter preceding "The Grand Inquisitor" by confessing to Alyosha that he has never understood how one can love one's neighbors. He then discourses on man's natural cruelty, closely following Sade. Ivan's discussion of child-flogging, and the dynamic of sadistic pleasure, are clearly inspired by the numerous child-whipping scenes of Justine and Juliette: "there are people who at every blow are worked up to sensuality, to literal sensuality, which increases progressively at every blow they inflict.... It's just their [children's] defenselessness that tempts the tormentor, just the angelic confidence of the child who has no refuge and no appeal, that sets the tormentor's vile blood on fire." Like Sade, Ivan sees cruelty and sadism as inherent in human nature: "In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden--the demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain ...." (29)

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Dostoevsky vs. the Marquis de Sade

Modern Age, Fall, 2004 by John Attarian

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