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Patrick Durkin 

Nietzschean Types in ​The Brothers Karamazov 

139817 –Dr. William Angus 

11​th​ February 2019 

For the Masters of Arts, English 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Durkin 1 
 

Abstract 

  
Nietzsche and Dostoevsky were contemporaries, and Nietzsche especially was known 

to admire Dostoevsky’s work. Both authors were interested in the study of the basis for 

human morality, and the search for a redirection of human morality; one in which the 

problems they saw with the current understanding of acceptable behaviour according to 

laws, religion and might is right, could be melded in with their own beliefs and struggles 

with their own mortality and morality. 

 

Although Nietzsche’s collection of essays ​The Genealogy of Morals,​ (1887) was 

written 7 years after Dostoevsky’s ​The Brothers Karamazov ​(1880), it is interesting to 

note that the main character types that Nietzsche believed created hierarchies that 

developed and sustained the morality of his time, appear in the form of the main 

characters in ​The Brothers Karamazov​. 

 

This thesis will be looking at the ​The Brothers Karamazov​ through the different 

character ‘types’ and the resulting psychomachia of the three legitimate brothers, the 

older brothers Dmitri and Ivan, and especially that of Alyosha, the youngest brother. 

The thesis will focus on both elder brothers’ evolution of thought and action through the 

progress of the novel, and, importantly, on each brothers’ interactions with Alyosha and 

the turbulent state of mind they regularly leave their younger sibling in. 

The final chapter of the thesis will concentrate on Alyosha and his journey throughout 

the novel, from his parting of ways with Zosima to his talk with the young boys by the 

stone. This journey, I believe, will be the one that extracts the idea of Dostoevsky’s true 

morality seen in the novel. 

 

 



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Table of Contents 
1. Introduction 3 

 

PART 1 

 

2​. Religion and ​The​ ​Brothers​ ​Karamazov 1​4 

3. Types in Dostoevsky and Nietzsche 2​8 

4. Russianness 34 

 

        PART 2 

 

5. Zosima 51 

a. Zosima’s similarities and differences to Nietzsche’s priestly type. 53 

b. Zosima and Alyosha: Setting Forth on the Path to Enlightenment 59 

6​. Ivan Karamazov’s intellectual type, and his effect on Alyosha 68 

a. Introduction 68 

b. Ivan: Part One – Commonalities with Nietzsche. 69 

c. Ivan: Part Two - His Role in the forming of a New Russian Type 82 

d. Ivan’s Effect on Alyosha 92 

7​. Dmitri Karamazov’s Sufferer Type and His Effect on Alyosha 95 

a. Introduction 95 

b. Dmitri: Part One – Commonalities with Nietzsche. 99 

c. Dmitri: Part Two-- His Role in the Forming of a New Russian Type 10​9 

8​. Alyosha Karamazov and his development into a new Russian type 1​20 

9. Conclusion 145 

10.    ​B​ibliography 147 

 

 

 

 



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1.  Introduction 
 

              ​"If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground." 

- Fyodor Dostoevsky, ​The Brothers Karamazov 

 
            “What would this life be without immortality? If the spiritual is not behind 

the material, to what purpose is the material?” 

                                                           -  Walt Whitman, ​Discussion  

 
Many have been the words written about Dostoevsky and his trials and turmoils 

on the religious front. What type of Christian was he? How did his orthodox upbringing 

come through in his novels? Was Dostoevsky a Christian at all or indeed an atheist at 

heart? The questions have been myriad throughout the centuries since his death and 

have been part of the development of different stages, forms, and methodologies of 

scholarship over the years. There are those who claim he must be scrutinised only 

through a close reading of his texts, and those who feel the times he lived in must be 

examined to elicit a more comprehensive understanding of the meaning in his works. 

This thesis will take the idea that it was all the influences, from intellectual atheism to 

religious fervour that creates a psychomachia that can be seen throughout the novel. 

This debate over methodology began primarily with a warming in East and West 

relations in the late twentieth century as Russian and Western scholars started working 

more closely together. As a result, there has been an eclectic mix of scholars: scholars 



Durkin 4 
 

of the East and the West, scholars who look at Dostoevsky through a religious 

viewpoint, and scholars who take a more philosophical view of scrutinising his work.  

This mirrors how Dostoevsky himself was torn between the new, revolutionary 

thinking coming out of Western Europe that was prevalent in Russian intellectual circles 

at the time and his own very orthodox upbringing. It was a form of psychomachia, a 

tugging apart of the psyche due to opposing forces, working on the author, that can be 

seen working in ​The Brothers Karamazov​. In ‘Thesis V. Religious Polemic in Narrative 

Form: ​The Brothers Karamazov​,’ from his book ​Dostoevsky and the Dynamics of 

Religious Experience​, Malcolm V. Jones describes this as “a situation where the 

extremes of religious faith and atheistic conviction appear to have reached a stalemate” 

(108). Though it is beyond the scope of this thesis, it is interesting to note the dualism 

that Dostoevsky struggled with throughout his life and the psychomachia that permeates 

his last great novel. 

The novel takes the reader through the turmoils of the family Karamazov, most 

especially the trials and tribulations of the three legitimate brothers: the oldest—Dmitri 

Fyodorovich Karamazov (Dmitri), the middle brother—Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov 

(Ivan), and the youngest —Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov (Alyosha). As the text 

progresses, the reader comes across many types, especially typical Russian types, that 

develop or contradict Alyosha’s journey to his spiritual peace.  In ‘Nietzsche’s 

Understanding of a Good Life: Seeking More Than Happiness,’ Marcella Tarozzi 

Goldsmith defines Nietzsche’s types as “a given model of existing human being that can 

be described in its essential traits.”  



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Jones examines “the vulgar literalism of old Karamazov and Smerdiakov [...] the 

secular liberalism of Miusov and Rakitin, the commitment of faith and living the life of 

active love in Alesha and Zosima, the poetical paganism of Dmitri, the uneducated and 

superstitious piety of Grigory and Marfa, the radical agnosticism or atheism of Ivan and 

the careerist motivation of Rakitin” (108). Jones also notes how the reader sees 

examples of the Russian tradition of the holy fool, martyrs for faith, sectarianism, 

hagiography, folk religion and Christian socialism, among others. It is clear that ​The 

Brothers Karamazov​ is saturated with very typical character types, and it will be shown 

later that this was done purposefully by the author.  

What this thesis proposes to do is to examine religious discourse in Dostoevsky’s 

novel,​ The Brothers Karamazov​, and what it has to say about morality from a religious 

perspective, especially concerning the route of the three brothers, and most especially, 

the hero of the story, Alyosha. This thesis will be based on the belief that as 

Dostoevsky’s culminating novel, it was also the culmination of the development of 

religious discourse in his works. Often it is his previous, great works that are held up 

and examined for their conversation on religious morality. ​Demons​,​ Notes from the 

Underground​, and ​The​ ​Idiot​ are all well documented by scholars over the ages for the 

speculations on religious morality they hold. What makes ​The​ ​Brothers​ ​Karamazov 

important in the discussions on religious morality portrayed in Dostoevsky’s novels is 

not its similarities to these previous novels, but instead, the subtle changes it shows 

when applying some of the same themes, character types, and symbolism.  



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 Indeed, the changes of theme, character, and action from the previous novels 

will briefly show a critical, fundamental change in this discourse in his final novel. This 

thesis will examine how many of the meanings and ideas that are taken and interpreted 

from the previous works end up being either evolved or, in fact, overturned, as the 

author’s progression of spiritual thought developed in his works. “The evidence should 

be found in Dostoevsky’s last novel [...] in the nothingness where cosmic despair or an 

experience of a transcendent reality may equally be found” (Jones 103). This changing 

of the import of these ideas, themes, and symbols that have been so prominent in 

previous novels adds credence to the notion that the religious discourse in the novel 

was about finding a new direction for religious morality to move in. It is about finding a 

new way forward for a modern looking world, but a way that still incorporates some of 

the old religious thinking, with the new Western intellectualism. This overturning of old 

ideas from previous texts blends with his combining of the old character types to create 

a new religious outlook and morality. 

This thesis will examine this great novel through the lens of one of Dostoevsky’s 

great contemporaries, and one whose thinking he would have been acutely aware of 

and discussed in the literary circles in which he socialised, discussed, and debated. 

Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the most prominent writers of the nineteenth century, 

and one of the leading proponents of the “God is Dead” line of thinking common in his 

time. This very clash of temperament is shown clearly in ​The​ ​Brothers​ ​Karamazov​ and 

can be used to help us trace the discourse on religion throughout the novel, along with 

the types that are more clearly delineated in Nietzsche’s work. 



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Nietzsche is as well known for his work on the historical development of human 

morals and his pressing claims for the need for a new understanding of morality, away 

from the old ruling principles determined for centuries by the overbearing overlords of 

Church, army, and land-owners, and the more modern phenomenon of intellectualism. 

The nature of his insight and way of looking at morality and its development is also a 

culmination of his thinking, and Dostoevsky’s outlook on religious morality and the way 

he portrays his characters, along with their contemporary nature, allows for an exciting 

and revealing comparison to be made. Specifically, regarding the novel, the thesis will, 

thus, explore how these character types are used as part of the discarding of the old 

thinking on morality and religion.  Through this evolution, a new “type” rises, and along 

with it, a new type of religious morality.  While these character types not only having 

struggles of psychomachia of their own throughout the novel, they also tug at the 

psyche of the “hero” of the story, the youngest brother of the three, Alyosha. Through 

the constant tug of the wants and ideas, indeed the morality of each of his family’s 

“types,” Dostoevsky develops his portrayal of a religious understanding throughout the 

novel. Thus, there is importance in studying the commonalities between Nietzsche’s use 

of “types” in his work ​On​ ​the​ ​Genealogy​ ​of​ ​Morality​ and Dostoevsky’s use of several 

familiar character types in his great work. This thesis will compare and contrast the two 

works and use them to develop an understanding of what the result of the discourse on 

religious morality is portrayed in his last book, ​The​ ​Brothers​ ​Karamazov​.  

Janko Lavrin, in ‘A Note on Nietzsche and Dostoevsky’ tells us that “they were 

also individually torn between strong religious temperament and that strong 



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anti-religious attitude which was so frequent a phenomenon of the age they lived in” 

(160). Lavrin also tells us that “another feature both of them shared was largely a result 

of the inner war each had to wage against the ‘complexes’ and contradictions in his 

self-divided consciousness” (161). So, the two authors not only shared an 

understanding of how “types” have dominated the religious morality passed down 

through the centuries, but they also shared a common striving for truth pitted against a 

background of very religious disposition. 

Thus, my research question is: “To what extent do the characters of ​The​ ​Brothers 

Karamazov​ mirror the ‘types’ described by Nietzsche in ​The Genealogy of Morals​, and 

what view does this give us into Dostoevsky’s discourse of religion in the novel?” 

This thesis will examine the idea of types that Nietzsche developed and 

explained more explicitly, and the psychomachia that these types display. It is the 

psychomachia that impacts the main character, Alyosha, and forms the position of this 

thesis—the idea that in the novel ​The​ ​Brothers​ ​Karamazov​, Fyodor Dostoevsky portrays 

a new kind of thinking. It is a new kind of thinking for his time and place, that moves 

away from the revelatory and “ascendance to the afterlife” spirituality, to an 

understanding of a kind of spiritual wholeness attainable while still in human form, 

walking this earth. In this, Dostoevsky moves from mimesis in his portrayal of many 

basic Russian types, to mathesis in the developing of new types for the modern Slavic 

world to follow and become.  This thesis takes the position that the real spiritual outlook 

depicted by the hero of the novel, Alyosha, is actual a more eastern, Buddhist outlook 

rather than the Orthodox or other types of Christianity proposed by the majority of 



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theological scholars or the nihilistic atheism suggested by others. There is no research 

to indicate that Dostoevsky had any understanding of the Buddhist religion itself. In 

‘Buddhism and The Brothers Karamazov,’ Michael Futrell states that the author “had 

some contact with the mystic and warrior Muhammad, but [...] his public 

pronouncements must seem far from Buddhism” (156). Thus, this work does not take 

the position that ​The​ ​Brothers​ ​Karamazov​ explicitly states a Buddhist belief. Instead 

through Dostoevsky’s use of Nietzschean types and the psychomachia that they 

display, this new understanding of religious morality developed in the novel displays 

remarkably similar attributes to eastern Buddhist thought. 

This thesis will examine this question through a thesis constructed in two main 

parts. Part One will develop a line of thinking that will be a wide exploration of religion 

and Russianness in the novel. The first section of Part One will involve a detailed look at 

past and current thinking on the religious morality, or lack of it, portrayed in 

Dostoevsky’s novels, as well as at some of the methodologies used to study this 

through some prominent scholars of the various approaches. The purpose of this is to 

show the vast variance that has been displayed throughout the years on what religious 

morality has been shown in Dostoevsky’s works, and what the religious discourse in the 

novels is actually saying. Presenting this wide range of methodologies is useful, as it is 

in ​The​ ​Brothers​ ​Karamazov​ where this plethora of approaches and ideas come together 

to form a more uniting, and ultimately enlightening, discourse on religious morality. This 

sets out the central position on the question: the religious discourse in ​The​ ​Brothers 

Karamazov​ develops into a more Buddhist outlook on life, than either Orthodox 



Durkin 10 
 

Catholic, nihilist or atheist. This proposal will be sustained and advanced in the second 

central part of the thesis with a more complete depiction of how the novel is showing 

this position. Also, the thesis defines the school of Buddhist thought that will be used to 

compare and contrast to the outlook of the religious discourses throughout the novel. 

This understanding of Buddhist thought will be used later in Part Two as this thesis 

dissects the action and dialogue of the novel more completely. 

In order to do this, an understanding of the history and usages of the term 

psychomachia will be given next, as well as the definition and usage of the terms of this 

thesis. It is through this struggle between two vastly opposite positions and all they 

entail that the belief or denial of the existence of God is one that drives the main 

characters.  Using this definition will set the basis for the more advanced thinking on the 

use of psychomachia in the novel in Part Two, as it is this psychomachia that, by the 

end of the novel, ultimately leads Alyosha to an understanding of his religious position.  

The last section of Part One will contain a comparison between Nietzsche’s and 

Dostoevsky’s writing, and, most importantly, between their works, ​The Genealogy of 

Morals​ and ​The​ ​Brothers​ ​Karamazov​. There will be a general introduction to the 

understanding of the idea of types both works show. Here the thesis will portray how the 

two can be shown not just to contain these similar understandings on not only the idea 

of “types” but also the certain “types” that have influenced societal thinking (be it moral 

or religious) over the centuries. Leading on from this analysis of types will be Part Two 

of the thesis, where the study of how the use of these types in The Brothers 



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Karamazov, and the psychomachia they bring about, leads to to a religious discourse in 

the novel more centered around brotherly love. 

Here I will be looking at the first collection in Nietzsche’s work, in the ​Preface​, 

which highlights the roles of the ruling orders that have defined and enforced the 

morality that have been passed down through the centuries up to the point of writing. 

This thesis will compare these ruling orders through the characters that Dostoevsky had 

previously displayed in his work. There is a very Russian character to these types that 

Dostoevsky uses, but they still fit well with the overall idea of Nietzsche’s. The types are 

very transferable from a broader European setting to a more Orthodox Russian 

environment. Hence, when Carol Apollonio tells us that the characters in ​The​ ​Brothers 

Karamazov​ are all “quintessentially mid-nineteenth century Russians” who are 

“grounded fully in their historical space and time as well,” there is no clash between 

Nietzsche’s types displayed from a broader setting, and Dostoevsky’s more centralised 

type (24). 

Part Two will consist of the main body of the thesis and will individually break 

down character types in the novel to show how Dostoevsky used this way of writing to 

portray a spiritual stance in the novel. It will develop, through the psychomachia Alyosha 

had to endure, presented to him by his two brothers, driven by the “types” from 

Nietzsche’s ​The Genealogy of Morals​, what we can discern to describe Dostoevsky’s 

original take on religion. 

The first way it will develop this will be by comparing the portrayals of the two 

oldest Brothers Karamazov with the second and third thesis of Nietzsche’s book. I will 



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look at how the second thesis ‘‘Guilt,’ ‘Bad Conscience’ and the Like” compares neatly 

with the role of Dimitri in the novel. Here, Nietzsche’s type of a restricted thinker who 

does what they “ought” and the “un-egoistic instincts” contrasts very well with the 

passionate and wildly unpredictable Dmitri (8). The third thesis, ‘What is the Meaning of 

Ascetic Ideals?’ compares very well with the second brother, Ivan. This thesis discusses 

philosophers, thinkers and artists and how they are “stifling of vitality,” which fits very 

well with Ivan’s demise and lethargy throughout the novel (178). 

The first focus will be on Dmitri and how his form of psychomachia was between 

the soul and the mind, and which should have dominance in determining his actions. 

After comparing this character with the ideas from Nietzsche’s second thesis, the focus 

will turn to examining the effect Dmitri’s passionate outbursts and seemingly illogical 

actions have on Alyosha. The eldest brother's influence will represent one side of the 

psychomachia that leads Alyosha to his religious understanding at the end of the novel. 

Dmitri’s type will be seen to be posing that of the person driven by inner beliefs and one 

who acts on those beliefs, often to his undoing. 

Next, Ivan will be looked at in much the same way, except from the other side of 

Alyosha’s psychomachia— as the intelligent, God-denying philosopher. Ivan’s struggles 

are much more the classical literary idea of psychomachia, with actual devils appearing 

to him (whether as psychosis or not) and his refusal to live in any world where a God 

would allow such suffering as Ivan details.  

By comparing and contrasting both the brothers to the types in these works, this 

thesis will show how Dostoevsky has appropriated universal character types in his 



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novel, and that these were similar to the ones Nietzsche later discussed in his work. 

Once this is established, the central resolve of the thesis is founded: “In ​The​ ​Brothers 

Karamazov,​ Dostoevsky portrays a religious discourse based on two main worldly 

factors, both tussling with an idea of humanity’s understanding of a belief in God and all 

that it encompasses, tugging at the essence of humanity”. Humanity, in this case, is 

represented by his new type of Everyman, Alyosha, and the secular forces represented 

by the intellectualism of Ivan and the passion-driven Dmitri. The development of this 

new type of Everyman is brought about by the clashes of the effects of modern 

philosophical argument versus passionate and innate belief that drives the discourse on 

religious morality. It is these clashes that ultimately move Alyosha to his understanding 

of his place in a world that so complexly disputes the role and even existence of a God 

in this world. It is through these confrontations that Alyosha discerns the need for a 

brotherly love that must start with the people.  

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



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PART 1 

2. Religion and ​The​ ​Brothers​ ​Karamazov​     
                ​                       

“The gap between Dostoevsky’s proclaimed beliefs and the way he depicts the problem 

of religion [... ] is our current critical workplace.”  

- Carol Apollonio, ‘Dostoevsky’s Religion: Words, 

Images, and the Seed of Charity’ 

 As his last work, it is natural to view ​The Brothers Karamazov ​as some endpoint 

in a long and profoundly thoughtful argument concerning humanity’s understanding of 

the idea of the existence of God and the morality that comes from pursuing such ideas. 

However, to approach reading ​The Brothers Karamazov​ as the culmination of 

Dostoevsky’s long and winding path on his discourse of religious morality, would involve 

an all-encompassing study of his previous works, which is outside the scope of this 

thesis. Instead, this thesis will only briefly look at interpretations and understandings of 

the religious discourse in Dostoevsky’s previous novels and some of the symbolism, 

character traits, and themes that are common throughout the earlier works and his final 

novel. In this way, the changes that occur in these ideas between the previous works 

and ​The Brothers Karamazov​ can shine a light on the direction the psychomachia of 

Alyosha describes in terms of religious morality.  

Also, this section of the thesis will examine the methodology of the scholarship 

around Dostoevsky’s work and the many influences on his work that have been noted 

by a range of different critics. Through this, it will set up the central argument in the 



Durkin 15 
 

thesis that these influences are also continuously seen in Dostoevsky’s final work, and 

that they contribute to the portrayal of the youngest Karamazov brother as being pulled 

towards a morality defined by his own religious understanding.  

The first part of this is to examine the multiple opinions and outlooks on the 

subject of religious morality throughout Dostoevsky’s works, which have always been a 

much-debated topic of discussion, especially regarding his later books. It has become a 

subject of even more debate in more recent scholarship, with some critics moving 

towards a theophanic criticism, while others find the method too limiting or even 

self-fulfilling. In discussion of this type of criticism, in the introduction to ​Dostoevsky 

Studies​ ​13, ​Susan McReynolds states: “Theophanic criticism currently enjoy[ing] great 

popularity among Western and Russian Dostoevsky critics” but that it is also one of the 

“most influential critical approaches” (6-7). Authors who are seen to use this 

methodology, such as Robin Feuer Miller and Carol Apollonio are mentioned here (and 

will be discussed in the latter stages of the thesis) as are also critics who oppose it, 

such as Steven Cassedy and Rudolph Neuhauser who “cautions against a trend in 

Russian Dostoevsky scholarship towards stripping away the artistic dimensions of 

Dostoevsky’s texts” (8). 

There was a vast array of Western intellectual thought being transfused into 

Russia during the early and mid-nineteenth century. Received wisdom about religion 

tended to point a Russian intellectual of Dostoevsky’s generation in the direction of one 

of two main sets of thinking: firstly, the humanistic line of thought that produced 

Feuerbach and the many “Lives of Jesus,” or, secondly, a very “Slavophile, nationalist 



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view of Russian Orthodoxy as the lone true system of religious belief on earth” 

(Cassedy 115). Their influence on the movement of Dostoevsky’s spiritual and 

philosophical thinking cannot be denied. Philosophers such as Hegel, Nietzsche, and 

Kant were discussed in the main centers and literary circles of Russia. Javro Lankin, in 

‘A Note on Dostoevsky and Nietzsche’ tells us that Dostoevsky was “a follower of the 

atheist Belinsky, but also joined the Petrashevsky circle,” two influences that would 

have been very aware of the radical intellectual thought coming from Western Europe 

(3). In his book ​Dostoevsky’s Religion​, Steven Cassedy states that “any Russian who 

came of age in the 1840s might have thought about these questions and issues with 

religion. Many of them were framed by West European, Primarily German thinkers” and 

goes on to say “others were framed by Russian thinkers who were either directly 

borrowing from Western European thinkers or adapting ideas of these thinkers to their 

own national context” (27). Socialism, Nihilism, as well as Nietzsche’s famous statement 

“God is dead,” were all ideas Dostoevsky would have grappled with in his conversations 

and communications with friends and in the greater literary circles of the time. 

Regarding the author’s position on God and Man, or, conversely, what the author 

says about God and Man, Dostoevsky saw “the significance of religious issues for the 

intelligentsia of the 1900s” and he intuited “the inner contradictions of their religious 

belief and their incompatibility with the more forthright piety of the established church” 

(Bird 20). But also, for Dostoevsky, this philosophical debate transformed into a conflict 

that was between the new thoughts of the period dictating that God is dead, or that 

humanity invented God, and his strong Orthodox Christian beliefs. The tangled mess 



Durkin 17 
 

that is often perceived to be his beliefs, as Cassedy references that “we can never pin 

him down to a consistent set of beliefs,” can be ascribed to this large influx of thought 

during a flourishing period of intellectualism in Western Europe and while Russia is 

clinging to the set of very Russian Christian Biblical interpretations (114). Cassedy also 

tells us of the author’s “relationship with Russia’s reigning progressive literary [...] critic 

of the 1840s, Vissarion Belinsky [...] [who] read much of the philosophy that was in 

vogue among Russian intellectuals during the 1830s and 1840 and discussed it with 

Dostoevsky” (42). But from Gerald J. Sabo, in “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man: 

Christian Hope for Human Society,” he states how Dostoevsky kept a copy of the 

Russian New Testament by his bedside and that the “significance of the New 

Testament during those four years was confirmed by Dostoevsky’s (second) wife as 

well as its role in his life until the very day of his death” (49). 

Dostoevsky saw “the significance of religious issues for the intelligentsia of the 

1900s” and he intuited “the inner contradictions of their religious belief and their 

incompatibility with the more forthright piety of the established church” (Bird 20). This 

understanding of the two opposing sides of religious morality played a major role in 

Dostoevsky’s themes in his novels. 

These two polar opposite philosophies form a kind of psychomachia, tugging 

between Dostoevsky’s search for truth and his belief in the Russian Orthodox idea of 

Jesus Christ as the saviour. In ‘Fyodor Dostoevsky and Friedrich Nietzsche: 

Power/Weakness,’ Ekaterina Poljakova mentions that, though Dostoevsky strongly 

believes in “Christian truth, he also found himself profoundly affected by a rival 



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perspective in the world - the truth of its scientific-atheistic interpretation,” while Caryl 

Emerson states that the novel has “on the one side, the Holy Spirit, moving through the 

detached and unfamilied Zosima [...] And on the other side, human beings who in 

Mikhail’s judgment also represent a living truth” (Poljakova 122; Emerson 155). 

It is this intersection, or this overlap, between the humanistic and the devotional 

that is where any understanding of Dostoevsky’s ​The Brothers Karamazov​ must come 

from. It is in the clash between “God is dead” and Jesus Christ as “the way, and the 

truth, and the Life” (John, 14.6) that we can hope to seek a fuller understanding of the 

direction the discourse on religious morality takes through his final novel. Much like 

Alyosha in ​The Brothers Karamazov​, Dostoevsky had a dual understanding of morality 

and had to combine and fuse aspects of each, as well as discard what, deep down, did 

not gel with his own understanding to come up with his own answer to the religious and 

moral struggle of his role as well as all humanity’s role on this earth. 

A lot of the struggles Dostoevsky might have faced when coming to terms with 

his own understanding of God and religion would have been in working through the 

permeating ideas that either God is dead or that he was only a manifestation of human 

consciousness in the first place. Hegel was someone that Dostoevsky sought out, as 

evidenced in letters to his brother asking for copies of the philosopher’s work. According 

to Cassedy, Hegel “more than anyone was responsible for reducing religious 

experience to a phenomenon of human consciousness” (33). He also would have been 

aware of Schleiermacher in circles that discussed the ideas of Nietzsche, whose 

philosophy was that “the essence of religion is neither thinking [that is, metaphysics] nor 



Durkin 19 
 

acting [that is, morality], but intuition and feeling” and “there can be no God without the 

world” and also Kant, who put it more bluntly, “the saviour is nothing more than an idea 

formed in human reasoning” (Cassedy 31-32). 

But pulling against these thoughts Dostoevsky had his robust Orthodox 

upbringing and beliefs. Carol Apollonio tells us that “Fyodor Dostoevsky was a Russian 

Orthodox believer for whom the image of Christ was a ‘symbol of faith’ so powerful that 

he would choose it over proven truth” (23). These beliefs were not only in Christ as the 

saviour, but two other convictions which the author had with him throughout his life. The 

first was in the power of icons, as Apollonio says: “Eastern Orthodoxy, of course, gives 

primacy to the icon as a conduit to religious experience” and also of the Bible as the 

true word of God and capable of enabling prophecy (28). Dostoevsky had his New 

Testament by his bedside and would turn to random pages and interpret them as 

prophecy dictating what would happen in his life that day. Sabo tells us that on the day 

of his death, Dostoevsky, after being read a passage from Matthew’s Gospel, 

“concluded that he was going to die, and his wife should not hold him back from this 

happening” (48). Jones states that the author’s last novel is a situation where the 

“extremes of religious faith and atheistic conviction appear to have reached stalemate” 

(103). 

However, rather than an apparent stalemate between the two, they act as 

catalysts to form a new type. As Cassedy later notes about the novel, it is “clearly 

fundamental to religion [...] but bears no peculiar connection with Dostoevsky’s own 

native tradition” (146).  Rather, it is describing how “man will be reborn definitively [...] 



Durkin 20 
 

into another nature” (117). This pulling apart from two sides of the author’s ideas and 

beliefs on God and religion is the psychomachia that leads Alyosha down his path of 

understanding his own religious ideas and morality. But even though a new type is 

formed, it still holds aspects of both the old Orthodoxy and the new intellectual atheism 

as well as the unique Russianness that permeates throughout Dostoevsky’s novels. 

Apollonio describes how “Linda Ivanits demonstrates the centrality of the charitable 

impulse in Dostoevsky’s novels and traces its roots to the religion of the common 

people” (32). Even though Futrell mentions that Dostoevsky’s “sensitivity to the 

emotional, aesthetic and visionary aspects of religion overcom[e] his Christian and 

Russian exclusiveness,” which agrees with the idea of a new type being formed, Lavrin 

also states in “A Note on Nietzsche and Dostoevsky” that the author was “still tormented 

by the old doubter or skeptic in him, he clung [...] to Slavophilism and to the kind of 

rootedness in the native soil” (Futrell 3; Lavrin 169). Moreover, he notes that religious 

and psychological perspectives of both the modern and pre-modern world of Russia and 

other parts of the world to discover that the traditions or ideas indigenous to the writer’s 

native Russia, surprisingly, are not always the dominant ones (Lavrin 191). Apollonio 

tells us that his “protagonists embody prototypes from the Gospels, the lives of saints, 

folklore, and patristic literature, but they are also quintessentially mid-nineteenth century 

Russians” (24). So Alyosha, is being formed, from the semblances of the previous types 

that it is moulded. He is a new Russian everyman, with a new conceptual understanding 

on what ideas and morals will form the basis for modern thinking. As Bird says, 



Durkin 21 
 

“Dostoevsky’s goal was [...] to deepen and strengthen the very fact of individual 

consciousness and being in Russia” (Bird 24).  

 Along with this is Dostoevsky’s anxiety “to demonstrate such simultaneity in 

humanly embodied secular narrative” (Emerson 171).  It is in this account that the 

author portrays “a proper mix within it of philosophy and faith” in which the new type of 

Everyman emerges (172). This pulling apart from two sides of the author’s ideas and 

beliefs on God and religion is the psychomachia that leads Alyosha down his path of 

understanding his own religious views and morality. The psychomachia brought forth by 

the two distinct types of his brothers compels a new understanding of how life must be 

lived. In ‘The Passion of Dmitri Karamazov,’ Carol A. Flath mentions that Dostoevsky 

“suggests the impossibility of earthly justice but compensates for this harsh truth 

through a vision of transcendent joy” (584). This thesis suggests that more than just 

compensating for lack of earthly justice, this transcendence is more of a new type of 

religious position that is proposed through the discourse of religion in the novel. The 

ultimate psychomachia of the novel, manifested in Alyosha, is the guide to religious 

morality ​The Brothers Karamazov​ delivers. Alyosha’s pathway shows a belief in the 

spiritual goodness of Christ, mixed with a need to actually live his life in this world and 

seek spiritual fulfilment whilst still here on earth. As Zosima says, “what is the word of 

Christ without an example” (Dostoevsky 267).  

A much more worldly type of understanding comes from this pressure cooker of 

the radical western thought and old Orthodox values. It is “precisely the anguished 

ambiguities of faith” that lead to this formation of a new morality (Lesic-Thomas 776). 



Durkin 22 
 

The new understanding is one of a paradise that can be lived on earth, without waiting 

for paradise after death. Futrell in ‘Buddhism and The Brothers Karamazov’ states that 

there are “some features of the book [that] bear comparison with certain aspects of 

Buddhism” while Harrison in ‘The Numinous Experience’ says that “Dostoevsky’s major 

novels converge around the ruling idea of personal transformation [...] it intimates a 

nascent awareness of a higher self that coheres with the integral vision of 

transcendence” (Futrell 1; Harrison 388). This, combined with Robert Bird telling us 

“Dostoevsky’s goal was [...] to deepen and strengthen the very fact of individual 

consciousness and being in Russia,” captures Alyosha’s newly formed understanding at 

the end of the novel, where brotherly love supersedes all else (24). 

The thrust of this thesis will be that this outlook is arrived at through the 

psychomachia Alyosha endures from his two brothers. Furthermore, this thesis will 

maintain that these brothers were both written as character types, very similar to the 

ones later described in Nietzsche’s ​The Genealogy of Morals​ and that the religious 

discourse in ​The Brothers Karamazov ​culminates with the creation of a new type, a 

modern Everyman for a particularly Russian point of view. This new Russian Everyman 

is, of course, Alyosha, and he represents the pathway that is needed to be taken for a 

new religious morality to come into existence. Malcolm Jones points this out in saying 

that  Dostoevsky’s “work is not ‘permeated’ with the spirit of Orthodoxy. They do all, in 

different ways, show the presence of new shoots of faith appearing in the atheistic 

gloom” (152). 



Durkin 23 
 

There are distinct moments in the novel when the beliefs of Orthodoxy are either 

shown in a ridiculous light or strongly questioned. This questioning often occurs in the 

first part of the novel, especially in the monastery where the monks are divided over 

specific issues or shown to be quite petty. Many of the monastery’s inhabitants form 

factions against the idea of Zosima’s being an elder, while others show fanatical 

devotion by fasting or remaining in solitude or even by claiming to see demons 

everywhere. These questioned ideas are highlighted by the fact that, instead of the 

miraculous preservation of Zosima’s body that many were expecting as a sign of his 

sainthood, the monk’s body decays more quickly than others and very soon lets off a 

distinct foul odour. Yet, with the intellectuals in the novel, Ivan, who goes mad, 

Smerdiakov who kills himself and the smug lawyers and atheists like Muisov, Western 

philosophical thought is not shown to be the answer either. Dostoevsky wrote that 

atheism “could not be disproved point by point; to counter it, an entire ‘artistic picture’ 

was required” (Emerson 155). 

All of these portrayals are important as they form the background for Alyosha’s 

traumatic upheavals as he makes his way into the world. Zosima sends him out into the 

world and on the religious quest to find himself and his religious moral position. Both his 

legitimate brothers represent two sides pulling at his beliefs and ideas the same way 

Dostoevsky was. Ivan, the intellectual and debater on religion, God, and the futility of it 

all, can be seen to represent the philosophers and thinkers whose thought pervaded the 

intellectual circles of Russia during his formative years. He represents the radical new 

thinking that “took Western Europe’s spiritual relativism to the next level” (Cassedy 47). 



Durkin 24 
 

Whereas, Dimitri is the passion, and the feeling; he is the man who acts and speaks in 

wild rage or love torn desperation. He represents the belief side, the part of a religion 

that does not come from rational thought or informed debate, but the feeling and 

intuition that Schleiermacher dismissed so easily. He has the mad revelations, like in 

the Gospel of Matthew, “through which God speaks to humans with positive 

life-changing messages” (Sabo 49).  Through being pulled on both sides by his familial 

psychomachia, Alyosha comes to his path, that of a content almost blissful serenity with 

the world and his place in it. Grigori Pomerants says it best: “Dostoevsky believed in 

universal harmony, on earth” (23).  

“On earth” is important to the new Everyman that is formed. The idea of waiting 

for death to find spiritual unity is cast aside in ​The Brothers Karamazov​.  In the 

Orthodox model, there is a distinct difference between life on earth and a heavenly 

paradise; there is a “qualitative difference between this side and that” (Cassedy 123). In 

place of “the state of fusion and synthesis where the I is annihilated” is an ability to 

acquire an inner peace and transcendence here on earth, while still living (120). Unlike 

in previous novels, the idea of transformation into a nothingness or non-entity is 

discarded. This transformation is best shown in the idea of epilepsy, which was 

described in previous novels to represent characters who are capable of achieving a 

transcendence on earth, but only at the cost of their own consciousness or the 

obliterating of the “I.” Prince Myshkin in ​The Idiot​ is the perfect example of this. 

However, in ​The Brothers Karamazov​, the epileptic fit is discarded as a means of 

transcendence. Rather, it is used as part of the ploy that Smerdiakov enacts in order to 



Durkin 25 
 

murder Fyodor Pavlovich. It is also apparent in the lack of any mention of visions or 

miracles by any credible character in the novel. Much like Nietzsche’s goal to  “breed a 

slow and severe constitution, impervious to being overwhelmed by new stimuli” that 

Simon Townsend describes, ​The Brothers Karamazov​ moves away from this idea of 

instant transformation and into the idea of a blissful love here on earth. (Townsend 10). 

Gone is the “hysteric [...] devoid of unified and strong character” in place of the ability to 

obtain paradise here on earth, through an ability to take on the sins of your brothers, 

and an unconditional love (6). 

As Caryl Emerson tells us, “the emphasis is on man’s psyche rather than on 

God’s grace” (158). The ability to reach enlightenment and peacefulness in this life to 

attain that god-like state of bliss, is where the novel takes us. Rather than seeing our 

earthly lives as being either devoid of any religious meaning and therefore morality, or 

as being a game of waiting for the next life to enjoy spiritual peace, ​The Brothers 

Karamazov​ takes us on its journey to display a unique new stance, forged through the 

world of the old types and thinking. Malcolm Jones understood this when he described 

this overwriting of the old understanding thus; it is “the idea of the sacred, an awakening 

to a previously hidden or suppressed reality that is superordinate to the established 

secularism of the modern mind” (398). 

This awakening is an understanding that it is here on earth that the rewards of 

paradise are to be found, not in another realm where one must lose oneself in order to 

gain entry. The new religious morality that is displayed is one of an active love for 

everything and everyone. This active love is why Emerson says that the “irrational 



Durkin 26 
 

recovery of the ability to love was Dostoevsky’s most precious point of faith” (157). 

However, as Poljakova tells us, “the all-encompassing guilt of the world is to be 

acknowledged” (130). Also, one must make oneself responsible for the guilt of the 

world. This is akin to Alyosha’s understanding of accepting the world and its 

weaknesses, while still being able to move forward on a path of peace and love. A new 

morality and understanding must be born, and this is why it is that Alyosha is the true 

hero of the story. After all, it is his journey to discover for himself what his religious 

outlook must be that is the heart of the novel. It is through him, starting with his leaving 

the monastery at the request of Zosima, that we can trace a path of struggle mixed with 

passion and fraught with opposing ideas that lead to this new religious morality. 

Emerson mentions that Roger Anderson calls Zosima “surely eccentric as a Christian 

monk but fully persuasive as a mystical pantheist” with a “cosmic interconnectedness” 

(165). 

This idea of interconnectedness would not be new to many of Orthodox faith. 

Furthermore, the idea that we are all guilty and that only an active, everyday love could 

overcome was not a novelty. Justin White in ‘The Russian Orthodox Response’ tells us 

how the great critic and Orthodox Church leader, Father Serge, says that “most 

members of the Orthodox tradition would read Dostoevsky and claim that he is 

Orthodox” (1). However others, like Lesic-Thomas, state that “as a number of critics 

have pointed out, Zosima’s and Aloysha’s ethics, in its practicality, is not greatly 

concerned with God,” while Apollonio says that “neither Orthodox symbols, dogma, and 



Durkin 27 
 

ritual, nor the iconic image of Christ figure prominently in the writer’s great novels” and 

that “Christ is absent in image and sign” (Lesic-Thomas 785; Apollonio 23). 

So, the novel is not about attaining heaven in the next world, but an 

understanding that it is in this world that paradise must be found, and to do that, Zosima 

“speaks of ‘touching of other worlds’ as a necessary component of our survival in this 

one” (Emerson 171). Futrell points out that “prominent in Zosima’s transformation from 

military officer to monk was his realisation that ‘we don’t understand that life is 

paradise’” (3). It is as Poljakova argues that in “the idea of ‘active love’ in ​The Brothers 

Karamazov​, the Russian writer wanted to express something different” (135). 

Pomerants sums up this new understanding well, which comes from the meeting 

of such distinct ideas in the novel, saying that “the universal harmony about which 

Dostoevsky prophesied does not in the least signify the utilitarian prosperity of people 

on this present earth but rather the beginning of that new earth where truth abides” (23). 

This is the perception that is built up in Alyosha as he witnesses the travails of his 

brothers in ​The Brothers Karamazov ​and is the ultimate new religious morality 

developed in the novel.  

 

 

 



Durkin 28 
 

3. Types in Dostoevsky and Nietzsche 
“Dostoevsky’s heroes can be martyrs for the idea, but they are not in any sense, 

marionettes of the idea.”  

- Carl Emerson, “Zosima’s ‘Mysterious Visitor’” 

 
Seven years after Dostoevsky finished ​The Brothers Karamazov, ​Friedrich 

Nietzsche released ​The Genealogy of Morals ​in 1886​. ​The two seemed to share an 

understanding of the zeitgeist of the period which was how the morality of society had 

been shaped by certain ”‘types” down the centuries. In ​The Brothers Karamazov, 

Dostoevsky’s characters fulfilled many of these roles as types that twenty years later 

Nietzsche was to define more precisely in his work. The similarities between the more 

specifically delineated roles of the types in Nietzsche’s three theses and the portrayal of 

the main characters in Dostoevsky’s work is a main theme of this thesis. This thesis will 

be investigating how Dmitri, Ivan, and the Elder Zosima, as well as some of the 

peripheral characters, all align with a type from each of Nietzsche’s three theses and 

how the third Karamazov, Alyosha, did not. This thesis will show that the two authors 

shared an understanding of the role of certain ruling types in defining their 

contemporary religious morality. Because the youngest Karamazov, Alyosha, did not fit 

into any of these types both authors described, he was, thus, able to display a new path 

for modern Russian religious morality. Before elaborating on this conclusion, it is first 

necessary to understand both Nietzsche’s and Dostoevsky’s use of types in their works. 

Nietzsche believed that all people had traits that could evolve in different ways, 

with certain traits dominating depending on the society that they lived in. This echoed 



Durkin 29 
 

what Dostoevsky had portrayed twenty years earlier in his work with the lives of Ivan 

and Dmitri upon their return to their home town in Russia. Both writers understood that 

the inherent characteristics of people were shaped by the society around them. Both 

authors also understood that certain attributes of each person were preferred in that 

type, but did not always come to prominence. The two also displayed a thinking that 

what was a desirable trait in one breed of person was not always a preferable 

characteristic in a different type.  

However, there were noteworthy differences between Nietzsche’s and 

Dostoevsky’s use of types. While Nietzsche penned his three theses as a more 

scientific discussion of the evolution of society’s morals created by specific, defining 

aspects of humanity’s natures, Dostoevsky brought to life characters whose individuality 

was still hampered by their own defining types. The sides of their personality, which 

dominated this type, were molded by the different communities they had lived in. The 

other difference between the two texts is that Nietzsche’s treatise outlined the roles 

each type had played in the forming of religious morality through the centuries as well 

as his dislike of such a system. On the other hand, Dostoevsky not only uses his cast to 

perform a mimetic role in characterising these traits, but also provides an answer in the 

mathesis role that Alyosha performs by defining a new type of religious morality for 

Russia. 

Nietzsche did not believe that a person’s nature was the only thing that controlled 

their behaviour and actions. He also saw that nurture, or the role of the society that a 

person developed in, was vital in controlling which aspects of a person’s type came to 



Durkin 30 
 

play the dominant role in their life. Dostoevsky understood this also and had illustrated 

this two decades before in his description of the lives of Ivan and Dmitri Karamazov, as 

well as the Elder Zosima.  

In the preface to his theses, Nietzsche explains that ​The Genealogy of Morals ​ is 

a culmination of much of the thinking and work up to that date, and that his ideas “have 

grown riper, clearer, stronger, more complete” (2). The theses are his “thoughts 

concerning the ​genealogy ​of our moral prejudices” after he “gave up looking for a 

supernatural ​origin of evil” (2, 4). These theses investigate “under what conditions did 

Man invent for himself those judgements of value, ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’?” (4). Nietzsche 

wants to look at the “real ​history of morality​”  so that the reader can understand that 

there is no “​blue vacuum of heaven​” but rather that the whole area of morality is “​grey” 

(10). By this he is referring to previous philosophies (in particular “English theories”) that 

have run to a certain script concerning the development of human morality (11). Rather 

than believing that one suits all form of morality passed down by the institutions over the 

years, Nietzsche thought that “type facts partially explains the beliefs and actions, 

including moral beliefs and actions, of the person whom those type-facts 

characterize,” and, even more than that, “which type someone belongs to can (though 

needn’t) evolve over the course of her lifetime” (Alfano 418). This is similar to the 

understanding Dostoevsky had depicted with his story of the three brothers Karamazov. 

The brothers wrangled with a society whose morals had been decided by conventions 

from organisations that only recognised morality based on their own type. This is why 

Dostoevsky’s characters have “rich individuality” and “depart from the typical in the 



Durkin 31 
 

sense of the statistical average”; they are there to represent how the contemporary 

Russian world can no longer be constrained by ethics passed down based on a small 

number of ruling types’ understandings of how life must be lived correctly (Bird 19). 

The old ideas of good and evil were challenged by both writers: Nietzsche with a 

“treatise extolling the virtue of a peculiarly anti-modern type” and Dostoevsky with a 

novel that “creates life, a life in such full amplitude as did not exist before him” 

(Townsend 1; Bird 17).  ​The Brothers Karamazov ​sees the two older brothers struggle 

to discover their true selves in Skotoprigonyevsk, where “the remnants of ideological 

types are cast together in a spectacular, renewing explosion” (Bird 25). Because both 

Ivan and Dmitri had been brought under the influence of some of the morality deciding 

types that had dominated Russian society’s ethical decisions on right and wrong, they 

were unable to break free and present “new shoots of faith” and who all but die “at the 

burning point of (their) inner struggle between good and evil” (Jones 152; Apollonio 20). 

In writing about Camus’s ​The Plague, ​Lesic-Thomas says that the “reshuffling of 

characters and ideologies allows for a humanist moralist to emerge out of Dostoevsky’s 

vision” (5). However, this thesis contends that this is what Alyosha did also. It was 

through witnessing the inner turmoil his brothers faced with the dominant types of their 

personality that Alyosha reshuffled his understanding of morality to come up with “a 

synthesis with everything. “Love everything as yourself​” ​idea of brotherly love enacted 

firstly by that great Russian being, the peasant (Cassedy 117).  Clearly, Dostoevsky 

turns away from the mimesis of his characters who cannot break free of society’s 



Durkin 32 
 

morals bound by their types and presents the mathesis effect of the new morality 

envisioned by Alyosha at the end of the novel.   

Both writers understood there was a far more complex and changeable amount 

of personalities existing in the world. Alfano notes that there is an amazing amount of 

types for Nietzsche “not just a binary distinction between higher and lower, master and 

slave, noble and contemptible,”  while Townsend tells us that Nietzsche “describes 

multiple higher types, with incommensurable physiological and psychological 

characteristics, and that attempts to collapse these into one type obscure the richness 

of his thought” (Alfano 419; Townsend 1). Alfonso goes on to say that “the vast majority 

of people’s evaluations are foisted on them by their society and culture” and that 

“Nietzsche clearly thinks that drives change in the face of social pressure and 

evaluation” (1). This is why the German philosopher treatises against current moral 

standings. The contemporary definitions of good and evil and right and wrong were 

developed by limited sets of types to suit their own purposes and ends. It is these ruling 

types of military, clergy, landowner or intellectual that has defined morality according to 

their own limited understanding. They have handed down rules on how to live to the 

masses of people, without having any understanding of how they really live or who they 

really are. Thus, the common people are not able to flourish amongst these sets of rules 

that they don’t really understand.  

The most obvious example of this sort of common person in ​The Brothers 

Karamazov ​is Fyodor Karamazov’s servant Grigory, who blindly follows the tenets of 

faith and behaviour handed down to him by his masters, as when he saw his wife dance 



Durkin 33 
 

and horrified at the inappropriateness of it for one of her station, beats her for the first 

and only time in their life (Dostoevsky 100). Grigory is the most basic portrayal of a 

simple type, whereas the two elder Karamazov brothers display much more complex 

characters. Yet they still battle to establish normal relations in their town because of 

their non-conformity with the established morality of the time. The Karamazov brothers 

are, as Robert Bird describes, the “positive types either languish on the brink of rebirth 

without fully achieving it or perish at the hands of more potent historical forces” (26). 

Further to this Bird goes on to discuss the creation of values through literature in 

Russia:  “Dostoevsky’s goal was [...] to deepen and strengthen the very fact of individual 

consciousness and being in Russia. Literature in Russia […] inscribes values into 

culture through ascetic creation” (24). As Ekaterina Polijakova expounds about 

Dostoevsky, “his writing, in many ways, an experiment with the idea of love, as it is 

incarnated in the figures of concrete people” and that “it is along these lines that 

Nietzsche interpreted the ‘redeemer type’ and this also was under the influence of 

Dostoevsky” (121, 128). 

 
Dostoevsky does this by displaying the failure of the current morality, embedded 

in society by a few indistinct types. He portrays this through the simpleminded following 

of Grigory, but in a more complex way with Ivan and Dmitri, who are two higher types 

who cannot fulfill their potential. It is only Alyosha, who breaks free of any morality 

handed down over the centuries who, by “searching for ‘a ​new ​greatness of man, a new 

untrodden path to his enlargement” emerges as a new type for Russian morality to 

follow (Townsend 16).​  



Durkin 34 
 

4. Russianness  
 
 “‘Stay!’ cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, in a transport of delight. ‘So you do 

suppose there are two who can move mountains? Ivan, make a note of it, 

write it down. There you have the Russian all over!’ 

‘You're quite right in saying it's characteristic of the people's faith,’ Ivan 

assented, with an approving smile. 

‘You agree. Then it must be so if you agree. It's true, isn't it, Alyosha? 

That's the Russian faith all over, isn't it?’ 

‘No, Smerdyakov has not the Russian faith at all,’ said Alyosha firmly and 

gravely. 

‘I'm not talking about his faith. I mean those two in the desert, only that 

idea. Surely that's Russian, isn't it?’ 

Yes, that's purely Russian,’ said Alyosha smiling.” 

- Fyodor Dostoevsky, ​The Brother Karamazov 

The Brothers Karamazov​, though loved all over the world, is quintessentially a 

Russian novel. That it can be translated into a moral lesson in so many different 

countries and cultures speaks to the brilliance of the writing and human morality, without 

taking away from the unique Russianness of the story, characters, and society that 

confronts Alyosha and his brothers. In fact, it is this Russian society that both Dmitri and 

Ivan fail to fit into; it is the lens through which Alyosha sees his brothers’ failures and 

thus develops his understanding of a need for a more loving, living morality that 

embraces all, rather than the few. 



Durkin 35 
 

The novel may be looked at through the way in which the two older Karamazovs 

slowly unwind mentally in this Russian community, but also through other aspects of 

Russianness which are displayed throughout. The first aspect will be inspected in this 

chapter by examining the many tales delivered through the novel, many which centre on 

the speaker’s take on morality and goodness. What becomes apparent through these 

stories is that there is a disregard for life within them, as murderers and thieves are 

reformed, but the harm left behind by them is not undone. Secondly, the role of monks, 

wealthy landowners, and intellectuals within the society of the time will also be analyzed 

here, as the role of the monastery overlooking the town and the apparent strong 

relationship between these men of God and the townspeople and their morality is active 

in the book. Thirdly, the sense of the Russianness of the novel will be examined in the 

attitudes and beliefs of the peasants and other minor characters. This chapter will look 

at how there is no real clear brotherly feeling of universal love amongst the Russian 

people in the novel and that this is a spur that moves Alyosha on to his discoveries. 

Primary among these characters will be the opposite personalities of Smerdyakov and 

Grigorii, who are the extremes that need unifying, as Alyosha realises. The last part will 

examine how Alyosha’s need for a more active love is deeply rooted in this Russian 

society, and that it is only through the Russian people that it can be changed. This final 

piece will examine this idea by looking at the progression of the youngest brother 

Karamazov’s life with the characters mentioned above. Also, the passing of his wisdom 

to the boys (Kolya in particular) at the stone represents a succession of the new 

Russian understanding of religious morality in the novel. 



Durkin 36 
 

In ‘Dostoevsky’s Religion: Words, Images and the Seed of Charity,’ Carol 

Apollonio expresses the belief that there is a distinct Russianess to all of Dostoevsky’s 

work. She says that “his protagonists embody prototypes from the Gospels, the lives of 

saints, folklore, and patristic literature, but they are also quintessentially mid-nineteenth 

century Russians” (24). Lavrin agrees with this idea, saying of Dostoevsky that although 

“he was still tormented by the old doubter or sceptic in him, he clung fervently to Christ 

[...] to slavophilism and the kind of rootedness in the native soil” (169). This sentiment is 

echoed by Alyosha in the novel when he says “for real Russians the questions of God's 

existence and of immortality, or, as you say, the same questions turned inside out, 

come first and foremost, of course, and so they should.”  (Dostoevsky 256). Zosima also 

exhorts to his fellow monks a similar idea based on the unifying of the Russian people: 

“Is it so inconceivable that grand and simple-hearted unity might in due time become 

universal among the Russian people?” (352). 

However, Michael Futrell, in speaking specifically of the novel, takes this idea 

further. In ‘Buddhism and The Brothers Karamazov,’ he suggests this same idea, but 

adds that Dostoevsky tries to go beyond the purely Russianness of his religion, 

describing “Dostoevsky’s sensitivity to the emotional, aesthetic and visionary aspects of 

religion overcoming his Christian and Russian exclusiveness” (Futrell 3). This meshes 

well with the idea that the great Russian writer is trying to develop a new Russian type 

of morality. The new type is embedded in the character of Russia and its deep 

connection to Orthodox Christianity but must go beyond the previous restrictions on 

morality developed by the old orders.  



Durkin 37 
 

One of the most significant points in which the novel displays the holes which 

have developed in the old morality pervading the Karamazov brothers’ contemporary 

Russia is in the attitude towards murder and thievery displayed in many stories told by 

the characters. All these stories end in some moral tale that the speaker feels 

represents a moral stance at least for some section of Russian society. What each of 

the tales fails to take account of, however, is that the livelihood or even life of some 

person or persons has been taken away, and the old morality of these tales fails to 

account for them. In most cases, the stories are exuberant in the saving of a soul in a 

future life. None of the stories take into account the damage done to people living on 

this earth. These tales are the exact opposite of what Alyosha envisages in his theory of 

a living love for all humanity and a paradise on earth. 

 
The Elder Zosima gives an example of this kind of thinking when he quotes a 

popular motif from the Bible. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall 

into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” 

(Dostoevsky 343). It is a theme repeatedly echoed in the novel, where life on earth is 

lived for the joy to be received in the next life. Zosima, nearing death, still believes that 

the purpose of life is to prepare for the afterlife, as he states, “And now I feel God near, 

my heart rejoices as in Heaven [...] I have done my duty” (346). Even more glaring is the 

abundance of stories in the novel which are considered examples of good morality, 

where a murderer or thief finds salvation after their crime. Though the murderers and 

thieves are improving their future selves, the tales take into no account the suffering of 

others that they caused. Emerson tells us how “only the criminal, at the last minute 



Durkin 38 
 

before his death, selfishly reaps relief” and that “repentance over the murder is a very 

muffled theme” (162; 167). It seems a “muffled theme”’ on purpose, as these stories are 

used to display the inadequacy of the old morality.  

In ​The Brothers Karamazov​, there are several stories that portray the goodness 

of God or an understanding of how the criminal turned his or her life around.  For 

example, one tale starts, “Not long ago in Petersburg a young man of eighteen, hardly 

more than a boy, who carried on a small business as a costermonger, went in broad 

daylight into a moneychanger's shop with an ax”; others tell of misused servants slaying 

their masters, of babies slaughtered, or ex-lovers robbed and killed (827). However, the 

central theme or reason for these stories is not to establish pity for the victims or to 

declare that new ways must be found to stop these type of crimes. These tales display 

the weaknesses in the old ideas of goodness and evil in contemporary Russia. The old 

ideas include aspects of honour which Dmitri still holds onto when he declares that he 

may be a murderer, but never a thief. 

Even during the trial, this lack of empathy for those who truly suffer under this 

ethical regime becomes clear. In trying to defend the actions of Dmitri and explain how 

Fyodor Karamazov’s demise could easily not be truly parricide, the defence lawyer tells 

the following story: 

 
Not long ago a servant girl in Finland was suspected of having secretly given  

birth to a child. She was watched, and a box of which no one knew anything was  

found in the corner of the loft, behind some bricks. It was opened and inside was  

found the body of a new-born child which she had killed. In the same box were  



Durkin 39 
 

found the skeletons of two other babies which, according to her confession, she  

had killed at the moment of their birth (843). 

 
He starts his conclusion with the following question: “Gentlemen of the jury, was she a 

mother to her children?” (843). As in the other tales distributed throughout the novel, the 

emphasis is on the individual who perpetrated the crime, rather than those whose lives 

were hurt or taken by that crime. Whether it be a monk, a poet/philosopher or one of the 

landed classes relating the tale, none of them dwells on the impact of the atrocity on the 

victims. These fictions merely enforce the power of the contemporary morality over a 

real feeling of humanity amongst the people.  

These stories permeate the novel and lay one of the groundworks for Alyosha’s 

revelations. They shine a light on how some of the defining moralities of the time are 

based around living life for the upcoming life after death, thus diminishing each human’s 

time here on earth. This idea in ​The Brothers Karamazov ​is derived from the close 

connection between the monastery, the monks, and the people of the town, which is 

representative of all Russian society-- all strata of society have connections to the 

monks and their religious viewpoint. As Babushkina says, “the novels of Dostoevsky 

have three distinct characteristics: they are connected to death, they involve the hunt for 

money, and they establish certain power relations” (538). It is this need for possession 

and power that are ideas Alyosha rebels against in his revelations.  

Foremost amongst the types who cultivate this type of morality in his Russia are 

his old mentors. The monks of the monastery interact with all layers of society, whether 

in bequeathing ideas of repentance and the ability to be saved or in debating and 



Durkin 40 
 

arguing against more atheistic trains within the town. What is essential is that all three of 

Nietzsche’s principal types (the clergy, the intellectual, and the commander) interact 

with each other and are seen influencing the peasant classes.  

The meeting behind the cloister walls is an early example of all the types meeting 

and a harsh lesson for Alyosha in the ineptness of these ruling strata of society. The 

reader witnesses the behaviour of Fyodor Karamazov who is described by Babushkina 

as “a drunkard, debauchee, and voluptuary [who] is concerned only with himself, 

money, and pleasures” (536). Fyodor Karamazov is constantly mocking and making a 

fool of himself; the father of the three brothers has come from nothing to be wealthy 

land-owner and displays the no-good type of person who can prosper under the morality 

fashioned by the old types. Despite all his antics and tomfoolery, Fyodor Karamazov 

does make a salient point to the monks about the wealth of success of their monastery. 

He says regarding their fortunate life, “And who has provided it all? The Russian 

peasant, the labourer, brings here the farthing earned by his horny hand, wringing it 

from his family and the tax-gatherer! You bleed the people, you know, holy fathers” 

(Dostoevsky 94). This concurs with Townsend's analysis of Nietzsche’s understanding 

of “bound spirits” -- those members of society who acquiesce to the will of the more 

powerful. He states that, “Nietzsche calls them ‘bound spirits’ to describe conformist 

individuals who passively absorb the values of their community” and later “traditionally 

aristocratic societies fit this mould” (Townsend 2). In this scene, we not only have the 

major types that Nietzsche later defines, but also the first indication of the discontent at 

the way power has been distributed in the town/society. It is the first time in the novel 



Durkin 41 
 

the lower classes and their strength is mentioned in front of Alyosha, and it comes at a 

time when he also witnesses the bedlam caused by all of the types being unable to find 

a cohesive unity amongst themselves. Interestingly, it is Alyosha’s father Fyodor who 

has moved from the lower classes to wealthy landowner, that speaks this. He is a 

forerunner of the complexities to come in the novel. 

Later, Zosima also confirms the strength of the peasantry but has not moved 

away from the idea that it must be the monks who help guide them in their morality: 

“The salvation of Russia comes from the people. And the Russian monk has always 

been on the side of the people. We are isolated only if the people are isolated” 

(Dostoevsky 349).  It is indicative of the goodness shown by many in the room during 

the melee, such as the intellectuals Ivan and Musiov, the commander Dmitri, the 

landowner Fyodor Karamazov, and the various clergy. Despite the discord, none can 

reach outside of their type and find an understanding that might indicate they need to 

change their understanding of morality. This meeting is a clear indication for Alyosha 

that there is something wrong with how his present community has developed. He sees 

the power distributors who, according to Lavrin, bring “the masses to that infantile level 

where no problems arise and where, in any case, comforting prefabricated ‘truths’ are 

provided for” (169). In this context, the youngest brother Karamazov has his first insight 

as he falls to the ground outside the monastery. He realises that through ordinary 

people, true morality will be found. With this revelation comes an understanding of the 

wedding at Cana, the first miracle of Jesus, which is performed not for the powerful, but 



Durkin 42 
 

for the common people gathered at a wedding in which Jesus is participating as one of 

them. 

This is the first step in the young monk moving away from the unthinking beliefs 

of the bound spirits, “so called because they assume their values from habit and 

unreflective faith. Bound spirits believe they are predestined for a particular occupation, 

and this confidence and satisfaction in their role in society make them resistant to 

change and outside influence” (Townsend 4). From the women visiting the monks who 

fall in ecstasy or slumber in peace merely from touching a priest’s robe to the antics of 

the courtroom, Alyosha sees the influence of the ruling types over the easily influenced 

lower strata of society and observes that this is not where true morality for Russia must 

come from. Hence, the novel does display the types that Nietzsche was later to define, 

but in a very Russian context and a very Russian character. Alyosha must overturn this 

Russianness of the old morality in order to invent a new type of all-encompassing love 

to be lived every day by his people. It is a brotherly love that starts with the idea of 

never forgetting the good that is in the world and always remembering the times of true 

friendship and companionship.  

It is with what is often called the real people of Russia in the novel that Alyosha 

begins his description of how life must be lived. Alyosha turns away from the old 

morality makers and, with his generous heart and spirit, attracts the lower class boys to 

hear him. Through the great peasantry of Russia, this new understanding must be built 

up, which is why the examples of religious attitudes amongst them often appear in the 

book. There are minor stories scattered through the novel, but also there are the polar 



Durkin 43 
 

opposite religious views of Smerdyakov and Grigory, which mirror, in a way, the 

attitudes of Ivan and Dmitri.  

Early in the novel, it is exposed that Grigory, Fyodor Karamazov’s valet, had a 

significant role in the bringing up of Dmitri, while Ivan strikes up a strange kind of 

friendship with Smerdyakov, his supposed half-brother, who is also a servant in the 

Karamazov household. Both pairings have similar attributes amongst themselves, with 

Grigory and Smerdyakov being more extremely Russian in their attributes. This acts to 

highlight the Russianness of the morality, as there are flickerings of each of the servants 

in the two brothers. 

Smerdyakov, like Ivan, has a disdainful air about his intellectualism but is even 

more vehement in his belief that the Russian people are foolish. He says of them: “They 

are swindlers, only there the scoundrel wears polished boots, and here he grovels in 

filth and sees no harm in it. The Russian people want thrashing” (Dostoevsky 246). He 

has an even more extreme chip on his shoulder than Ivan has carried around with him, 

believing that “I could have done better than that. I could have known more than that, if 

it had not been for my destiny from my childhood up” (245).  Ivan even talks of 

Smerdyakov in a demeaning way, unaware of the similarities between them. “‘He's a 

lackey and a mean soul. Raw material for revolution, however, when the time comes [...] 

He's storing up ideas,’ said Ivan, smiling” (143). Smerdyakov, like Grigory, is a more 

archetypal Russian than the brother; he can be paired up against and compared to, 

Ivan. The unclaimed half-brother reminds others of a painting because of his deep 

Russian contemplativeness. In the novel, Dostoevsky writes of of Smerdyakov, and his 



Durkin 44 
 

intense hoarding of impressions and images, describing it as a common Russian 

peasant attribute: 

           “Those impressions are dear to him and no doubt he hoards them imperceptibly, 

and even unconsciously. How and why, of course, he does not know either. He 

may suddenly, after hoarding impressions for many years, abandon everything 

and go off to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage for his soul's salvation, or perhaps he will 

suddenly set fire to his native village, and perhaps do both. There are a good 

many ‘contemplatives’ among the peasantry. Well, Smerdyakov was probably 

one of them, and he probably was greedily hoarding up his impressions, hardly 

knowing why.” (136).  

Townsend says of Smerdyakov that “his goal is to breed a slow and severe constitution, 

impervious to being overwhelmed by new stimuli,” which once again highlights the 

extreme Russianess of the boy (10). Ivan is thoughtful like this too often, but not in quite 

the broad way that Smerdyakov is portrayed here. While following Ivan’s travails in the 

novel, the shadow of the more deeply Russian Smerdyakov is always near him.  

The servant likes to play word games with theology also as does Ivan with his 

Grand Inquisitor and other theories he espouses through the book. Smerdyakov likes to 

taunt Grigory with baffling theological questions like, “Oh, nothing. God created light on 

the first day, and the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day. Where did the light come 

from on the first day?”  (133). This passage not only shows Smerdyakov at his atheistic 

best but also displays the archetypal loyal but unthinking servant that Grigory 

represents.  



Durkin 45 
 

On hearing this question, the old valet is struck dumb, and can only react in the 

simple way he knows how: “Grigory was thunderstruck. The boy looked sarcastically at 

his teacher. There was something positively condescending in his expression. Grigory 

could not restrain himself. ‘I'll show you where!’ he cried, and gave the boy a violent slap 

on the cheek” (Dostoevsky 133). Like Dmitri, who also follows a code of conduct quite 

blindly, Grigory lashes out at people that are beyond his understanding and do not fit 

into his code of how people should be. He also beats his wife Martha after he sees her 

dancing, after which she never dances again. Grigory is the archetypal servant, of 

whom Townsend explains in ‘Beyond the Myth of the Nietzschean Ideal-Type’ where he 

states that they “cling tenaciously for years to almost intolerable ‘situations, places, 

residences, company’ once [Grigory] had found himself in them unwittingly. For clinging 

to them is preferable to ‘feeling them as capable of being changed. Nietzsche termed 

this strategy ‘Russian Fatalism’” (10). When he did not seem to know what year it was 

and was teased by Ivan (in another example of the shadows of Smerdyakov), Ivan jokes 

that maybe Grigory could use his fingers to count. Grigory replies, “I am a servant,” and 

suddenly, in a loud and distinct voice states, “If my betters think fit to make game of me, 

it is my duty to suffer it” (Dostoevsky 754).  

Grigory is a more extreme example of the devout but unthinking Russian, as is  

seen in his often confused understanding of myth and theology: 

“‘Why not?’ asked the priest with good-humoured surprise. 

‘Because it's a dragon,’ muttered Grigory. 

‘A dragon? What dragon?’ 



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Grigory did not speak for some time. ‘It's a confusion of nature,’ he muttered 

vaguely, but firmly, and obviously unwilling to say more”  (101). 

Grigory is an extreme example of what Lesic-Thomas describes, citing A.P. Vlaskin who 

argues that the “true bearers of Orthodox “ethics in Dostoevsky’s novels are in fact the 

minor characters of servants and peasants [...] who do not ask themselves about the 

nature of God and his creation, but simply strive to lead a good and responsible life 

through their love of Christ” (779). However, because of his inconsistent theology and 

behaviour, Grigory also highlights the distorted morality that has been passed down by 

the governing types. The servant is not like the other poor peasants in the novel, whom 

Apollonio argues are “often signals [of] Dostoevsky’s coded images of grace: a squalid 

garret with its impoverished family, the apparently drunk man on the bed, the rickety 

furniture piled with rags, the teapot, the crumbly black bread, the ever-present candle, 

the pale, sickly woman, the down-trodden husband, the toddler, the newborn baby” (34). 

These are the peasant types that Alyosha will hope can be the saviours of Russia, so as 

they do not become the confused followers that Townsend describes above. The 

passage below highlights the plight of these types under the rules set by them for their 

life by their betters: 

However, Grigory decided then, once for all, that ‘the woman's talking nonsense, for 

every woman is dishonest,’ and that they ought not to leave their old master, 

whatever he might be, for ‘that was now their duty.’ 

‘Do you understand what duty is?’ he asked Marfa Ignatyevna. 



Durkin 47 
 

‘I understand what duty means, Grigory Vassilyevitch, but why it's our duty to stay here I 

never shall understand,’ Marfa answered firmly. 

‘Well, don't understand then. But so it shall be. And you hold your tongue.’ (97) 

Smerdyakov and Grigory display extremes of the moralities which are pervading Russia 

at the time of the novel and help define, in a more obtuse way, how the old moral ideas 

are not fitting with a new modern Russia. These two provide a more extreme example of 

the clashes Ivan and Dmitri will have within themselves in their struggles to fit into this 

world.  

Ultimately, it is through witnessing his older brothers’ travails that Alyosha 

learns what is wrong in his world and society. Alyosha sees both Ivan and Dmitri fail 

dramatically in their endeavours. The youngest brother knows that they are both good 

people, with good hearts and capable of great love, and comes to understand that there 

is the heavy weight of society’s expectations beating them down. Alyosha perceives that 

in order for good people like his brothers to prosper in a new Russian society, morality 

and what it is based upon must change.  

The Brothers Karamazov  ​displays a stark portrayal of a Russian society whose 

distinction between right and wrong, and good and evil is not always straightforward. 

Through the different struggles that Alyosha witnesses in his time after the monastery, 

he sees the way forward that Russia must go. Alyosha sees that there must be a living 

love every day, where, even in times of despair, the goodness in the past will still be 

part of a person’s makeup and see them through the troubled time. This is how all living 

together as brothers will make a better world. The pure Russianess of his vision is that 



Durkin 48 
 

he understands it must now start with the old morality makers, which Nietzsche was 

later to define in his work. It is to the young and those of less power that Alyosha turns 

to spread his message. There is no better display of this new Russian morality than 

when Alyosha urges the boys not to forget the death of their friend, and in doing so 

turns around the understanding of a burgeoning Russian soul in the young Kolya. 

In Alyosha’s early encounters with Kolya and in Kolya’s antics, Kolya is portrayed 

as a boy who is struggling to find his identity from when he was young. He proclaims 

beliefs he has heard from others around the town: “‘Oh, I've nothing against God. Of 

course, God is only a hypothesis, but [...] I admit that He is needed ... for the order of 

the universe and all that ... and that if there were no God He would have to be invented,’ 

added Kolya” (622). While he also, at the age of 13, declares himself to be a socialist to 

both Alyosha and his friends, and above many of the present modes of knowledge at 

his school -“‘Yes, universal history! It's the study of the successive follies of mankind 

and nothing more. The only subjects I respect are mathematics and natural science,’ 

said Kolya” (603). He is a young man wanting to make an impact and to be recognised 

for his talent and intelligence. It is clear that he can be influenced, but not just by any 

average person. It is people of intelligence and personal authority that he is drawn to 

such as Ratikin and Alyosha. He even wants to emulate Dmitri at one stage, which 

horrifies Alyosha. Alyosha declares that this is not the way for the young Kolya, as the 

type of suffering Dmitri has taken on is wrong.  

There is a change in Kolya as Alyosha’s good-heartedness influences him more. 

Kolya recognises the path that he has been on is wrong: 



Durkin 49 
 

What kept me from coming was my conceit, my egoistic vanity, and the beastly 

willfulness, which I never can get rid of, though I've been struggling with it all my 

life. I see that now. I am a beast in lots of ways, Karamazov’ and declares that it 

is Alyosha whom he will follow -  ‘There is only one man in the world who can 

command Nikolay Krassotkin—this is the man.’  Kolya pointed to Alyosha. ‘I obey 

him, good-bye!’ (631). 

 
Kolya represents the hope of the young Russians who can follow a new path and 

determine a new kind of morality based on brotherly love, and founded from the 

strengths of the working classes. Alyosha recognises all of this in Kolya, as well as the 

heavy influences that have been weighing on his decisions and the direction he wants 

to take in life. In a simple yet telling sentence, Alyosha sums up his feeling on the new 

morality to Kolya: “‘You are like everyone else,’ said Alyosha, in conclusion, ‘that is, like 

very many others. Only you must not be like everybody else, that's all’” (627). Alyosha 

recognises the connectedness of humanity and how a new morality will come from the 

common people. However, he is also aware that this time has only just begun, and in 

order to create a new reality, Kolya cannot be influenced by those who have developed 

under the old morality rules. 

Pointedly, Kolya, after becoming enamoured with Alyosha’s kind heartedness, 

continues on one of his usual jaunts where he teases and tricks peasants, but runs into 

one who is brighter than Kolya expects. This is an indication for the boy of the potential 

of these working class people. It can be seen as a foreshadowing of Alysoha’s 



Durkin 50 
 

foundation of his new belief in the peasant classes. As Alyosha mentions importantly 

near the end of the novel,  

“‘It's your luxurious life,’ said Alyosha, softly. 

‘Is it better, then, to be poor?’ 

‘Yes, it is better’” (655). 

Throughout the novel, the strictures of Russian morality and its failures are seen 

across a broad spectrum of the society represented by the town. However, faith in the 

ability and strength of the Russian people to forge a new morality is the outcome of this 

for Alyosha in ​The Brothers Karamazov.​ The difference for Alyosha is that this new 

understanding must not come from the traditional sources of ethical guidelines, but from 

the people of the soil, the pure blood of Russia who are the peasants.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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PART 2 

5. Zosima 
 

 “Zosima’s reconstituted life is overall so placid that we tend to forget how unresolved 

certain portions of it are.” 

- Caryl Emerson, “Zosima’s Mysterious Visitor” 

      The Elder Zosima is a much-debated pivotal figure in ​The Brothers Karamazov. 

Emerson queries if “the elder Zosima [is] a sufficiently vigorous, convincing rebuttal of 

the ‘extreme blasphemy’ of the Grand Inquisitor” while Andrea Thomas, in ‘The Answer 

Job Did Not Give,’ maintains that “Zosima’s teaching is quite vague, even more so when 

it comes to specific allusions to God himself” (Emerson 155; Lesic-Thomas 786). 

Steven Cassedy, in ​Dostoevsky’s Religion​, believes that the monk “in his life has 

followed the formulaic Dostoevskian trajectory from impetuous, proud sinner to humble 

man of God” while in ‘A Note on Nietzsche and Dostoevsky,’ Janko Lavrin states “that 

his creed is remote from Russian Orthodoxy, representing […] a type of nature 

mysticism” (Cassidy 136; Lavrin 391). All of these various ideas on the Elder Zosima not 

only show how the monk’s role in the novel has been interpreted in widely different 

ways, but also emphasizes his importance to the thematic drive of the novel. Whether 

as a natural mystic, a reformed sinner, or a Christ-like figure, his influence is paramount 

on the hero of the story, the youngest Karamazov, Alyosha. It is Zosima who, after 

nurturing Alyosha during his time in the monastery, urges the young man to go out into 

the world. It is Zosima who sees that Alyosha cannot fully develop his own concept of 

religious morality hidden behind the cloistered walls. As a result, this part of the thesis 



Durkin 52 
 

will examine Zosima’s role in delivering Alyosha to the fates and whims of his two 

brothers. Firstly, however, it will look at the connections Zosima has and does not have 

to Nietzsche’s priestly type. The differences and commonalities which he rejects when 

advising Alyosha contribute to the dynamic and seemingly conflicting discourse 

revolving around Zosima. Secondly, it will analyze how the monk’s life was a mirror 

opposite of Alyosha’s, in terms of the direction both of their lives advanced in. 

      Zosima has similarities but also strong differences with the morality deciding type of 

Nietzsche’s first thesis ‘‘Good and Evil’ ‘Good and Bad.’’ Unlike Nietzsche’s type, 

Zosima does give considered and rational answers, while also never deeming to speak 

for others but only himself. Also, Nietzsche held in disdain the priestly caste that would 

deem to defer to a higher power in reference to discussions on morality and the idea of 

right and wrong. In ​The Brothers Karamazov, ​Zosima rarely refers to Christ or God 

directly but tends to discuss how actions on this earth can have logical consequences 

for the spirit. Where Zosima does conform to the priestly caste type is in sequestering 

himself away behind the monastery walls, very rarely receiving visitors, and being held 

in an almost saint-like reverence by many of the parish faithful. However, his influence 

on Alyosha, and his understanding that Alyosha must follow a different path, led to the 

youngest Karamazov’s revelation of how a morality based on love and compassion is 

for the here and now, rather than something that will help one attain the kingdom of 

heaven.   

Part of the reason for Zosima not quite fulfilling the role of a new Russian type 

was that though he led an adventurous and interesting life, it was a life that ended with 



Durkin 53 
 

him behind the walls of the monastery. The monk had developed his own interpretation 

of how life must be lived, but did not apply this understanding in the world, which was 

his major failing. Thus, he could not break out of the old type. However, by counseling 

Alyosha to go out and join his brothers, he sets the young monk on the pathway to 

assimilating his experiences into a new Russian religious morality. 

 
a. Zosima’s similarities and differences to Nietzsche’s priestly type. 

 
     The first way Zosima does not resemble Nietzsche’s priestly type was how his 

discussions were grounded in earthly reality, rather than in metaphysical theorising. The 

Elder gave out practical advice that would benefit people while here on earth. When he 

did discuss spiritual matters pertaining to belief, it was following a logical pattern that 

belief should bring, rather than urging the faith in the first place. Zosima very rarely 

actually refers to God or Christ at all in his discourse. 

     While Emerson questions whether “the elder Zosima [is] a sufficiently vigorous, 

convincing rebuttal of the ‘extreme blasphemy’ of the Grand Inquisitor,” she also tells us 

that Zosima “allows no miracles, for example, and hardly mentions God or the mission 

of the church” (156). Lesic-Thomas declares that “in order to attain the blessed state in 

which Zosima appears to exist perpetually, Zosima’s teaching is quite vague, even more 

so when it comes to specific allusions to God himself” (786). What these quotes show is 

how Zosima does not adhere to the priestly type of Nietzsche, who felt that “the Church 

certainly is a crude and boorish institution, that is repugnant to an intelligence with any 

pretence at delicacy, to a really modern taste” (33). In fact, Zosima is very much in 

accord with this analysis of the Church.  Zosima does use intelligent and rational 



Durkin 54 
 

discussion when providing advice, rather than advising to appeal to God for miracles. 

As with the cases of soothing a mother over a lost child, counselling a parent hoping for 

the return of a son coming home from wars, Zosima does not appeal to a higher power. 

In the first case the Elder describes what the logical process should be if a belief in God 

is held and uses this to soothe the mourning mother. In the second instance, he 

instructs the waiting parent on the many possible reasons for a delayed return and to 

wait a few more days. Zosima’s advice proves correct, and many whisper of a miracle, 

but it was the Elder merely following a logical thought process, rather than channeling 

divine intervention. ​The Brothers Karamazov ​ continues to highlight Zosima’s lack of 

reliance on the divine to provide the answers on this world, with a description of his 

attitude to prayer: “In his fervent prayer he did not beseech God to lighten his darkness 

but only thirsted for the joyous emotion, which always visited his soul after the praise 

and adoration, of which his evening prayer usually consisted” (Dostoevsky 173). 

By speaking in a rational way without alluding excessively to the need for faith, 

Zosima did not fulfill one of the main characteristics of the priestly type, that of using 

unprovable metaphysical debate to put their point across. The Elder based his 

discussion on actions to take in the present that would alleviate suffering, rather than 

relying on God to heal pain. When Zosima did speak of reliance on God, it was to urge 

the listener to follow that faith to its logical conclusion, and thus gain peace from the 

belief. In this way, Zosima does not resemble the normal priestly type described by 

Nietzsche. While discussing this way, he was also very humble when putting forward his 

views. Unlike the priest type of the German philosopher, the Russian Elder did not claim 



Durkin 55 
 

to be able to speak for others in his discourses. This character difference is important 

for it leads the way for Alyosha to follow in a more rational understanding of his place in 

the world. The narrator in the novel describes Alyosha as quite rational-minded as he 

remarks that “Alyosha, was not a fanatic, and […] was not even a mystic” (14).  

One of the chief attributes of all of Nietzsche’s morality creating types is that they 

presume to be able to speak for the masses based on some outside idea of authority, 

be it martial, political or religious. It was this higher authority that they claimed that 

allowed them to enforce their own understanding of morality on the rest of society. One 

of the most striking aspects of Zosima’s teachings was that he did not try to force 

people to conform to edicts and dogma. Zosima did not enforce rules and regulations, 

but preferred to teach through examples and stories. Throughout the beginning 

chapters of ​The Brothers Karamazov, ​the revered monk is prepared to sit and listen and 

let others talk, and let them come to their own understandings. This is so with his stories 

as well, where he will relate stories from his life, but is content for his listeners to draw 

their own conclusions.  

Emerson best describes the elder’s methods: “His teachings are compiled after 

his death by a disciple and designed to speak abstractly (without hostile interruptions) to 

a community of reverent readers, in a voice that resounds self-confidently from within” 

(156). Lavrin sees in Zosima someone who has moved away from boring dogma to 

being a teacher who portrays ideas of love through his stories: “Zosima’s teaching has 

nothing to do with the gloomy and ascetic tradition. On the contrary: it is an affirmation 

of joy and beauty through all-embracing sympathy and love” (170).    



Durkin 56 
 

Zosima not only uses his tales to enable listeners to come to their own idea of 

morality, he also urges that they devote time to reading other similar tales of goodness 

and understanding. In the novel, he tells some of his devotees that with “the man of God 

and, greatest of all, the happy martyr and the seer of God, Mary of Egypt— [...] you will 

penetrate their hearts with these simple tales. Give one hour a week to it in spite of your 

poverty, only one little hour” (Dostoevsky 324). In this way, instead of lecturing people 

and instructing them on actions they must take derived from scripture, Zosima does not 

align with Nietzsche’s claim that the priestly cadre twist words to behold the audience to 

do their bidding. The German philosopher says that priests are “virtuosos of black 

magic, who can produce whiteness, milk, and innocence out of any black you like: have 

you not noticed what a pitch of refinement is attained by their ​chef d'œuvre​, their most 

audacious, subtle, ingenious, and lying artist-trick?” (Nietzsche 49). Zosima explains his 

humble approach as he relates one of his stories:  “Am I worth it, that another should 

serve me and be ordered about by me in his poverty and ignorance? And I wondered at 

the time that such simple and self-evident ideas should be so slow to occur to our 

minds” (Dostoevsky 352). He never wants to be a proponent of the darkness Nietzsche 

speaks of as we see when Zosima states when serving their flock, “work without 

ceasing [...] And if you cannot speak to them in their bitterness, serve them in silence 

and in humility, never losing hope” (357). The monk does not urge his followers to 

pursue acts derived from someone else’s understanding of godliness, but rather to think 

and learn from examples put in front of them. Through this philosophy, he 

wholeheartedly agrees with Nietzsche, who decries usefulness based on ungodly 



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pretensions: “The standpoint of utility is as alien and as inapplicable as it could possibly 

be, when we have to deal with so volcanic an effervescence of supreme values, 

creating and demarcating as they do a hierarchy within themselves” (20). 

With his humble approach to his teaching, Zosima defies the definition of the 

priestly type who believe they have the authority from a higher power to determine 

morality and impose dogma. This, along with the monk's logical way of discussing the 

consequ