Icons of Faith in The Brothers Karamazov: A Kierkegaardian Reading

Abstract

Through a creative and critical reading of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, this paper explores how the novel portrays a narrative of faith which corresponds to Søren Kierkegaard’s philosophical notion of faith. By analyzing the actions and utterances of the narrative agents, the researcher draws from the novel its conceptions of justice, death and rebirth, acceptance, active love and responsibility, the metaphor of the heart, and mystery. These are subsequently correlated to the Kierkegaardian categories of the double movement, teleological suspension of the ethical, infinite resignation, receiving again, subjectivity, and subjective truth. The paper has the double-aim of (1) providing a philosophical framework for understanding the convoluted issues of faith explored in the novel, and (2) presenting a novelistic expression of Kierkegaard’s philosophy. This dialogue between the two thinkers provides deep reflections on the experience of pain and loss in the world of a Benevolent God.