August Compte vs. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

[Cypress]

August Compte: 19th century French sociologist Auguste Comte was a leading advocate of positivism. Positivism promoted a vision of society in which scientific experts and sociologists would have great influence on governments and legal systems.

Positivism came from this concept of science as positive knowledge; it referred to a method of observing specific facts about the external world. This science is only descriptive; we can’t speak of ultimate or higher causes, because they can’t be observed or described.

Comte believed that science could provide social harmony and truth.

The new priests of this scientific society would be the scientists, among whom he included himself.

Comte argued that scientific knowledge was the one true form of knowledge, or what he called the only positive form of knowledge. He wanted to describe the nature of scientific knowledge and the creation of a society with laws and institutions that would be based on good science.


Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Positivism generated vehement criticisms from some intellectuals who questioned its view of human beings and human rationality. We can see forceful examples of such criticisms in the literary work of the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky,

Dostoevsky rejected the scientific claim that human beings could be understood and changed through scientific knowledge of their external behavior.

For Dostoevsky, the internal form of knowledge is the only kind that is really important or significant; he suggests this in many of his novels.

Dostoevsky stressed the internal human experiences and the irrational human thoughts that Positivist knowledge did not describe. His novel Notes from Underground (1864) exemplifies this theme. He was convinced that many parts of human life are mysterious, irrational, and beyond the reach of science. The complex, internal side of human emotion and behavior had to be accepted and explored. He thought it absurd that the new sociology and that new scientifically-based laws or institutions could ensure social harmony.




Source credit: Lloyd Kramer, Ph.D., University of North Carolina

[Cypress]

In a town in Spain, in the sixteenth century, Christ arrives, apparently reborn on Earth. As he walks through the streets, the people gather about him, staring. He begins to heal the sick, but his ministrations are interrupted by the arrival of a powerful cardinal who orders his guards to arrest Christ.

Late that night, this cardinal, the Grand Inquisitor, visits Christ’s cell and explains why he has taken him prisoner and why he cannot allow Christ to perform his works.

The Grand Inquisitor tells Christ that he cannot allow him to do his work on Earth, because his work is at odds with the work of the Church. The Inquisitor reminds Christ that he guaranteed that human beings would have free will. Free will, the Inquisitor says, is a devastating, impossible burden for mankind. Christ gave humanity the freedom to choose whether or not to follow him, but almost no one is strong enough to be faithful.

The Grand Inquisitor says that Christ should have given people no choice, and instead taken power and given people security instead of freedom. That way, the same people who were too weak to follow Christ to begin with would still be damned, but at least they could have happiness and security on Earth, rather than the impossible burden of moral freedom.

Thus, the Grand Inquisitor must keep Christ in prison, because if Christ were allowed to go free, he might undermine the Church’s work to lift the burden of free will from mankind.


https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section7/