Velikiy Inkvisitor (The Grand Inquisitor)

He who cannot command himself should obey. And many can command themselves, but much is still lacking before they also obey themselves. (Nietzsche,Also Sprach Zarathustra,Third Part,"The Old and New Tablets", Chapter 4)

Politics never really ever was my bag, and so to understand it I have been forced to over-simplify it. For example, what is the meaning of the distinction of "right" versus "left" or of "liberal" as opposed to "conservative"? Maeterlinck it was, I believe, who said, "Each progressive spirit has always been opposed by a thousand self-appointed defenders of the past." Disraeli said "Any man who is twenty and not a liberal has no heart; any man who is forty and not a conservative has no mind." When I was a lad, I too characterized liberals as progressive spirits and conservatives as self appointed defenders of the status quo.

The trouble with such a conception is that it breaks down too easily. Most individuals might consider themselves as liberal in some aspects of life, and as reactionaries in others. Therefore, I think that this concept is probably in need of some "revisionism".

Before I proceed, I must admit to a particular bias - and that is that I am very partial to Occam's Razor (to be distinguished from the Gilette or Bic variety). This concept, succinctly stated, is that given a set of arguments, the simplest one is usually the best. Now caveat emptor, this concept does not work ALL of the time. [Kafka might have argued that when Occam's Razor could not apply, the solution might be so complex as to defy most people's comprehension and therefore totally discountable.] In my humble opinion, nevertheless, when the most possible light is shed on a subject Occam usually prevails.

Let us attempt to shed some light upon the above question concerning political polarization. Any group is composed of individuals and is defined by a [some] common goal[s]. Therefore, it should follow that any given individual in a group should share at least a part of that common goal. Now, then, if we can identify that particular goal by querying an individual member, we might be more able to reach some understanding into the characteristics of the group in question.

Allow me one more little digression before attempting to establish some points. Martin Buber talked in terms of "I and Thou" - the "T" in Thou was capitalized because Buber was talking about his relationship with the Almighty. I prefer to talk in terms of "I and You", and by "you" I am truly referring to you (second person plural [impersonal] ) in terms of my relationship with you my fellow man. It is precisely here, I believe, that can be found the very essence of politics. You see, for us to live together in some kind of social "order", we must establish certain covenants between us. Some of these covenants are established in us by our parents at such an early age as to become virtually ingrained at the very essence of our "programming" - and I refer specifically to what we euphemistically call in the plumbing age "toilet training." You and I are not going to get along very well together if I have any serious problems with voluntary "continence".

Now this may sound so elemental as to be totally obvious; and yet the inescapable conclusion is that I have sacrificed an elemental freedom of behavior for the privilege of being able to live with you in a minimal state of friction and discomfort.
This concept is very important in the animal behavior of "humans" because we are by nature dependent critters (may the heavens prevent the wrath of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau from falling upon my head). You see, our most successful - from the standpoint of natural selection - ancestors evolved as hunting animals with a need to coordinate efforts with other members of their own species. Obviously more covenants (than the one previously so elaborately described) had to be established. Each of these covenants involved to a certain extent some sacrifice of individual liberty for the pursuit of some communal goal.

Set amid the innumerable paragraphs of Dostoevsky's Brahti Karamazov (the Brothers Karamazov) lies a most amazing little story, the total implications of which positively stupefy me to this day! It is a tale told by Ivan, the cosmopolitan intellectual brother who lives in Moscow. The plot is fairly simple.

Jesus returns to earth at the time of the Spanish Inquisition and is appalled by what He sees. Incredible! People maimed and massacred and all in His Name. Overwhelmed, yet recognized by a Jew of the appropriate personnel, Jesus asks to see the ultimate perpetrator of these heinous atrocities - the Grand Inquisitor, himself.

Face to face with His Holiness, Jesus can do no more than confront him with the "alarming" facts and inconsistencies of the Church's "betrayal". This is obviously not what Jesus desired or ever in his wildest dreams imagined could occur from His Ministry on earth. His wish was only for a society of warmth and beauty in which man was free to perform acts of goodness and righteousness purely for their own sake. He encouraged, nay intended His disciples to desire for man only the freedom to chose for himself the pathway to goodness and mercy. What the Church and the Grand Inquisitor were doing could only be considered anathema to Jesus.

The Grand Inquisitor, having listened quite politely and most intently to the unbridled displeasure his Deity has displayed, remains, however, totally unshaken. His response seems at first one of those absurd attempts to defend an obviously and ridiculously untenable position. Nevertheless, as he proceeds the unmistakable [albeit somewhat unpalatable] wisdom of his logic becomes clear.

Essentially, he tells Jesus, we [The Church] know what You were trying to establish. After all, he continues, we are not all idiots. But do You remember Your response to the temptations in the wilderness - in particular, to the old biblical question about whether man does live by bread alone? Well, the problem, Dear Lord, is that the answer which You implied was totally and completely mistaken. Why? Because, he says, man DOES, in fact, live by bread alone. He only desires and cares about the peace of mind he can have from the knowledge that he can have bread on his table when he gets hungry. You offered man what, Jesus, freedom? - the freedom to do what? - to chose between right and wrong, good and evil, justice and injustice? The problem is that man cannot make these choices on his own. More especially, he cannot be expected to make these choices in a direction which You would see fit. Moreover, he desires that he not even be allowed the opportunity to think about the possibility of trying to make a choice. He prefers, nay, demands the peace of mind and security he can have from knowing that his basic needs, i.e., bread, will be available to him. In exchange for that security, he gains additional peace of mind from knowingly, willfully, and lovingly abandoning to us the pain of choosing between moral alternatives. We tell man how he must lead his life and put bread on his table in return for which he is eternally grateful!

Needless to say, Jesus is stunned, and legitimately at a loss for words. About all he can summon up the energy to do at that point in time is to kiss the Grand Inquisitor upon the lips and head back off to Heaven - a sadder, and yet wiser Numen.

I love this story. It has the gestalt of some of the best Midrashim - particularly the concept of the power of human logic over the Supernatural. Its essence is, I believe, therefore very, very Jewish. I have to admit, though, that it has left me in a kind of moral dilemma a solution for which I would almost [although not quite] be willing to sacrifice some of my own individual freedoms. This is probably unlikely as I can see no potential inspiration forthcoming in at least the reasonably foreseeable future. The question left me, as I see it, is the same today, i.e., how much individual freedom is man capable of handling? - or, how much of a dictatorial framework does man require? Obviously the more dictatorial, the more covenants and laws - which brings us full circle. Which problems require collective solutions, and what will be the cost in terms of individual freedom? Is not the history of Russian communism, at least until Gorbachev, totally predictable in terms of this little story? The communist nations do seem to be moving more in the direction of individual freedom, whereas the "free world" countries seem to be drifting ever more apparently in the direction of collective solutions.

In addition, the people alive today can be divided roughly into two camps - those who need or desire an authoritarian set of standards, and those who wish to set their own standards as much as they can. On the one hand, all orthodox religions, whether it be theistic Catholicism, Eastern [Greek or Russian] Orthodox, Orthodox Judaism, Shiite or Sunni Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Confucianism or whether it be secular Communism, John Birchism, Klu Klux Klanism, generic military organizations - the anal compulsive neurotics who comprise them need to submit themselves totally unto a thoroughly comprehensive scheme of behavior. Here again the very term "anal" was conceived by Sigmund Freud to refer to the earliest covenant established between man and his fellow man.

On the other hand, with the advent of more or less universal education, more leisure time, and more security, there are an ever increasing number of individuals who are unwilling to sacrifice personal freedoms for the sake of "the common good." Basically, these are people who want to determine their own destinies, elaborate their own ethics, and anguish over the aspects of any issue which may be important to them.
Historical communities who have these kinds of tendencies include the ancient (and not so ancient), argumentative Hebrews, democratic Greeks, republican Romans, Magna Carta Englishmen, Rebellious Lutherans, Revolutionary Americans, and Bastille Frenchmen. The absurd consequence of this kind of group in America today is personified by the "northeastern establishment liberals", who are so "open-minded their brains have all fallen out", and who are the major proponents of collective solutions to social problems.

The paradox is that a group which has evolved intellectually by reacting against social dogma is precisely the one lobbying for more dogma, as long as it is "new" or different" and, more importantly, its own brand. Its message is, I suppose, "my ideas are better than yours", or "let me impose MY idea of an ideal world upon you". Look at all the "wonderful" revolutions in Latin America for how well that concept plays! What's bad for me has got to be bad for all of us! Would not this collection of "have-nots" and "goody-goodies", given any influence upon the Almighty in His process of natural selection, have created a species of nerds and wimps so protected from one-another as likely to have long since gone extinct? If people do not pay their own freight, can a "great" society afford to carry them? (c.f. Budget of the United States Government 1963-??). Put the bread on the table and shut up! But organized religion is not doing that anymore, ergo it is now the government's responsibility to do so!

The other seeming paradox in American politics during the latter twentieth century is the alliance forged by the religious orthodoxy and the forces for "less government".

This may sound somewhat confusing, so let me try to refine a few points. There are really two kinds of freedom at issue here, are there not? The first is moral freedom, the second economic. "The Grand Inquisitor" raises questions in my mind about both kinds of freedom which are held in direct apposition to communal needs, which are also economic and moral in nature. The "conservative" forces [i.e., the Grand Inquisitor et al] during the "dark ages" were represented by those favoring:

Increased communal moral needs
Increased communal economic needs
Decreased individual moral freedom
Decreased individual economic freedom

When viewed as such the Russian flow from feudalism to communism does not appear to represent a large magnitude of change, does it? How do all my left-wing bomb-throwing readers appreciate this perspective? Is not this position still representative today of the Roman Catholic church?

The people whom I identify as the "neo-liberals" of today are those who favor:

Decreased communal moral needs
Increased communal economic needs
Increased individual moral freedom
Decreased individual economic freedom

Is this not representative of the "northeast liberal establishment" bleeding heart positions? Of the post-Frankfurter twentieth century Supreme Court's policy of "judicial restraint"? Of the ACLU positions supporting NAZI marches and opposing limiting access of obscene materials to children? Of radical priests in the Catholic church supporting Latin communist revolutions?

As for the apparently "paradoxical" alliance of today's "neo-conservatives", they favor:

Increased communal moral needs
Decreased communal economic needs
Decreased individual moral freedom
Increased individual economic freedom

Does this not explain the positions of the "moral majority"? Of the "Reagan democrats"? Of the followers of William F. Buckley?

What about the fourth possibility? The "libertarian" or "anarchist" favors:

Decreased communal moral needs
Decreased communal economic needs
Increased individual moral freedom
Increased individual economic freedom

Is not this representative of "from whence we came"? Of ancestral human primates eliminated by the process of years of natural selection?

Where might I stand in all of this? I suppose I would favor a mix something like:

50% communal moral needs
25% communal economic needs
50% individual moral freedom
75% individual economic freedom

What does that make me? "What's good for me ain't necessarily gonna be right for you - so the less we tell one another what to do the better! [I guess my particular bias here IS becoming more than just a little bit obvious.]

Nevertheless, does not insurance for all of us against real (as opposed to litigious) catastrophe make minimal sense? What is wrong with the approach of Jesus in The Grand Inquisitor to allow each man the right to determine whether or not, and to what extent, he is his brother's keeper?

Richard Neely, in How the Courts Govern America argues cogently that the judicial system in the United States today is what in actuality protects the individual from the intrusions of the executive branch, while protecting society from the inertia of the legislative branch - and it works precisely because it was designed to be oligarchic and non-democratic! Keep in mind that Judge Neely is, his protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, a neo-liberal who supports the Harlan Stone-Felix Frankfurter concept of "judicial restraint". He believes that "we have replaced the nineteenth-century court's proscription of government involvement in the private sector with a type of court supervision of that involvement." One of the reasons why this is necessary, he argues, is "that the free enterprise economy" [by itself] "cannot possibly undertake to provide all of the necessary social services, including such fundamental programs as social security, because ... there is a need for compulsion." His rationale for the restraint of the judiciary from enforcing the constitutional Commerce Clause and Tenth Ammendment was merely that in 1933 it became economically feasible to do so and "for the first time a bureaucracy could actually manage" anything as ambitious and enormous as social security.Is it still economically feasible for the Central [certainly not "Federal"] Government to provide us with all of these necessary services?

Remember also that in Frankfurter's mind judicial restraint further implied that it was okay for the courts to intervene "for civil rights [substitute "moral imperatives"-RJI] but not for free enterprise." See how the neo-liberal of the latter twentieth century evolved?

I think that it is entirely appropriate at this point to wonder just where, exactly, the great dilemma in which I find myself, resides. To be blunt, although I definitely side with Jesus in terms of the regulation of my own behavior, I find myself inextricably drawn toward the Grand Inquisitor's argument where it concerns the regulation of other peoples' behaviors - which is exactly the way it should be, I suppose.
(See Nietsche's exposition which begins this chapter.)

Jesus said, and it is, indeed, His "golden rule" to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I accept this principle with, perhaps, a few minor modifications, and that is not to expect them to do unto you as nicely as you have done unto them - unless in actuality the impact was decidedly negative, in which case, of course, expect them to do you worse! Most people do apply the golden rule passively, i.e., do unto others the way they do unto you. For myself, and only for myself, I believe in attempting to actively apply the golden rule. Specifically, my dilemma lies somewhere in the question as to how I can accept one set of rules for myself, and another for everyone else.

I have defined for myself a rather rigid set of standards to which I yearn [but never nearly enough] to endeavor to adhere. As previously expressed my sympathies do lie with Jesus in his dispute with the Grand Inquisitor - at least in so far as He guides my own behavior. Jesus is, however, a bit too much of a behavioral positivist, i.e., a "thou shalt-er", for me to expect "the masses" to be able to be guided by Him. In that arena, the Old Testament, with its preponderance of behaviorally negative "thou shalt nots", gives a much better approximation of performance relative to expectation. Since a minimal code of behavior is necessary for human coexistence, the imposition of such a code, as represented by the Old Testament behaviorally negative Grand Inquisitor, becomes desirable. Herein, the old "conservative" Grand Inquisitor becomes the "neo-liberal" of today still willing to exchange individual freedom for collective bread.

The main point which I would like to make here, however, is that although I accept the behaviorally positivist Jesus for myself, I do not believe that I have the right to expect that behavior from any other man merely because it is the code of ethics which I have chosen for myself. It is precisely here that I must depart from all Utopians: - for, following the same reasoning, I do not believe that it is fair for me to impose my concept of an ideal world upon anyone else, and I abhor anyone else who might attempt to impose his vision of an ideal world upon me. This is the essence of what I consider to be fundamental conservatism - not, mind you the maintenance of the status quo, but the legitimization of the right to selfishness. This is simply to say that given the choice of behavioral alternatives benefiting me as opposed to those befitting the masses, as long as primum non nocere, I demand not only the expectation, but the right to look after myself first. This is not necessarily to imply that I automatically might not chose to accept the altruistic option. Essentially, I do believe both that "God helps those who help themselves" and "the best place to look for a helping hand is at the end of your arm."

In all seriousness, however, a few clarifications are necessary. I am strongly enamored of the democratic process. If a majority of adults in a democratic society decide to adopt somewhat selfless social options, then I must accede no matter how ill-advised the constituency or how contrary my own opinions. I consider myself to be a conservative with a conscience. I do believe that most conservatives are those who [with Jesus] opt for minimally imposed social conscience [notice I did not say no conscience at all] and maximally unrestrained individual freedom. Likewise, I believe that liberals wish [with the Grand Inquisitor] to institutionalize and maximize the collective conscience of humanity and to suppress individualism wherever possible. Having said all that I wonder whether or not I may have converted anyone yet [or is it just that you may suddenly have turned forty]?

Let me put it another way. I consider myself to be a conservative because I believe that it is not the responsibility of anyone else to correct injustices which I may indict. I, furthermore, consider myself to be a conservative with a conscience because I do believe it is my own unique responsibility, together with those who feel the same as I and only with the resources available to us, to find a just solution to problems which I or we feel require some sort of resolution. The current liberal cop-out is certainly "if a problem exists, then it is the government's responsibility to handle it - and no matter how depleted the governmental resources are!"

To modify John Stuart Mill a bit, both the government and "the people, sir, are a great beast." The less responsibility in the hands of either, the better. I fundamentally disagree with Eldridge Cleaver when he says that "if you are not a part of the solution, than you are part of the problem." My suggestion is "if you are not part of the problem, try not to become one." So basically, once again, leftists believe in governmental or collective solutions to identified problems, whereas rightists believe in not compounding identified problems, or even not identifying them, if possible.

The obvious conclusion here is that both conservatives and liberals are "cop-outs". The conservative says,"It ain't MY responsibility - if you care about it then do something about it." The liberal says,"It ain't MY responsibility - it's the government's responsibility to do something about it." Is this attitude, whether conservative or liberal, not the ultimate logical expression of the Grand Inquisitor's argument? Is it not as well the answer to Cain's rhetorical question, i.e.,"NO, I am NOT my brother's keeper?" Does this attitude not leave a void which is most easily filled by authoritarianism. It may still be filled by liberals and conservatives alike who say,"No it is not my responsibility - but I will assume as much of the burden as I can bear." This is the very substance of Freemasonry - which is quintessentially my idea of what religion should be.

For, as Jesus implies in The Grand Inquisitor, if there is to be hope for any freedom at all on this planet, can it not only come from the individual assumption of as much responsibility as necessary to avoid creating a moral vacuum?