The Karamazov Case: Dostoevsky’s Argument for His Vision by Terrence W. Tilley (review)

Reviewed by: The Karamazov Case: Dostoevsky's Argument for His Vision by Terrence W. Tilley Samuel C. Still The Karamazov Case: Dostoevsky's Argument for His Vision. By Terrence W. Tilley. London: T cf. 121–22). In chapter 1, Tilley refutes a standard reading of Dostoyevsky's novel as entrenched in an irreconcilable conflict of faith versus reason, sides represented by Alyosha/Father Zosima and Ivan Karamazov (see Joseph Frank, The Mantle of the Prophet, 1871–1881). Tilley argues that it is a mistake to equate Ivan's position with "reason" (13). Moreover, he urges readers to reconsider what faith—both that of the characters in the novel and Dostoyevsky's own faith—entails. For Tilley, the content of faith is not a set of concepts to be explained, but beliefs the truthfulness of which is to be "displayed" in an embodied form of life (Wittgenstein's term; see 17). Tilley concludes chapter 1 with the suggestion that The Brothers Karamazov does not tell what Dostoyevsky's viewpoint (viz., faith) is or why it "should be accepted." Rather, the novel "shows the significance of living out different basic presumptions" (19, emphasis original). It aims to do so, Tilley suggests in chapter 2, through its polyphonic structure, such as that analyzed by Mikhail Bhaktin in Problems of Dostoyevsky's Poetics (1984). The significance of the novel's polyphony lies not merely in the proliferation of dissonant voices. Tilley, drawing on speech–act theory, suggests that the true significance of the novel as a speech–act lies in its "perlocutionary effects": that is, what the reader does after having read Brothers (30). By showing the significance of several forms of life (which Tilley lists in chapter 3), Dostoyevsky allows the reader to conclude which of these forms of life renders "the real world" and to respond in acting it out (34, emphasis original). Of course, one must bear in mind that "the real world" might be the one in which the bitter atheist Ivan or the lecherous father Fyodor Karamazov live. But it also might be the one inhabited by Alyosha and Father Zosima. End Page 143 In chapter 3, Tilley outlines the six "forms of life" he sees present in the novel: materialism, realism, sensualism, superstition, religious simplicity, and manipulation (35). He offers these as a better framework "for understanding the patterns of reasoning (or unreasoning) mentálites viz., forms of life in the novel" than the dichotomy of faith versus reason (36). Tilley names Ivan a materialist because of what he sees as Ivan's unwavering commitment to three-dimensional thinking: a commitment that colors his atheism. As Ivan himself states in the novel, he has a "Euclidean mind" that does not necessarily reject but "cannot say" whether God is a "a human creation" or "the creator of humans" (38). Alyosha, Zosima, and Father Paissy are realists, and Grushenka, Dmitri, and Kolya Krasotkin evidence this form of life later in the novel. These characters not only recognize the ills that plague the world but "risk repairing" them through prudent, active love (40–41). Fyodor Karamazov, along with Grushenka and Dmitri in the novel's early stages, are sensualists. They think and behave so irrationally that it is difficult to detect in them any "form of life" save slavery to capricious passions. Father Ferapont...