The Temptation of Ultimate Happiness: Dostoevsky and european nihilism

The Russian writer Dostoevsky never had a happy love, a happy family, or a character with a very different personality, and so did the Brothers Karamazov as his most important work. This does not hinder his greatness, but it also subjects the reader to the same heavy mental torture again and again. In this work, full of moral conflicts, disputes, and extreme human passions, each character represents a moral ideal and a concept of life. Every dispute and conflict, every hysterical preaching, contains Dostoevsky's torture of Christian morality and historical reason—faith and reason, Athens and Jerusalem, which can determine the fate of mankind? As a reed that thinks, where is the preciousness of the human spirit?

The section "The Patriarch" in The Brothers Karamazov represents the spiritual height of Dostoevsky's writing. He condensed all his emotions, cultivation, and confusion into this fictional story told by the nihilist Ivan Karamazov to his brother Alyosha: When Jesus returns, how will he face the new tyrant, the judge of religion? Power monopolizes all faiths, where will man go and what will he depend on? The Justices spoke of a truth, "Why distinguish between good and evil, if you have to pay such a great price for it?" So Ivan, lonely and stubborn, resisted the world of faith and embraced the world of "reason." In his opinion, if God really existed, why was there still suffering and killing in the world, and why was he deaf to the cries of suffering children?

Religious Magistrate Image source: evangelicalfocus.com

Liu Xiaofeng argues in Salvation and Escape that behind Ivan's dispute with Alyosha represents the opposition between the two sources of Western philosophy, modern nihilists and defenders of transcendental values. Ivan represents the spiritual descendants of the "basement man" of Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus, and Malraux, while Alyosha is the embodiment of Kafka, Wittgenstein, and Shestov. But this dialogue was not created out of thin air by Dostoevsky. He was deeply involved in the nineteenth-century russian debate between realpolitik and ideas, which also made the Russian intellectuals of all schools of the time the object of Dostoevsky's investigation, whether Westernized, nihilist or populist. The central idea in The Brothers Karamazov is that there is only one of the various forms of evil in human history, which negates human dignity and diversity. And truth exists in man himself, including his freedom of choice and everything he thinks and loves.

Last month, the fifth volume of the Dostoevsky biography by the American scholar Joseph Frank, The Pinnacle of Literature, was published Chinese edition. In this 1,000-page tome, Frank devotes a chapter to how Dostoevsky conceived of The Patriarch of Religion, a "struggle" for the human soul. And this thrilling dialogue between Ivan and Alyosha is still unresolved in the spiritual genealogy of modern man.

Author | Hao Yuan

Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, written at the height of his literature, contains a legend of a religious magistrate who tells a seemingly bizarre but in fact thought-provoking story: fifteen centuries after the official Prophecy of the Kingdom of Heaven by The Christian Authorities, Christ reappeared on earth and, with his wisdom and strength, relieved the people of great suffering. However, the justices of the religion, who had always professed their fidelity and purity to the Christian faith, arrested Christ and sentenced him to death for heresy. According to a popular understanding, Dostoevsky's mockery in this story is that in his view, he has betrayed the ideals spread by the ancient apostles, and this interpretation does seem to find much textual support in Dostoevsky's works. However, if the legend is concerned only with sectarian strife, it is difficult to explain the widespread influence and deep resonance it has provoked among generations of readers. As Berdyaev points out, its subject matter is broader than the orthodox dispute between truth and Catholicism, where there is monitoring of human beings and contempt for human dignity and its sacred mission, where it prefers vulgar enjoyment over freedom, where it is convinced that truth is unnecessary for human happiness, where there are religious magistrates. It can be said that it "condenses the most profound prophecy about the fate of mankind" from which one can derive "eternal admonition."

Dostoevsky: The Pinnacle of Literature by Joseph Frank Translator: Dai Dahong Version: Guangxi Normal University Press, April 2022

Following this line of thought, Joseph Frank vividly demonstrated the historical context and deep intention of Dostoevsky's conception and writing of this legend through detailed and meticulous examination in his Biography of Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky's critical thrust in constructing this literary narrative was not only directed at Catholic religious practice, but more focused on Russian nihilism, and the reason why he adopted this roundabout critical approach was delicately related to the Russian social ecology at that time.

Spiritual soil for religious justices

On April 4, 1866, as Tsar Alexander II drew to a close to his walk in the summer garden near the Winter Palace, a pale former university student, Dmitry Karakozov, squeezed out of the crowd and pulled out a pistol and fired a shot at the Tsar. Although the assassination did not succeed because of an accident, the news of the Tsar's assassination shocked the whole of Russia, and Dostoevsky fell into a state of hysteria because of the shock. Dostoevsky reacted so strongly not because of the safety of the Tsar, as he had expressed in his public commentary at the time, but of the future of so many enlightened Russian cultures. Dostoevsky knew that the plot to assassinate the Tsar, if successful, would be nothing more than a change of tsar, which would not only not help russia's trend toward political enlightenment, but would allow the conservatives in the Tsarist government to further expand their power and improve their status. Sure enough, H. Werner, known as the "Werner Executioner", was not the only one who could do so. Count M. Muravyov was in charge of investigating the assassination, and he frantically suppressed Russian militants for a short period of time. Taking advantage of this power and favorable situation, he banned socially influential periodicals such as Modern Man and The Voice of Russia, and arrested a group of dangerous literati who he considered to advocate radical ideas. With Muravyov's behind-the-scenes support, The Russian Herald editor-in-chief Katkov launched a massive and demagogic propaganda campaign to reveal to the Russian public the "deep roots" of the assassination. At this time, Russian nihilism became the object of concentrated criticism in the official discourse of the Tsarist government.

Tsar Alexander II

According to Frank's research, although Russian nihilism originated in Europe, And European currents such as British utilitarianism, French utopian socialism, Feuerbach's atheism, Bakunin's anarchism, and vulgarized social Darwinism and mechanical determinism all contributed to the formation of Russian nihilism, Russian nihilism has a very distinct and complete negativity. Like Turgenev's Bazarov in Father and Son, the Russian nihilists were keen to use the name of modern science to deny and question the moral ideals and religious beliefs affirmed and promoted by their elders in order to replace them with the materialistic ideology they worshipped. As the divine values in the religious and moral spheres dissolve, they break free themselves of all kinds of moral and conscience shackles, and they can flexibly use various ideals and beliefs that may not be true to them to manipulate others and seize power for themselves.

Drama "Dostoevsky and the Lord Chancellor"

Given that the Christian faith espoused by the Orthodox Church was one of the important cornerstones of the legitimacy of the Russian monarchy, the tsarist government's power elite was keenly aware that Russian nihilism was eroding the ideological base of their ruling power. In order to maintain the stability of the ruling order, it is necessary to deeply criticize Russian nihilism and restore the vitality and vitality of the Russian religious tradition, so that the restless souls of young Russians who have nowhere to rest can be returned to the embrace of orthodoxy. However, Dostoevsky was keenly aware that since Peter the Great's reforms, russia's ruling class, which had become more and more concerned with material prosperity and the strength of the military armed forces, had gradually lost its passion for the faith they openly preached, resulting in a state of de-roots Russian culture, "the reason we have no culture lies in Peter the Great, an nihilist who uprooted our culture." Although Russia's rulers and people still advocate the Christian faith in public, the underlying motivations are completely different: the Russian people want to use the Christian faith to realize their desire for justice and equality, while the Russian rulers want to use the Christian faith to make the people more docile. Dostoevsky had no doubt that this pragmatic attitude of Russian high society towards faith was also a hidden expression of nihilism. It can be argued that a specter of nihilism is wandering around Russia. In order to maintain the stability of order more effectively, the upper strata of society need to quietly change the beliefs commonly held by the lower strata of society, and then spread this distorted sect widely to the masses. It is in this historical situation that religious justices naturally came into being.

"In the name of bread on the earth"

According to the narrative of the Patriarch of Justices, the Lord Justice, the night before the resurrected Christ was about to be executed at the stake, came to the prison with a lamp in his hand, perhaps trying to persuade Christ to accept his system of values that had been updated in substance. In the view of the Religious Justices, Christ's greatest "sin" was the promise to his faithful, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free," thus giving freedom of faith to those who are too weak to deserve it at all.

The judges of religion adopted the strategy of opposing the freedom of the people in the Middle Ages to bread, and he sought to prove that as long as the people had freedom, they could not have enough bread to sustain themselves. People who have a little knowledge of modern politics may wonder that freedom is a necessary condition for the material prosperity of modern civilization, so why can a person's freedom endanger his own survival? But here the religious magistrates have in fact stolen the concept that normal freedom is an orderly freedom bound by a legal and moral conscience, while the religious magistrates refer to the kind of absolute freedom freed from all legal and moral constraints, and that lawless freedom only gives the strong the opportunity to plunder the weak. In this state, it only takes a little use of the long-standing contradictions among the people to stir up trouble, and they can be plunged into a fierce struggle. While most people despair of this state of chaos, the Judge of Religion appears as the savior who mediates contradictions and establishes a new order, who will tell the people that human beings are weak, small, rebellious, and that if they are given full freedom, they will not be able to fully feed the bread of the earth. After suffering from chaos and strife, the medieval populace tended to accept it uncritically, would have loatheed and feared freedom, and would have gladly welcomed the supervision and control of the religious magistrates. Through the long-term discipline of this language, they will be like beasts who have become accustomed to being kept in captivity, and even if they have gained freedom by chance, they do not know how to enjoy and maintain it. As soon as the religious justices who intended to put them back in chains appeared, they would tamely put their freedom at the feet of the justices.

The 1958 Soviet film The Brothers Karamazov

Of course, the Religious Justice knew quite well that this tactic alone would not be enough to induce the people to give up their freedom for a long time, and he went on to invent three major powers to consolidate this effect of letting the people escape freedom, the first of which was the miracle. In 1851, in order to hold the first World Exposition in Hyde Park in London, the United Kingdom built an exhibition hall of the "Crystal Palace" in the park. Chernyshevsky praised the great achievements of the British Industrial Revolution on display in the Crystal Palace, and regarded the Crystal Palace as the totem of brilliant modern civilization in reality. During his 1862 trip to London, Dostoevsky made a special visit to the Crystal Palace, which was hosting the Second World's Fair, but he was not as optimistic as Chernyshevsky, but regarded the Crystal Palace as a giant monster predicted by the book of Revelation. He was keenly aware that the great miracles created by the Crystal Palace on the material level would become an ingenious means for religious judges to manipulate people's hearts.

1969 version of the Soviet film The Brothers Karamazov

In view of the fact that human beings always have a greater reverence for the unknown, in order to maintain the faith formed by the people through the fear of miracles, it is necessary to keep the way and process of faith form miracles for a long time, and mystery is precisely the second kind of power invented by religious justices. As a theoretician, the Religious Justice will write books and doctrines for his quietly transformed faith, but he tends to use esoteric and obscure statements to express his thoughts. He wrote long sentences with complex grammatical structures as much as possible, filled with strange allusions and cold languages that prevailed in intellectual fashion and could show their profundity, and even when everyday terms appeared, they had to give a sense of secrecy and ambiguity in that context, and even frequently weave elusive new terms to flaunt the innovation of his theories. By artificially raising the threshold of understanding, the religious magistrates can not only quickly dissuade readers who lack piety to themselves in the first place, but also succeed in shifting the attention of the pious readers essentially to the difficult goal of understanding their own obscure ideas. People always value the goals they have painstakingly achieved, and when one devotes one's main energies to interpreting the profound meaning of mysterious ideas, one rarely pays attention to the truth or falsity of the ideas themselves, and is convinced of the coherent set of explanations that one has painstakingly constructed from them. Even if this apparent interpretation proves to be problematic in hindsight, the religious magistrates can shift the intellectual responsibility to the interpreter's misreading.

On the other hand, as the actual leaders of the Church, the Religious Justices must use their power in various public social activities to create a mysterious sense of distance and to disguise their true abilities, thoughts and mental states, so as to avoid ambitious subordinates who, after seeing through the psychological and behavioral laws of the Religious Justices, will in turn use these laws to manipulate the Religious Justices. It is undeniable that this kind of power does not confuse the truly intelligent, and Gide sharply criticized it in his speech in memory of Dostoevsky: "False greatness is aggressive and unattainable, and because of the weakness of the heart, it is hidden deeply, at least not to show its face, and to show its honor only when it is necessary to make people solemn, but never to reveal its truth, and I want to say that its truth is uncompromisingly small." "But this kind of power technique is still quite effective for the vast majority of the public and even for young students who have received higher professional education but are not deeply involved in the world." As long as the religious magistrates establish a great and profound mystical image of themselves before the majority, there is no room for a few brainy people like Gide.

However, public opinion has always been easy to change, and the people have shaken their original faith due to serious setbacks in reality or the influence of new intellectual ideas, and the religious justices have a last resort to this- to consolidate the authority of the faith by making peace with secular power, and to use Caesar's sword to eliminate heresies that threaten them. Thus, the methods used by the judges to deal with this dilemma were usually a Machiavellian dark strategy: "All armed prophets triumph, but non-armed prophets fail; when people no longer believe, rely on force to force them into submission." ”

Six Lectures on Dostoevsky by Andrei Kidd Translator: Yu Zhongxian Edition: People's Literature Publishing House, March 2019

As Frank pointed out, Dostoevsky showed through his superb narrative technique that these powers, which the religious magistrates relished, were precisely the three great temptations that the devil used to test Christ during his forty days of asceticism in the wilderness. This is enough to prove that the Magistrate was a fake believer who, by distorting the teachings of Christ, appealed to secular power to tempt the medieval people to renounce their freedom, and took the opportunity to seize unimaginable privileges and benefits for himself. By its very nature, the Justice was a nihilist, but his brilliance lay in his adept at disguising his demonic heart, which was actually nihilistic, with his sincere appearance and devout words and deeds of criticism of nihilism. It is extremely frightening to think that it is this "Antichrist" disguised as a Christian who controls the enormous power of the top echelons of the Russian state church, where a large number of conspiracies to corrupt the true faith are constantly planned and carried out.

Christ remained silent in the process of expounding his ideas and techniques incessantly, and this silent attitude meaningfully exposed the lie that the religious justices wanted to fulfill Christ's wishes on earth. At the end of the story, the religious magistrate finally realizes that he cannot convince Christ to believe in himself. After receiving a gentle kiss from Christ, the Judge of Religion shivered and changed his previous desire to execute Christ, he opened the prison door and let Christ go, and solemnly admonished Christ, "Don't get in our way, never come back!" This act of the Judge of Religion does not in any way imply the discovery of his conscience; on the contrary, the shrewd Judge of Religion is well aware that his power and power cannot at all change the faith of Christ through secular judgment, and that his judgment of Christ will only completely cut off his own way back. The Religious Justices were clever and opportunistic, and he had no intention of defending the power order of the Tsarist Government to the death, and once the political situation and the balance of power changed, the Religious Justices would change their appearance and reappear on the stage of history as a radical civilian leader.

The wave of nihilism in Russia

In 1863, while visiting Herzen in London, Dostoev met a friend named Ogalyov. In September of the same year, on the recommendation of Oggalyev, the Dostoevskys attended a congress of the Union for Peace and Freedom in Geneva, at which the famous Russian anarchist Bakunin gave an impassioned impromptu speech, which aroused strong repercussions from the participants. Although Dostoevsky did not listen directly to Bakunin's speech, he was indirectly aware of the main thrust of Bakunin's speech through comprehensive coverage of it in the local press and the international press. Dostoevsky did not have any sympathy for Bakunin's rhetoric, and in his view, although Bakunin promised the people that they would help them achieve the justice and equality that the people had long sought, Bakunin's nihilism extolled the passion for destruction of all things as "the unfathomable eternal source of all life", which invisibly dissolved the moral constraints of justice and equality. Bakunin concluded that this was a valuable opportunity for nihilism to give the populace the freedom to pursue his own political ideals, but Dostoevsky argued that this unbridled freedom in political practice would only lead to a sad state of unscrupulous abuse of intrigue and trickery, and eventually to the infinite concentration of power in the hands of a small group of ambitious civilian leaders, which, so to speak, gave people "beginning with infinite freedom and ending with infinite despotism." In the minds of radical civilian leaders like Bakunin, there was actually a "religious justice."

Bakunin

The political theory and practice of Bakunin and his followers became one of Dostoevsky's main sources of inspiration for The Devil. In this novel, Verkhovynski, with stavrodinal Stavrogin as his spiritual leader, establishes a terrorist organization aimed at overthrowing the Russian government, which organizes a series of conspiracies to shake the foundations of society, but they eventually disintegrate due to the crime of killing Shatov, a core member of the organization who wanted to quit the organization. In this way, Dostoevsky vividly shows the reader that the demons possessed by the religious magistrates are in turn possessed by jesus to a group of radical civilian leaders, who, under the deception of the demons, are further leading to their own destruction.

After the publication of The Swarm, from time to time some critics thought that the novel was nothing more than an arbitrary fiction or even a vicious slander of certain Russian political figures, however, Frank's study of the historical background of the Ensemble of the Devil showed that the various intrigues and tricks that Dostoevsky exhibited in it were basically well-documented. In 1871, Bakunin's proud protégé Nechayev was tried for directing the murder of wavering elements of the underground, followed by his secret treatise, The Revolutionary Catechism, which had profoundly influenced generations of radical civilian leaders in Russia. In this book, Nechaev systematically expounds on the many shady tactics that radical civilian leaders can use in seizing power, for example, they should disguise their identity as radicals, use various social channels to approach the wives and children of the ruling faction, lure them out of orthodox moral norms, and use the relevant privacy at hand to force them to join radical movements against society. They should seize every opportunity to dress up as ardent followers of liberalism and entangle influential liberals into conspiracies that would provoke social unrest, so that the main responsibility for the riots could be passed on to the liberals afterwards. They should also serve as much as possible as aide and spies of the Tsarist elite, "fueling all disasters and evils, which will eventually make the people intolerable and force them to revolt as a whole." These ideas of Nechaev not only powerfully dominated the radical political practice of many Russian nihilists, but also succeeded in causing some Russian nihilists to constantly lower their moral bottom line in political activities. A group of bakunin's loyal followers enthusiastically participated in the rebel movement in Paris, France, in 1871, and when this movement was about to fail, these fanatics planned to set fire to Paris, and this was only because they sincerely believed that their great cause was higher than the happiness of the world, and since their cause could not succeed, they did not mind destroying the world with their own hands.

The herzen statue located in Moscow

Although Bakunin and his radical civilian leaders ostensibly preached ideals and values that confronted the religious magistrates, they did not particularly believe in the set of values they passionately advocated, but in order to cater to the desire of the people at the bottom for justice, equality, and freedom, so that they could climb the ladder of power with the power of the people at the bottom. Although their theory of inciting the masses is not invulnerable, the russian masses, which lack political experience, still flock to it, perhaps yet another testimony to the pathetic law of history that Rousseau has summed up: "A people who are accustomed to a certain master, if they try to break the shackles, will leave freedom even further, for they will often regard the debauchery as freedom, as opposed to freedom, and as a result their revolution will almost always bring them into the hands of those demagogues who have only aggravated their shackles." These radical civilian leaders and religious justices are two sides of the same coin of Russian nihilism, and radical civilian leaders, when they have come to power, will gradually tend to advocate and propagate the conservative beliefs of religious justices, and the radicals in Russia in this century will be the conservatives of the next century.

Russian drama "Group of Demons" released in 2014

According to some commentators, Dostoevsky, with the help of Elder Zosima's sermon before his death, made an important critique of the nihilism of the religious justices, but this theoretical critique lacked strong persuasiveness. Frank rightly reveals here that Dostoevsky was a great writer who could not have been expected to refute nihilism with highly abstract philosophical arguments like Nietzsche or Heidegger, but that his specialty lies in the profound and informative revelation of the Russian nihilists' false assertions about human nature through his carefully constructed literary narratives and literary roles. Dostoevsky found that, whatever they professed, there is a pathological phenomenon in the Russian nihilists which is divorced from the people by arrogance and arrogance: they consider themselves to be the elite and the strong above the people, and the people are nothing more than a group of weak, ignorant, insensitive, and therefore unworthy of freedom and dignity, and can only be reduced to a ragtag group of their means and instruments of power. Throughout his life, Dostoevsky continued to use his literary works to debunk this outrageous lie, perhaps the most convincing of which was based on his own experiences of hard labor in Siberia, and authentic faith played a crucial role in his gradual insight into the nature of the Russian people.

Search for the soul of fraternity in the Fall

On December 24, 1849, Dostoevsky embarked on a perilous journey to Siberia, where he would spend a decade of arduous and challenging hard labor. Despite having just experienced the horror of nearly being executed by death, Dostoevsky's heart was full of energy, he thanked God for giving him a new life, he swore that he would not lose hope, would keep his soul and heart pure, and secretly planned to impress other prisoners during hard labor, arousing their courage to fight for justice and freedom.

Hard laborers in Siberia

However, no matter how beautiful his original plan, Dostoevsky encountered the harshest reality of his life in a Siberian labor camp. Due to lack of funds and neglect of management, the living environment in Siberian labor camps has become harsher than ordinary people can imagine. Worse still, the mental state and moral standards of the prisoners from the bottom are far less idealistic than Dostoevsky originally believed. They treat their companions with ruthlessness and do not miss any opportunity to frame their companions and grab their own interests. They are grateful and condescending to officials in labor camps whose social status is higher than their own, and even play clowns in front of big people in order to get some small profits. They were initially in awe of Dostoevsky, political prisoners from high society, but when they learned that these political prisoners had lost their privileged position by speaking out for the people at the bottom, they quickly became cold and even disrespectful. When Dostoevsky's companions tried to preach to them progressive political ideas, they either ignored them, sneered, or even some scheming prisoners who would swindle them of what little money they had by superficially pandering to their claims.

All of this has forced Dostoevsky into an abyss of unprecedented despair, yet, as Kierkegaard has repeatedly reminded, for a truly committed Christian, this abyss of despair, far from breaking his faith, will inspire him to achieve a "leap of faith." According to Frank's account, Dostoevsky made a miraculous leap of faith during his second Easter break at the Oms Crow Camp. On the second day of the holiday, many prisoners were not taken out to work, but in the camp they were verbally arguing with each other or drinking and gambling, surrounded by a mess of vulgar minor tunes, and Dostoevsky's mood was extremely boring. He did not want to be disturbed by the prisoners, so he lay down on the wooden bed and pretended to sleep. But it was during this time that a childhood memory that he had long forgotten came to his mind: nine-year-old Dostoevsky had once lost his way in the woods near the manor, and since he had known earlier that a wolf was also wandering nearby, he was in a state of utter horror. Desperately running out of the woods, with no one around, he met one of his father's serfs named Malei. Although Malejpinsu was always ridiculed by those around him as rude and ignorant, the rough man did not use this opportunity to take revenge on the owner's son, but smiled at him gently like a mother. He drew crosses for each other and sent the panicked child home safely.

The Dostoevsky Literature Memorial in St. Petersburg

This vivid memory suddenly awakened Dostoevsky, who realized with trepidation that the essence of the Christian faith is like the joy and love of a mother when she sees a baby in her arms, and this love is like a light that can help her to see what has been neglected before, "the treasure of Christ's fraternity buried in the depths of the soul of the Russian people." Dostoevsky found himself having made the same mistake of hypocritical sentimentalism as the radical civilian leaders of the Russian nihilists. Although they advocate equality, they always look down on the people from above, they think that they are the saviors of the people, they impose their political ideas on the people, they will give small favors to the people, but they never bother to listen to and understand what the people really care about and really want. Dostoevsky firmly believed that in order to truly understand the hearts of the people, it is necessary to lay down one's body and actively enter the actual situation of the people with empathy. True realism is not an acceptance of the nature of the people proclaimed by arbitrary power, but to show the causes and consequences of the formation of this character, which means that the interrogator of the soul exposes the filth, but finds diamonds in the filth, illuminates the light of human nature that is buried, and thus shows the complexity and depth of the soul.

After changing perspectives, Dostoevsky patiently observed and studied to develop a deeper understanding of the prisoners from the bottom: in the cruel environment of the labor camps, these prisoners who were denigrated by secular morality and insulted and bullied began to hide their true feelings behind the false mask of drifting with the flow. Remaining silent or pretending to be satisfied is their means of survival. In some cases, they also protect themselves by playing clowns, and their "feelings are very deep, but because they are suppressed, they hide and do not reveal." They pretend to be crazy and stupid on the surface, but in fact they are angry and ironic to the people, because they have been trembling in front of these people for a long time, and they dare not tell them the truth. This kind of pretending to be crazy and stupid is sometimes very sad." Dostoevsky went on to discover that the vile and selfish qualities of these prisoners were the result of a long period of discipline by tyrannical power.

Although it is true that this manipulation can be effective in suppressing the pursuit of freedom in society as a whole for a certain period of time, Dostoevsky, through a meticulous examination of the prisoners in the labor camps, found that for a man, no matter how ordinary his abilities are, no matter how humble his status, he is not born to be bullied and insulted, but to desire basic respect and to have the minimum freedom. As God's creature, this desire has become universal and profoundly an irrational life instinct of every human being. No matter how strongly one suppresses one's instincts in this regard as a result of rational calculation, as long as the infringement of this human dignity and freedom by arbitrary power exceeds a certain limit, this aspect of one's instincts will explode in a crazy way.

Dostoevsky recorded in the Dead House Manuscript that a prisoner who went out to work brought back an eagle with a badly injured wing, and they secretly put it in the farthest corner of the camp, but the eagle refused to be domesticated at all, and even if it ate, it was only eaten when it was alone, and never in front of others. It would rather wait for death proudly than trust anyone who approaches it. One day in late autumn, the eagle's invincible spirit finally prompted the prisoners to put it back into nature. Although many people are worried about the safety of the eagle after going out, when they see the eagle flapping its injured wings and roaring away in the cold, gloomy, and empty field, they all express their heartfelt envy, which stems from the long-suppressed instinct for freedom in their hearts.