Ivan's Rebellion Against Divine Justice — The Brothers Karamazov

Ivan continues at the tavern with the confession Alyosha has waited for. He cannot love neighbors up close, only at a distance; he mocks saintly charity as self-laceration. Christ-like love, he argues, is a miracle impossible on earth because no one can fully share another's suffering, especially degrading suffering that strips dignity at the doorstep.

He narrows the case to children, admitting that weakens his logic but makes the outrage clearer. He is fond of children himself, yet piles example on example: a murderer in prison who loved a boy at the window; Turkish atrocities against mothers and infants; the Swiss foundling Richard kissed to the guillotine; a cultured father who stung his seven-year-old with birch twigs; a five-year-old beaten and smeared with excrement by her own mother. Alyosha says he wants to suffer too; Ivan adds the serf boy torn by the general's hounds before his mother's eyes.

Then Ivan demands justice now, not in remote eternity. He will not accept harmony bought with children's tears, will not forgive torturers on behalf of their victims, and refuses hell as consolation after the fact. He sticks to the fact, not understanding: with his earthly mind he knows suffering exists and none are guilty, yet he must see justice or destroy himself. He returns his entrance ticket; he does not deny God, only God's world.

Alyosha calls it rebellion. Ivan asks whether he would be the architect of human happiness if one innocent child had to be tortured to found the edifice on unavenged tears; Alyosha says no. Alyosha invokes Christ's innocent blood; Ivan says he has not forgotten Him and offers his prose poem, The Grand Inquisitor, as the next stage of the argument.