Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Grand Inquisitor

The idea of ‘Miracle, Mystery, and Authority” is laid out by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in “The Grand Inquisitor” as a way to combat potential for human freedom. In the biblical tale of the Temptation of Christ, Satan appears to him in the desert and attempts to tempt him to transform stones into bread, jump from a tower, and to kneel to him in exchange of dominion over the entire world (“Temptation of Christ” 2). Jesus refuses all three temptations and thus grants humanity freedom and eternal salvation. Miracle, Mystery, and Authority refers to the perversion of these tests by the Grand Inquisitor as a set of powers he uses to control the masses during the time of the Spanish Inquisition. He critiques Christ for giving up these powers and thus allowing

He says, “Freedom, free thought, and science will lead them into such straits and will bring them face to face with such marvels and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, the fierce and rebellious, will destroy themselves, others, rebellious but weak, will destroy one another, while the rest, weak and unhappy, will crawl fawning to our feet and whine to us: ‘Yes, you were right, you alone possess His mystery, and we come back to you, save us from ourselves!”. He justifies taking away their freedom because the masses are better off without it, they do not have the capacity to choose for themselves. He even goes so far as to claim that they willingly give up freedom, and that the Inquisitor is noble to take on the bun of choice on behalf of the weak multitudes. This ties in with both Machiavelli’s view of human nature and Carl Schmitt’s view of the friend/enemy

This means that all members of a given society share a common enemy, who may not pose a direct threat, but who they wish to exterminate nonetheless, “But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible.” The concept of Miracle, Mystery, and Authority ties in with Schmitt's friend/enemy distinction on the basis that a sovereign is necessary to maintain societal stability. The intensity of the distinction leads people to die and kill for it, and in a full scale society this means that war is always possible. The sovereign then must be the only one who can control when war occurs and to what extent. Schmitt also claims that although having a shared, existential enemy is inherent to society, who the enemy is can be decided upon by the state sovereign and changed to adapt to that sovereign's interest. This mirrors miracle, mystery, and authority because both concepts are presented as ways to restrict individual freedom, and as reasons for why this freedom must be restricted. Just as the Grand Inquisitor claims that the masses are unable to bear the burden of freedom, Schmitt argues that society cannot decide for itself who the common enemy is and when to engage it. The political