And yet, freedom, although it calls on a person never to renounce his Self, cannot objectively overcome the obstacles to happiness. On the contrary, it manifests them and accentuates them. Calling on a person not to limit himself to subjective happiness and not to be satisfied with it, it still does nothing for the achievement and preservation of objective happiness. Freedom in the face of happiness is just a promise. Therefore, a person begins to experience it as a heavy and often even unbearable burden. Freedom demands, but does not help; approves, but does not substantiate; causes thirst, but does not quench it. It becomes a gift, although noble, but at the same time terrible. Being free, a person begins to feel non-existence under his feet. Freedom opens up an emptiness for him, into which he is called to find the courage to step. To accept this call is to renounce happiness in this reality. This is not an easy task. For this reason, very many remain on this side of the call for freedom, satisfied with the benefits of this reality, even though these benefits are partial, transitory, and relative. Very many, rejecting objective metaphysical happiness, try to create their own, subjective psychological happiness. A great many renounce freedom for the sake of happiness. Many become slaves in order to become happy.

All the activities of the Inquisitor, all his efforts, all his love for humanity, are based precisely on the difficulties that freedom engenders. The basis of the inquisitor's activity is subjective psychological happiness. His gaze is not directed to the otherworldly. He does not recognize ideal reality and, thus, ideal nature. He is not an idealist in the metaphysical sense of the word. The otherworldly does not exist for him, for he does not believe in God or in the immortality of the soul. On the other side, there is only death, therefore, complete non-existence. Therefore, there can be no transcendental completeness of man, and consequently no objective happiness. Everything ends here, on this earth, in this concrete reality. Happiness is just subjective psychological satisfaction, psychological peace, psychological pleasure. A person should be happy already in this life, because all human existence is exhausted by this life. That is why this life, according to the Inquisitor, should be arranged in such a way that it brings a person as much satisfaction as possible, as much peace and pleasure as possible.

But bearing in mind that with such an understanding of happiness, freedom is the most significant obstacle on the way to happiness and its complete opposite, this freedom must be taken away from man. As long as a person is free, he cannot be subjectively happy. When freedom is rejected, man finds objective happiness in a natural way. "We will calm everyone," the inquisitor says to Christ. "With us all will be happy and will no longer rebel or destroy each other, as in your freedom, everywhere. Oh, we will convince them that they will only become free when they renounce their freedom for us and submit to us." Therefore, the inquisitor creates a life in which there is no freedom, but this life is happy in the subjective psychological sense. The people he leads become calm and satisfied. They live a perfectly innocent life, not knowing what is good and what is bad; they cannot even sin, for they do not know sin, although they commit it. The Grand Inquisitor is trying to restore the lost paradise to people.

But this paradise of his is not a humanly Christian heaven, not paradise as a consequence of the final victory of freedom, but an animal state that is revealed as a result of the denial of freedom and, thus, of the personality of man. There is an essential similarity between the state of the animal and the life created by the Inquisitor. A person in the kingdom of the inquisitor must become the same as an animal that, being "always in the womb" (R. M. Rilke), is subjectively happy because it is full, calm and satisfied. The happiness of an animal is a consequence of its immersion in nature. A person's happiness should be a consequence of his immersion in the team. Just as nature predetermines the animal and establishes laws for it, so society must predetermine man and order his life. Only by immersing himself in the collective, living in the womb of society, can a person feel happy and satisfied. His personal self, his individual inclinations and passionate desires perish here, for they are the strongest opponents of subjective happiness. But this can happen only on one condition – if a person renounces his freedom. Just as an animal is not free in nature, so man is not free in society. Lack of freedom is a prerequisite for happiness for both humans and animals. The life created by the Inquisitor becomes a natural collectivism, where causality and necessity dominate, determining not only the carnal, but also the spiritual sphere of human life. The Igquisitor immerses man back into nature, from which he has separated himself in spirit. Such a person has not yet awakened the consciousness of himself as a person.

Thus, the inquisitor finds the ideal of his life not in religion, but in nature. He did not look at the prototype according to which man was created and to which he strives throughout his history, but he peered into the human conditions in which this prototype has to manifest itself. The Inquisitor's gaze is essentially directed backwards. Therefore his love for humanity, of which he constantly speaks and with which he justifies his actions, is in reality love of nature. This is not the love of the God-man. but of nature-man. This is love for the animal in man. The Inquisitor asks Christ: "Did we not love humanity, having so humbly recognized its impotence, lovingly lightened its burden, and forgave its weak nature, even if it was a sin, but with our permission?" Undoubtedly, it was love. But love is not for man, but for animals; love not for the spirit, but for nature. The very formulation of the question suggests that this love is somehow terrible and that, when manifested, it destroys a person as a spiritual, independent and free personality. To take the natural animal nature in man as a basis and predetermine his whole life with this principle means to condemn man forever not to rise above nature and above its causal laws. This means to sentence him to one state instead of infinity. This means to turn an open creature into a closed one, such as an animal is. The transformation of man into an animal is the result of inquisitorial activity. Having rejected the ideal transcendental realm, the inquisitor, still wishing to make man happy, had to turn to nature and immerse man in it. The position of man as man in the cosmic structure is the middle and therefore the transition. Man can break away from nature and go up the path of culture into religion, where he will reach his completeness, thus satisfying his restless (for it is open) heart. But he can also descend lower and lower back into nature, gradually losing his spirituality and his personality. The Inquisitor chooses the second path, the path downward, and this path leads the person. The path of the Inquisitor is the path of Zarathustra3 from the mountain. Having lived on the top of the mountain for ten years, Zarathustra finally had enough of his wisdom and wanted to go down. Why? Because he found out that God was dead. The path from God leads to nature. For the one for whom God dies, the earth is resurrected. "I adjure you, brethren, to remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of unearthly hopes,"[41] for on the other side of the earth there is only death. This is the law of Zarathustra and the Grand Inquisitor, which they both lay at the foundation of human life.

In this way, the inquisitor's reproach to Christ, as if He judged man too highly, that He judged him too highly, is in fact a reproach to the very nature of man. Christ did not overestimate man or hide his weaknesses. His sigh in the Garden of Gethsemane — "the spirit is cheerful, but the flesh is weak" — "spiritus quidem promptus est, caro autem infirma" (Matt. 26:41) — convinces us that Christ penetrates into the very depths of human nature, into the duality that lies within it, which, breaking through to the surface, marks our entire inhabited reality with constant doubts and vacillations. However, Christ did not find the support of His activity and His teaching in that which raises doubts and changes man himself, but in that which makes him eternally unchangeable, which constitutes the basis of his being. The support of Christ is the ideal nature of man: that 6-divine prototype of man which every man bears within himself as the source of his anxiety, but at the same time as the source of his divinity. But this prototype is none other than God Himself in His fullness and in His holiness. "Let us create man in our image and likeness" – this biblical idea expresses the depths of our being, our ideal nature, our purpose and our purpose. It was in this idea that Christ found support, proclaiming His teaching and accomplishing His feat. Its basis is not an animal, with which man is related by a common natural principle, but God as the prototype of man, as his ideal and his goal. True, Christ did not reject the animal man, as the Manichaeans later did.4 But He did not stop at it, as the Inquisitor did. Christ knew that man had surpassed the animal, but that he had not yet reached God, so he stopped halfway. He also knew that man's way is a way forward toward God, not a way backward toward an animal. He came to facilitate this path forward, the path to God. Christ's requirements are too high and too difficult for animals, but not for man as man in the ideal sense of the word. These demands are too high for a person who has stopped or who is coming back, but they are not too difficult for a person who walks forward without looking back.

The Inquisitor reproaches Christ: "Respecting him less, I would demand less of him..." There is no doubt that in this case "his burden would have been lighter." But then the understanding of human nature would be different -- its high and deep meaning would remain beyond this understanding. And the prototype of man would not be God, and man would not be man. Christ evaluated man not according to His own discretion, but on the basis of the very divine idea of man, from his very divine basis, which constitutes the true being of man. The ethics of Christ is built on His metaphysics, which is the expression of true human existence. If man were different, then the laws of Christ would be different. His teaching is dictated by the structure of human nature, in which the image of God is hidden, so it naturally compels man to follow the path to God. The laws of Christ are merely landmarks that help man to go in the right direction without deviating from his predestined path, and to reach the end of that path as quickly and successfully as possible, so that man may manifest in himself the image of God which earthly life does not allow to manifest. Like an artist who solves the riddle of nature and embodies it in his creations, so Christ solved the riddle of man and embodied it by His redemption. A redeemed man is a regenerated man, recreated; it is the creation of Christ, that Great Artist, a work in which the primordial divine idea shines in all its primordial purity, much brighter than in the paradisiacal life. Christ leads man forward, for man himself wants to go forward. Christ cannot leave man in this reality, for it is not the true being of man. That is why He said that He did not come to bring peace, but a sword, "for I have come to divide a man from his father, and a daughter from her mother, and a daughter-in-law from her mother-in-law" (Matthew 10:35). From the very beginning, His earthly activity was to be a swift attack and struggle, it was not to be satisfying, for satisfaction would mean stopping, which is inherently unacceptable to man. Christ wants to see man happy. However, He builds this happiness not on psychological pleasant experiences, but on the ideal metaphysical nature of man, revealed in his prototype. The happiness that Christ promises is the deification of man's being. However, this reality is not yet deified, so a person cannot be happy in it. That is why Christ points to transcendental reality as the true homeland of man and as the true place of his existence and his happiness. The Inquisitor does not believe in transcendental life, so the precepts of Christ are for him only the gesture of an idealist, detached from reality, whose teaching he tries to correct by bringing him closer to this tangible reality. It seems to the Inquisitor that Christ did not remain faithful to the earth. Therefore, he makes every effort to return this fidelity to the earth, at least to His inheritance. And yet the Inquisitor, no matter how hard he tries, cannot refute the human "inquuietum cor" that is hidden in every person and which must be quenched. The Inquisitor understands this very well, but chooses a very peculiar way to satisfy it. The Inquisitor kills both the passionate desire and the restlessness of the heart. It makes a person not a person. The man "recreated" by the Inquisitor no longer has this Augustinian uneasiness of the heart, it does not exist because it was quenched, but because it was destroyed when the individual in man with his freedom, with his conscience and his choice was destroyed. The Inquisitor, like Christ, wants to be the redeemer of man. But the inquisitorial "atonement" is the liberation of man from himself. The dehumanization of a person is the result of the inquisitor's activities.

Meanwhile, Christ fills this anxiety and thirst of the human heart with divine content and, thereby, drowns them out. Christ does not destroy man's anxiety. On the contrary, He intensifies this anxiety, bringing it to the highest degree. People who adhere to a different, non-Christian worldview do not experience such significant and deep internal conflicts as people with a Christian worldview. No one experiences the discrepancy between the ideal and reality more painfully than a Christian. R. Guardini, speaking about the dual character of the Christian, noted that the redemption and rebirth of man is not sorcery, but a new beginning is laid in man. "The evil of which you speak exists, but so does the new beginning. A Christian is an unusual creature, but he is, so to speak, a struggle. It is a battlefield and therefore consists of two contending parties: the old man, strengthened in his rebellious self, and the new, formed from Christ. It is Christ who shows what the meaning of all this struggle is and where man can find final and complete peace. Christ places God before man as his content, his goal and meaning. The beautiful dream of "you will be as gods" – "eritis sicut dii", which seduced the first people, is realized by Christ in its entirety. The deification of man is the ideal of Christ, which He proclaims and which He lays down as the foundation of the Kingdom created by Him.

But man himself must strive for this ideal, to which man is brought closer by his openness, his choice, and his responsibility. The deification of man is a good thing that comes from the Creator. But a person must open up, accept this good and choose it. The path to the deification of man goes only through his freedom. Only a free person is ready to accept God into himself. Therefore, the preservation of freedom is a precondition for religious redemption and transfiguration. The Inquisitor constantly reproaches Christ for multiplying it, instead of taking away a person's freedom. Indeed, the freedom of man is the main precept of Christ. Even the Inquisitor admits that Christ did nothing that could harm the freedom of man. The reverence for freedom is one of the basic rules of Christ's conduct and the consistent conclusion of His entire metaphysics. If the inquisitor, leading man back to the animal state, had to refute the freedom of man, then Christ, leading man to the divine state, had to affirm it. Freedom, as already noted, is a constant call to objective metaphysical happiness. But Christ is the leader on this path. Therefore, it is He who must constantly call man, not allowing him to calm down, stop and get tired. Undoubtedly, for psychological subjective happiness this constant call of Christ serves as a hindrance. The fundamental importance of freedom in the teaching and actions of Christ leads to a clash between the freedom He emphasizes and the psychological happiness to which man strives. That is why the Inquisitor says that Christ brings to man "anxiety, confusion and misfortune." Christ Himself does not deny this, noting that He did not bring rest into the world, but a sword, and raised up children against their fathers, and generation against generation. But since subjective psychological happiness is of little concern to Christ, He does not attach much importance to the suffering caused by the destruction of this kind of happiness. The main goal of Christ is objective metaphysical happiness, as a consequence of the transfigured human nature and the regenerated reality. Therefore, all of Christ's attention is focused on overcoming the obstacles to true happiness – part, time, relativity. The main means of overcoming these obstacles is human freedom. Therefore, Christ consistently revives freedom, multiplying it and emphasizing it. Christ's central promise is expressed in His words—I will set you free.

But it is at this point that a painful and intractable problem arises. This problem is raised by the Inquisitor himself, and it is because of it that he dares to oppose Christ. Speaking of how Christ rejected the offer of the spirit of the desert to step down from the top of the temple, the inquisitor remarks: "Oh, of course, you acted here proudly and magnificently, like a god, but people, but a weak rebellious tribe - are they gods?... But, I repeat, are there many like you?" These are the chosen and strong ones, whom he himself wanted to join in his time. But the whole crowd, all the thousands of millions, are weak, they are unable to bear their freedom, they cannot decide and act for themselves. What to do with them? Maybe they should die? Maybe happiness is not for them? Or do they not want him? Or maybe they "should only serve as material for the great and strong?" asks the Inquisitor. Indeed, the question is very acute. In the history of mankind there have always been many for whom the freedom brought by Christ was too heavy, and the happiness proclaimed by Him too far away.

So maybe he did the right thing?

R. Guardini is inclined to answer this question in the affirmative. Speaking of the fact that when reading Dostoevsky's legend, he doubted whether the Christ of the legend was really a "heretic," Guardini notes that Christianity in this Christ is an absolute responsibility and at the same time something extraordinary. This Christianity has nothing to do with the sphere in which man finds himself, namely, with the everyday mediocrity." According to Guardini, absolute peaks and absolute depths are peripheral values. Meanwhile, there can be no life if it does not have a middle region. In Dostoevsky's legend, this middle region does not exist. And therefore, "perhaps the sharpest reproach that can be made against Dostoevsky is that the middle area completely falls out of the picture of human existence he depicts. This suddenly becomes evident when you notice that the people in his novels do everything except one: none of them work." This general orientation of Dostoevsky, according to Guardini, is also manifested in the legend "The Grand Inquisitor". It also does not have an everyday median area. That is why Christianity in it "becomes unreal." Guardini characterizes Christ in the legend as follows: "He is an abstract Christ. Christ is only for himself. He has no connection with the Father in the direction of the world and with the world in the direction of the Father. He does not love the world as it is, and does not really elevate it. He is not a Messenger or a Savior. He is not an intermediary between the true Father in heaven and the true man. He has no support. It is amazing, but it is not clear what and for what purpose. The shock caused by him becomes hopeless and ends in hopelessness"[43]. Without a doubt, if the Christ of the legend really rejects everyday life, if he does not accept it and is not connected with it, then it goes without saying that he is a dreamer, detached from reality, who shakes the world, but does not create it, but rather destroys it, because he has rejected its inner structure. Then His teaching really deserves to be corrected. Then, from the standpoint of Christianity, such a Christ is really a heretic, who, according to the just decision of the inquisitor, must be burned at the stake. But is it really so? Did Dostoevsky really depict Christ as abstract from everyday life, and the Inquisitor as a person who feels and understands reality? This question is resolved by itself when the relationship between Dostoevsky and Christianity on the one hand, with the everyday sphere of life, on the other, becomes clear.

R. Guardini reproaches Dostoevsky for the fact that the depiction of human existence in his work allegedly lacks the middle everyday area in which man is and without which life is impossible. As a vivid example of such insufficiency, Guardini points out that Dostoevsky's characters do not work, noting that "labor embraces the entire sphere of man's everyday existence with his troubles, with his responsibility and with his nobility"[44]. We must agree with Guardini that the characters in Dostoevsky's novels really do not work. It is also necessary to agree that labor expresses the sphere of everyday existence in all its content. However, it is hardly possible to agree with the conclusion that the middle area of everyday life seems to fall out of the human existence depicted by Dostoevsky. True, daily work fell out of this existence, but only because for Dostoevsky this work is not the main thing in human existence, it is a peripheral thing for this existence, and therefore Dostoevsky does not attach much importance to it, but, drawing the image of man, excludes it altogether. However, if work falls out of everyday life, this does not mean that everyday life itself falls out. The absence of everyday work in Dostoevsky's world does not indicate the insufficiency of everyday life, but only that Dostoevsky tries to express this everyday life not by work, but by something else. Guardini himself quite rightly noted the difference between the characters of Western literature and the characters of Dostoevsky, saying that all the characters of Dostoevsky as a whole can be characterized by such thoughts, tendencies and spiritual forces that are really able to blow up the architectonics of Western characters. Therefore, the motivation for the integrity of Dostoevsky's works is completely different from that in some French or German novel. [45] The same can be applied to the depiction of everyday life. Dostoevsky's characters, like all people, live everyday life, rooted in the middle realm of existence. For them, peaks and depths are just peripheral values, to which they turn very rarely, being interested. However, this everyday life, this middle area of existence is expressed by Dostoevsky's characters in a different way, not in the way that Western man does.

For four years, wandering in the backwoods of Germany, the author of this work never saw the Germans, noticing the approach of evening, abandon their work in the fields, in houses, in workshops, go outside the gates of their estates, sit down in small groups and have long conversations that last until nightfall. Meanwhile, in Russia, this is a common thing. The German's work takes all day. He has Sunday for talking. However, a person who has been silent for six days can say little even on the seventh day. Therefore, conversation in Germany and in the West in general is not an integral part of human existence. It is somewhere on the periphery, like labor in Russia and in the East in general. The Russian man does not devote all his time to work, because in his experience the work does not fill and express the whole man. As soon as the sun begins to sink to the west, the Russian man leaves his work and goes to others, but not to continue this work, as the girls do in the German villages, gathering in the "Wohnzimmer"5 and sitting around the heating stoves; No, the Russian goes to others to talk. And it is in these conversations that Russian everyday life is revealed, with its troubles, with its responsibility and with its nobility. Western man manifests himself in work. A Russian person manifests himself in conversation. The everyday form of existence of Western man is labor. The everyday form of Russian existence is conversation. A Western person exists by working, a Russian exists by talking. Therefore, at the origins of the experience of the West there is action – the idea of "Faust". At the origin of the experience of the East there is a word – the Gospel idea. For the East, constant and hard work is a rare case and therefore a peripheral value. For the West, a profound word that closely links human and world problems is a specialty of philosophers and also a peripheral value. In the East, everyone philosophizes, in the West, everyone works. Word and work are forms of manifestation and existence of the East and West and, thus, manifestations of everyday life. Western everyday life is manifested and realized in work, Eastern in words.