If there is no God, everything is permitted.
Attributed to Fyodor Dostoevsky
Paraphrase Circulates in other words. The real passage is below.Draft entry, not yet reviewed
How the popular form came about
The sentence 'If there is no God, everything is permitted' does not occur in the novel; it condenses a thesis that several characters pass between them, always attributed to Ivan. Miusov first reports it from Ivan's talk in town (Book 2, chapter 6): destroy belief in immortality and 'nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism' (все будет позволено, даже антропофагия). Rakitin sums it up as 'if there's no immortality of the soul, then there's no virtue, and everything is lawful' (Book 2, chapter 7). Ivan accepts the formula to Alyosha after the Grand Inquisitor: 'The formula, "all is lawful," I won't renounce' (Book 5, chapter 5). Dmitri puts it to Rakitin and Ivan in the passage above, the closest the novel comes to the popular form, since it joins 'without God' to 'everything is permitted'. Smerdyakov, confessing the murder, tells Ivan he did it because 'all things are lawful', as Ivan taught him: 'if there's no everlasting God, there's no such thing as virtue' (Book 11, chapter 8). The novel thus shows the idea as a slogan that travels from theory to murder and destroys Ivan. Garnett translates позволено as 'lawful', which is why the phrase cannot be found in her text. The compact form spread through Sartre, who in Existentialism Is a Humanism (lecture of October 1945, published 1946) wrote 'Dostoevsky had written: "If God did not exist, everything would be permitted."', calling this the starting point of existentialism, and through Camus, who discusses Ivan's 'everything is permitted' in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) and The Rebel (1951). In Russian it circulates as 'Если Бога нет, то всё позволено'. In 2000 David Cortesi argued on the Secular Web that Dostoevsky never wrote it; Andrei Volkov replied in 2011 that the Book 11 passage is a faithful condensation. Both are right in part: the words are a paraphrase, the idea is in the novel, but as Ivan's and his followers', not as Dostoevsky's verdict.
The real passage
"Только как же, спрашиваю, после того человек-то? Без бога-то и без будущей жизни? Ведь это стало быть теперь все позволено, все можно делать?" -- "А ты и не знал?" говорит. Смеется. -- "Умному, говорит, человеку все можно
‘But what will become of men then?’ I asked him, ‘without God and immortal life? All things are lawful then, they can do what they like?’ ‘Didn’t you know?’ he said laughing, ‘a clever man can do what he likes,’ he said.
- Work
- The Brothers Karamazov, 1880
- Where
- Part 4, Book 11, chapter 4 ("A Hymn and a Secret")
- Speaker
- Dmitri Karamazov, reporting his own question to Rakitin and Rakitin's answer
- To
- Alyosha, in Dmitri's prison room
Where it circulates
Awaiting trial for his father's murder, Dmitri tells Alyosha how the seminarian-turned-journalist Rakitin has been explaining to him that thought is only 'chemistry' and nerves, and that there is no God. Dmitri asked him what becomes of man then, and Rakitin laughed that a clever man can do what he likes. Dmitri adds that he put the same question to Ivan, who answered only that their father 'was a pig, but his ideas were right enough'. Dmitri is torn: if there is no God, he asks, whom will man love and to whom will he sing his hymn?
Read it in the text
ЧАСТЬ ЧЕТВЕРТАЯ. · КНИГА ОДИННАДЦАТАЯ. · IV. ГИМН И СЕКРЕТ.
-- Вообрази себе: это там в нервах, в голове, то есть там в мозгу эти нервы... (ну чорт их возьми!) есть такие этакие хвостики, у нервов этих хвостики, ну, и как только они там задрожат... то есть видишь, я посмотрю на что-нибудь глазами, вот так, и они задрожат, хвостики-то... а как задрожат, то и является образ, и не сейчас является, а там какое-то мгновение, секунда такая пройдет, и является такой будто бы момент, то есть не момент, -- чорт его дери момент, -- а образ, то есть предмет, али происшествие, ну там чорт дери -- вот почему я и созерцаю, а потом мыслю... потому что хвостики, а вовсе не потому, что у меня душа и что я там какой-то образ и подобие, все это глупости. Это, брат, мне Михаил еще вчера объяснял, и меня точно обожгло. Великолепна, Алеша, эта наука! Новый человек пойдет, это-то я понимаю... А все-таки бога жалко!
-- Ну и то хорошо, -- сказал Алеша.
-- Что бога-то жалко! Химия, брат, химия! Нечего делать, ваше преподобие, подвиньтесь немножко, химия идет! А не любит бога Ракитин, ух не любит! Это у них самое больное место у всех! Но скрывают. Лгут. Представляются. "Что же, будешь это проводить в отделении критики?" спрашиваю. -- "Ну явно-то не дадут", говорит, смеется. -- "Только как же, спрашиваю, после того человек-то? Без бога-то и без будущей жизни? Ведь это стало быть теперь все позволено, все можно делать?" -- "А ты и не знал?" говорит. Смеется. -- "Умному, говорит, человеку все можно, умный человек умеет раков ловить, ну а вот ты, говорит, убил и влопался, и в тюрьме гниешь!" Это он мне-то говорит. Свинья естественная! Я этаких прежде вон вышвыривал, ну а теперь слушаю. Много ведь и дельного говорит. Умно тоже пишет. Он мне с неделю назад статью одну начал читать, я там три строки тогда нарочно выписал, вот постой, вот здесь.
Митя, спеша, вынул из жилетного кармана бумажку и прочел:
"Чтоб разрешить этот вопрос, необходимо прежде всего поставить свою личность в разрез со своею действительностию."
PART IV · Book XI. Ivan · Chapter IV. A Hymn And A Secret · Constance Garnett
“Imagine: inside, in the nerves, in the head—that is, these nerves are there in the brain ... (damn them!) there are sort of little tails, the little tails of those nerves, and as soon as they begin quivering ... that is, you see, I look at something with my eyes and then they begin quivering, those little tails ... and when they quiver, then an image appears ... it doesn’t appear at once, but an instant, a second, passes ... and then something like a moment appears; that is, not a moment—devil take the moment!—but an image; that is, an object, or an action, damn it! That’s why I see and then think, because of those tails, not at all because I’ve got a soul, and that I am some sort of image and likeness. All that is nonsense! Rakitin explained it all to me yesterday, brother, and it simply bowled me over. It’s magnificent, Alyosha, this science! A new man’s arising—that I understand.... And yet I am sorry to lose God!”
“Well, that’s a good thing, anyway,” said Alyosha.
“That I am sorry to lose God? It’s chemistry, brother, chemistry! There’s no help for it, your reverence, you must make way for chemistry. And Rakitin does dislike God. Ough! doesn’t he dislike Him! That’s the sore point with all of them. But they conceal it. They tell lies. They pretend. ‘Will you preach this in your reviews?’ I asked him. ‘Oh, well, if I did it openly, they won’t let it through,’ he said. He laughed. ‘But what will become of men then?’ I asked him, ‘without God and immortal life? All things are lawful then, they can do what they like?’ ‘Didn’t you know?’ he said laughing, ‘a clever man can do what he likes,’ he said. ‘A clever man knows his way about, but you’ve put your foot in it, committing a murder, and now you are rotting in prison.’ He says that to my face! A regular pig! I used to kick such people out, but now I listen to them. He talks a lot of sense, too. Writes well. He began reading me an article last week. I copied out three lines of it. Wait a minute. Here it is.”
Mitya hurriedly pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket and read:
“‘In order to determine this question, it is above all essential to put one’s personality in contradiction to one’s reality.’ Do you understand that?”
What it says
The question the novel keeps returning to: whether morality can survive without God and immortality, or whether, without them, nothing is forbidden.
How it is misread
Used on both sides of the debate about religion and morality as Dostoevsky's own argument: by believers as proof that atheism leads to crime, by atheists as a straw man to refute. In the novel it is a slogan the characters handle: Miusov reports it, Rakitin mocks it, Dmitri fears it, Smerdyakov acts on it, and Ivan, who launched it, breaks down when he sees what it has done.
Forms in circulation
- retranslation
If God does not exist, everything is permitted.
The common English form, by way of Sartre's French ('Si Dieu n'existait pas, tout serait permis'). - condensed
Если Бога нет, то всё позволено.
The proverbial Russian form; not in the novel in these words. - condensed
Everything is permitted.
Ivan's 'formula' on its own; easily confused with 'Nothing is true, everything is permitted', which Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals, III, 24) gives as the secret motto of the medieval Assassins.
Descent
- KindredFriedrich Nietzsche, 1887On the Genealogy of Morals cites 'Nothing is true, everything is permitted' as the motto of the Order of Assassins: a separate source of the phrase, often mixed up with Ivan's.
- Taken up byAlbert Camus, 1942The Myth of Sisyphus takes Ivan's 'everything is permitted' as a cry of the absurd, not of release; The Rebel makes Ivan the founder of metaphysical rebellion.
- Taken up byJean-Paul Sartre, 1946Existentialism Is a Humanism (L'existentialisme est un humanisme): 'Dostoevsky had written: "If God did not exist, everything would be permitted." That is the starting point of existentialism.' (Our translation of the French.)
Tags
What it is made of
Nearby
- It's not God that I don't accept, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket. related
- There are three powers, three powers alone, able to conquer and to hold captive for ever the conscience of these impotent rebels for their happiness: miracle, mystery and authority. related
- If the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness. related
- If there is no God, then I am God. alike 52%
- An 'extraordinary' man has the right to decide in his own conscience to overstep certain obstacles. alike 43%
- Beauty will save the world. alike 42%
Checked against
Have a different wording, or a source we missed? Check it or submit it.