On one side, everything is permitted, because there is no God (Ivan is an atheist), on the other the rule of despotic Inquisitors who claim that there is God, but "know" the truth: that there is no God. Ivan desires rebellion against the Father and his father, the proclamation of a man-god, but in the same time Ivan looks at people like himself as fathers to the masses. Raskolnikov does the same. He separates people on ordinary and extraordinary. His superman is permitted everything : I simply intimate that the "extraordinary" man has the right... I don't mean a formal, official right, but he has the right in himself, to permit his conscience to overstep...(Crime and Punishment. III, 5) Ivan praises the idea of God, "which entered the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man" (Brothers Karamazov, V, 4). So he also thinks most of people unworthy. How can a man that despises humanity love it at the same time? If humans are like that than who has a right to be a Superman or the Inquisitor. Yes, it is true that there are bad humans, but one cannot go and hate all of human race for the fault of some. Without love the salvation and better society are impossible. Sonya and her sacrifice for others and her forgiveness are the best example. She has God because she knows that she is as big of a sinner and no better than others, and she still loves people, she does not want to be better for the purpose of egotistical pride. In Russia at the time the Church was second place and the values of Western European liberal thought were sweeping through. What Dostoevsky saw was that none of those ideas actually improved the status of the masses. Thus, the answer has to lie somewhere else rather than in the assertion of humanists and rationalists that men are gods. What Raskolnikov does is exactly that: he gives himself the license to transgress and to decide to be a god. He rebels against society and its norms. Raskolnikov hates ...
