Il Grande Inquisitore e l'enigma del potere

Dostoevsky returned troubled from a trip to London: instead of feeling the luminous thrill of progress, he found that in that city was taking place an irremediable loneliness and the resigned dispersion of a submissive humanity. He had experienced the immortal trauma of prophecy: looking into the future, he was strolling inside the building of the nowadays world and he shrinked back. This illumination through the darkness will find an happy fulfillment in the chapter of the Karamazov Brothers dedicated to the Grand Inquisitor. In it Dostoevsky addresses crucial issues concerning moral philosophy, politics, philosophy of history and religion: cutting pages of great literature, able to dig into the human soul without screens or mediations. With lucid passion, this book captures every aspect of the famous text, framing it first within the work and poetry of the Russian writer, and then putting it in relation with the political thought of modernity, deepening finally the many reflections that flow from it. The author is interested in aspects related to the theory of power; and in the monologue of the Inquisitor before the silent Christ - up to the enigmatic final kiss - he finds numerous and amazing connections with our present time, which in many aspects seems to fulfill the Inquisitor's cynical nihilism: above all, the tendency to accept the deprivation of the authentic freedom, exchanging it for the miserable and obedient one of an apathetic conformism.