THE GRAND INQUISITOR
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aim of excluding any middle ground between Christ and the Grand
Inquisitor. And the starkness and ultimatism of the choice he offers,
which has the effect of shrinking our sense of historical possibilities
and reducing our resourcefulness in the face of extremes, reminds us
of other great thinkers of the nineteenth century, like Kierkegaard
.and Marx, who likewise made war, though from other standpoints,
on that century's liberal humanism-Kierkegaard with his either-or
formula that is spiritually quite as terroristic as that of the Russian
novelist, and Marx with
his
inexorable idea that if humanity fails to
choose socialism it will inevitably fall back into barbarism.
