‘The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor’:
The Utopian as Sadist
Gorman Beauchamp
University of Michigan

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved
innocent.
—George Orwell, “Reflections on Gandhi”

The argument of Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor is simple: man is
a weak, pitiful creature unable to achieve peace or happiness unless he submits to the rule of the few superior beings capable of determining his social destiny for him. This argument has been
seen—correctly, I think—as an adumbration of the totalitarian regimes that emerged in the twentieth century; but it also continues a tradition of utopian thinking that began with Plato. The Republic
is generally accepted as the first utopia—a depiction, that is, of the ideal state. But the exact nature of that state—the premises on which it rests and the contempt that it displays for the abilities
of ordinary men—is, because of Plato’s great prestige, too seldom recognized. His utopia is predicated not on the great mass of mankind’s becoming wise or good, only obedient. In this regard, the
Grand Inquisitor stands as Plato’s direct ideological heir.
http://www.nhinet.org/beauchamp20-1.pdf