In 1861 Dostoyevsky stayed with Alexander Herzen in London. The experience introduced him to this big industrialized city which was seen as a symbol of the world’s future and would
be presented as such in the Universal Exhibition the following year. It was during his stay there that he got the inspiration for Chapter 5 of the second part of The Brothers Karamazov: the legend of the Grand Inquisitor.
Dostoyevsky’s proposed interpretation of the three temptations of Christ in the desert is a pretext for examining the moral basis of a mass society in which people are, or appear to be, possessed by an inner strength which determines collective and individual behaviour, eliminating all possibility of rejection or revolt.
In Liberi servi, Gustavo Zagrebelsky takes Dostoyevsky’s text as the starting point for an analysis in terms of anthropological theory, the theory of the government of mass societies and the theory of power. Why do people obey power? he asks.
The author’s literary gifts and his probing analysis of the ethical questions implicit in this clash between contrasting world views make the book a particularly absorbing read.