The Scaffold and the Rod: Dostoevsky on the Death Penalty and Corporal Punishment

IN THE CHAPTER “Rebellion” inThe Brothers Karamazov, Ivan famously confronts Alyosha with a roster of crimes against children that emblematize innocent and unavenged human suffering. In Ivan’s eyes, this suffering makes it impossible to accept the promise of universal reconciliation at the end of time and prompts him to “return … the ticket” (BK, 245). Among the criminals on Ivan’s roster is an unnamed general who orders an eight-year-old boy to be torn apart by a pack of dogs in front of the boy’s mother. When Ivan asks Alyosha if the general ought to be shot, “for our moral