Dostoyevsky feared the materialism that had come to dominate European thought. In the famous “Grand Inquisitor” chapter of The Brothers Karamazov, in which Ivan Karamazov tells his tale of a Spanish inquisitor grilling Jesus, Dostoyevsky suggested that the day had come when human beings would give up on meaning in favor of worldly goods: “Dost Thou know that the ages will pass, and humanity will proclaim by the lips of their sages that there is no crime, and therefore no sin; there is only hunger?” Dostoyevsky suggested the cure for hunger would be the dictator—the man who satiates hunger will
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