Ivan’s influence on Smerdyakov presents the philosophical
difficulty in determining guilt for a crime. Ivan’s repeated insistence
that people are not responsible for one another suggests that he
is morally and psychologically free of guilt for Smerdyakov’s actions,
no matter how much influence he may have exerted. On the one hand, if
Ivan really believes everything he says about the absence of good and
evil and the meaninglessness of responsibility, then he should have
no cause to feel guilty about Fyodor Pavlovich’s death. On the other
hand, if he does not really believe in his own argument, then the
complicity he exhibits here will force him to confront the fact that
he is partially to blame for the murder of his hated father. Dostoevsky
does not show us the outcome of this philosophical question in these
chapters, but Zosima has insisted that all people are responsible for
the sins of all other people, and Ivan has insisted just the opposite.
