2 min read
Ivan the Terrible
On Ivan Karamazov, the first of a sequence on Dostoevsky’s last novel. A man who has mastered method but remains aimless in the soul.
Writing
Essays & notes
Essays on the books and ideas I keep turning over. Notes, musings, and glimpses of how I think, the world from where I stand.
Series · 9 essays
Brothers Karamazov
A weekly engagement with Dostoevsky's last novel, January through March 2026. The arc through Ivan's Grand Inquisitor, the devil that visits him, and Alyosha's quiet answer at the end.
2 min read
The Proto-Ragebaiter
Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is Ivan’s belief system, lived. If there is no virtue and everything is permitted, you do not get a free man. You get this.
2 min read
Two Women, Two Worlds
The drawing-room confrontation between Grushenka and Katerina is a seduction battle, and beneath that, a class collision. One of them understands both rooms.
4 min read
Taking Ivan Seriously
On the Grand Inquisitor. Ivan does not deny God outright. He says that even if God exists, he will spit on Him.
3 min read
The Onion
You can do a thousand good deeds and still remain a murderer. The fable inverts this proposition. Live a wicked life, but do one good deed. How much weight does that single act carry?
2 min read
Mitya, Without Malice
Mitya is the embodiment of what the novel calls Karamazovian passion. The most notable thing about him is that I cannot find any malice in him.
3 min read
Chesterton’s Fence, Borrowed
Kolya recites his ideas, he does not explain them. Dostoevsky uses a thirteen-year-old to mock a generation of intellectuals tearing down fences they cannot see.
4 min read
Ivan’s Devil
Ivan has said everything is permitted, and yet he cannot live it. He has a conscience he cannot account for. That is the abyss the devil represents.
2 min read
Alyosha’s Speech
Ivan finds it easy to love mankind in the abstract but struggles the moment that idea takes on flesh and bone. Alyosha shows what it is to love, not within the bounds of logic, but as an act.
Series · 5 essays
Crime and Punishment
Essays from a weekly reading group on Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, April through May 2024.
2 min read
Raskolnikov’s Dream
On the dream of the horse. A child’s empathy inverts into the mob’s amorality, and the inner voice is silenced. The silence is only temporary, and when it returns, there will be a price.
2 min read
Pride and Poverty
Katerina Ivanovna’s pride was never going to survive her circumstances. Poverty is the great equalizer, and it forces her into a fight that her former life left her unequipped to win.
3 min read
Chess With Porfiry
What looks like a friendly chat is a disguised interrogation between two grandmasters. Porfiry opens with gambits, plays to vanity, and ends with a trap Raskolnikov barely escapes.
2 min read
Pride and Poverty, Revisited
I had thought poverty would inevitably triumph over pride. The memorial dinner proved me wrong. Dignity, even when hollow, is sometimes the only thing left holding a person together.
3 min read
Confessions
Half on the confession of Raskolnikov, and half on mine. Why an atheist would confess at all, and why I cannot leave the question alone.
Series · 4 essays
Demons
Essays from a reading group on Dostoevsky's Demons, May through June 2024. On Kirillov's nihilism, Stavrogin's contradictions, and the future the novel saw coming.
2 min read
Kirillov’s Truth
People can accept an axiom at face value, but seldom can they accept all its conclusions. Follow the denial of God and free will to its end, and you arrive at someone like Kirillov.
2 min read
Costly Amusement
Stavrogin’s interest in Marya Lebyatkin began as amusement at her innocence. His silence after taking her home suggests something else, and the rumors are bold enough to mean some part of them is true.
2 min read
The Duel
Games within games. Stavrogin and Gaganov begin a classic duel of escalating brinkmanship. Stavrogin subverts the rules by firing into the air, playing a different game whose only equilibrium is his own death at Gaganov’s hand.
2 min read
Dostoevsky’s Psychohistory
Prediction as real knowledge. Asimov imagined a science that could predict the behavior of large groups. Dostoevsky was doing it. He smelled what was coming in Russia and tried to warn us before the spark arrived.
Series · 3 essays
Against the Gods
A three-part series inspired by Peter L. Bernstein's history of risk. From fatalism to portfolio theory, and the frontiers we still cannot model.
4 min read
The Remarkable Notion of Risk
How humanity gradually overcame fatalism and mysticism to develop the modern concept of risk. Part one of a series, inspired by Peter Bernstein.
6 min read
Mastering Uncertainty
How pioneering mathematicians, the birth of insurance, and modern portfolio theory transformed risk from a nebulous concept into a quantifiable asset, and why even our best models sometimes fail.
10 min read
Dancing With the Unknown
A reflection on the far-reaching themes of Against the Gods: the measure of our ignorance, radical new views of uncertainty, behavioral finance, derivatives, and the frontiers we still cannot model.
Series · 2 essays
I See Satan
A two-part field guide to René Girard's mimetic theory. On desire, scapegoats, and the moment victims started to testify.
5 min read
The Operating System Beneath Our Arguments
A field manual to the hidden engine that converts human wants into sacrificial rituals we call justice. On mimetic desire, scapegoats, and the violence we pretend is order.
5 min read
When the Victim Speaks
Part 2 of the Mimetic Field Guide. How the Bible turns myth inside-out, the radical shift when victims testify, and why modern crowds still flinch from its implications.
Standalone
Essays
Standalone pieces, not part of a series.