Artem'eva O.V. Nonresistance to Evil as a Commandment and Practical Senses Thereof

Abstract: The article is devoted to the analysis of ethical and philosophical interpretations of the commandment of non-resistance to evil (Matthew 5, 38-41). Along with the two main approaches to interpretation of the commandment (1) as an absolute law that implies an unconditional refusal from a forceful resistance to all kinds of evil; or 2) as a limited rule inferior to the imperative of resistance to evil, the author of the present article describes the third approach to the problem. Within the framework of this research, the commandment is interpreted as a demand for active resistance to evil. The research provides a thorough analysis of the second and third approaches to the problem based on Leo Tolstoy's works and Joseph Brodsky's essays. In her research article Artemieva reconstructs and studies arguments offered by the aforesaid two approaches. The author defines peculiarities of Leo Tolstoy's and Joseph Brodsky's positions and carries out their comparative analysis. The author concludes that even though Tolstoy and Brodsky initially had opposite attitudes to the commandment of nonresistance to evil, both authors insisted that evil must have been resisted. Even though Tolstoy urged not to resist the external evil, he underlined how important it was to struggle against evil inside man himself. Brodsky disagreed and demonstrated that a refusal from all kinds of evil (both internal and external forms) expands the territory of evil, and nonresistance to evil is not always flawless from the moral point of view. The main conclusion of the article says that the humanistic value of the idea of nonresistance to evil can be defined by the fact that it is a complex problem which does not have simple solutions. 

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