Concept
Everything Is Lawful
Also known as everything would be lawful, all is lawful, all things are lawful, All things are lawful, everything was lawful, Everything in the world is lawful, if there's no immortality of the soul, then there's no virtue.
Everything Is Lawful is the moral paradox Miusov attributes to Ivan in Zossima's cell. If belief in God and immortality disappears, Miusov says Ivan argues that love, virtue, and moral law lose their natural foundation. Dmitri seizes on the formula at once, and Father Zossima treats the question as a torment in Ivan's heart rather than a clever phrase.
II-VII. A Young Man Bent On A Career
Rakitin repeats the idea as an attractive theory for scoundrels, insisting that humanity can still live for virtue through freedom, equality, and fraternity without immortality.
V-V. The Grand Inquisitor
After The Grand Inquisitor, Alyosha presses Ivan directly on the formula. Ivan does not renounce it, and Alyosha answers not with argument but with a kiss.
XI-VIII. The Third And Last Interview With Smerdyakov
Smerdyakov invokes Ivan's teaching when he confesses the murder to Ivan, saying the doctrine that all things are lawful helped him imagine a life beyond ordinary conscience.
XI-IX. The Devil. Ivan’s Nightmare
In Ivan's nightmare, the visitor turns the formula into the language of the man-god: if God and immortality are denied, the new person may step beyond old moral barriers and call his own place holy.
XII-VI. The Prosecutor’s Speech. Sketches Of Character
At the trial, the prosecutor treats Ivan's abstract ideas as part of the spiritual weather that unsettled Smerdyakov and darkened the case around Dmitri.
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