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Exploring the role of ethics, morality, and philosophy in the expression of human behavior in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Camus’ The Outsider.
It is commonly found that the personal desires of characters in literature do not align with ‘rational’ or ‘moral’ requirements for behavior, with friction deriving from this misalignment in the resolution of what it means to act ‘correctly’. This trend lends itself to the ethical theory that demarcates different ways to deem a desire or action to be moral. Utilitarianism, as established by Jeremy Bentham, holds that actions can be considered morally right if they produce a consequence with a greater quantity of pleasure than pain.
‘Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure: The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity’ (Bentham, The Principles of Morals and Legislation)
Both Crime and Punishment and The Outsider present protagonists, Raskolnikov and Meursault, each fashioned with an abnormality that expresses itself in esoteric, traditionally immoral behavior. Yet, paradoxically, it is the story of how both try to interact with the constructs of humanity through actions that reject its customary principles. Nevertheless, their actions can be looked upon differently through a utilitarian scope that ignores civility’s practices and instead focuses on the nature of the result. This, then, compensates for the characters’ resignation from collective beliefs and allows the reader to determine the sanctity of the action. However, it is still necessary to investigate the receival of such acts as this often influences the character’s personal philosophy going forward.
The morality of Raskolnikov pertinently expresses itself in action in his murder of pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna. Governed by the effects of poverty, Raskolnikov’s desires succumb to the looming perceptions of a socially stratified class system that he now finds himself at the bottom of. A man desperate to achieve acceptance and embrace from a surrounding society is completely irreconcilable with his equal desperation to evidence his superiority to the human race, yet it is this confused impulse on which Raskolnikov sees the reason for the murder of the pawnbroker Alyona.
‘I wanted to become a Napoleon, that’s why I killed: Now do you understand?’
This quotation is almost emblematic of Raskolnikov as a character, presenting two notions that act as a microcosm of the dichotomous personal principles he summates to find a motive for the murder. First, is the glaring reference to Napoleon Bonaparte; a figurehead that Raskolnikov identifies with to facilitate the belief that he is a superior being. Throughout the novel, Dostoevsky establishes a clear presence of a perceived hierarchy between persons not only in the form of Russian classism but also in Raskolnikov’s strata of ‘ordinary’ men and ‘extraordinary’ men. He writes;
”All men are divided into ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary.’ Ordinary men have to live in submission and have no right to transgress the law, because, don’t you see, they are ordinary. But extraordinary men have a right to commit any crime and transgress the law in any way, just because they are extraordinary.”
Influenced by his years in exile, Dostoevsky ingested the ideas of the Pochvennichvesto, a doctrine aimed at rejecting the elitist ideas of the intelligentsia and giving substance to social reform interested in the humbling of the self and looking for more unity within the state. Dostoevsky takes the heightened sense of classism he felt himself and implements it representatively into Raskolnikov’s personality. This lays claim to the assertion that Raskolnikov is an embodiment of the moral dangers that arose from the unilateral resentment of stark differences between classes in the wake of Peter the Great’s period of Westernization, by which Dostoevsky uses the quandary of Raskolnikov’s beliefs to reflect his umbrage at a Russia which condemned and criminalized his utopic ideas within the Petrashevsky Circle. Returning to Raskolnikov’s feelings of supremacy, the motif of a utilitarian Napoleon lends itself to the idea of the ‘Hegelian Superman’. Hegel himself adds ‘If the ends are noble, the means can be justified’, about the belief that anything evil ought to be removed from society, and if one were to accomplish this, their means are by anyhow justifiably moral. Raskolnikov attaches to the utility of this idea, believing extraordinary men must and are permitted to transgress the law in the pursuit of higher goals that the ordinary could not do. Alyona Ivanovna was seen as an evil pawnbroker who benefited from lower classes in positions of vulnerability by forcing them to sell her their most precious items for diminished returns. Raskolnikov therefore saw her removal as an extension of his duty as a Hegelian superman. To go further, Bentham’s utilitarianism would deem this murder to be irrefutably moral, as the cessation of her extortions and the availability of honest distribution of her wealth for the welfare of the depraved society in which Alyona operated and stole from produces a consequence with a quantifiably greater response of pleasure than pain. Thus, although collectively and lawfully this murder is an instance of ‘incorrect behavior’, it is not only morally right but is dutiful to Raskolnikov. He murders to evince his superiority, and this does not corrupt his morality, for his maxim is irrelevant given the productivity of the result. In Dostoevsky and the Conflicting Worldviews of Chernyshevsky and Christianity, Kevin Fox fosters a rebuttal to utilitarianism, arguing that ‘Dostoevsky treats utilitarianism as a sort of poison that can make an ordinary man delirious and mad’, suggesting that, once again, Dostoevsky makes use of Raskolnikov to promote his philosophy, implying utilitarianism provides a blanket of morality for illegal and evil behaviors. Dostoevsky’s subscription to moral absolutism (the traditional morality practiced by society and enforced by law) foils Raskolnikov as a character who is designed to display the wider effects of transgressing lawfulness in the hail of utility. The moral beliefs of Hegel and Bentham that Raskolnikov practices can therefore be seen as conflicting with what type of behavior is favored within society (‘delirious and mad’), and this misalignment is the driver of isolation and unhappiness (that Raskolnikov experiences). According to Fox’s approximations of Dostoevsky, Raskolnikov is a victim of utilitarian morals that have deluded an ordinary man into extraordinary belief, resulting in a great distance between himself and those he wishes to be close to – the herd, as put by Nietzsche. Whilst there are breeds of ethical theory like Benthamism that liberate Raskolnikov from the shackles of immorality, it is unsurprising that murder adds to the isolation he heavily feels and wholly resents, with there being the stringent distinction between theoretical morality and behavior that will denote acceptance, much less ‘extraordinary’ recognition within the herd. This angle allows navigation toward the second aspect of the quotation which represents the second side of Raskolnikov;
‘: Now do you understand?’
The contrition that Raskolnikov experiences both baffles and frustrates him, for it is entirely contradictory of an ‘extraordinary’ man to feel guilt for their actions. Thus, Raskolnikov’s need for another person to ‘understand’ him shows not only his position as an ‘other’ living in isolation but is also a symbol of his underlying desperation to be accepted by his peers, ultimately contrasting the criterion of an extraordinary man. Raskolnikov does not try to prove his Hegelian superiority for positive ends, he does so in an attempt to attest to his vanity. Raskolnikov insults the standards of a Nietzscheist Ubermensch, who is categorized as spiting the unmindful values of the herd, by wishing he was revered by it. Reflected in the acrylic naming of the protagonist, with ‘raskol’ translating to ‘schism’, a split caused by differences in belief, the superego of Raskolnikov wishes to be Ubermensch but his subconscious id desires to be one with the ‘herd man’. It is this conflation that fuels the existential questions that Raskolnikov cannot answer about himself. Raskolnikov’s id goes on to hegemonize his behaviour following the murder as he seeks redemption, becoming a benefactor of any wealth he accumulates to remedy the guilt he is not supposed to be feeling. This, not only gives credence to the morality of Raskolnikov through a Benthamist scope, for he propagates qualities of morality by producing great quantities of pleasure in others, but confirms the assertion that Raskolnikov is interested in his interaction with societal laws, rejecting his self-made claims of being an ‘extraordinary man’ like Balram in Adiga’s White Tiger (2008). Balram gloves the Nietzscheist Ubermensch and becomes the idol of Raskolnikov’s superego by constructing his system of morals that contrast what is traditionally accepted, moralizing acts such as murder and betrayal in honor of his superiority. Whilst he achieves what Raskolnikov fails to, he can endure the tribulations of loneliness that betray Raskolnikov. Ultimately, unlike Balram, Raskolnikov cannot force himself to detach from the traditional moral system he was born into and so looks at redemption to repent the immorality his superego sustained. Both characters can certainly be argued to be moral men, for the rules that decide morality are subjective to the self, but where Raskolnikov falls is his reliance on the opinions of others, as was nurtured into his personality by the extreme classism in Russia at his time of upbringing.
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