In this series I discuss the books on Jordan Peterson’s Great Book List in no particular order. My hope is to help those interested understand what they’re getting into and choose which books they decide to take on.
What happens when humanity decides that their cherished tool — the ability to reason — is put at the pinnacle of all values? Using reason to manipulate the world is a fundamental part of what makes us human. But how far can we take it? Can reason justify murder?
Why Should Anyone Read This Book?
You may recognize the name Dostoevsky. It’s a name synonymous with some of the best literature ever produced. So just to have one of his novels under your belt helps to bring you into the fold of understanding why it is that this man’s name has been on the lips of readers for so long.
In Crime and Punishment he asks a question at the root of human development which will direct us individually and collectively in one of two directions. It is perhaps on of the most important question we can ask: “Can humanity replace God with reason?”
It’s a question that is at the root of much of humanity’s development as our conscious minds develop from the unconscious, and is taken up time and again.
The way Dostoyevsky asks this important question is by setting up a story where a young, incredibly intelligent man in 19th Century Russia answers that question, “Yes. I can.” What follows are the consequences of that choice on the shoulders of a man who tries to rationalize away the pathology of guilt.
The Plot
Unique to the way this story is told is that it’s much like a murder mystery, except that you as the reader know who the murderer is before the crime is committed. You become witness to a chain of rationalizations detailed out by our protagonist, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov. The name Raskolnikov comes from a Russian word that at its root means “schism.”
Rodion’s primary schism separates reason from any higher virtue and ends up creating a divide in his mind, or possibly his mind from his soul, that nearly drives him to insanity.
We see the first example of this main question and schism in the rationale provided for what would end up to be his crime, as Rodion overhears a conversation at a local pub. There’s a young student presenting the reasoning for why it would be ok to kill a local woman. He lays out several ways that the money she “hoards” could be used to help those with what he says have a greater need than she.
He describes her as a nasty woman who takes advantage of people in need and she doesn’t deserve the consideration we normally give any other human being.
“…wouldn’t one petty little crime like that be atoned for by all those thousands of good deeds?”
Unfortunately for our protagonist, he hears this rationale as a confirmation of the general acceptance of what he has already been working out in his own mind. And when the opportunity he creates presents itself, he bludgeons the old woman to death. But happenstance pushes him further than he had planned.
Rodion thinks he’s gotten away with it. And in some respects, he did. He wasn’t arrested. He planned it out pretty well outside of one major hiccup he dealt with swiftly. But what starts to emerge is an answer to the question this book asks: “Can humanity replace God with reason?” Dostoyevsky’s answer to this is, “No.”
Little by little Rodion’s unconscious mind starts to push to the surface thoughts, ideas, and behaviors that he can no longer explain or ignore. As smart and logical as he is, there are things within him that he cannot reason his way out of.
The Fracture of the Self
The brilliance of Dostoevsky’s mind is revealed by the process he lays out as Rodion’s mind starts to fracture. There’s a scene where Rodion finds a secluded place to hide some evidence he took from the scene of the crime. As he walks away and feelings of satisfaction start to emerge, he starts to laugh, silently but uncontrollably. A laughter he doesn’t even notice until after it dies out.
“Yes, he remembered later that he laughed a long, faint, nervous, inaudible laugh, and that he continued to laugh during the whole time he was crossing the square.”
In The Origins and History of Consciousness, Erich Neumann points out that “In neurotic and particularly in hysterical reactions, the failure of the ego and its suffering are frequently accompanied by a ‘smile of pleasure’ — the triumphant grin of the unconscious at having taken possession of the ego.” This is the level of detail Dostoyevsky uses to create such a rich and accurate picture of this journey through the disintegration of Rodion’s mind. I couldn’t help but think of Joaquin Phoenix in Joker laughing uncontrollably in response to incredibly uncomfortable situations.
Political Commentary
Along with the effects murder has on the mind of a man, there is a lot of socio-political commentary throughout this novel, usually through conversation of the characters. It’s important to remember that Dostoyevsky, being deeply religious, likely sees the reasons for murder being wrong tied to the inherent dignity of humans as created in the image of God. Once you accept the principle of individual human dignity, based on the grounds of religious precepts or secular ones of the Enlightenment, it has consequences. As does rejecting that concept.
Living in the Soviet Union during the 19th Century, Dostoyevsky had experienced much of the intellectual buildup to rationalizations for the murderous regimes that took hold in the following century. He even faced a mock execution for speaking politically incorrectly.
Political ideas of the following communist regimes were deeply tied with a rejection of religion and an elevation of reason alone in the hands of few elites guiding the people under their rule. That is where the conflict lies. It’s a shift away from the dignity and necessary liberty of individual people and towards seeing the world and history as collective peoples moving in a prescribed direction controlled by the visions of those anointed. Their visions are limited only by there imaginations and have no regard for any higher principles.
Dostoyevsky lays these ideas bare as they developed in his country and takes on their fundamental precepts.
At well more than six-hundred pages, the intricate details, and the cultural differences in how Russians speak to each other using varied names, this novel is a bit of work. But it is a labor worth every page. It asks some of the deepest questions that humanity could ask and answers those questions with strength.
If you enjoy detailed nuance and long conversations without small talk, this is definitely the novel for you. I still see Dostoyevsky’s ideas and observations as I watch the world unfold today.
I hope this short introduction can help you decide if it’s something you too would like to read. If you have read it, let me know what you thought and what kind of ideas it sparked for you.