Do you agree with this books central theme (that nihilism and rationalism only lead to selfish destructive acts)?

>It's more accept christs unconditional love and unconditionally love those around you and you can't but be happy

Raskolnikov isn't exactly happy in the end.

But there's also the whole thing about the experience of loving someone is a way to get closer to God

He's not, but he's acknowledged that his previous mentality was incompatible with happiness and is striving to love Sonya.

This also

that and sophia is the term for the grace and kindness of god. and that Dostoevsky close friend Vladimir Solovyov actually wrote a book called Divine Sophia

it should be pretty clear that the book is anti-nihilism long before the epilogue.

If Raskolnikov only read Stirner he could have avoided all this trouble by seeing that he was haunted by the spook of the Napoleon type

It seemed to me that Dostoevsky was caught up in and devoted to Christian morality, and that he thought everyone else must be subject to it as well, even villains like svidrigailov if only subconsciously. He used characters like the him and the dim witted socialist as straw men to characterize the forms of that rationalism, and they are either redeemed through moral acts like the socialist and raskolnikov or come to a bad end like luzhin and svidrigailov.
I read the whole book through my thought of Dostoevsky being too decisive in his conclusion due to the distortion of religion. Am I right in saying this?
Also, was svidrigailov an embodiment of the overman which rodya couldn't reach?

I don't think the book was nihilistic. Raskolnikov was right, morals are a form of governance that work for the majority of people but sometimes need to be ignored. Raskolnikov's problem was he thought he was a Napoleon when he wasn't, and he couldn't handle the responsibility of living a life without moral obligation. I think the message was one of acceptance and humbleness, knowing your place as an inferior, whether it's in a country or under God.

>spook of the Napoleon type
I don't think you read C&P or The Ego
In fact I would say Rodion represented a proto-Stirner philosophy of amoral objectivism

Most people alive today seem to be blissfully/painfully unaware of it, yes.

I disagree. While it is obvious that humans will act in short-sighted hedonistic ways some of the time that is not a very accurate view of humanity. In reality there is a significant amount of humanity that believes in loving service. They may not do these things every day but they believe it will make them happy because it has in the past. This is the path of rational self interest that rand overlooked and I find it every bit as beautiful as Dostoevsky or Tolstoy's love of God.

Thanks for a high quality post.

My thoughts too.

I think this is a pretty narrow reading. I mean, even ignoring the fact that a protagonist's journey is almost always meant to be abstracted to apply to the reader (ie Rasknolnikov's philosophy and his realization of its wrongness is supposed to be universal), I still don't think there's any evidence of your interpretation.

Nothing in the book points to a sort of world where Raskolnikov's philosophy is truthful. There are no "Napoleons" in the story. The only truly bad person is Svidrigailov, and he ends up shooting himself. Sofya is exceptional in a way, but not at all in a way that excepts her from moral laws.

Honestly, I think you missed the point entirely if you somehow got out of it that Raskolnikov's philosophy was the true philosophy.

it's about repentance and salvation via orthodoxy and communion with Holy figures who appear where they are least likely

the rebuke of philosophical ideologies is largely incidental

thanks man i really love Dostoevsky and pretty much all Russian literature and philosophy.

>The only truly bad person is Svidrigailov, and he ends up shooting himself.

Do you think Svidrigailov redeems himself a little bit when he decides to let Dunya just walk away?

Finished it yesterday and loved it, what are some books like it? Thinking about getting The Brothers Karamazov.

If that was the point though, I think Dostoevsky failed, because he hasn't proven Raskolnikov's philosophy wrong, just that Raskolnikov didn't have what it takes to be the Napoleon he theorized. I do think that Dostoevsky intended for your idea to be the point, it's just that the evidence in the book doesn't concretely back up his argument unless you assume Raskolnikov's entire philosophy is wrong just because he wasn't a Napoleon.

Yeah, but the book wasn't about Rakolnikov's philosophy. His philosophy was brought up as an explanation for his behavior and that's all. The book didn't spend any time describing people as "Napoleons" and "plebs." It wasn't making an argument for the correctness of Raskolnikov's philosophy, and I think you'd have a hard time finding evidence that it was.

In other words, he doesn't prove Raskolnikov's philosophy wrong in a general sense, but he also doesn't even TRY to prove that the philosophy is correct in ANY sense (in general or in Raskolnikov's case). The philosophy Raskolnikov comes up with is just a secondary matter, it could've been any philosophy that a rationalist, nihilistic person would come up with and the story would've reached the same conclusion.

Don't read that book until you've read more Dostoevsky. It's the culmination of his work so if you really want to get the most out of it, read his other major novels and Notes at the very least. The Idiot is essential for The Brothers K., and an amazing work on its own anyway. If you want my recommendation, read Notes From the Underground and then The Idiot, and then feel free to read The Brothers K. if you want, or read his other novels.

>In other words, he doesn't prove Raskolnikov's philosophy wrong in a general sense, but he also doesn't even TRY to prove that the philosophy is correct in ANY sense (in general or in Raskolnikov's case). The philosophy Raskolnikov comes up with is just a secondary matter, it could've been any philosophy that a rationalist, nihilistic person would come up with and the story would've reached the same conclusion.

Well, this part obviously isn't true though, right? If a rationalist, nihilistic person had come up with some theory that made him an asshole but didn't lead him to committing an illegal act, he wouldn't have ended up in Siberia, and Sonya might not have followed him there, etc.

I meant to only quote the latter half of what I put there. I agree that Dostoevsky doesn't necessarily try to prove Raskolnikov's theory right or wrong.

>Nobody has ever rationalized altruism.

Okay, well, some other similarly homicidal philosophy then.

>In fact I would say Rodion represented a proto-Stirner philosophy of amoral objectivism

I say he made a spook for himself as he subscribed to this ideology despite not truly aligning with it. His subservience to "Logic" and "objectivity" compelled him to against his own nature and interest.

Its a perfect example of the most common misinterpretation of Stirners idea; that acting for oneself necessitates being an antisocial Nietzsche caricature.

>proto-Stirner philosophy
Stirners work predated C&P

You people read wrong.

Please elaborate.

yeah i thought russian orthodoxy was a pretty big theme in this.

tell us about illuminati symbolism bby

Actually the central theme of Crime and Punishment is to be yourself.

I do agree that Raskolnikov was nihilistic, but his philosophy wasn't necessarily nihilistic. He does actually describe what it means to be a Napoleon. A Napoleon is someone who is capable of making great, beneficial changes for the world, and is therefore allowed to ignore the morals of the society at that time because of his vision for the future. The problem with this is that Raskolnikov doesn't have any higher ambition and just uses his philosophy as justification to do whatever he wants. His motivations for killing the woman are:
1. He dislikes her.
2. He doesn't want to be so poor.
3. He wants to prove that he is a Napoleon by not feeling regret for the murder.

None of those in any way benefit anyone other than himself, making his act a failure to prove his philosophy. Not to mention that a Napoloen would probably be confident enough to be above morality without committing needless crimes just to prove he can.

Hah, a lot of people finish C&P with that line of thinking, but I'd say it's the result of being overawed by the name of the book, of the author. Essentially, in thinking there is something essential there to be understood, you misunderstand.

For example, Plato and Aristotle are interesting and important reads, but you don't walk away from them subscribing to their theories on natural science, do you? Of course not, they lived so long ago their views are clearly a dated product of their time. Likewise with Dostoevsky. His return to religiosity is quaint, but little more, no-one who takes it seriously has any respect for his own position as a modern man, and too much respect for Dostoevsky.

A sagacious reader doesn't directly apply his lesson, but rather interprets it; I came away from C&P thinking Raskolnikov was too weak to be a Napoleon, not that there are no Napoleons, and he was weak for the same reason most people are, there's a need for religion, for delusion, for avoiding the bleakness of reality. It's less of an answer to nihilism and more of a proof of its terrible power. C&P was about fundamental human weakness, not their salvation.

There are many theories on the evolutionary implications of altruism, essentially it's an unconventional genetic trait wherein an animal looks to better the odds of survival of its fellows rather than itself, it is observable in many animals and not just humans.

see

Dostoyevsky's hard on for orthodoxy can easily be interpreted as an argument for nihilism. It would have made so much more sense for Rodion to not confess and fucking relax like a real nihilist.

>condescendingly mocking one of the greatest works about human desire because it has religion in it
also there are religious and respected authors of a similar vein like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The only difference between Dostoyevsky's Orthodoxy and a caveman's fire-worship is the latter doesn't have a dedicated intellectual circle jerk.

>further condescension
this is a literature board sir.

I'm thinking about reading something else from Dostoyevsky, are all of his books as good as C&P?

BK is even better (so i hear)

>I came away from C&P thinking Raskolnikov was too weak to be a Napoleon, not that there are no Napoleons, and he was weak for the same reason most people are
I think that the weakness of Raskolnikov is in his ability to come up with a philosophy which is so out of touch with reality. This is pretty much a direct result of existentialism, and so the book is an attack on existentialism.

The point is that a philosophy so outside of common sense that it condones murder is the result of a major mistake of logic and mental faculties. Raskolnikov was not too weak to be a Napoleon, but he WAS too weak to live in real life, and so he created a system of thought which made up for his shortcomings and which allowed him to live in a fake way that was somehow more palatable.

His "religion" or "delusion" as you say, was this fantastical philosophy which let him view himself as a god among men.

Or is it too "weak" to subscribe to a universal framework of logic while denying yourself the opportunity to forge cognitive applications and understandings for and by yourself?

The Idiot and Demons are different. less psychological, more plot and character driven narrative. BK is like C&P on steroids. NfU is an exploration and examination of Rodin's character

When the whole basis of your philosophy is wish-fulfillment to build up your persona, it is weakness. Raskolnikov couldn't handle the fact that he was just another person, and so he formulated a philosophy almost out of thin air (some history books) in order to believe he was a real special snowflake.

I suppose its difficult to understand a rationalization of a philosophy that does not abide by traditional logical frameworks through a traditional logical framework.

But I understand what you're saying.

...

Is BK a more difficult read than C&P?

Is this translation any good? I read the first ~half chapter and enjoyed it a lot. Anyone have more experience with it?

>being this much of a patronizing cunt

Please define what you mean by "existentialism".

It's the same. Dostoyevsky's writing never demands much of the reader, he wrote for everyone. It's just long.

The belief that there are no innate rules to life and that you have to create your own system of values.

Strange definition. I think most people consider Dostoevsky an existentialist because he evidently believed in having to take responsibility for your freely chosen actions while dealing with all manner of psychological pressures, like Kierkegaard.

Anyone who thinks to argue this needs only take 1 look around at the modern and ever more nihilistic world of perversion we occupy.