Here are some thoughts on Crime and Punishment, my new favorite book.
The destruction of human life resonates on a deeply personal level. Despite utilitarian principles of aggregate happiness, the heart refuses to believe that a person is a dispensable commodity, to be weighed on scale or quantified with arithmetic. Cannibalism, infanticide, or like practices have been stigmatized as egregious or inhumane by nearly all societies throughout all of history because they violate the deep, bedrock commonness of humanity. They violate human brotherhood.
The interconnectedness of mankind depends on a certain faith in the invisible hand of social morality. It depends on a willingness to guide one’s logic with emotion. Those who value the progress and survival of mankind in a world of shifty relativism and capitalistic initiative ought to take seriously Dostoevsky’s warning about moral bankruptcy. If these impulses towards fraternity and love are cauterized, then man is left with nothing but empty dogma and soulless calculus. Though aimed at 19th century Russian thought, the novel’s challenges are still relevant to humans at the dawn of the 21st century, neither gods nor beasts.
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