2) What drove Raskolnikov’s definition of an extraordinary man to be imbued with a quality of transcendence of conventional morality and how did that shape the rest of his life perceptions and actions?
It appears that the way Raskolnikov approaches structuring his definition of a higher/special man is by analyzing the “greats” of the past, or rather, he conducts a flawed analysis of mentality they had to have possessed and philosophy he believes they had to have lived by in order to truly embody their greatness. There’s a certain danger in assuming to know the mind of another person, especially when that assumption of knowledge becomes the baseline for building one’s own life philosophy through appeal to the authority of their undeniable greatness. Raskolnikov quite openly ponders that for a man to be a cause of innumerable deaths while founding his legacy, that man must possess a kind of mind that would be able to bear the weight, or better, to possess a kind of mind that doesn’t recognize the burden or acknowledge the weight. What Raskolnikov fails to pursue in his analysis though is what arrival at that kind of a prerequisite in the first place says about him and his morals (he sort of gets there by the end of the book, in a painful process of taking an honest look in a metaphorical mirror) - the higher man “possessing” a permission granted to him by his higher nature to be free of remorse and regret in his pursuits is just something Raskolnikov thirsts for and by the very act of this thirst doesn’t have, without realizing it until too late. But what’s more important is that this higher man possesses a quality Raskolnikov is not only adamant about but also, at that point in the book, actually expects himself to have (just hidden deep down) - after all, few would have thought up a higher man that they can’t see themselves as embodying. If anything, there’s quite a neat caution tale here about the dangers of defining greatness/superiority in terms of qualities/characteristics/descriptors one believes himself to already possess or be capable of possessing (yes, I’m talking about you, my lovely lovers of classics who believe that this love places you above other readers, or dare I say even non-readers :))
Anyways, is it that it’s simply unfathomable to Raskolnikov that anyone might be capable of doing the deeds leading to notorious greatness without crumbling under the weight of the “costs” so he convinces himself that something else must be at play - a characteristic that would allow for that? So the way he’s hung up on (his perception of) Napoleon’s unperturbedness while leading wars that cost thousands of lives and taking plenty of those lives personally, how he finds such unbotheredness, such lack of remorse (or possible even lack of understanding of a need for remorse) worthy of admiration and indicative of potential for greatness (looking at it as “transcendence of conventional morality) - it’s not too hard to see the appeal in the absence of conscience, especially for someone who’s regularly attacked by its righteous bouts, and yet the way Raskolnikov seems to express idolization for what now would qualify as psychopathy is concerning to say the least. Makes one strongly question whether he would similarly admire remorseless ruthlessness of Hitler if born a century later (just like Ollivander from HP, when he praised the greatness of Voldemort’s endeavors - “terrible, yes, but great”).
What else comes up here is the likeness of Raskolnikov’s higher man to what Ayn Rand considered a perfect human. Specifically, Raskolnikov regularly emphasizes the “innateness of greatness” - one can’t become great by seeking to become great - rather, one recognizes his own greatness, embodies it, steps into it, and it self-fulfills - which is coincidentally how Rand presents her characters Galt and, especially, Roark (Rand’s conviction is also strongly emphasized in the journey of the character of Peter Keating, as a stand-in for someone who encroaches on greatness without having been born with it) - it seems to be regular iteration in her philosophy that one can’t become a Roark, rather one must be born him. One doesn’t get to have a beautiful mind by looking to make their mind beautiful, which then requires a beautiful mind to be an innate quality. Funny how that kind of philosophy strips down growth potential and opportunity for a lifelong change. But in relation to Raskolnikov, what seems to do him in is this conviction that awareness of one current non-greatness is an insurmountable obstacle to any future greatness because that awareness lacks forward looking glimpse of opportunity in favor of the self-fulfilling doom.
3) Okay, as I was writing out the above, a third question popped up, but I’m going to just leave it here for now (seems like a bit too charged of a topic for a comment under a post): What are the parallels between fictional Raskolnikov and real-life Luigi and what does the societal reaction to the actions of the latter signal about shifts in the social morality, if anything? In other words, how has the morality of murder evolved (or stayed the same) over the centuries and where are we with it now?
I know this is a brief philosophical guide to the book, and given that practically every study out there offers a PhD, it’s safe to refer to philosophy as both the foundation and the ever aspirational direction underlying and guiding each study - just look at the degree of the psychological analysis that gets evoked when philosophically dissecting a book, or rather its characters. Dostoyevsky’s characters are big on such semi-necessary/relevant preludes in their monologues, so I felt called on to offer a bit here as well before divulging the actual subjects of my reflection, as provoked by your beautifully structured article. Specifically, two questions arose for me:
1) What is a relationship between superiority and worthiness, and how does is it reflected in Raskolnikov’s journey?
At the end, when Raskolnikov is seen as finally acknowledging his feelings for Sonya and in that act of acknowledgement there’s surrender of his isolated position to that of one shared with another, that acknowledgement and surrender are noticed/observed by others, as evidenced in the reduced hostility they show towards Raskolnikov, or rather reduced projection of his own hostility that this whole time he’d been nurturing towards them. He held on so tight to his perception of his own superiority and misplacement in the society that part of his suffering was fueled by his victim mentality of being an unrecognized genius. As you pointed out, Raskolnikov needed an appeal to the recognized authority in order to be bestowed with a kind of punishment that he could trust would provide proper retribution for his actions, and yet what he was still missing was evidence in favor of his own worthiness, of there still being anything worthy about him, as the notion of his own insignificance gnawed at him despite all his efforts at keeping up the illusion of superiority, his true torture being the incongruence - the deep set fear and knowledge of not mattering that he vehemently refuted and hid behind arrogance and self-importance. So that when he finally acknowledges his feelings for Sonya, he’s forced to acknowledge her feelings for him too, and with that also the reality of those feelings - that he’s a creature that can be loved by someone like Sonya, and since by now he holds Sonya in an ever-growing esteem, her love imbues his existence with worthiness because he can’t insult her by insinuating that she would love someone unworthy of that love. And so, the more he can love Sonya and the greater regard he can develop for her, the more that influences his own worthiness by association. It can turn into a rather twisted motivation for affection and adoration, unreasonably inflating his perception of Sonya’s qualities, which in turn translates into higher expectations and an eventual greater potential for disappointment (or more hostile approach to defending his perception of Sonya from succumbing to that disappointment).
What’s curious about this is that it almost feels like an illusion of progress, illusion of spiritual growth - after all, Raskolnikov starts his journey with a heightened sense of self-importance and through his actions (or let’s call things what they are - murder) seeks to prove to himself the rightfulness of his conviction about himself; he’s then faced with the painful reality of not being the kind of special he hoped to be (equivalent to Napoleon), and as his delusion crumbles around him, he gets ever more defensive about his superiority. The defensiveness that really serves as desperate attempts at rejecting any signs of what he perceives as his inferiority to others (I might be misinterpreting, but it almost seems like to him, being on the same level as others is infinitely worse than being inferior to them, but of course, inferiority still feels worse than superiority). We see this in his projections onto them, especially in prison, where he is regularly irked by feeling that others look down on him and isolate him on purpose. Yet where Raskolnikov ends up is in rediscovering his self-worth in finding himself loved by Sonya - lovable to someone he’s learned to look up to as a higher representation of purity and righteousness. So he started with trying to locate irrefutable proof to his superiority and he ended with discovering his worthiness through another’s acknowledgement, which is a simplified depiction of an inferiority complex - the journey of overcompensation. But with inferiority complex, which amusing enough, Napoleon is frequently psychoanalyzed to have had, there’s a caution around tying one’s self-worth to someone else’s perception thereof. Dostoyevsky was a bit of a suppressed romantic (I mean ending the book with a hint of a cliche of “love will save the world, one soul at a time”), but I wonder if he really intended for Raskolnikov’s growth journey to barely have started by the end of the book.
Yes! This just randomly came up in my feed and I was so excited to see that you're on substack. Thanks for the amazing work that you do
This is reality beautiful. I'm glad you wrote it.
2) What drove Raskolnikov’s definition of an extraordinary man to be imbued with a quality of transcendence of conventional morality and how did that shape the rest of his life perceptions and actions?
It appears that the way Raskolnikov approaches structuring his definition of a higher/special man is by analyzing the “greats” of the past, or rather, he conducts a flawed analysis of mentality they had to have possessed and philosophy he believes they had to have lived by in order to truly embody their greatness. There’s a certain danger in assuming to know the mind of another person, especially when that assumption of knowledge becomes the baseline for building one’s own life philosophy through appeal to the authority of their undeniable greatness. Raskolnikov quite openly ponders that for a man to be a cause of innumerable deaths while founding his legacy, that man must possess a kind of mind that would be able to bear the weight, or better, to possess a kind of mind that doesn’t recognize the burden or acknowledge the weight. What Raskolnikov fails to pursue in his analysis though is what arrival at that kind of a prerequisite in the first place says about him and his morals (he sort of gets there by the end of the book, in a painful process of taking an honest look in a metaphorical mirror) - the higher man “possessing” a permission granted to him by his higher nature to be free of remorse and regret in his pursuits is just something Raskolnikov thirsts for and by the very act of this thirst doesn’t have, without realizing it until too late. But what’s more important is that this higher man possesses a quality Raskolnikov is not only adamant about but also, at that point in the book, actually expects himself to have (just hidden deep down) - after all, few would have thought up a higher man that they can’t see themselves as embodying. If anything, there’s quite a neat caution tale here about the dangers of defining greatness/superiority in terms of qualities/characteristics/descriptors one believes himself to already possess or be capable of possessing (yes, I’m talking about you, my lovely lovers of classics who believe that this love places you above other readers, or dare I say even non-readers :))
Anyways, is it that it’s simply unfathomable to Raskolnikov that anyone might be capable of doing the deeds leading to notorious greatness without crumbling under the weight of the “costs” so he convinces himself that something else must be at play - a characteristic that would allow for that? So the way he’s hung up on (his perception of) Napoleon’s unperturbedness while leading wars that cost thousands of lives and taking plenty of those lives personally, how he finds such unbotheredness, such lack of remorse (or possible even lack of understanding of a need for remorse) worthy of admiration and indicative of potential for greatness (looking at it as “transcendence of conventional morality) - it’s not too hard to see the appeal in the absence of conscience, especially for someone who’s regularly attacked by its righteous bouts, and yet the way Raskolnikov seems to express idolization for what now would qualify as psychopathy is concerning to say the least. Makes one strongly question whether he would similarly admire remorseless ruthlessness of Hitler if born a century later (just like Ollivander from HP, when he praised the greatness of Voldemort’s endeavors - “terrible, yes, but great”).
What else comes up here is the likeness of Raskolnikov’s higher man to what Ayn Rand considered a perfect human. Specifically, Raskolnikov regularly emphasizes the “innateness of greatness” - one can’t become great by seeking to become great - rather, one recognizes his own greatness, embodies it, steps into it, and it self-fulfills - which is coincidentally how Rand presents her characters Galt and, especially, Roark (Rand’s conviction is also strongly emphasized in the journey of the character of Peter Keating, as a stand-in for someone who encroaches on greatness without having been born with it) - it seems to be regular iteration in her philosophy that one can’t become a Roark, rather one must be born him. One doesn’t get to have a beautiful mind by looking to make their mind beautiful, which then requires a beautiful mind to be an innate quality. Funny how that kind of philosophy strips down growth potential and opportunity for a lifelong change. But in relation to Raskolnikov, what seems to do him in is this conviction that awareness of one current non-greatness is an insurmountable obstacle to any future greatness because that awareness lacks forward looking glimpse of opportunity in favor of the self-fulfilling doom.
3) Okay, as I was writing out the above, a third question popped up, but I’m going to just leave it here for now (seems like a bit too charged of a topic for a comment under a post): What are the parallels between fictional Raskolnikov and real-life Luigi and what does the societal reaction to the actions of the latter signal about shifts in the social morality, if anything? In other words, how has the morality of murder evolved (or stayed the same) over the centuries and where are we with it now?
I know this is a brief philosophical guide to the book, and given that practically every study out there offers a PhD, it’s safe to refer to philosophy as both the foundation and the ever aspirational direction underlying and guiding each study - just look at the degree of the psychological analysis that gets evoked when philosophically dissecting a book, or rather its characters. Dostoyevsky’s characters are big on such semi-necessary/relevant preludes in their monologues, so I felt called on to offer a bit here as well before divulging the actual subjects of my reflection, as provoked by your beautifully structured article. Specifically, two questions arose for me:
1) What is a relationship between superiority and worthiness, and how does is it reflected in Raskolnikov’s journey?
At the end, when Raskolnikov is seen as finally acknowledging his feelings for Sonya and in that act of acknowledgement there’s surrender of his isolated position to that of one shared with another, that acknowledgement and surrender are noticed/observed by others, as evidenced in the reduced hostility they show towards Raskolnikov, or rather reduced projection of his own hostility that this whole time he’d been nurturing towards them. He held on so tight to his perception of his own superiority and misplacement in the society that part of his suffering was fueled by his victim mentality of being an unrecognized genius. As you pointed out, Raskolnikov needed an appeal to the recognized authority in order to be bestowed with a kind of punishment that he could trust would provide proper retribution for his actions, and yet what he was still missing was evidence in favor of his own worthiness, of there still being anything worthy about him, as the notion of his own insignificance gnawed at him despite all his efforts at keeping up the illusion of superiority, his true torture being the incongruence - the deep set fear and knowledge of not mattering that he vehemently refuted and hid behind arrogance and self-importance. So that when he finally acknowledges his feelings for Sonya, he’s forced to acknowledge her feelings for him too, and with that also the reality of those feelings - that he’s a creature that can be loved by someone like Sonya, and since by now he holds Sonya in an ever-growing esteem, her love imbues his existence with worthiness because he can’t insult her by insinuating that she would love someone unworthy of that love. And so, the more he can love Sonya and the greater regard he can develop for her, the more that influences his own worthiness by association. It can turn into a rather twisted motivation for affection and adoration, unreasonably inflating his perception of Sonya’s qualities, which in turn translates into higher expectations and an eventual greater potential for disappointment (or more hostile approach to defending his perception of Sonya from succumbing to that disappointment).
What’s curious about this is that it almost feels like an illusion of progress, illusion of spiritual growth - after all, Raskolnikov starts his journey with a heightened sense of self-importance and through his actions (or let’s call things what they are - murder) seeks to prove to himself the rightfulness of his conviction about himself; he’s then faced with the painful reality of not being the kind of special he hoped to be (equivalent to Napoleon), and as his delusion crumbles around him, he gets ever more defensive about his superiority. The defensiveness that really serves as desperate attempts at rejecting any signs of what he perceives as his inferiority to others (I might be misinterpreting, but it almost seems like to him, being on the same level as others is infinitely worse than being inferior to them, but of course, inferiority still feels worse than superiority). We see this in his projections onto them, especially in prison, where he is regularly irked by feeling that others look down on him and isolate him on purpose. Yet where Raskolnikov ends up is in rediscovering his self-worth in finding himself loved by Sonya - lovable to someone he’s learned to look up to as a higher representation of purity and righteousness. So he started with trying to locate irrefutable proof to his superiority and he ended with discovering his worthiness through another’s acknowledgement, which is a simplified depiction of an inferiority complex - the journey of overcompensation. But with inferiority complex, which amusing enough, Napoleon is frequently psychoanalyzed to have had, there’s a caution around tying one’s self-worth to someone else’s perception thereof. Dostoyevsky was a bit of a suppressed romantic (I mean ending the book with a hint of a cliche of “love will save the world, one soul at a time”), but I wonder if he really intended for Raskolnikov’s growth journey to barely have started by the end of the book.
2)