Unveiling Roskolinkov’s Philosophy

Unveiling Roskolinkov’s Philosophy

Introduction

In Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, Rodion Raskolinkov is a poor intellectual man who is a former law student and who is depressed and unable to pay his rent. He is preoccupied with philosophy and its theories and thinks that he will contribute to the world’s great works. He has the urge to prove, to himself before others, his superiority to common people. He decides to kill Alyona Ivanovna, an old moneylender who was harassing him and other people about their loans. He finds good justifications to kill the woman and he makes his plans to do so. It ends up that he kills the woman along with her sister, Lizaveta, whom he was surprised to find there.

Before Raskolinkov confesses his crime, he goes through a tough psychological and philosophical inner conflict. Porfiry Petrovich, the detective that investigates the murder case, is one of the factors that aroused that conflict and helped in bringing it to its end, the confession. Petrovich plays some psychological games and uses his knowledge of criminals’ psyche to make him confess voluntarily. He reveals some of his psychological tricks in Part IV Chapter V:

What is it, to run away! A mere formality; that's not the main thing; no, he won't run away on me by a law of nature, even if he has somewhere to run to. Have you ever seen a moth near a candle? Well, so he'll keep circling around me, circling around me, as around a candle; freedom will no longer be dear to him, he'll fall to thinking, get entangled, he'll tangle himself all up as in a net, he'll worry himself to death! He’ll keep on making circles around me, narrowing the radius more and more, and—whop! He'll fly right into my mouth, and I'll swallow him, sir, and that will be most agreeable, heh, heh, heh!

(161)

In spite of that, Petrovich embodies the intellectual side of Raskolinkov which is challenged by his spiritual side which is embodied in Sonia. When Raskolinkov is greatly exposed to both Petrovich and Sonia his inner conflict reaches its climax, which causes him to realize his self-deception and unmask it accordingly. I think Raskolinkov’s conflict is one of the most intense and complex psychological conflicts that can occur within a human being, because it holds contradictory philosophical theories or views along with his complex self-deception.


Thesis

Thinking about Raskolinkov and the different aspects of his personality has motivated me to write about the various philosophical views that were occupying and conflicting his mind. I’m especially interested in juxtaposing Nietzsche’s Superman Theory and Utilitarianism with Kant’s philosophy of morality. I argue that the excessive opposition of the contradictory theories which preoccupied Raskolinkov in the same strength is what caused him to be aware of his self-deception and to decide to confess afterwards.

In addition, I will examine the degree of his self-deception and whether self-deception is more likely to occur only partially or mildly within intellectual individuals in comparison to common people; or, on the other hand, whether it occurs more intensely within intellectuals and makes it overwhelming to their minds. Is that why it doesn’t last long because of their ability to analyze and interpret what is going on in their subconscious mind? It’s hard to make a conclusive determination regarding this issue, but I will argue that self-deception occurs more intensely within intellectuals and that it doesn’t last long because of its complexity and their cognitive abilities to observe the processing and the functioning of their minds.


Rationalization to Support Self-deception

Depressed, desperate and in need of money, Raskolinkov decides to kill the old moneylender. He justifies that desire with the uselessness of that woman. Not only that, but he thinks that she is harmful to people since she is abusing people’s need for money.

He thinks that he will do good to people in two ways: First, by killing her and killing her abuse with herself. Second, he will do good by taking her money and improving his own living conditions, helping his poor mother and finishing his studies and writing his great works that will improve the whole world. So, we see Raskolinkov repeating to himself throughout the course of the novel “she is only a louse!” But the question here is, why did he keep saying that to himself if he really believed that his justification is an unquestionable one? If a person believes that something is morally justified or right, he wouldn’t have such an inner conflict even if it were an implicit one. In other words, a person who knows consciously and subconsciously that what he is doing is right wouldn’t need to remind himself of that or to prove it over and over again. When Raskolinkov confesses to Sonia (his spiritual guide and the voice of his conscience, also called Sofia), he repeats the same sentence to her: “I only killed a louse, Sonia, a useless, vile pernicious louse.” Apparently he was instinctively uncomfortable with the idea although he could find logical justification for his crime. Indeed, he rationalized his crime to disguise his self-deception and escape his guilt.


Awareness and guilt

The observations that Dostoevsky depicts in Raskolinkov’s monologue while committing his crime suggest the fact that he was fully aware of what he was doing. Nothing in the novel refers to him being unconscious or even emotionally stimulated while committing the murder. And yet we don’t see him as a person who has sadistic tendencies. While committing his crime, we can see him as a kind of neutral actor, as if he were playing a role in a scene without being emotionally involved in it. This is the “unconscious reading” which Daniel Goleman refers to in his article, “Insights into Self-deception,” in which the mind selectively ignores facts and emotions that cause psychological tension:

“The evidence includes the startling phenomenon known as ‘unconscious reading’, in which, as psychologists at Cambridge University in England have shown, a person unconsciously registers the meaning of words that are presented to him in such a way that has no conscious awareness of having seen them at all” (1)

After he had killed the woman’s sister, Lizaveta, Raskolinkov started to become anxious, but not to the level that you would expect from an extremely sensitive person as how he is depicted: a person who gives all his money to a family whose father tragically dies and whom he meets only once; a person who gives all the money he had to a girl who wanted to sell her body to be able to eat! A person as compassionate as this should have had a nervous breakdown (or something similar) after murdering that poor innocent victim. But that didn’t happen since his mind blocked that upsetting emotional experience from his awareness. Actually, Raskolinkov himself was surprised that killing Lizaveta didn’t affect him to the level that it should have. And this is when he started to become aware to some extent of his self-deception. He says: “Poor Lizaveta! Why had she to turn up? … It is strange though; I wonder why I hardly ever think of her, as though I had not killed her…” (III.5.234)


Unmasking the unreal motive

The fact that he doesn’t use the woman’s money or anything of her possessions seemed quite weird even for him. And here is where he realizes the failure of the rationalization of his crime. So, he starts to support his rationalization theory by thinking that what bothers him is not the fact he killed the woman, but the fact that he wasn’t a good killer, since he didn’t benefit from it! So, basically Raskolinkov tries to cover up his self-deception with another self-deception! But actually in this point, when he realizes that he doesn’t care to use the woman’s possessions for personal matters, his self-deception becomes more complicated since he starts to question his true motives for that crime. After a long while of wrestling with contradicting assumptions, he decides that he didn’t want to kill the lady herself. Instead, he wanted to kill the concept of life’s injustice and people’s abuse of one another. “I didn’t kill a human being. A principle! I killed a principle!” (78), he says.

“The old woman was a mistake perhaps, but she's not the point! The old woman was merely a sickness … I was in a hurry to step over … it wasn't a human being I killed, it was a principle! So I killed the principle, but I didn't step over, I stayed on this side … All I managed to do was kill. And I didn't even manage that, as it turns out.” (217)

He felt that the existence of that woman in itself was not right, and he thought he could correct that mistake. Basically, he was self-deceived in believing that he had the right to correct the mistakes of life and the flaws of reality. So, I would argue that one of his motives, which also caused his self-deception, was satisfying his ego since he wanted to some extent to rebel against social injustice. Moreover, it might be a natural result of believing in Nietzsche’s Superman Theory.


Nietzsche and Raskolinkov’s Rationalization


Raskolinkov was self-deceived in believing that he could do things that others are not allowed to do since he is a genius and that makes him superior to the regular laws. He believed that he could transcend common laws and act according to what he thought best for humanity. When he was thinking of killing the woman, he was inclined to think that his life is worth more than hers and more than all harmful people like her. In spite of that, he did have instinctively some uneasiness with this theory although he found it logically convincing. And that was because of tension that was caused by the occurrence of self-deception within him. Applying Nietzsche’s theory was the mechanism Raskolinkov used to rationalize his decision to kill the lady. And questioning how the Superman Theory works in reality was the backup support of his complex self-deception. Did Raskolinkov find it workable in reality or did he find it conflicting with human nature?

This is what he said in Chapter 5 of Part Three:

“… I don’t contend that extraordinary people are always bound to commit breaches of morals, as you call it … I simply hinted that an extraordinary man has the right … that is not an official right, but an inner right to decide in his own conscience to overstep… certain obstacles, and only in case it is essential for the practical fulfillment of his idea…” (270)

Was Raskolinkov Utilitarian?

From the Utilitarian point of view, Raskolinkov’s murder was morally acceptable since he was seeking his happiness and his profit. Upon this foundation he calculated the whole notion of murdering the woman. He thought of killing that “louse” as “the best of the worst” if I may say. In other words, he thought that killing her is definitely better than letting her harm all of those people she was harassing. I like to think of Utilitarianism as counting the benefits versus the harms, weighing them and finally going with the heavier side of the scale. Thus, the consequence of the action is what determines if it’s morally accepted or not. This is what Jeremy Bentham states as Mill quoted him in Utilitarianism: “It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.” 

So, this is what Raskolinkov claimed to do when he considered both his own happiness and others’ too. Moreover, he claimed to protect himself and others from the pain that could be caused by the moneylender. That’s how he wanted to achieve the ultimate goal of Utilitarianism; giving people hope and taking away their fear. So, that was Raskolinkov’s other rationalization mechanism in supporting his self-deception.


Intellect vs. spirituality

Applying or examining the utilitarian theory along with the supernatural (Nietzsche’s) is what caused Raskolinkov to be self-deceived about his motivation to commit the murder. Those theories represent the logical or the intellectual dimension of his personality, which is the only side that had control over his conscious mind when he decided about the murder. So, we can assume that he was challenging those theories along with the concepts of reason and intellect they represent since they worked as the assistance of the “mental exotica” that Alfred Mele refers to in Self-deception Unmasked (4). When Petrovich confronts him and discusses with him the article that Raskolinkov wrote about the psychology of criminals, the discussion stimulates him to illustrate his views on the privilege that extraordinary people have in examining their theories in reality. Raskolinkov believes strongly in his philosophical views and can’t hide his devotion to them. So, the intellectual dimension of the action played a significant role in serving his “motivational profile “and his rational explanatory.

This is what Alfred Mele referred to as the “unifying view” of self-deception:

“the FTL analysis of lay hypothesis testing suggests a ‘unifying’ view of self-deception– specifically, the view that, in all cases of self-deception, straight and twisted alike, a tendency to minimize errors that are costly, given the person’s current motivational profile, plays a central explanatory role.” (98)

On the other hand, Raskolinkov wasn’t comfortable with expressing the spiritual dimension of his personality. And that was markedly depicted in his denial of his love to Sonia and in the fact that he refused to take the cross from her, which was a symbol for redemption and salvation. That emotional state stimulated his psychological tension even more and made emotion central in his self-deception.

This is what Raskolinkov said to Sonia when he bowed to her in Chapter 24: “I did not bow down to you; I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.” (337)

Mele states that “As Douglas Derryberry observes, there is evidence that ‘emotional states facilitate the processing of congruent stimuli’ and that ‘attentional processes are involved in [this] effect’” (99). He also refers to what Ronald de Sousa argues, that “for a variable but always limited time, an emotion limits the range of information that the organism will take into account, the inferences actually drawn from a potential infinity, and the set of live options among which it will choose” (99).

Emotion played that role in Raskolinkov’s self-deception when he believed that by killing the moneylender he was, like Sonia, sacrificing his life for his family, by helping them financially, and for humanity as whole, by getting rid of the harmful lady. That wasn’t realistic since everything in reality was saying that he was sacrificing for himself (contrary to Sonia who devoted her life to take care of her family). Raskolinkov’s main concern was his theories and whether they are applicable in real life or not. Actually, he didn’t try to help his family or sacrifice anything for them because he was more concerned about the conflict of theory and life in the human soul, as he claimed.

So, as both the intellectual and the spiritual side of Raskolinkov were highly reinforced by the existence of Sonia and Petrovich in his life, and as he was motivated to claim that he was challenging the concept of reason or intellect versus faith or spirituality in both real life and in man’s psyche, his emotions caused his self-deception to become more complex.


Kant’s Philosophy and Unmasking Raskolinkov’s Self-deception


The fact that Raskolinkov tried to examine Nietzsche’s theory and Utilitarianism proves his implicit attempt of denying and challenging Kant’s philosophy (a kind of defensive mechanism). Maybe he believed instinctively in Kant’s philosophy but he might have thought that applying it in such a crazy world would be merely foolish. And that’s what caused the tension between his conscious and subconscious mind. So, he decided to deny and ignore Kant’s categorical imperative and used self-deception to block it. Thus, he didn’t bother to identify the maxim of his action and universalize it afterwards, because he would find his murder morally impermissible since the world would be a mess if people kill whomever they think is a “louse”!

Was Raskolinkov aware of the fact that he was really violating the “morality of human beings” by committing his murder? The morality that Kant referred to in Chapter II of the Metaphysics of Morals by saying: “The greatest violation of a human being’s duty to himself regarded merely as a moral being (the humanity in his own person) is the contrary of truthfulness, lying.” (183)

I argue that Raskolinkov subconsciously knew that he was deceiving himself to avoid confronting his guilt. The whole notion of the existence of his self-deception served as a self-defense mechanism to avoid the discomfort of feeling guilty.

I think what happened between Raskolinkov and Sonia when he was in her room confessing his murder is a good example to discuss the self-deception issue. Although he kept saying to Sonia at the beginning that he thinks that he didn’t do something wrong because he only killed a louse, we see how it’s difficult for him to confess. He even uses a third person pronoun to do that, which reveals the moral guilt that he subconsciously suffered: “He… did not want to…kill Lizaveta. He…killed her by accident … he meant to kill the old woman.” (393)

Then, he starts to unmask his false motivation for the murder while talking to Sonia about it: “‘Let me tell you: if I'd simply killed because I was hungry,’ laying stress on every word and looking enigmatically but sincerely at her, ‘I should be happy now. You must believe that!’ ” (429).

So, he realizes that he didn’t kill her for the money. And he suggests that he was occupied by the thought that Napoleon would do the same thing to be able to start his career and contribute to the world’s accomplishments. He says in the same scene:

“It was like this: I asked myself one day this question- what if Napoleon, for instance, had happened to be in my place, and if he had not had Toulon nor Egypt nor the passage of Mont Blanc to begin his career with, but instead of all those picturesque and monumental things, there had simply been some ridiculous old hag, a pawnbroker, who had to be murdered too to get money from her trunk (for his career, you understand). Well, would he have brought himself to that, if there had been no other means? Wouldn't he have felt a pang at its being so far from monumental and... and sinful, too? Well, I must tell you that worried myself fearfully over that ‘question’ so that I was awfully ashamed when I guessed at last (all of a sudden, somehow) that it would not have given him the least pang, that it would not even have struck him that it was not monumental... that he would not have seen that there was anything in it to pause over, and that, if he had had no other way, he would have strangled her in a minute without thinking about it! Well, I too... left off thinking about it... murdered her, following his example. And that's exactly how it was! Do you think it funny? Yes, Sonia, the funniest thing of all is that perhaps that's just how it was.” (430)

His conversation with Sonia is more like an inner monologue in which he questions all his motives and all possibilities that occurred to him while and before committing the murder. Raskolinkov goes on to question the possibility of challenging or examining the Superman Theory:

“I too know it wasn't a louse,” he answered, looking strangely at her. “But I am talking nonsense, Sonia,” he added. “I've been talking nonsense a long time... That's not it, you are right there. There were quite, quite other causes for it! I haven't talked to anyone for so long, Sonia... My head aches dreadfully now.” (432)

Here we can see how confused he is about whether to take responsibility for his crime or not. At the same time, we see that he accepts to surrender to his moral guilt by admitting his awareness that she is not “a louse” without being able to give logical reasons for that. He finally confronts this guilt but he suffers because he doesn’t know how to interpret that instinctive feeling of guilt.

I would like to assume that the source of his guilt is “annihilating his dignity as a human being” that Kant refers to, in Chapter II of The Metaphysics of Morals, when talking about lying versus truthfulness:

“By a lie a human being throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a human being. A human being who does not himself believe what he tells another (even if the other is a merely ideal person) has even less worth than if he were a mere thing; for a thing, because it is something real and given, has the property of being serviceable so that another can put it to some use. But communication of one’s thoughts to someone through words that yet (intentionally) contain the contrary of what the speaker thinks on the subject is an end that is directly opposed to the natural purposiveness of the speaker’s capacity to communicate his thoughts, and is thus a renunciation by the speaker of his personality, and such a speaker is a mere deceptive appearance of a human being, not a human being himself.” (182)

So, I argue that Raskolinkov believed instinctively in treating people as ends and that one’s right actions should be independent from the consequences of that action. It was hard for him though to admit his failure in challenging his ability to stick to reason and to ignore his spirit, because accepting that failure would include accepting guilt. But Raskolinkov shows all his cards here, and by admitting his crime to Sonia he confronts his guilt and starts to live at peace with it.

In this statement in Part 5, Chapter 4, we see him taking full responsibility for his crime as a result of the intensity of his self-deception that he unmasks:

“I know it all; I have thought it all over and over and whispered it all over to myself, lying there in the dark... I've argued it all over with myself, every point of it, and I know it all, all! And how sick, how sick I was then of going over it all! I have kept wanting to forget it and make a new beginning, Sonia, and leave off thinking. And you don't suppose that I went into it headlong like a fool? I went into it like a wise man, and that was just my destruction. And you mustn't suppose that I didn't know, for instance, that if I began to question myself whether I had the right to gain power- I certainly hadn't the right- or that if I asked myself whether a human being is a louse it proved that it wasn't so for me, though it might be for a man who would go straight to his goal without asking questions... If I worried myself all those days, wondering whether Napoleon would have done it or not, I felt clearly of course that I wasn't Napoleon. I had to endure all the agony of that battle of ideas, Sonia, and I longed to throw it off: I wanted to murder without casuistry, to murder for my own sake, for myself alone! I didn't want to lie about it even to myself. (424)

He goes on to reach his last conclusion before deciding to pay the price for the life experiment he did on himself and face his destiny in Siberia:

“Understand me! Perhaps I should never have committed a murder again. I wanted to find out something else; it was something else led me on. I wanted to find out then and quickly whether I was a louse like everybody else or a man. Whether I can step over barriers or not, whether I dare stoop to pick up or not, whether I am a trembling creature or whether I have the right...” (434)

Apparently, Raskolinkov’s tension was caused by contradictory concepts of morality in his conscious and subconscious mind. Consequently, in order to eliminate his inner conflict, he blocked the concepts he had in his subconscious mind that knew that it’s immoral to kill even harmful people.

As we’ve seen in Raskolinkov’s case, it’s harder for highly intellectual people to self-deceive themselves, because they are more able to analyze and interpret the signs of inconsistency they get from their subconscious mind. Raskolinkov’s self-deception didn’t last long. He became aware of his self-deception primarily because of the dreams that he had and he thought that it had implications of his self-deception (i.e. when he dreamt of beating the horse so vigorously). So, Raskolinkov was somehow trying to protect his self-image by rationalizing his motives to kill the old moneylender, and he directed his tension to his subconscious mind which couldn’t bear it for long.


Self-deception as means for self-knowledge

As life won the battle against the loss of theory, Raskolinkov is now aware of the fact that he has to submit to faith in redemption in order to quiet his philosophical doubts. He knows that he is guilty but he also knows that he can’t break moral laws with logical justifications. In other words, he knows that he can’t let the intellect dominate him to the detriment of spirituality. Ironically, by killing the old woman, Raskolinkov acquired self-knowledge and knew that he can’t exist except as a real human being accepting the weakness of both his reason and his spirit.

This is what Sofia’s wisdom spirit spoke to him in Chapter 4 of Part 5: “You must accept suffering and redeem yourself by it; that’s what you must do … For broad understanding and deep feeling you need pain and suffering. I believe really great men must experience great sadness in the world.” (480).

Raskolinkov makes his last choice: to be a human being and to do whatever it takes to be so. In this sense he embodies what John Stuart Mill refers to when he says “It’s better to be a human being dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” (10)


Conclusion

By opposing his nature, questioning his humanity and examining his philosophical theories, Raskolinkov ironically by killing the old lady gains the self-knowledge and the inner harmony he seeks. He accepts his suffering because he realizes that it is his way to true redemption and real inner peace.

Raskolinkov’s self-deception was very intense because it covered up his real motivation with multiple “inner lies” as Kant would call it. And whenever he fabricated a new motive for his crime, his super-active subconscious mind would unmask it and prove its fallacy. I believe that it’s less common among highly sensitive intelligent people to endure self-deception because its intensity can affect their sanity. Those kinds of people would seek self-knowledge even if they realized that it would cost them severe mental discomfort. And this is what Dr. Julie Kirsch refers to in “What’s So Great about Reality?” when she talks about the value of truthfulness which doesn’t need to be rationalized:

“however, should someone ask me, ‘what’s so great about reality? Why do you value the truth over illusion?’ I must rest content with [the] reply ‘I just do’; for in such cases there can be no further justification” (426)


Bibliography

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. .London : Penguin Books, 1998 Penguin Classics edition.

Beyer, Thomas R. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Middlebury College Press, JR, 2002.

Goleman, Daniel. Insights into Self-Deception. New York: New York Times, May 12 ,1985

Kant, Immanuel. The Moral Law; Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. H.J. Paton. London: Routledge Classics, 1991.

Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. The University of Adelaide Library: Electronic Texts Collection, 1998.

Zahid, Anas. Thus quieted Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zorba. London: Tuwa Media & Publishing Limited, 2007.

Mele, Alfred R.Self-deception Unmasked. Princeton New Jersy : Princeton University Press, 2001

Kirsch, Julie. What’s So Great about Reality? Toronto: Canadian Journal of Philosophy. Volume 35, Number 3, September 2005