Fyodor Dostoevsky is widely regarded as one the greatest novelists in history.
His fictional work is so rich with deep insights into human psychology, particularly its interplay
with various social and political structures of the modern world, he is equal parts renowned
psychologist and philosopher. His work brings into question how well we truly know ourselves, what we
really want, and how we go about considering and attaining these things in the world—as
well as the consequences of following false delusions and impossible ideals. His insights and
warnings about humanity, both individually and collectively, were not only ahead of his time,
but in many ways, they are still arguably unheeded warnings immensely relevant to today.
Dostoevsky was born in 1821 in Moscow Russia to a well-off orthodox Christian family. His father
was a successful doctor, and his family lived on the hospital grounds where his father worked.
While in his teens, however, his mother died of tuberculosis, and while Dostoevsky was away
at school studying to become an engineer, his father died without definitive cause—although,
it was reported and speculated that he was murdered by his own serfs in an act of vengeance
against his abusive tendencies. Young Dostoevsky’s proximity to the conditions of a hospital,
his upbringing in a strong-faithed family, and the early deaths of both his parents,
especially that of the mysterious, possible murder of his father, likely all culminated into some
amount of the early foundation of what would go on to become his unique but tragic voice as a writer.
After graduating from a military engineering institute, Dostoevsky would work as an
engineer. However, as a means of engaging in his budding passion for literature and humanities,
he also began translating books on the side during this time. As this passion for literature soon
increased further and further, he would resign from his engineering career and focus solely on
writing himself. In 1846, he published his first book, titled Poor Folk. Right away, this work
received commercial success and was reviewed favorably by literary critics of the time,
deemed as Russia’s first social novel. However, Dostoevsky’s subsequent works just following this
one would struggle to find any similar level of success, and he soon found himself mostly
just experimenting and failing as a writer, quickly falling into financial distress.
Partly as a consequence of his financial situation, in 1847, while in his late twenties,
Dostoevsky became associated with a radical group of writers and intellectuals focused on
utopian socialism. This, however, would soon lead to him to being arrested when the government went
after those associated with these types of groups. In 1849, as punishment, Dostoevsky was sentenced
to death by firing squad. On December 22nd of the same year, he stood facing the barrel of
a gun pointed at his head. The remainder of his life was now counted in minutes. As the
officials held their aim and steadied to pull the trigger, suddenly, at the last moment,
a message arrived, and Dostoevsky was pardoned. The execution turned out to be a mock-execution,
used merely as a psychological tactic to instill fear in the prisoners.
Following this, Dostoevsky was instead sent to Siberia where he was forced to work grueling labor
in horrible conditions for four years. In 1860, Dostoevsky returned from Siberia,
but returned a very different man. He would soon begin writing again,
but now, his voice would contain a new tone of pessimism, realism, and a highly perceptive
understanding of the human psyche. He was now turned away from utopian ideals of society,
and instead, his focus was now turned inward, toward spiritual and psychological explorations.
Over the following twenty years, before dying of a lung disorder in 1881, Dostoevsky would produce
several successful masterpieces, many of which are still regarded as some of the most important
works of literature to this day, including Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment,
The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov. One of the more prominent themes established in
much of Dostoevsky’s work was his insights on and assessment of human suffering—more particularly,
the means by which and the consequences of humanity trying to overcome and rid itself
of suffering, especially in relation to a time in which religious and spiritual anchors were
cut loose, and individuals and societies were left to create and defend their worldviews
through an increasing thrust of rationality and technology toward the ideal of perfect well-being.
In Notes from Underground, published in 1864, Dostoyevsky explores and critiques these modern
western ideals: rationality and technological progress as a means toward perfect happiness and
goodness. In the novel, we follow an unnamed retired civil servant, often referred to as
the underground man, through a series of diary entries. The man is deeply angered and unhappy,
and he possesses a disdain for others and the delusions in which others live.
He wants to make other people see the truth and acknowledge the same discontent
and absurdity he knows and feels in life. For Dostoyevsky, suffering is a fundamental
tenet of human life. It is infused in the blood. Thus, there is no life, nor social or material
condition for life, that can exist without suffering. And so, for Dostoyevsky, all efforts
and accomplishments of progress, both individually and collectively, can merely change the particular
things that we derive our suffering from, but cannot eliminate our suffering comprehensively.
“Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness,” wrote Dostoyevsky.
For Dostoyevsky, since there can never be a social or material structure that rids humanity
of unhappiness or suffering, any objective of improving the world toward an idealistic,
utopian version of itself is doomed to fail. Through the underground man,
Dostoyevsky largely critiques and warns about humanity pursuing these sorts of ideals
while operating within the increasingly prevalent worldviews of nihilism, utopianism, rationalism,
and egoism—which essentially culminate into the beliefs that there is no inherent or transcendent
meaning to life and that actions and morality should be based on reason and knowledge with
self-interest as the driving force. Dostoyevsky argued, however, that with a void of religious
faith and a deeply flawed, irrational human nature, this worldview would become destructive.
In the process of resolving suffering toward perfection, solutions to old problems will
inevitably create new problems in need of new solutions—and the more grandiose the solutions,
the more complex and perhaps destructive the new problems. This is not necessarily
to say that efforts of social, technological, or self-improvement are useless or inherently bad,
but rather, they are not capable of attaining what they often set out to accomplish;
and if not considered within the constraints of the human condition, their incessant motion
can serve to only fan the flames of problems. In Notes From Underground, Dostoyevsky wrote:
Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities?
Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but
bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have
nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species,
and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty
trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish,
the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense
his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams,
his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to
himself—as though that were so necessary—that men still are men and not the keys of a piano.
For Dostoyevsky, humanity is irritational and incessantly desires a sense of self-agency—not
perfect happiness. Thus, even if a perfect life or society in which happiness could be
of formulaic ease to everyone, humanity would rather go mad or destroy its perfect conditions
than live as if it fit into a mechanical system.
We think we want happiness, but we don’t—not really. We know this every time we could be
happy but aren’t; every time we find something to dwell on or complain about or sabotage.
Our conscious mind appears to tell us we want happiness and peace with perfect equality,
but our whole being, our behaviors, our history, show us that we, quite often, want the opposite.
We don’t know ourselves as well as we think, and often when we do, we struggle to accept the truth.
In Dostoyevsky’s subsequent masterpiece, Crime and Punishment,
published in 1866, he further explores this notion of self-knowledge, or the lack thereof. The novel
centers around a young former law student living in poverty, named Rodion Raskolnikov.
Raskolnikov’s mother and sister are sacrificing a great deal to try to help Raskolnikov’s situation
and facilitate his success—his sister even setting up to marry a wealthy man in order to help.
This, however, all further upsets and shames Raskolnikov. Additionally, he is deeply affected
by a nihilistic, rationalistic, and atheistic view of the world. Because of his views, without
needing to answer to any religious or spiritual principles, Raskolnikov decides to kill and rob a
wicked, abusive, old pawnbroker woman whom he has become aware has a lot of cash. He believes that
moral decisions ought to be based on what one can determine, through reason, produces the highest
net good on society—or the greatest happiness for the largest number of people. Because of this, he
believes that he deserves the money more than the old woman, as he can do far more good with it. He
can help his sister and mother, and he can become a lawyer, and can then go on to do even more good
in the world. Moreover, he thinks of himself as an individual of greatness, powerfulness, and
ruthlessness; and, in his mind, extraordinary men are allowed to commit crimes for the common good.
And so, he is able to rationally justify murder, and he proceeds to kill the pawnbroker, and then,
her half-sister when she walks in during the act. Throughout the rest of the novel,
Raskolnikov finds himself tormented and riddled with guilt and horror because of his actions. He
is not who he thought he was; he is not a man of ruthless power. He is a tender and feeling man.
Eventually, he turns himself into the police in order to essentially avoid going insane.
Through Raskolnikov’s guilt and torment, Dostoyevsky critiques the notions of reason
and self-interest as complete methods of determining morality and self-hood.
Raskolnikov had every reason to do what he did, and yet, what he did was wrong, and it causes him
to feel immense pain and suffering. Like in Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky is again critiquing
the beliefs of nihilism, utilitarianism, rationalism, and egoism, in which all faith
and relevance is placed solely on the individual, and all efforts to maximize a life and society are
done through self-interest and rationality. Also like in Notes from Underground,
Crime and Punishment focuses on the complexity of the human mind and how we, as the conscious
observers and orators of who we think we are, are often detached from and inconsistent with
who we really are. Moreover, our perception of who others are is often even further removed from the
truth. Dostoevsky not only shows how Raskolnikov has a completely inverted, false self-perception,
but he also allows the reader to relate to and empathize with Raskolnikov: a cold-blooded
murderer. Rather than purely showing how a bad character becomes bad, Dostoevsky shows
how a bad character isn’t purely bad, and is, in many ways, a lot like us—extremely confused
and misguided by the conflict of their inner psyche and their misunderstanding of said psyche.
For us all, the complex interplay between our conscious mind,
unconscious mind, and the world outside of ourselves is chaotic,
muddled, contradictory, and perhaps impossible to ever truly understand. None of us are that far
from those we fear or dislike; in them is some amount of us, and in us is some amount of them.
We don’t know ourselves as well as we think; we chase things that we don’t want, and we often
dread what we truly want. We are far less rational than we think; we exhibit a sort of madness every
day and every generation. Christianity and idealistic philosophies set us up to fail;
science cannot save us; and technology is a not a means to escape our problems but merely
an efficient transformation of them. Dostoevsky believed all this to be the case, and arguably,
on at least some level, he was right. However, at the end of Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov is
in prison, serving just an eight-year sentence, for doing good deeds. The novel ends alluding
to the prospect that Raskolnikov's story will continue, suggesting Dostoevsky’s belief that
through suffering, faith, acceptance, compassion, and repentance, redemption is still possible.
Although Dostoevsky’s work is largely dark and tragic, it also contains this sort of epilogue
of redemption in spite of itself—at least redemption of a sort. In his novel, The Idiot,
published in 1869, through the main character, Prince Myshkin, Dostoevsky reflects on some his
own personal experiences and ideals in life. In one instance, Prince Myshkin discusses an anecdote
about a man recounting having been arrested and sentenced to a mock-execution by firing squad,
mirroring almost exactly Dostoevsky’s own experience many years prior. Prince Myshkin says:
He had about five minutes left to live, not more. He said those five minutes seemed like an endless
time to him, an enormous wealth . . . he reckoned up the time for bidding his comrades farewell
and allotted two minutes to that, then allotted two more minutes to thinking about himself
for the last time, and then to looking around for the last time . . . He was dying at the age of
twenty-seven, healthy and strong; bidding farewell to his comrades, he remembered asking one of them
a rather irrelevant question and even being very interested in the answer. Then, after he had
bidden his comrades farewell, the two minutes came that he had allotted to thinking about himself.
He knew beforehand what he was going to think about: he kept wanting to picture to himself
as quickly and vividly as possible how it could be like this: now he exists and lives, and in three
minutes there would be something, some person or thing—but who? and where? He wanted to resolve
it all in those two minutes! There was a church nearby, and the top of the cathedral with its
gilded dome shone in the bright sun. He remembered gazing with terrible fixity at that dome and the
rays shinning from it: it seemed to him that those were his new nature and in three minutes
he would somehow merge with them...The ignorance of and loathing for this new thing that would be
and would come presently were terrible; yet he said that nothing was more oppressive for him at
that moment than the constant thought: ‘What if I were not to die! What if life were given back to
me—what infinity! And it would all be mine! Then I’d turn each minute into a whole age, I’d lose
nothing, I’d reckon up every minute separately, I’d let nothing be wasted!’ He said that in the
end this thought turned into such anger in him that he wished they would hurry up and shoot him.
In this, Dostoevsky arguably alludes to the idea that although life is so often
tragic, purity and perfect goodness is impossible, and suffering is fundamental,
the conscious awareness of being but moments away from losing it all is so overwhelmingly
horrible that one would literally rather hurry up and die than steep in the knowledge of just
how beautiful everything truly is and that they are just about to lose it all forever.
Whether we agree with Dostoevsky or not, his deep insights and brilliant works of literature can
help remind us and allow us feel this same beauty and depth in life, while there’s still time.