You guy's think Raskolnikov's Great Man Theory was correct? I'm guessing people like Napoleon maybe felt bad for killing people to achieve great things, but they were able to simply handle it because they were greatAre you a great man?
>>24859792Did you finish the book? It literally tells you what that type of thinking brings about.
>>24859816yeah i finished it, but i guess i missed that parti thought Raskolnikov settled with that his theory was correct but he just wasn't a Great Man
>>24859844Raskolnikov is a great man because he wifes up an STD-ridden whore. He's not a stepdad: he's the dad who STEPPED UP.
>>24859965maybe he should've dated his sister
Just look at all of human history. Of course it's true.
>>24859844>uses the great man analogy to justify his own actions>becomes sick and insaneYea read it again dummy
>>24859844You missed the part where they bring up another character who also murders but he gets away with it (Svidrigailov or whatever his name was). He ends up killing himself.
>>24859792He was just a dumb zoomer with stupid ideas, the book literally spells it out for you.
>>24859792If you are alluding to Dostoevsky’s worst novels, then, indeed, I dislike intensely The Brothers Karamazov and the ghastly Crime and Punishment rigamarole. No, I do not object to soul-searching and self-revelation, but in those books the soul, and the sins, and the sentimentality, and the journalese, hardly warrant the tedious and muddled search. Dostoyevsky’s lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity – all this is difficult to admire. I do not like this trick his characters have of ”sinning their way to Jesus” or, as a Russian author, Ivan Bunin, put it more bluntly, ”spilling Jesus all over the place." Crime and Punishment’s plot did not seem as incredibly banal in 1866 when the book was written as it does now when noble prostitutes are apt to be received a little cynically by experienced readers. Dostoyevsky never really got over the influence which the European mystery novel and the sentimental novel made upon him. The sentimental influence implied that kind of conflict he liked—placing virtuous people in pathetic situations and then extracting from these situations the last ounce of pathos. Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoevsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. I admit that some of his scenes, some of his tremendous farcical rows are extraordinarily amusing. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment—by this reader anyway. Dostoyevsky seems to have been chosen by the destiny of Russian letters to become Russia’s greatest playwright, but he took the wrong turning and wrote novels.
>>24859995Yeah, but if he actually WAS a great man, he wouldn't have had any guilt and everything would have turned out fine. The moral of the novel is "find out if you have a conscience, and if you do, resign yourself to obscurity while sociopaths rule the world". Bleak.
>>24860694I think you're right, at least that's the moral of the story that I figured out >>24860086It wasn't ever confirmed that he murdered anyone thoughbeit
I interpreted Raskolnikov as not being able to handle the complete freedom from society that such a crime granted him, killing 2 people without anyone knowing meant he could never reveal himself fully to anybody. This is why he ended up confessing to a murder that nobody generally suspected him of, and opening himself up to Sonya in exchange for her love. He couldn't be a Great Man because he couldn't handle the isolation that came from being completely free from morality.I think Dostoevsky isn't against Rodya's theory being valid under nihilism. TBK talks about godless morality benefitting those without a conscience while keeping those with a conscience servile to it. Dostoevsky's answer to this problem is of course believing in the objective morality that comes from Orthodox Christianity, and that the external threat of hell is necessary to enforce it.
>>24860848>>24860116Neither of you read it. The investigator Porfify suspected Rodion from the start since a witness (the painter downstairs) came to him saying Rodion was at the building the murder took place in on the night it happenedPorfify was only delayed temporarily because of Rodion's friend, the rich guy, and then the two whack jobs who felt the need to confess to a crime they didn't commit >>24860694Correct. He could've been a great man with the help of that rich guy if he would've pimped his sister out to him...If Rodion was the type of character to follow through
>>24859844>>24860694>>24860694The funniest part is how Raskolnikov thinks he's reasoned his way out of morality, left Plato's cave so to speak, not realizing that the reasoning he used to "escape" morality was itself bound by his sense of morality (she's a filthy greedy old pawnbroker and I can use the money to help my family, for the greater good). He thought he went beyond good and evil yet he justified his actions to himself using the language of good and evil. He didn't realize until too late that he was trying to use morality to justify immorality, thinking in that dualistic dichotomy even as he claimed to be above it. Like you pointed out, he realized this at the end when he saw in Svidrigailov a real Great Man and was horrified--which he shouldn't have been if he truly claimed to be above morality. Whether or not Great Men exist--I think they do despite what Tolstoy says--the fact, for better or worse, is you just can't become one if you aren't one already. I wonder if that's what Nietzsche meant when he was talking about how the goal of humanity should be to bring about the Overman. That individuals can't drop their sense of morality and suddenly become Overmen, rather that an Overman is something moulded from birth. That if you have to ask...
>>24861062The novel at the end explicitly states that the investigators, besides Porfiry who was just bluffing, didn't suspect Rodion at all and that he was not really in any real danger of being caught. Rodion turning himself in out of guilt is a very important theme, I don't know why you thought summarizing parts of a book I've already read is a good response
Are you a Great Man, anons? Idk if I am, I mean, my conscience is a bit seared but everytime I lie or steal or do something morally wrong, it seems like I get found out in one way or another, maybe not punished, but the truth usually comes out.For example, my friend totaled his car hammered drunk one night, got out of the car and walked home, no witnesses or anything. When he got home, he called the sheriff and told the sheriff he crashed his car. The next day, the county sent some kinda interrogator or investigator guy to his house to try and get him to admit he was drunk when he crashed his car. They knew he was drunk, but he didn't admit it, and they couldn't prove it, so he got to avoid punishment, but they knew the truth. Sometimes you don't get punished, or maybe the punishment comes in different forms later on
>>24860689I know this is a copypasta, but I really enjoyed Crime And Punishment and I'm glad /lit/ recommended it to me
>>24860717There was a rumour. Then Svidrigailov says to Raksolnikov that for men like then there were only two ways go go: Either syberia or killing themselfsWhat do you think he was implying?
>>24861741>>24860717Oops, sorry, I'm phoneposting: There was a rumour. Then Svidrigailov says to Raksolnikov that for men like them there were only two ways to go: Either syberia or killing themselfs*
>>24859792>I'm guessing people like Napoleon maybe felt bad for killing people to achieve great thingshe absolutely did not
>>24861755lol, based
>>24861568It is questionable whether one can really discuss the aspects of ''realism'' or of ''human experience'' when considering an author whose gallery of characters consists almost exclusively of neurotics and lunatics. Besides all this, Dostoyevsky's characters have yet another remarkable feature: Throughout the book they do not develop as personalities. We get them all complete at the beginning of the tale, and so they remain without any considerable changes, although their surroundings may alter and the most extraordinary things may happen to them. In the case of Raskolnikov in ''Crime and Punishment,'' for instance, we see a man go from premeditated murder to the promise of an achievement of some kind of harmony with the outer world, but all this happens somehow from without: Innerly even Raskolnikov does not go through any true development of personality, and the other heroes of Dostoyevsky do even less so. The only thing that develops, vacillates, takes unexpected sharp turns, deviates completely to include new people and circumstances, is the plot. Let us always remember that basically Dostoyevsky is a writer of mystery stories where every character, once introduced to us, remains the same to the bitter end, complete with his special features and personal habits, and that they all are treated throughout the book they happen to be in like chessmen in a complicated chess problem. Being an intricate plotter, Dostoyevsky succeeds in holding the reader's attention; he builds up his climaxes and keeps up his suspenses with consummate mastery. But if you reread a book of his you have already read once so that you are familiar with the surprises and complications of the plot, you will at once realize that the suspense you experienced during the first reading is simply not there anymore. The misadventures of human dignity which form Dostoyevsky's favorite theme are as much allied to the farce as to the drama. In indulging his farcical side and being at the same time deprived of any real sense of humor, Dostoyevsky is sometimes dangerously near to sinking into garrulous and vulgar nonsense. (The relationship between a strong-willed hysterical old woman and a weak hysterical old man, the story of which occupies the first hundred pages of ''The Possessed,'' is tedious, being unreal.) The farcical intrigue which is mixed with tragedy is obviously a foreign importation; there is something second-rate French in the structure of his plots.
>>24861749Ohh, yeah, Siberia being the prison colony iirc So Svidrigailov settled with death because of his guilt of killing his wife
>>24860848That’s an interesting interpretation and I think you’re right.Back when I read crime and punishment I never understood why he turned himself in when he’d be totally able to get away with it. I didn’t consider the aspect of isolation, of never being able to share his true self with anybody
>>24861152>That individuals can't drop their sense of morality and suddenly become Overmen, rather that an Overman is something moulded from birth. That if you have to ask...You're too hung up on morality here. People always forget that Nietzsche only fixated on morality because it was the pre-eminent bugbear of his time.
>>24859792yes, the theory is correct.>>24859844you got it right, it's just that midwits are very loud about their opinions.Dostoevsky just doesn't like what the theory brings about, so he gives heuristical counter-arguments, but he himself believes the theory to be correct. He's just troubled and doesn't want it to be true.
>>24859792The entire novel states this line of thinking is nothing more than a seductive cope. Raskolnikov achieved nothing great by killing. He killed a greedy pawnbroker and her sister who was a decent person. That’s nothing to brag about.
>>24862689He achieved nothing great because the killing itself wasn't supposed to be the great thing, it was the means to it. The point is that Raskolnikov couldn't handle such a means, but a "Great Man" could've.
>>24859792Raskolnikov’s views on Napoleon are inherently incorrect, so his theory will be incorrect just based on that alone. Napoleon is not someone who killed people because he felt superior or anything like it. Anyone who thinks that Napoleon didn’t have a conscience is beyond retarded.
>>24862815What about Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, or idk, Vlad The Impaler
>>24860694What's a good way to find out if you have a conscience?
>>24859792The Great Man theory is true. Despite War and Peace being my favorite book, Tolstoy is retarded when disputing it.
