Exploring Dostoevsky's Themes and Characters

Somebody mentioned last time that I was quoting from an edition where the pages didn't line up so I think I've got the right one now I must have been quoted from the wrong one but you'll tell me if I've got it wrong this time I wanted to start with by going back to something that was in part one which is now of much greater relevance. I think I mentioned it briefly, but I want to say something. It's, remember that on the way to the murder, Raskolnikov has, quote unquote, irrelevant thoughts, and they are about city, what we would call city planning, right? Let's see, if we only could move the soup of gardens over here and put a road over there, and, but... he cast from his mind all these irrelevant thoughts. Well, they're not irrelevant from the point of view of the novel, you can imagine. They're relevant in two ways. First of all, remember there's a lot of reference to this being a crime of the city of St. Petersburg. It's almost as if St. Petersburg is committing the crime by using Raskolnikov. There's all this reference. constantly, you know, his mother is saying in part three, you know, this city, it's like shut up rooms, even outside, you know, and, you know, the painter is saying how strange it is, on and on. Well, there's a reason for it, okay? Raskolnikov is irrational, right? He thinks you can have the perfect crime based on reason. He thinks that if you are, you know, are guided by reason you know you can overcome superstition and that's how you know that there's no such thing as good and evil or that you know utilitarian philosophy means whatever the theory is right he's theory minded based on rationality and the city of saint petersburg symbolized rationale for the following reason In the 17th century you had a new discipline based on utopian thinking of city planning. Let's design the perfectly rational city, you know, with geometrical streets and that sort of thing. But they remained on, you know, the bulletin board. Nobody's actually going to build one of these except because you have to command immense resources and you have to be able to order thousands of people around. Who's going to do that? No European king. but a Russian czar did. Peter the Great decided he was going to build one of these cities, and the city is St. Petersburg, which was built according to the principles of utopian rational architecture. So the streets are geometrical. Philadelphia was later designed this way, part of Washington, in our time, Brasilia, you know. And, you know, If you go to Philadelphia, for example, you will see that the downtown is a perfect grid. But the moment you're outside of the initial part, the streets are going all which way. You know, Brazil is largely in the main areas uninhabitable. One city after. Petersburg is basically uninhabitable, except people had to move there because the czar commanded them to. All these aristocrats had to move there, you know. But it was uninhabitable for a variety. First of all, it was a city built on canals. And it flooded all the time. And, you know, houses, whole parts of the city were drawn away. I mean, it was not really tamed, you know. Wolves roamed the streets. It was a constantly, it was a rapidly declining. population. That is, your lifespan was very low because of the tuberculosis, because of the water, if you lived in the capital, right? And the only reason it sustained its population was more and more people like those house painters moving in from the countryside. So it was as if this city, and this is how, you know, Dostoevsky doesn't invent this. It goes way back. He's using it. Rationality went one way. the real human being went another way. So, you know, it seemed like it was rational, but it didn't fit the human. So city planning was already a symbol of that, right? But then add to the fact that at the time Raskolnikov was saying that, there's a new city planner in power in France, and his name is Napoleon III. He's the nephew of the great Napoleon. And this is the, remember, the part, in part three of the book, is where Raskolnikov... develops his Napoleonic theory, as it was called. Napoleon was a superman, and he could defy normal morality. And, you know, Raskolnikov is obsessed with Napoleon, but he's not, you know, he's not unique. In the 19th century, young men all over the world were, you know, at least the Western world, were obsessed with Napoleon. You know, you can imagine it's all over. you know, a novel, by the way, which was being published at the same time in the same journal as Crime and Punishment. The subscriber of that journal got his money's worth. It was War and Peace, okay, on the same pages, right, in the same journal. And of course, War and Peace is all about Napoleon. And in the early stages, you know, the hero of that novel, Prince Andrei, wants to be the Russian Napoleon who defeats Napoleon, okay. It's obsessive because, again, Napoleon was a superman based on reason. If he was a nobody, right? He was barely even a Frenchman because he was born in Corsica, which had only become part of France two years before he was born. And for the rest of his life, he spoke with an Italian accent. Okay? So. I mean, they used to mock him by, the Russians like to mock him by calling him Buonaparte, as if he were an Italian, okay, which is how it's spelled in part of War and Peace, okay, but by sheer force of will and reason, okay, he became the emperor of Europe, okay, so will and reason can do anything, and will and reason overcomes ethics. and napoleon it's again the new napoleon was doing city planning you see how it all fits together it's a book about the limitations of rationality and city planning becomes part of and the city of petersburg okay i mean in traditionally russian thought you know petersburg symbolizes rationality moscow symbolizes a long historical you know i mean cities that are not planned all at once can never be, you know, geometrical, right? If you go to London, right, where the same streets, you know, goes like this and that, and it changes its name three times in the course of a mile, right? I mean, and that's what Philadelphia is like outside of the central portion. That's because it develops historically, okay? Not all at once, but historically, and historically means... There isn't a single impulse, you understand. If it's signed all at once, that's one impulse. But if it's built historically, then, you know, somebody makes a decision this year and somebody else. It's not one decision. It's decisions layered on decision, which is what he means by history. Okay. So if you now, this is what, you know. Mr. Morrison, before we hop into the text, can I ask you a favor? Sure. Can you put your fingers above? Yes. And pull that small clip down the wire just a bit. Like this? Perfect. And then your microphone, if you can bend it up just a little bit more or swing it up. Yes. I think it's probably the best way to do it. I want to move those two things apart. Okay. Let me. Apologies, everyone. If you want to. Put it on mute for a second while we work through the technical aspect. How's this? Can you move your head up and down? Look towards your notes and come back up? Yeah. So if we can move the microphone up just a little bit more, are you able to bend the microphone or pull it up? No, it's just a wire. I don't know how you would. Oh, let's slip it up maybe. Oh, no, no, no. That's the sound. That's the sound of the wire. You can pull that. down the wire but there's an actual microphone that's separate from that wire Ah, this? And what do I do with that? You can pull that up just a little bit, bend it up. How's that? It doesn't bend. It doesn't bend. Okay. I think that'll be better. I think the two of them won't be clashing, so let's give that a go. Thank you. Sorry, everyone. Okay. So you remember, this is what Razumikhin will say. Remember, Razumikhin reads... means reasonable as opposed to rational. His name means reason, right? And he'll say, at the argument yesterday, they were arguing about, this is page 203 to 4, I hope I'm getting the pages right now. They argued whether there's such a thing as crime. It began with the socialist doctrine. Socialism claims to be another philosophy of pure rationality. Okay. Crime is a protest and nothing more. Everything with them is the influence of the environment and nothing else. That is, there is no human nature. We are whatever our social conditioning is, right? It's a common doctrine still now, right? From which it follows that society is normally organized. Crime will cease. Human nature is not taken into account because in this doctrine, we're all the product of our conditioning. So there is no human nature. You can make people whatever you want. And here we go. They believe that a social system that has come out of some mathematical brain is going to organize all humanity at once. I'm underlining that phrase at once. That's not a historical process, you understand. And make it just and sinless in an instant, quicker than any living process. That is why they instinctively dislike history. Nothing but... ugliness and stupidity in it, they say. That's why they so dislike the living process of life. They don't want a living soul. The soul won't obey the rules of mechanics. The soul is retrograde. Logic presumes three possibilities, but there are millions. Reduce it all to the question of comfort. That is, you know, people always pursue their best advantage. So he's contrasting, you know, the purely rationalist view. We have the right plan. Just put it into effect with it. the world as a gradual historical process and then relates to is there such a thing as human nature or is it a human soul or is it simply are we whatever our social conditioning and you know the idea that we are we have no human we're just what our conditioning is that's not limited to socialists by any means i mean john locke who's you know the philosopher who leads to the american you know founding also believe that we're a blank slate, was the phrase, right? And you can educate people to do whatever you want, right? Here, you understand, the idea of rationality, do it in an instant, that's what Peter, it's symbolized by Petersburg, Peter the Great did it at once. Okay? Now, at the beginning, I hope you really liked part three. It's such a wonderful part. At the beginning, Razumikhin is talking, this is in chapter one, He's talking about what it is to have your own thought, okay, as opposed to those that everybody has, and you share them because they're the up-to-date thing, and everybody has it, so you have it, you buy it as a package. And this is what he puts, it's a, you know, we have it today, we have it, you know. It's always an option. Okay. I mean, he says they insist on complete absence of individualism. This is page 160. And he says, if only their nonsense were their own. Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense. To go wrong in your own way is better than to go right in someone else's. In the first case, you're a man. In the second, you're no better than a bird. Okay. That is a bird meaning like a parrot. Okay, you just quote things. So do you, what is it, an art critic of the 50s referred to intellectuals as the herd of independent minds, if you know that famous phrase, right? Well, that's the same thing is talked about here, right? Talk your own nonsense. Make it your own at least, right? But don't just borrow the ideas that are fashionable. Think it through. And you're going to hear Dostoevsky saying this too. Tolstoy. Almost everybody who really thinks for themselves is going to find distasteful the people who just buy as a package whatever they're supposed to think. And at this point, it was those rationalist ideas. Okay. So. that's pretty much what I want to say about chapter one. Chapter two, here you get introduced one of Dostoevsky's favorite themes. It's going to play a lot in this book. It's usually called the theme of the double, okay? Raskolnikov, aspects of Raskolnikov's personality. are possessed by other characters. And so it's as if each one of them embodied one part of him. So you can see it played out. In this case, this is an obvious reason, his double is his sister. He's described as having a similar personality. They both get absorbed in their own thoughts. They don't listen to other people. Dunyid says, had the same habit of not listening to what was said to her, right? And, you know, their mother says, you know, they look different, but they have the same soul, okay? And what's the crucial thing, remember, is they're talking about illusion, right? And illusion. Raskolnikov is saying, you can't marry this guy. You're just selling yourself and marrying him for money. And what he really means is money to help him, which is why he has the right to say you can't do it. And she said, no, no. It's for myself. I'm doing it for myself. I want the money. She doesn't claim she loves him, but I want the money, right? And then she says, if I ruin anyone, it's only myself. I'm not committing a murder after all. Why are you so pale? The obvious thing is, well... Is what she's doing morally equivalent to what he's done? Okay. And you see, in some sense, of course, it isn't. After all, she's sacrificing herself. He killed somebody else. True enough. But she does, you understand, there are some ways of sacrificing yourself, which are. actually ruinous to others. Okay. Because if you sacrifice yourself for someone else and they know it, okay, you are creating an obligation, a moral debt that cannot be repaid. And that can be ruinous to another person. Okay. Just for example, as if you are too benevolent to another person. it can become oppressive right you can hurt someone sometimes by helping them in the wrong way or too much okay by the same token you know um sometimes people will resent your hell why would you resent help precisely for this reason and that's what we're called So in a sense, you know, they are both, he's sacrificing himself for an idea, she's sacrificing herself for what? For him. Which is also an idea of benevolence, right? And both are going to be ruinous, okay? So that's the sense in which, you know, she's a double of that. Well, Skolnicka was... having with his mother and sister that terribly awful sensation of being completely alone. completely cut off because of the murder. He never expected that, right? But it separates him from other people, right? And a completely different moral category. And so he talks to them as if repeating a part. He knows what he's supposed to say, but he's very distant. But of course, they sense it, okay? It's very different. Well... Then they're going over to, I'm going to skip a part that I'll come back to. They're going over to Razumikhin's where they're going to meet Porfiry Petrovich. Porfiry Petrovich, the detective, along with Sherlock Holmes, let's say, he's probably the most famous detective in world literature. But he's the opposite of Sherlock Holmes. And this Dostoevsky meant, he didn't know Sherlock Holmes, but he knew the detective story, right? I think I mentioned to you that the detective story was the invention of Edgar Allan Poe in the 1830s. It caught on very rapidly. Dostoevsky wrote a review of Poe's story. He knew him very well, right? But you have to think, what? Think of Sherlock Holmes. What is a detective story? What's his implicit view of the world? Sherlock Holmes, remember, he solves crimes first by, you know, noticing things nobody else does. I've written a treatise on the muds of London, so I know that the mud on your shoe indicates blah, blah, blah, blah. Or by deduction, by logical deduction, right? Okay, so empirical observation, logical deduction, that is science. That's the combination of science. So the detective story is social science, you follow me? And it expresses the view that reason is adequate to solve all problems, okay? So if you want to challenge that view, you create a philosophical detective story. But with reason being the source of the crime and a different view being the source of the detection of the crime. So you get both here. Petrovich has the he doesn't work by. He knows first of all, what's going on was done it from the start. OK. He knows it right away. What he has to do is maybe prove it. But he doesn't prove it. What he has to do is get Raskolnikov. to confess now this is nothing to do with rationality and evidence right it has it's pure psychology right and the way in which he's going to do it is i'll give you the most general terms of how he does it when you think to yourself you have a kind of conversation with yourself It's not exactly like the conversations in real life because, you know, let's say you can use a pronoun, he, without explaining who it is, as you can't really, because you know what you're talking about. And it can be very abbreviated, right? You don't have to be grammatical. It can be very abbreviated and very fast and intense. But you are always, when you say something, addressing it implicitly to somebody. It could be, you know. someone like your mother, somebody, you know, the general public, but every speech is a speech to someone. So you are the people in your head who you're used to addressing. Okay. Right. So if somebody can enter into your head and become one of those. listeners or voices in your head and participate in your conversation from within, if they know you that well, then they can do things to you and talk to you in a way that you think you can only talk to yourself, right? Okay. That's what Bofiri Petrovic does. Okay. He does everything to enter into Raskolnikov's... inner speech okay you know starts out with winking how winking works winking first of all it's a second line of communication you think it's out here but actually it's it's another line in line of communication but then a winking you don't know if so did he really wink or did it seem the only wink right so Is it really happening or am I imagining, which is, is it in my head? Right. And later it's going to be yet another thing. It's going to be the wink or lowering your voice to talk to him when the only two people are there are you and he. So why would you lower your voice as if somebody else could overhear? It's as if the two of you were a little compact, a little conspiracy. Maybe the voices in your own head, but certainly a little conspiracy of your own, who know things that nobody else could know, so we don't have to let other people know. You see how the wink sort of suggests that, right? Or another way we have right here, he laughs noiselessly. Laughter is noisy, but inner laughter could be noisy. You follow how it's beginning to penetrate into his own head. And once he's in his own head, he can make things such that it's unbearable unless he speaks out. OK, that's how he's always going to work. Couldn't be more different from the rationalist detective. Right. So Raskolnikov is going to meet the fairy patrol, which was Razumikhin. Right. And he's, of course, a little nervous at this detective. right and he's gonna meet right and so he decides to how are they going to behave well he says i have to behave naturally i have to be spontaneous the logic what he's doing something like remember i had a I had a friend who had been dean of the Northwestern University Medical School for, I don't know, 10 years, when people never last in that job more than a couple of years, right? And he used to explain how he did it. He would say, look, you have to understand that the most important thing in this job is sincerity. absolute sincerity and once you learn to fake that you're home free. I'm gonna be spontaneous. How can I arrange to be spontaneous? I'm gonna be natural or is it too natural? It's the same logic. You can't fake spontaneity or it isn't spontaneous. Now, so he tries to make it look like he's spontaneous by entering with that laughter, by provoking Razumikhin, right? And it looks like, so will Porfiry Petrovich catch that this is staged? Well, he has a line which, unless you know Russian literature, you wouldn't get. But, so I'll translate it for you. He says, but why break chairs? He says, it's a loss to the crown. What does he mean? They're not breaking chair. In Gogol's play, the inspector general, okay, which is all about pretense, fake, taking somebody in, con game, right? And the inspector general is going to come, right? And. they have to pretend they're all doing their job perfectly and the mayor is talking about the school teacher and he says you know the school teacher gets so caught up in what he's saying that he you know says things like i would die for alexander the great things like that right i don't care i'm and and then he slams and he breaks the chair why break chairs as the mayor it's a loss to the crowd Alexander the Great may be a great man, but don't break chair. That's what Foufouri is alluding to here when he says it. It's a very well-known line. And given the context, he's saying, this is a con game. And Raskolnikov wondered, is that what he's saying? Or is he just mindlessly quoting this famous line? He doesn't know. But that's the point. It has to be a suggestion, not a statement, so that he can then go through, gee, I wonder what's going on. Is he thinking this? Was I too natural? What did he mean by this? Maybe even now by asking this question, he's noticing I'm asking. He can produce that long sequence of thoughts. And Dostoevsky gives you at one point a whole page. Begins on page 202 here. You know, it begins with, I won't read the whole thing, but it begins like this. The worst of it is they don't disguise it. They don't care to stand on ceremony. And how, if you didn't know me at all, did you come to talk to Nicodemus from the beach about me? So they don't care to hide that they are tracking me like a pack of dogs. They simply spit in my face. He was shaking with rage. Come, strike me openly. Don't play with me like a cat with a mouse. It's hardly civil, but perhaps I won't allow it. I shall get up and throw the whole truth in your ugly face, which is what he wants. He wants to provoke that. And you'll see how I despise you, which is the same when he was behind the door and he had the impulse to suddenly rush out and laugh at them with his axe. OK, but what if it's only my fancy? What if I'm mistaken? And through inexperience I get angry and don't keep up my nasty part. Perhaps it's all unintentional. All their phrases, you go online. Did Porphyry wink at me just now? Of course. It's nonsense. What could he wink for? He goes online just back and forth, back and forth. That's what Porphyry is trying to provoke. Now look, is it step one, you say something. Step two, you imitate saying something. Step three. you imitate imitate saying right each one is a negation of the negation i'm spontaneous i'm not spontaneous i'm pretending to be the point is not where he stops as he thinks right the point is that he's playing the game at all that's what gives him away the fact that he's obviously going through these mental It doesn't matter where he winds up in these inner debates. The fact that he's having the inner debates is what gives him away. Anyway, if you can read it on his face. Porphyry Petrovich, we discover, is a joker. He's always... Humbugging, right? Remember, you know, like the other day, says Razul Meekin, he convinced us all that he was getting married. We believed it for ever, ever so long. He talked about the wedding. He even bought a set of new clothes. No, you're wrong about that, said Palfrey Petrovich. I had the set of clothes. That's what gave me the idea of humbugging. I didn't buy it. Oh, yes. Oh, yes, yes, I'm such a humbugger. He says, maybe I'll take you in, too. Right. So when is he pretending and when is he not pretending and when he's pretending? It's the same. You see that he's behaving in that way, which is just what Raskolnikov's inner spirit is like that. So the two kind of merge in Raskolnikov's consciousness, right? And then. they bring up Raskolnikov's article, which he has not known has appeared. But Volfiri Petrovic knows. Yes, the crime is always accompanied by an illness. Of course, Raskolnikov has just been talking about how he's had this illness. Very interesting. But there's something else. only not stated but only hint that and then you go through this third theory justifying murder. And we've had the first two, which contradict each other, right? There is no such thing as good and evil. It's just a superstition. We're in a materialistic universe. And so there's nothing evil about murder. Theory one. Theory two is the utilitarian theory. There is morality, but it's the greatest good for the greatest number. And if that means killings, an old woman and taking her money, then not only may you do it, but it's immoral not to do it, because the only morality of the greatest good for the greatest number, right? Well, you see, they contradict each other, because one is amoral, and the other is highly moralistic. Now, there's a third theory, which contradicts the other two, right? And this one is, the world is divided, for there is morality of a sort. So it's not like the first one. but it's completely different from the second because the second one presumes everyone's the same the greatest good for the greatest number each number is the same this one divides the world into two groups of people there are the ordinary people and the extraordinary people right now at the peak of extraordinary people are those like napoleon or Mohammed or Newton. Okay, and let's go look. He says I maintain that if the only way Kepler and Newton could make their ideas known was to murder a hundred people they would have the right indeed they would be duty-bound to do it. their morality just because they are extraordinary. They have morality, but it is opposite to that of ordinary morality. Because, well, that's how each stage, later they'll be honored because what was once breaking the rules will become the new rule, right? And so on. That's how progress happens, right? So they have to do that. It goes a little further than that, right? It's not just that there are the occasional Napoleons. It's that within the group of extraordinary people, there are many, as he says, divisions and subdivisions. Some are more extraordinary than others, right? Only one Napoleon, every century maybe. But what he means is that... The intelligentsia, the educated people, they are extraordinary, not like Napoleon, but compared to the ordinary people, right? And so they can do things that other people can't. And this, you know, this is Dostoevsky's allusion to the fact that the intelligentsia, the educated people, actually did have this incredibly condescending view of ordinary Russians and the peasants, and they thought they had a, you know, different morality that they could... for their sake, for the sake of everybody, right? They could kill people as revolutionaries or terrorists. Why? Why could they kill people and other people? Because they're educated. They know things. They're extraordinary. That's his illusion here, right? And so later on, you know, Porphyria will say, you know, you had... come up with a slightly different theory, you could have killed thousands of people, could have been even worse. And that's the illusion again to being revolutionaries, where you do kill thousands. And here he says there must be divisions and subdivisions in some proportion. He says it's a law of nature. He says it can't be chance. that is this is social science again that just as there are there's no chance in physics there's also no chance in um in social science right you know it's just you know how how the world is so that things are divided into the extraordinary by a strict proportion given by social science okay Again, the scientific worldview. Society is governed by science. In the same way that individuals are, okay? In the same way that physics is. Same in psychology and social science, right? Well, to this, Lofari Petrovich says, You know, how do you distinguish these extraordinary people? You know... Maybe they could sort of wear a kind of mark or a tattoo because, you know, the rest of us could recognize him. Because after all, suppose somebody who was not extraordinary should get the idea that he was extraordinary and begin, so to speak, to eliminate obstacles, as you so happily put it. Forgive the worries of an ordinary law-abiding person, but... But are there very many of these extraordinary people? I mean, you know, and I'm ready to bow down to them, of course. But that would be alarming if there were a lot of them, wouldn't it? And he's teasing. He's teasing him, right? And this is when Razumikhin interrupts. And he says, What's really original in all this is that you sanction bloodshed in the name of conscience. And excuse my saying so with such fanaticism, but that sanction of bloodshed by conscience is more terrible than the official legal sanction of bloodshed. And before you throw it in, you are quite right. It is more terrible. Agreed, right? The idea that you can, there's a moral justification for killing because you're a special person. This is much worse than ordinary murder, precisely because it claims to be done in the name of conscience and for good. Well, then Rosamund Meechan says, but oughtn't those who have the right to murder at least repent for the blood they've shed? To which Raskolnikov replies, why the word ought? Because you understand, if you're a social scientist, there is no ought. There just is. This is the morality, right? There's no ought to physics and there's no ought if it's social science, right? Just is. and that makes it cause all the more terrible and then that's when wafiri patrol which brings his trap by suddenly asking a question so you know the house painters there very important when you were there at 7 00 p.m did you see such as you were there at 7 00 p.m right and it's going to come before he knows answers yes and realizes he needn't have said that. What's the trap? And he goes through this trap. The trap depends on his saying what he saw only the night of the murder instead of the other night, okay, that he's there. And that would give him away. But it happens like that, right? But he mastered the trap, okay? But he knows that Pafiri must be on to him. to spring that trap okay the last chapter chapter six i'll have to just do start with next time because we're we're at our 45 minute break the one that has that amazing dream you know beating the killing the old lady killing the pawn broker again but we're gonna with laughter i'll talk about that one next time Open it for questions now. Thank you, Professor Morrison. Can I ask you to hold up the copy of the book that you're using? Yeah. I think what we've stumbled upon is there's a different introduction. I have the Dover Thrift Edition. Is that what you've got? Dover Thrift. There's a different introduction that's setting off. Show me yours. Show it up again. Oh. Okay. I've got that. So we have four versions already. I've got the one that. Georgina has too. Next time I'll code the pages to that. Does anyone have this one, Dover Thrift Edition? No? It looks like we have six different versions of the Garnett translation. So I think if you can give us an idea of sort of the passage you're talking about and the page that you found, what I found was the version that I have is about three pages off. So it's not terrible. But there is clearly an introduction that's... that's setting us apart as a team here. Well, just tear out the introduction. It'll be all fine. Perfect. So Jacques has asked, within the novel, the statement to go wrong in your own way is better. Isn't this contradicted by the murder? And what do you think? Well, what Rosamund Meekins means is if you think your own thoughts, of course you'll make mistakes sometimes. right but that's better that's how you arrive at truth okay people make errors and they talk and they correct them and gradually they get better but if you the way you think is simply to whatever you know the right people think i will think too then there's no possibility of correction based on evidence or anything else right it's just that you know there's a character in um remember in anna karenina who who thinks um he changed his views only when the majority of a circle changed them or more strictly speaking they seem to change of themselves within him no agency involved right whatever the group is and i do you can't you know if you learn by making errors and correcting them having them point out that's what the process of just saying whatever your newspaper says or whatever will prevent, whereas making mistakes is better, even if they're a mistake, because they can be correct. That's what he means by that. He doesn't mean mistakes like, well, go commit a murder. I mean, he's talking about an intellectual process here, right? In terms of mistakes, going back to the conversation about mother sort of conveying this is for her, this isn't for him as she's entering into the marriage. Are we really thinking she's talking herself into this moment or is she sort of steadfast? This is really something she's doing for herself as a mother. It's not a mother, right? It's a sister who says this, right? Apology. Right. Well, that's a good question. I mean... She clearly does it for the sake of her brother and maybe her mother. But on the other hand, that's her own decision. So in some sense, it's for herself. And so she can be a little confused by it. So what a Skånegub is going to have to do is show her that. even on the terms she professes, right, this doesn't work. Okay. I mean, for example, if she's doing, even if she's doing it for money, she's marrying a skinflint who puts them in, you know, third-class carriages in a lousy hotel. She's not even going to get the money, right? I mean, you know, right? It doesn't even work. And that's when it's going to force her to rethink her whole motives there, right? But that's kind of a duel that they're going to have there. But she's, you know, her obstinacy in doing something she thinks is right, which actually isn't, is very much like what Skolnicka's, right? Coming back into the context, we have a question about your opening. And would people have been familiar with St. Petersburg if they were reading this from outside of the city and this concept of... of him calling out certain spaces, would they understood the context of those spaces as well? They would have understood, if they had been literate at all, what Petersburg symbolized. I mean, you know, it's the capital, right? I mean, the most dramatic and important event in Russian history was Peter the Great westernizing the country. And, you know, the most important thing in that was... building the city of Petersburg, you know, as his window to the West. It's on the Baltic. So, you know, it's a window to the West. Moscow is inland, right? And then, you know, everybody knows about the Capitol. Many people go to the Capitol, right? And, you know, everything they read is published either in Moscow or Petersburg, sometimes called the two capitals, right? Yeah, so everyone would have known about, maybe they might not have known, but it appears about where the U-soup of gardens were. But that doesn't matter for that past. It just matters that you're going to rearrange things, right? The way Napoleon did. was doing with Paris at the time, Napoleon III, right? That's when you get to all these big, broad boulevards, which we now have in Paris, is, you know, that's Napoleon III doing that. Oh, so Sheila and Michael have a great question about the shift in characters here. Was Razumikhin sort of becomes the protagonist to her in this third part? someone that you can even sympathize with. Can you speak to that a little bit? I didn't catch that. I'm sorry. So in this part three area, Reza Mikan becomes the protagonist for her and someone she can sympathize with. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, to she being Dunya, well, yeah, I mean, he's in love with her, obviously, right? And she recognizes that, right? So, but he's also... a supremely capable person who can take care of everybody, starting with Raskolnikov and then with them. So yeah, that becomes okay, Luzhin has all this power and money. He's got all this practicality of a different sort, but fundamental decency, right? That's very different. Okay. So the contrast, is palpable. And gradually, of course, she will get more and more connected to him, originally because he can help them. And Jack points out that Dunia was able to change her mind about marrying Luskin, but Raskolnikov can't take back the murder. Oh, that's right. He can't take back the murder. Right. That's a really good point. We're going to see more of, you know, Luskin coming up. He becomes a... I mean, here, so far, right, he's just a truly obnoxious character, right? You know, right? I mean, you know, the revolutionaries are all the socialists who Dostoevsky hated, and Luzhin is the capitalist who Dostoevsky hated, right? He hated both capitalism and socialism. He hated socialism more, but he hated them both. And because what they both shared was they both defined human beings in purely material terms. They're not spiritual, right? They're not just, you know, objects. They just have a different system. The only reason socialism is worse is that socialism, in addition, takes away their freedom. But they're both awful, okay? And you can see how awful illusion is, right? Razumikhin isn't thinking that way, right? He's thinking of human nature and, you know... His view of people is as far from a capitalist microeconomic class as it is from a Marxist class. They're both. Both of those are extremely rationalistic. They're both forms of enlightenment rationalism. And he doesn't think that way. So Jackie sort of reaffirmed what you had said about Skolnikov feeling very isolated and alienated. She was struck by that in particularly because she felt that before. But now it seems like a whole new level of isolation. Can you talk a little bit about that? I know there's a lot of folks in this class who attended your other Dostoevsky readings. And so can you talk a little bit about how he's done that in some other texts as well? Well, Don made people purely isolated yes how and why he does that yeah it's really interesting because humanness okay for dostoevsky you must be an individual you must have a will of your own and take responsibility for it right you can't be a material object Governed by laws of nature who can't surprise right you have to be individual, but if you're only an individual There can't be any morality or meaning So you must be an individual connected to others. Okay. Both are absolutely necessary. So, you know, the the rationalists take away your individuality because you're nothing but an object who can be predicted. Right. But if you're only an extreme individualist, I make my own morality, then you're destroying another part of humanness which is the absolute necessity of connecting look we aren't born into the world like athena from the head of zeus fully grown okay okay we're you're born as an utterly helpless infant you can't survive a day right independently right um and the nature of humanness is therefore connectedness with others. It's the nature of us, right? So you need both, right? You need to be an individual who chooses to give up part of your individuality for others, because that's the only source of meaning. Does that make sense? You have to do both. You have to have both, right? you know, if you want to look at this way, the socialists take away the individuality and the capitalists take away the connection to others. Okay, they're, they're both making fundamental errors and what it is to be human. He's not he doesn't specifically say capitalist, but I think Luzion, it's clear what Luzion symbolizes, right? I mean, you know, So we have one question around Raskolnikov and Razumikhin's characters as being presented. You know, we clearly understand that one is, you know, trending towards good and one is tending towards evil, but we can't get over the fact that the one is good keeps being read as the one who's less intelligent, who is less smart. And is this sort of something I'm intuning or is this something that the author has meant here? You mean that Razumikhin is less smart than Raskolnikov? And yes, I believe that's the question here. He's less rational than Raskolnikov, but I don't think he's less smart. It's only if you see intelligence as, you know, the sort of thing that helps you in Euclidean geometry, right? That's a part of intelligence, certainly, but it's not all of intelligence. I mean, if you take it more broadly, Raskolnikov, you know, in some areas that are essentially social, I mean, he isn't as intelligent as Razumikhin, right? So I guess you say, what is it to be intelligent? It's not simple. But that's why you get this difference between rationality and reasonableness. Did I mention to you my, the philosopher Stephen Toulmin? in a lecture, one of the great philosophers of modern time. He taught, came from the University of Chicago to Northwestern, where I met him. And he once said to me, you know, he said, when I was in the University of Chicago, there was a lecture being given with the title, Is it rational to be reasonable? And I realized that the question, the whole question. of my philosophical work has been the opposite one. Is it reasonable to be rational? Well, Razumihin, the name is reasonable. Okay, that's what his name is. And he's, it's not, no, it is not reasonable to be only rational. Rationality in that sense is something that you use in very particular circumstances where you need it. But you can't... Just think about morality, psychology, meaning in those terms. Although, you know, if you believe in a hard social science, you insist that you can. Well, we're around the hour, but if you could just give us one or two thoughts as we leave and finish up our readings for next time, that would be helpful, I think. Okay, you're going to meet, you know, a really faint, another one of Dostoevsky's really famous characters, Svidrigailov. We heard him mentioned before, you know, but here is somebody who incorporates one side of Raskolnikov, kind of the nihilist side, the side that knows there isn't any right and wrong, right? The first theory. What does it mean to truly live without the sense that there is anything transcendent beyond the natural world, you know, and the laws of what would it mean to really believe that to really live that that that's what you're going to get here. And it's really quite fascinating. I mean, you know how he does. And it's partly because although it's awful and grotesque, it's also very funny. Take Dostoevsky to make humor out of that. So take a look at that for next time. Thank you, Professor, this week, and thank you all for your questions. Looking forward to gathering again soon. Until then, enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend. Be well and be safe. Thank you. Bye bye.

Well, they're not irrelevant from the point of view of the novel, you can imagine. They're relevant in two ways. First of all, remember there's a lot of reference to this being a crime of the city of St. Petersburg.

It's almost as if St. Petersburg is committing the crime by using Raskolnikov. There's all this reference. constantly, you know, his mother is saying in part three, you know, this city, it's like shut up rooms, even outside, you know, and, you know, the painter is saying how strange it is, on and on. Well, there's a reason for it, okay? Raskolnikov is irrational, right?

He thinks you can have the perfect crime based on reason. He thinks that if you are, you know, are guided by reason you know you can overcome superstition and that's how you know that there's no such thing as good and evil or that you know utilitarian philosophy means whatever the theory is right he's theory minded based on rationality and the city of saint petersburg symbolized rationale for the following reason In the 17th century you had a new discipline based on utopian thinking of city planning. Let's design the perfectly rational city, you know, with geometrical streets and that sort of thing. But they remained on, you know, the bulletin board. Nobody's actually going to build one of these except because you have to command immense resources and you have to be able to order thousands of people around.

Who's going to do that? No European king. but a Russian czar did.

Peter the Great decided he was going to build one of these cities, and the city is St. Petersburg, which was built according to the principles of utopian rational architecture. So the streets are geometrical. Philadelphia was later designed this way, part of Washington, in our time, Brasilia, you know.

And, you know, If you go to Philadelphia, for example, you will see that the downtown is a perfect grid. But the moment you're outside of the initial part, the streets are going all which way. You know, Brazil is largely in the main areas uninhabitable. One city after. Petersburg is basically uninhabitable, except people had to move there because the czar commanded them to.

All these aristocrats had to move there, you know. But it was uninhabitable for a variety. First of all, it was a city built on canals. And it flooded all the time. And, you know, houses, whole parts of the city were drawn away.

I mean, it was not really tamed, you know. Wolves roamed the streets. It was a constantly, it was a rapidly declining. population.

That is, your lifespan was very low because of the tuberculosis, because of the water, if you lived in the capital, right? And the only reason it sustained its population was more and more people like those house painters moving in from the countryside. So it was as if this city, and this is how, you know, Dostoevsky doesn't invent this.

It goes way back. He's using it. Rationality went one way.

the real human being went another way. So, you know, it seemed like it was rational, but it didn't fit the human. So city planning was already a symbol of that, right? But then add to the fact that at the time Raskolnikov was saying that, there's a new city planner in power in France, and his name is Napoleon III.

He's the nephew of the great Napoleon. And this is the, remember, the part, in part three of the book, is where Raskolnikov... develops his Napoleonic theory, as it was called. Napoleon was a superman, and he could defy normal morality. And, you know, Raskolnikov is obsessed with Napoleon, but he's not, you know, he's not unique.

In the 19th century, young men all over the world were, you know, at least the Western world, were obsessed with Napoleon. You know, you can imagine it's all over. you know, a novel, by the way, which was being published at the same time in the same journal as Crime and Punishment. The subscriber of that journal got his money's worth.

It was War and Peace, okay, on the same pages, right, in the same journal. And of course, War and Peace is all about Napoleon. And in the early stages, you know, the hero of that novel, Prince Andrei, wants to be the Russian Napoleon who defeats Napoleon, okay.

It's obsessive because, again, Napoleon was a superman based on reason. If he was a nobody, right? He was barely even a Frenchman because he was born in Corsica, which had only become part of France two years before he was born. And for the rest of his life, he spoke with an Italian accent.

Okay? So. I mean, they used to mock him by, the Russians like to mock him by calling him Buonaparte, as if he were an Italian, okay, which is how it's spelled in part of War and Peace, okay, but by sheer force of will and reason, okay, he became the emperor of Europe, okay, so will and reason can do anything, and will and reason overcomes ethics.

and napoleon it's again the new napoleon was doing city planning you see how it all fits together it's a book about the limitations of rationality and city planning becomes part of and the city of petersburg okay i mean in traditionally russian thought you know petersburg symbolizes rationality moscow symbolizes a long historical you know i mean cities that are not planned all at once can never be, you know, geometrical, right? If you go to London, right, where the same streets, you know, goes like this and that, and it changes its name three times in the course of a mile, right? I mean, and that's what Philadelphia is like outside of the central portion. That's because it develops historically, okay? Not all at once, but historically, and historically means...

There isn't a single impulse, you understand. If it's signed all at once, that's one impulse. But if it's built historically, then, you know, somebody makes a decision this year and somebody else. It's not one decision.

It's decisions layered on decision, which is what he means by history. Okay. So if you now, this is what, you know. Mr. Morrison, before we hop into the text, can I ask you a favor?

Sure. Can you put your fingers above? Yes.

And pull that small clip down the wire just a bit. Like this? Perfect. And then your microphone, if you can bend it up just a little bit more or swing it up.

Yes. I think it's probably the best way to do it. I want to move those two things apart.

Okay. Let me. Apologies, everyone. If you want to.

Put it on mute for a second while we work through the technical aspect. How's this? Can you move your head up and down? Look towards your notes and come back up?

Yeah. So if we can move the microphone up just a little bit more, are you able to bend the microphone or pull it up? No, it's just a wire.

I don't know how you would. Oh, let's slip it up maybe. Oh, no, no, no.

That's the sound. That's the sound of the wire. You can pull that.

down the wire but there's an actual microphone that's separate from that wire Ah, this? And what do I do with that? You can pull that up just a little bit, bend it up. How's that?

It doesn't bend. It doesn't bend. Okay.

I think that'll be better. I think the two of them won't be clashing, so let's give that a go. Thank you.

Sorry, everyone. Okay. So you remember, this is what Razumikhin will say. Remember, Razumikhin reads... means reasonable as opposed to rational.

His name means reason, right? And he'll say, at the argument yesterday, they were arguing about, this is page 203 to 4, I hope I'm getting the pages right now. They argued whether there's such a thing as crime. It began with the socialist doctrine. Socialism claims to be another philosophy of pure rationality.

Okay. Crime is a protest and nothing more. Everything with them is the influence of the environment and nothing else. That is, there is no human nature.

We are whatever our social conditioning is, right? It's a common doctrine still now, right? From which it follows that society is normally organized.

Crime will cease. Human nature is not taken into account because in this doctrine, we're all the product of our conditioning. So there is no human nature.

You can make people whatever you want. And here we go. They believe that a social system that has come out of some mathematical brain is going to organize all humanity at once. I'm underlining that phrase at once. That's not a historical process, you understand.

And make it just and sinless in an instant, quicker than any living process. That is why they instinctively dislike history. Nothing but...

ugliness and stupidity in it, they say. That's why they so dislike the living process of life. They don't want a living soul. The soul won't obey the rules of mechanics.

The soul is retrograde. Logic presumes three possibilities, but there are millions. Reduce it all to the question of comfort. That is, you know, people always pursue their best advantage.

So he's contrasting, you know, the purely rationalist view. We have the right plan. Just put it into effect with it. the world as a gradual historical process and then relates to is there such a thing as human nature or is it a human soul or is it simply are we whatever our social conditioning and you know the idea that we are we have no human we're just what our conditioning is that's not limited to socialists by any means i mean john locke who's you know the philosopher who leads to the american you know founding also believe that we're a blank slate, was the phrase, right? And you can educate people to do whatever you want, right?

Here, you understand, the idea of rationality, do it in an instant, that's what Peter, it's symbolized by Petersburg, Peter the Great did it at once. Okay? Now, at the beginning, I hope you really liked part three.

It's such a wonderful part. At the beginning, Razumikhin is talking, this is in chapter one, He's talking about what it is to have your own thought, okay, as opposed to those that everybody has, and you share them because they're the up-to-date thing, and everybody has it, so you have it, you buy it as a package. And this is what he puts, it's a, you know, we have it today, we have it, you know. It's always an option.

Okay. I mean, he says they insist on complete absence of individualism. This is page 160. And he says, if only their nonsense were their own. Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense. To go wrong in your own way is better than to go right in someone else's.

In the first case, you're a man. In the second, you're no better than a bird. Okay.

That is a bird meaning like a parrot. Okay, you just quote things. So do you, what is it, an art critic of the 50s referred to intellectuals as the herd of independent minds, if you know that famous phrase, right? Well, that's the same thing is talked about here, right?

Talk your own nonsense. Make it your own at least, right? But don't just borrow the ideas that are fashionable. Think it through. And you're going to hear Dostoevsky saying this too.

Tolstoy. Almost everybody who really thinks for themselves is going to find distasteful the people who just buy as a package whatever they're supposed to think. And at this point, it was those rationalist ideas.

Okay. So. that's pretty much what I want to say about chapter one.

Chapter two, here you get introduced one of Dostoevsky's favorite themes. It's going to play a lot in this book. It's usually called the theme of the double, okay?

Raskolnikov, aspects of Raskolnikov's personality. are possessed by other characters. And so it's as if each one of them embodied one part of him. So you can see it played out.

In this case, this is an obvious reason, his double is his sister. He's described as having a similar personality. They both get absorbed in their own thoughts.

They don't listen to other people. Dunyid says, had the same habit of not listening to what was said to her, right? And, you know, their mother says, you know, they look different, but they have the same soul, okay?

And what's the crucial thing, remember, is they're talking about illusion, right? And illusion. Raskolnikov is saying, you can't marry this guy.

You're just selling yourself and marrying him for money. And what he really means is money to help him, which is why he has the right to say you can't do it. And she said, no, no.

It's for myself. I'm doing it for myself. I want the money. She doesn't claim she loves him, but I want the money, right?

And then she says, if I ruin anyone, it's only myself. I'm not committing a murder after all. Why are you so pale? The obvious thing is, well... Is what she's doing morally equivalent to what he's done?

Okay. And you see, in some sense, of course, it isn't. After all, she's sacrificing herself.

He killed somebody else. True enough. But she does, you understand, there are some ways of sacrificing yourself, which are.

actually ruinous to others. Okay. Because if you sacrifice yourself for someone else and they know it, okay, you are creating an obligation, a moral debt that cannot be repaid. And that can be ruinous to another person.

Okay. Just for example, as if you are too benevolent to another person. it can become oppressive right you can hurt someone sometimes by helping them in the wrong way or too much okay by the same token you know um sometimes people will resent your hell why would you resent help precisely for this reason and that's what we're called So in a sense, you know, they are both, he's sacrificing himself for an idea, she's sacrificing herself for what? For him. Which is also an idea of benevolence, right?

And both are going to be ruinous, okay? So that's the sense in which, you know, she's a double of that. Well, Skolnicka was... having with his mother and sister that terribly awful sensation of being completely alone.

completely cut off because of the murder. He never expected that, right? But it separates him from other people, right?

And a completely different moral category. And so he talks to them as if repeating a part. He knows what he's supposed to say, but he's very distant. But of course, they sense it, okay?

It's very different. Well... Then they're going over to, I'm going to skip a part that I'll come back to. They're going over to Razumikhin's where they're going to meet Porfiry Petrovich. Porfiry Petrovich, the detective, along with Sherlock Holmes, let's say, he's probably the most famous detective in world literature.

But he's the opposite of Sherlock Holmes. And this Dostoevsky meant, he didn't know Sherlock Holmes, but he knew the detective story, right? I think I mentioned to you that the detective story was the invention of Edgar Allan Poe in the 1830s. It caught on very rapidly.

Dostoevsky wrote a review of Poe's story. He knew him very well, right? But you have to think, what? Think of Sherlock Holmes. What is a detective story?

What's his implicit view of the world? Sherlock Holmes, remember, he solves crimes first by, you know, noticing things nobody else does. I've written a treatise on the muds of London, so I know that the mud on your shoe indicates blah, blah, blah, blah. Or by deduction, by logical deduction, right? Okay, so empirical observation, logical deduction, that is science.

That's the combination of science. So the detective story is social science, you follow me? And it expresses the view that reason is adequate to solve all problems, okay? So if you want to challenge that view, you create a philosophical detective story. But with reason being the source of the crime and a different view being the source of the detection of the crime.

So you get both here. Petrovich has the he doesn't work by. He knows first of all, what's going on was done it from the start.

OK. He knows it right away. What he has to do is maybe prove it.

But he doesn't prove it. What he has to do is get Raskolnikov. to confess now this is nothing to do with rationality and evidence right it has it's pure psychology right and the way in which he's going to do it is i'll give you the most general terms of how he does it when you think to yourself you have a kind of conversation with yourself It's not exactly like the conversations in real life because, you know, let's say you can use a pronoun, he, without explaining who it is, as you can't really, because you know what you're talking about.

And it can be very abbreviated, right? You don't have to be grammatical. It can be very abbreviated and very fast and intense.

But you are always, when you say something, addressing it implicitly to somebody. It could be, you know. someone like your mother, somebody, you know, the general public, but every speech is a speech to someone. So you are the people in your head who you're used to addressing. Okay.

Right. So if somebody can enter into your head and become one of those. listeners or voices in your head and participate in your conversation from within, if they know you that well, then they can do things to you and talk to you in a way that you think you can only talk to yourself, right? Okay. That's what Bofiri Petrovic does.

Okay. He does everything to enter into Raskolnikov's... inner speech okay you know starts out with winking how winking works winking first of all it's a second line of communication you think it's out here but actually it's it's another line in line of communication but then a winking you don't know if so did he really wink or did it seem the only wink right so Is it really happening or am I imagining, which is, is it in my head?

Right. And later it's going to be yet another thing. It's going to be the wink or lowering your voice to talk to him when the only two people are there are you and he.

So why would you lower your voice as if somebody else could overhear? It's as if the two of you were a little compact, a little conspiracy. Maybe the voices in your own head, but certainly a little conspiracy of your own, who know things that nobody else could know, so we don't have to let other people know. You see how the wink sort of suggests that, right?

Or another way we have right here, he laughs noiselessly. Laughter is noisy, but inner laughter could be noisy. You follow how it's beginning to penetrate into his own head. And once he's in his own head, he can make things such that it's unbearable unless he speaks out. OK, that's how he's always going to work.

Couldn't be more different from the rationalist detective. Right. So Raskolnikov is going to meet the fairy patrol, which was Razumikhin. Right. And he's, of course, a little nervous at this detective.

right and he's gonna meet right and so he decides to how are they going to behave well he says i have to behave naturally i have to be spontaneous the logic what he's doing something like remember i had a I had a friend who had been dean of the Northwestern University Medical School for, I don't know, 10 years, when people never last in that job more than a couple of years, right? And he used to explain how he did it. He would say, look, you have to understand that the most important thing in this job is sincerity.

absolute sincerity and once you learn to fake that you're home free. I'm gonna be spontaneous. How can I arrange to be spontaneous?

I'm gonna be natural or is it too natural? It's the same logic. You can't fake spontaneity or it isn't spontaneous.

Now, so he tries to make it look like he's spontaneous by entering with that laughter, by provoking Razumikhin, right? And it looks like, so will Porfiry Petrovich catch that this is staged? Well, he has a line which, unless you know Russian literature, you wouldn't get. But, so I'll translate it for you. He says, but why break chairs?

He says, it's a loss to the crown. What does he mean? They're not breaking chair. In Gogol's play, the inspector general, okay, which is all about pretense, fake, taking somebody in, con game, right? And the inspector general is going to come, right?

And. they have to pretend they're all doing their job perfectly and the mayor is talking about the school teacher and he says you know the school teacher gets so caught up in what he's saying that he you know says things like i would die for alexander the great things like that right i don't care i'm and and then he slams and he breaks the chair why break chairs as the mayor it's a loss to the crowd Alexander the Great may be a great man, but don't break chair. That's what Foufouri is alluding to here when he says it.

It's a very well-known line. And given the context, he's saying, this is a con game. And Raskolnikov wondered, is that what he's saying? Or is he just mindlessly quoting this famous line? He doesn't know.

But that's the point. It has to be a suggestion, not a statement, so that he can then go through, gee, I wonder what's going on. Is he thinking this?

Was I too natural? What did he mean by this? Maybe even now by asking this question, he's noticing I'm asking. He can produce that long sequence of thoughts.

And Dostoevsky gives you at one point a whole page. Begins on page 202 here. You know, it begins with, I won't read the whole thing, but it begins like this.

The worst of it is they don't disguise it. They don't care to stand on ceremony. And how, if you didn't know me at all, did you come to talk to Nicodemus from the beach about me?

So they don't care to hide that they are tracking me like a pack of dogs. They simply spit in my face. He was shaking with rage. Come, strike me openly. Don't play with me like a cat with a mouse.

It's hardly civil, but perhaps I won't allow it. I shall get up and throw the whole truth in your ugly face, which is what he wants. He wants to provoke that. And you'll see how I despise you, which is the same when he was behind the door and he had the impulse to suddenly rush out and laugh at them with his axe. OK, but what if it's only my fancy?

What if I'm mistaken? And through inexperience I get angry and don't keep up my nasty part. Perhaps it's all unintentional. All their phrases, you go online.

Did Porphyry wink at me just now? Of course. It's nonsense.

What could he wink for? He goes online just back and forth, back and forth. That's what Porphyry is trying to provoke.

Now look, is it step one, you say something. Step two, you imitate saying something. Step three. you imitate imitate saying right each one is a negation of the negation i'm spontaneous i'm not spontaneous i'm pretending to be the point is not where he stops as he thinks right the point is that he's playing the game at all that's what gives him away the fact that he's obviously going through these mental It doesn't matter where he winds up in these inner debates. The fact that he's having the inner debates is what gives him away.

Anyway, if you can read it on his face. Porphyry Petrovich, we discover, is a joker. He's always... Humbugging, right? Remember, you know, like the other day, says Razul Meekin, he convinced us all that he was getting married.

We believed it for ever, ever so long. He talked about the wedding. He even bought a set of new clothes. No, you're wrong about that, said Palfrey Petrovich.

I had the set of clothes. That's what gave me the idea of humbugging. I didn't buy it. Oh, yes. Oh, yes, yes, I'm such a humbugger.

He says, maybe I'll take you in, too. Right. So when is he pretending and when is he not pretending and when he's pretending?

It's the same. You see that he's behaving in that way, which is just what Raskolnikov's inner spirit is like that. So the two kind of merge in Raskolnikov's consciousness, right? And then.

they bring up Raskolnikov's article, which he has not known has appeared. But Volfiri Petrovic knows. Yes, the crime is always accompanied by an illness. Of course, Raskolnikov has just been talking about how he's had this illness.

Very interesting. But there's something else. only not stated but only hint that and then you go through this third theory justifying murder.

And we've had the first two, which contradict each other, right? There is no such thing as good and evil. It's just a superstition.

We're in a materialistic universe. And so there's nothing evil about murder. Theory one.

Theory two is the utilitarian theory. There is morality, but it's the greatest good for the greatest number. And if that means killings, an old woman and taking her money, then not only may you do it, but it's immoral not to do it, because the only morality of the greatest good for the greatest number, right?

Well, you see, they contradict each other, because one is amoral, and the other is highly moralistic. Now, there's a third theory, which contradicts the other two, right? And this one is, the world is divided, for there is morality of a sort. So it's not like the first one.

but it's completely different from the second because the second one presumes everyone's the same the greatest good for the greatest number each number is the same this one divides the world into two groups of people there are the ordinary people and the extraordinary people right now at the peak of extraordinary people are those like napoleon or Mohammed or Newton. Okay, and let's go look. He says I maintain that if the only way Kepler and Newton could make their ideas known was to murder a hundred people they would have the right indeed they would be duty-bound to do it. their morality just because they are extraordinary.

They have morality, but it is opposite to that of ordinary morality. Because, well, that's how each stage, later they'll be honored because what was once breaking the rules will become the new rule, right? And so on.

That's how progress happens, right? So they have to do that. It goes a little further than that, right?

It's not just that there are the occasional Napoleons. It's that within the group of extraordinary people, there are many, as he says, divisions and subdivisions. Some are more extraordinary than others, right?

Only one Napoleon, every century maybe. But what he means is that... The intelligentsia, the educated people, they are extraordinary, not like Napoleon, but compared to the ordinary people, right?

And so they can do things that other people can't. And this, you know, this is Dostoevsky's allusion to the fact that the intelligentsia, the educated people, actually did have this incredibly condescending view of ordinary Russians and the peasants, and they thought they had a, you know, different morality that they could... for their sake, for the sake of everybody, right?

They could kill people as revolutionaries or terrorists. Why? Why could they kill people and other people?

Because they're educated. They know things. They're extraordinary.

That's his illusion here, right? And so later on, you know, Porphyria will say, you know, you had... come up with a slightly different theory, you could have killed thousands of people, could have been even worse.

And that's the illusion again to being revolutionaries, where you do kill thousands. And here he says there must be divisions and subdivisions in some proportion. He says it's a law of nature. He says it can't be chance.

that is this is social science again that just as there are there's no chance in physics there's also no chance in um in social science right you know it's just you know how how the world is so that things are divided into the extraordinary by a strict proportion given by social science okay Again, the scientific worldview. Society is governed by science. In the same way that individuals are, okay? In the same way that physics is.

Same in psychology and social science, right? Well, to this, Lofari Petrovich says, You know, how do you distinguish these extraordinary people? You know...

Maybe they could sort of wear a kind of mark or a tattoo because, you know, the rest of us could recognize him. Because after all, suppose somebody who was not extraordinary should get the idea that he was extraordinary and begin, so to speak, to eliminate obstacles, as you so happily put it. Forgive the worries of an ordinary law-abiding person, but... But are there very many of these extraordinary people? I mean, you know, and I'm ready to bow down to them, of course.

But that would be alarming if there were a lot of them, wouldn't it? And he's teasing. He's teasing him, right? And this is when Razumikhin interrupts. And he says, What's really original in all this is that you sanction bloodshed in the name of conscience.

And excuse my saying so with such fanaticism, but that sanction of bloodshed by conscience is more terrible than the official legal sanction of bloodshed. And before you throw it in, you are quite right. It is more terrible. Agreed, right?

The idea that you can, there's a moral justification for killing because you're a special person. This is much worse than ordinary murder, precisely because it claims to be done in the name of conscience and for good. Well, then Rosamund Meechan says, but oughtn't those who have the right to murder at least repent for the blood they've shed? To which Raskolnikov replies, why the word ought? Because you understand, if you're a social scientist, there is no ought.

There just is. This is the morality, right? There's no ought to physics and there's no ought if it's social science, right? Just is. and that makes it cause all the more terrible and then that's when wafiri patrol which brings his trap by suddenly asking a question so you know the house painters there very important when you were there at 7 00 p.m did you see such as you were there at 7 00 p.m right and it's going to come before he knows answers yes and realizes he needn't have said that.

What's the trap? And he goes through this trap. The trap depends on his saying what he saw only the night of the murder instead of the other night, okay, that he's there.

And that would give him away. But it happens like that, right? But he mastered the trap, okay? But he knows that Pafiri must be on to him. to spring that trap okay the last chapter chapter six i'll have to just do start with next time because we're we're at our 45 minute break the one that has that amazing dream you know beating the killing the old lady killing the pawn broker again but we're gonna with laughter i'll talk about that one next time Open it for questions now.

Thank you, Professor Morrison. Can I ask you to hold up the copy of the book that you're using? Yeah.

I think what we've stumbled upon is there's a different introduction. I have the Dover Thrift Edition. Is that what you've got? Dover Thrift. There's a different introduction that's setting off.

Show me yours. Show it up again. Oh.

Okay. I've got that. So we have four versions already.

I've got the one that. Georgina has too. Next time I'll code the pages to that. Does anyone have this one, Dover Thrift Edition? No?

It looks like we have six different versions of the Garnett translation. So I think if you can give us an idea of sort of the passage you're talking about and the page that you found, what I found was the version that I have is about three pages off. So it's not terrible.

But there is clearly an introduction that's... that's setting us apart as a team here. Well, just tear out the introduction. It'll be all fine.

Perfect. So Jacques has asked, within the novel, the statement to go wrong in your own way is better. Isn't this contradicted by the murder?

And what do you think? Well, what Rosamund Meekins means is if you think your own thoughts, of course you'll make mistakes sometimes. right but that's better that's how you arrive at truth okay people make errors and they talk and they correct them and gradually they get better but if you the way you think is simply to whatever you know the right people think i will think too then there's no possibility of correction based on evidence or anything else right it's just that you know there's a character in um remember in anna karenina who who thinks um he changed his views only when the majority of a circle changed them or more strictly speaking they seem to change of themselves within him no agency involved right whatever the group is and i do you can't you know if you learn by making errors and correcting them having them point out that's what the process of just saying whatever your newspaper says or whatever will prevent, whereas making mistakes is better, even if they're a mistake, because they can be correct.

That's what he means by that. He doesn't mean mistakes like, well, go commit a murder. I mean, he's talking about an intellectual process here, right?

In terms of mistakes, going back to the conversation about mother sort of conveying this is for her, this isn't for him as she's entering into the marriage. Are we really thinking she's talking herself into this moment or is she sort of steadfast? This is really something she's doing for herself as a mother. It's not a mother, right?

It's a sister who says this, right? Apology. Right.

Well, that's a good question. I mean... She clearly does it for the sake of her brother and maybe her mother.

But on the other hand, that's her own decision. So in some sense, it's for herself. And so she can be a little confused by it.

So what a Skånegub is going to have to do is show her that. even on the terms she professes, right, this doesn't work. Okay. I mean, for example, if she's doing, even if she's doing it for money, she's marrying a skinflint who puts them in, you know, third-class carriages in a lousy hotel. She's not even going to get the money, right?

I mean, you know, right? It doesn't even work. And that's when it's going to force her to rethink her whole motives there, right? But that's kind of a duel that they're going to have there. But she's, you know, her obstinacy in doing something she thinks is right, which actually isn't, is very much like what Skolnicka's, right?

Coming back into the context, we have a question about your opening. And would people have been familiar with St. Petersburg if they were reading this from outside of the city and this concept of... of him calling out certain spaces, would they understood the context of those spaces as well?

They would have understood, if they had been literate at all, what Petersburg symbolized. I mean, you know, it's the capital, right? I mean, the most dramatic and important event in Russian history was Peter the Great westernizing the country. And, you know, the most important thing in that was...

building the city of Petersburg, you know, as his window to the West. It's on the Baltic. So, you know, it's a window to the West.

Moscow is inland, right? And then, you know, everybody knows about the Capitol. Many people go to the Capitol, right? And, you know, everything they read is published either in Moscow or Petersburg, sometimes called the two capitals, right? Yeah, so everyone would have known about, maybe they might not have known, but it appears about where the U-soup of gardens were.

But that doesn't matter for that past. It just matters that you're going to rearrange things, right? The way Napoleon did. was doing with Paris at the time, Napoleon III, right?

That's when you get to all these big, broad boulevards, which we now have in Paris, is, you know, that's Napoleon III doing that. Oh, so Sheila and Michael have a great question about the shift in characters here. Was Razumikhin sort of becomes the protagonist to her in this third part? someone that you can even sympathize with. Can you speak to that a little bit?

I didn't catch that. I'm sorry. So in this part three area, Reza Mikan becomes the protagonist for her and someone she can sympathize with. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, to she being Dunya, well, yeah, I mean, he's in love with her, obviously, right?

And she recognizes that, right? So, but he's also... a supremely capable person who can take care of everybody, starting with Raskolnikov and then with them. So yeah, that becomes okay, Luzhin has all this power and money. He's got all this practicality of a different sort, but fundamental decency, right?

That's very different. Okay. So the contrast, is palpable.

And gradually, of course, she will get more and more connected to him, originally because he can help them. And Jack points out that Dunia was able to change her mind about marrying Luskin, but Raskolnikov can't take back the murder. Oh, that's right.

He can't take back the murder. Right. That's a really good point.

We're going to see more of, you know, Luskin coming up. He becomes a... I mean, here, so far, right, he's just a truly obnoxious character, right?

You know, right? I mean, you know, the revolutionaries are all the socialists who Dostoevsky hated, and Luzhin is the capitalist who Dostoevsky hated, right? He hated both capitalism and socialism. He hated socialism more, but he hated them both.

And because what they both shared was they both defined human beings in purely material terms. They're not spiritual, right? They're not just, you know, objects.

They just have a different system. The only reason socialism is worse is that socialism, in addition, takes away their freedom. But they're both awful, okay? And you can see how awful illusion is, right? Razumikhin isn't thinking that way, right?

He's thinking of human nature and, you know... His view of people is as far from a capitalist microeconomic class as it is from a Marxist class. They're both. Both of those are extremely rationalistic. They're both forms of enlightenment rationalism.

And he doesn't think that way. So Jackie sort of reaffirmed what you had said about Skolnikov feeling very isolated and alienated. She was struck by that in particularly because she felt that before. But now it seems like a whole new level of isolation.

Can you talk a little bit about that? I know there's a lot of folks in this class who attended your other Dostoevsky readings. And so can you talk a little bit about how he's done that in some other texts as well?

Well, Don made people purely isolated yes how and why he does that yeah it's really interesting because humanness okay for dostoevsky you must be an individual you must have a will of your own and take responsibility for it right you can't be a material object Governed by laws of nature who can't surprise right you have to be individual, but if you're only an individual There can't be any morality or meaning So you must be an individual connected to others. Okay. Both are absolutely necessary.

So, you know, the the rationalists take away your individuality because you're nothing but an object who can be predicted. Right. But if you're only an extreme individualist, I make my own morality, then you're destroying another part of humanness which is the absolute necessity of connecting look we aren't born into the world like athena from the head of zeus fully grown okay okay we're you're born as an utterly helpless infant you can't survive a day right independently right um and the nature of humanness is therefore connectedness with others. It's the nature of us, right?

So you need both, right? You need to be an individual who chooses to give up part of your individuality for others, because that's the only source of meaning. Does that make sense? You have to do both.

You have to have both, right? you know, if you want to look at this way, the socialists take away the individuality and the capitalists take away the connection to others. Okay, they're, they're both making fundamental errors and what it is to be human. He's not he doesn't specifically say capitalist, but I think Luzion, it's clear what Luzion symbolizes, right? I mean, you know, So we have one question around Raskolnikov and Razumikhin's characters as being presented.

You know, we clearly understand that one is, you know, trending towards good and one is tending towards evil, but we can't get over the fact that the one is good keeps being read as the one who's less intelligent, who is less smart. And is this sort of something I'm intuning or is this something that the author has meant here? You mean that Razumikhin is less smart than Raskolnikov? And yes, I believe that's the question here. He's less rational than Raskolnikov, but I don't think he's less smart.

It's only if you see intelligence as, you know, the sort of thing that helps you in Euclidean geometry, right? That's a part of intelligence, certainly, but it's not all of intelligence. I mean, if you take it more broadly, Raskolnikov, you know, in some areas that are essentially social, I mean, he isn't as intelligent as Razumikhin, right?

So I guess you say, what is it to be intelligent? It's not simple. But that's why you get this difference between rationality and reasonableness.

Did I mention to you my, the philosopher Stephen Toulmin? in a lecture, one of the great philosophers of modern time. He taught, came from the University of Chicago to Northwestern, where I met him.

And he once said to me, you know, he said, when I was in the University of Chicago, there was a lecture being given with the title, Is it rational to be reasonable? And I realized that the question, the whole question. of my philosophical work has been the opposite one. Is it reasonable to be rational?

Well, Razumihin, the name is reasonable. Okay, that's what his name is. And he's, it's not, no, it is not reasonable to be only rational. Rationality in that sense is something that you use in very particular circumstances where you need it. But you can't...

Just think about morality, psychology, meaning in those terms. Although, you know, if you believe in a hard social science, you insist that you can. Well, we're around the hour, but if you could just give us one or two thoughts as we leave and finish up our readings for next time, that would be helpful, I think. Okay, you're going to meet, you know, a really faint, another one of Dostoevsky's really famous characters, Svidrigailov. We heard him mentioned before, you know, but here is somebody who incorporates one side of Raskolnikov, kind of the nihilist side, the side that knows there isn't any right and wrong, right?

The first theory. What does it mean to truly live without the sense that there is anything transcendent beyond the natural world, you know, and the laws of what would it mean to really believe that to really live that that that's what you're going to get here. And it's really quite fascinating. I mean, you know how he does. And it's partly because although it's awful and grotesque, it's also very funny.

Take Dostoevsky to make humor out of that. So take a look at that for next time. Thank you, Professor, this week, and thank you all for your questions. Looking forward to gathering again soon.

Until then, enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend. Be well and be safe. Thank you.

Bye bye.

Transcript for:Exploring Dostoevsky's Themes and Characters

Transcript for:
Exploring Dostoevsky's Themes and Characters