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Dramatic Irony
Part 2, Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Self-Interest:
In a scene that satirizes the individualistic, rationalist worldview that Dostoevsky critiques throughout Crime and Punishment, Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin uses logos and fallacy while arguing in favor of his market-based worldview. Confronting the suspicious Raskolnikov and the hostile Razumikhin, Luzhin makes a case for pursuing self-interest:
[Science] says: Love yourself before all, because everything in the world is based on self-interest [...] And economic truth adds that the more properly arranged personal affairs and, so to speak, whole caftans there are in society, the firmer its foundations are and the better arranged its common cause. It follows that by acquiring solely and exclusively for myself, I am thereby precisely acquiring for everyone, as it were, and working so that my neighbor will have something more than a torn caftan, not from private, isolated generosities now, but as a result of universal prosperity.
Luzhin previously echoed an old saying, arguing that if two men split a “caftan” or tunic, then both men end up naked. In contrast to this notion of splitting or sharing resources, Luzhin mobilizes “Science” to argue that “everything in the world is based on self-interest.” He reasons that if everyone loves themselves “before all,” then everything in society will be more “properly arranged” and there will be more resources overall, even if they are not distributed equally. From this principle, he uses logos to argue that, by “acquiring solely and exclusively” for himself, he is in some sense “acquiring for everyone” due to the increase in “universal prosperity.”
Though he does employ logic in his argument, Dostoevsky, who was a critic of modern individualism (though also a critic of socialism) highlights the fallacies in his argument, as it is not necessarily the case that everyone will get more resources just because there are more resources overall. Through Luzhin, Dostoevsky satirizes and critiques what he considers to be the spiritually bankrupt philosophies and practices of 19th-century Europe and Russia.
Related Themes:
