The Enlightenment, Dostoevsky, and Revolution

 While reading "Toward a New Worldview 1540-1789" I encountered the following... "While many view the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment as bedrocks of the achievement of Western civilization, others have seen a darker side. For these critics, the mastery over nature permitted by the scientific revolution threatens to overwhelm the earth's fragile equilibrium and the belief in the universal application of 'reason' can lead to arrogance and intolerance..." (589).  This immediately brought to mind Dostoevsky, and the themes of his novels Crime and Punishment  and Notes from the Underground. The McKay text book talks about the application of reason to anything and everything, which is one of the prominent topics the "Underground Man" is concerned with. He talks about the new belief of the time, (from Chernyshevsky's What is to be Done?), that one could solve any problem by reasoning through it, and thus if man were aware of his true interests and what was most advantageous to him, that he would begin to only do good because that is what is most advantageous to him. Dostoevsky reminds us that men are creatures of free will, and often make decisions that are self-destructive simply because we have the ability to make the decision ourselves. Again and again, man defies reason. The idea of the "application of reason" resurfaces in Crime and Punishment as well, where Raskolnikov tries to reason through his murder, and tells himself it is "not a crime" because killing one rude, hateful old woman and using her money to do good will benefit others, therefore he will remain in control of all his faculties and not feel guilt or remorse. The question of whether murder can be right under certain circumstances and situations is raised, and using reason Raskolnikov determines that it is right, but we realize later that all of his reasoning has failed him, and he has lost himself to guilt despite his previous ideas. By Dostoevsky's assessment, not everything can be subjected to "reason". 


In class we discussed the balance of doubt and faith in society. During the 1840s and 1860 in Russia, there was an excessive amount of doubting the government, and too much blind faith in the new philosophies of the time. Just like the Papacy in Italy during the time of Galileo, the revolutionaries used the peoples' lack of faith in their government, and thus their weariness with being abused and kept on the bottom of society, to control them and exploit them for the revolution. Who is right and who is wrong? The powerful abuser or the downtrodden yet now angry and enraged victim? Is it right to fight violence with violence? We see in the case of Raskolnikov that what he gave was what he got. He solved his problem with violence and terror, and in the end that is exactly what his life was full of. It seems much the same in the case of the Papacy in Italy and the Russian Autocracy and next the Bolshevik revolutionaries. The Papacy kept their power not through violence, but restriction, deception and keeping the people in ignorance. In the end, their hold on the people was destroyed not by the people's lack of faith in God, but the fact that the Papacy deceived them and refused to acknowledge valid ideas that they didn't feel were right for the people to know. The Russian Autocracy ruled with a firm hand, keeping the imperial personages in the highest luxury, and the peasant populace in absolute poverty. They killed those who spoke out against them, and censorship was rampant. Thus a violent and bloody revolution was led against them, and everyone associated with the Imperial Family was murdered or banished from society. Yet, the cycle repeated itself. The bloody revolution did not create a peaceful society, but became one of violence, intolerance and terror. When the intention became to turn society upside down, and not simply to better the country for everyone, the tone of the revolution and the resulting country that was created was ruined. 


The darker side of the enlightenment raises the question of whether man is entitled to master the universe, and to use his reason on everything around him. The eradication of the firm hold the church had over its people made man the master of his own universe, and therefore entitled him too it. He could for the first time do as he wished without the threat of someone always watching. Once doubt took hold, man began to question and think for himself. This inevitably led to progress, but that progress is tempered with "arrogance" (589). We have become, as a species, arrogant in our domination of the earth, and the inherent idea that we are entitled to it because of our intellect. With the loss of innocence and acquisition of knowledge, we have progressed from tribes such as the Native Americans, who lived in harmony with the earth, to a society that uses the planet for its own purposes with little thought to its care. We are in a sense, destroying to help our own, and are in much the same predicament as Raskolnikov. The philosophers of the enlightenment would want to know, is it an improvement?