Fyodor Dostoevsky is widely regarded as 
one of the greatest novelists in history. His fictional work is so rich with deep insights 
into human psychology, particularly its interplay with various social and political structures 
of the modern world, he is equal parts renowned psychologist and philosopher. His work brings into 
question how well we truly know ourselves, what we really want, and how we go about considering 
and attaining these things in the world—as well as the consequences of following false 
delusions and impossible ideals. His insights and warnings about humanity, both individually and 
collectively, were not only ahead of his time, but in many ways, they are still arguably 
unheeded warnings immensely relevant to today. Dostoevsky was born in 1821 in Moscow, Russia, to 
a well-off orthodox Christian family. His father was a successful doctor, and his family lived 
on the hospital grounds where his father worked.

While in his teens, however, his mother died of tuberculosis, and while Dostoevsky was away at school studying to become an engineer, his father died without definitive cause—although, it was reported and speculated that he was murdered by his own serfs in an act of vengeance against his abusive tendencies. Young Dostoevsky’s proximity to the conditions of a hospital, his upbringing in a strong-faithed family, and the early deaths of both his parents, especially that of the mysterious, possible murder of his father, likely all culminated into some amount of the early foundation of what would go on to become his unique but tragic voice as a writer. After graduating from a military engineering institute, Dostoevsky would work as an engineer. However, as a means of engaging in his budding passion for literature and humanities, he also began translating books on the side during this time. As this passion for literature soon

increased further and further, he would resign 
from his engineering career and focus solely on writing himself. In 1846, he published his first 
book, titled Poor Folk. Right away, this work received commercial success and was reviewed 
favorably by literary critics of the time, deemed as Russia’s first social novel. However, 
Dostoevsky’s subsequent works just following this one would struggle to find any similar level 
of success, and he soon found himself mostly just experimenting and failing as a writer, 
quickly falling into financial distress. Partly as a consequence of his financial 
situation, in 1847, while in his late twenties, Dostoevsky became associated with a radical 
group of writers and intellectuals focused on utopian socialism. This, however, would soon lead 
to him to being arrested when the government went after those associated with these types of groups.
In 1849, as punishment, Dostoevsky was sentenced

to death by firing squad. On December 22nd of 
the same year, he stood facing the barrel of a gun pointed at his head. The remainder of 
his life was now counted in minutes. As the officials held their aim and steadied to pull 
the trigger, suddenly, at the last moment, a message arrived, and Dostoevsky was pardoned. 
The execution turned out to be a mock-execution, used merely as a psychological tactic 
to instill fear in the prisoners. Following this, Dostoevsky was instead sent to 
Siberia where he was forced to work grueling labor in horrible conditions for four years.
In 1860, Dostoevsky returned from Siberia, but returned a very different man. 
He would soon begin writing again, but now, his voice would contain a new tone 
of pessimism, realism, and a highly perceptive understanding of the human psyche. He was now 
turned away from utopian ideals of society,

and instead, his focus was now turned inward, 
toward spiritual and psychological explorations.  Over the following twenty years, before dying of 
a lung disorder in 1881, Dostoevsky would produce several successful masterpieces, many of which 
are still regarded as some of the most important works of literature to this day, including 
Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov.
One of the more prominent themes established in much of Dostoevsky’s work was his insights on and 
assessment of human suffering—more particularly, the means by which and the consequences of 
humanity trying to overcome and rid itself of suffering, especially in relation to a time 
in which religious and spiritual anchors were cut loose, and individuals and societies were 
left to create and defend their worldviews through an increasing thrust of rationality and 
technology toward the ideal of perfect well-being.

In Notes from Underground, published in 1864, 
Dostoyevsky explores and critiques these modern   western ideals: rationality and technological 
progress as a means toward perfect happiness and   goodness. In the novel, we follow an unnamed 
retired civil servant, often referred to as   the underground man, through a series of diary 
entries. The man is deeply angered and unhappy,   and he possesses a disdain for others 
and the delusions in which others live.   He wants to make other people see the 
truth and acknowledge the same discontent   and absurdity he knows and feels in life.
For Dostoyevsky, suffering is a fundamental   tenet of human life. It is infused in the blood. 
Thus, there is no life, nor social or material   condition for life, that can exist without 
suffering. And so, for Dostoyevsky, all efforts   and accomplishments of progress, both individually 
and collectively, can merely change the particular

things that we derive our suffering from, but 
cannot eliminate our suffering comprehensively. “Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't 
calculate his happiness,” wrote Dostoyevsky. For Dostoyevsky, since there can never be a 
social or material structure that rids humanity of unhappiness or suffering, any objective 
of improving the world toward an idealistic, utopian version of itself is doomed 
to fail. Through the underground man, Dostoyevsky largely critiques and warns 
about humanity pursuing these sorts of ideals while operating within the increasingly prevalent 
worldviews of nihilism, utopianism, rationalism, and egoism—which essentially culminate into the 
beliefs that there is no inherent or transcendent meaning to life and that actions and morality 
should be based on reason and knowledge with self-interest as the driving force. Dostoyevsky 
argued, however, that with a void of religious

faith and a deeply flawed, irrational human 
nature; this worldview would become destructive.   In the process of resolving suffering toward 
perfection, solutions to old problems will   inevitably create new problems in need of new 
solutions—and the more grandiose the solutions,   the more complex and perhaps destructive 
the new problems. This is not necessarily   to say that efforts of social, technological, or 
self-improvement are useless or inherently bad,   but rather, they are not capable of attaining 
what they often set out to accomplish;   and if not considered within the constraints 
of the human condition, their incessant motion   can serve to only fan the flames of problems. 
In Notes From Underground, Dostoyevsky wrote: Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since 
he is a being endowed with strange qualities?   Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown 
him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but

bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give 
him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy 
himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, 
sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would 
deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to 
introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It 
is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire 
to retain, simply in order to prove to himself—as though that were so necessary—that 
men still are men and not the keys of a piano. For Dostoyevsky, humanity is irritational and 
incessantly desires a sense of self-agency—not perfect happiness. Thus, even if a perfect 
life or society in which happiness could be

of formulaic ease to everyone, humanity would 
rather go mad or destroy its perfect conditions, than live as if it fit into a mechanical system.  We think we want happiness, but we don’t—not 
really. We know this every time we could be happy but aren’t; every time we find something 
to dwell on or complain about or sabotage. Our conscious mind appears to tell us we want 
happiness and peace with perfect equality, but our whole being, our behaviors, our history, 
show us that we, quite often, want the opposite. We don’t know ourselves as well as we think, and 
often when we do, we struggle to accept the truth. In Dostoyevsky’s subsequent 
masterpiece, Crime and Punishment, published in 1866, he further explores this notion 
of self-knowledge, or the lack thereof. The novel centers around a young former law student 
living in poverty, named Rodion Raskolnikov.

Raskolnikov’s mother and sister are sacrificing a 
great deal to try to help Raskolnikov’s situation, and facilitate his success—his sister even setting 
up to marry a wealthy man in order to help. This, however, all further upsets and shames 
Raskolnikov. Additionally, he is deeply affected by a nihilistic, rationalistic, and atheistic 
view of the world. Because of his views, without needing to answer to any religious or spiritual 
principles, Raskolnikov decides to kill and rob a wicked, abusive, old pawnbroker woman whom he has 
become aware has a lot of cash. He believes that moral decisions ought to be based on what one can 
determine, through reason, produces the highest net good on society—or the greatest happiness for 
the largest number of people. Because of this, he believes that he deserves the money more than the 
old woman, as he can do far more good with it. He

can help his sister and mother, and he can become a lawyer, and can then go on to do even more good in the world. Moreover, he thinks of himself as an individual of greatness, powerfulness, and ruthlessness; and, in his mind, extraordinary men are allowed to commit crimes for the common good. And so, he is able to rationally justify murder, and he proceeds to kill the pawnbroker, and then, her half-sister when she walks in during the act. Throughout the rest of the novel, Raskolnikov finds himself tormented and riddled with guilt and horror because of his actions. He is not who he thought he was; he is not a man of ruthless power. He is a tender and feeling man. Eventually, he turns himself into the police in order to essentially avoid going insane. Through Raskolnikov’s guilt and torment, Dostoyevsky critiques the notions of reason.

and self-interest as complete methods 
of determining morality and self-hood. Raskolnikov had every reason to do what he did, 
and yet, what he did was wrong, and it causes him to feel immense pain and suffering. Like in Notes 
from Underground, Dostoevsky is again critiquing the beliefs of nihilism, utilitarianism, 
rationalism, and egoism, in which all faith and relevance is placed solely on the individual, 
and all efforts to maximize a life and society are done through self-interest and rationality.
Also like in Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment focuses on the complexity 
of the human mind and how we, as the conscious observers and orators of who we think we are, 
are often detached from and inconsistent with who we really are. Moreover, our perception of who 
others are is often even further removed from the truth. Dostoevsky not only shows how Raskolnikov 
has a completely inverted, false self-perception,

but he also allows the reader to relate to 
and empathize with Raskolnikov: a cold-blooded murderer. Rather than purely showing how a 
bad character becomes bad, Dostoevsky shows how a bad character isn’t purely bad, and is, 
in many ways, a lot like us—extremely confused and misguided by the conflict of their inner 
psyche and their misunderstanding of said psyche. For us all, the complex interplay 
between our conscious mind, unconscious mind, and the world 
outside of ourselves is chaotic, muddled, contradictory, and perhaps impossible 
to ever truly understand. None of us are that far from those we fear or dislike; in them is some 
amount of us, and in us is some amount of them. We don’t know ourselves as well as we think; we 
chase things that we don’t want, and we often dread what we truly want. We are far less rational 
than we think; we exhibit a sort of madness every

day and every generation. Christianity and 
idealistic philosophies set us up to fail; science cannot save us; and technology is 
not a means to escape our problems but merely an efficient transformation of them. Dostoevsky 
believed all this to be the case, and arguably, on at least some level, he was right. However, at 
the end of Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov is in prison, serving just an eight-year sentence, 
for doing good deeds. The novel ends alluding to the prospect that Raskolnikov's story will 
continue, suggesting Dostoevsky’s belief that through suffering, faith, acceptance, compassion, 
and repentance, redemption is still possible. Although Dostoevsky’s work is largely dark and 
tragic, it also contains this sort of epilogue of redemption in spite of itself—at least 
redemption of a sort. In his novel, The Idiot,

published in 1869, through the main character, Prince Myshkin, Dostoevsky reflects on some his own personal experiences and ideals in life. In one instance, Prince Myshkin discusses an anecdote about a man recounting having been arrested and sentenced to a mock-execution by firing squad, mirroring almost exactly Dostoevsky’s own experience many years prior. Prince Myshkin says: He had about five minutes left to live, not more. He said those five minutes seemed like an endless time to him, an enormous wealth . . . he reckoned up the time for bidding his comrades farewell and allotted two minutes to that, then allotted two more minutes to thinking about himself for the last time, and then to looking around for the last time . . . He was dying at the age of twenty-seven, healthy and strong; bidding farewell to his comrades, he remembered asking one of them

a rather irrelevant question and even being very 
interested in the answer. Then, after he had   bidden his comrades farewell, the two minutes came 
that he had allotted to thinking about himself.   He knew beforehand what he was going to think 
about: he kept wanting to picture to himself   as quickly and vividly as possible how it could be 
like this: now he exists and lives, and in three   minutes there would be something, some person or 
thing—but who? and where? He wanted to resolve   it all in those two minutes! There was a church 
nearby, and the top of the cathedral with its   gilded dome shone in the bright sun. He remembered 
gazing with terrible fixity at that dome and the   rays shinning from it: it seemed to him that 
those were his new nature and in three minutes   he would somehow merge with them...The ignorance 
of and loathing for this new thing that would be

and would come presently were terrible; yet he 
said that nothing was more oppressive for him at that moment than the constant thought: ‘What if I 
were not to die! What if life were given back to me—what infinity! And it would all be mine! Then 
I’d turn each minute into a whole age, I’d lose nothing, I’d reckon up every minute separately, 
I’d let nothing be wasted!’ He said that in the end this thought turned into such anger in him 
that he wished they would hurry up and shoot him. In this, Dostoevsky arguably alludes to 
the idea that although life is so often tragic, purity and perfect goodness is 
impossible, and suffering is fundamental, the conscious awareness of being but moments 
away from losing it all is so overwhelmingly horrible that one would literally rather hurry 
up and die than steep in the knowledge of just how beautiful everything truly is and that 
they are just about to lose it all forever.

Whether we agree with Dostoevsky or not, his deep insights and brilliant works of literature can help remind us and allow us to feel this same beauty and depth in life, while there’s still time.

The Harder You Try, The Worse It Gets - The Philosophy of Fyodor Dostoevsky

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