The Limitations of Reason Exposed in Crime and Punishment :: Crime Punishment Essays

The Limitations of Reason Exposed in Crime and Punishment    Dostoevsky's   Crime and Punishment illustrates an important idea. The idea is that "reason," that grand and uniquely human power, is limited in reach and scope.   Social critic Friedrich August von Hayek commented once that, ". it may be that the most difficult task for human reason is to comprehend its own limitations. It is essential for the growth of reason that as individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles we cannot hopefully to understand, yet on which the advance and even the preservation of civilization may depend." Such limitations imply that on life's most important questions - particularly those of a moral or ethical nature -- reason alone can produce chilling consequences. Without adequate or any moral illumination, reason alone, when pushed to its limits, can produce consequences which stand dramatically opposed to those moral demands. Dostoevsky's   narrative is directed as a specific critique of Russian manifestations of purely rational political theories current in the 1860's in his homeland. But the challenge he poses has meaning for us at the end of the 20th century.    Dostoevsky's parable focuses on a particular brand of 19th century Russian ideology, as it begins to crystallize in the mind of a young idealist. But the modeling procedure Dostoevsky uses in teasing out the contradictions of Raskolnikov's unguided application of a morally bankrupt theory, could equally well be applied to contemporary thinking around several important and equally bankrupt modern ideas - ideas harshly criticized by thinkers such as Hayek.    Without direction - the source of which is ultimately beyond rational understanding - in the domain of the meta-rational -- reason-as-reason will, sooner or later, run aground. Directed reason on the other hand provides an orientation - an orientation that gives purpose and direction to inquiry -- by allowing us to select from an infinite range of possibilities the right path - the "right" reason.   Problems emerged for Raskolnikov then, and for us now when we deny the need to recognize, acknowledge and bow to external guidance.   The rational and the meta-rational must operate symbiotically: one pointing the way, the other uncovering the Truth.      Raskolnikov rationalized murder. We are appalled. Why? Each of us will attempt to answer in a different way. Fundamentally though I think that most of our answers boil down to the same idea.