From "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoyevsky
The setting and context:
1860s st. petersburg, russia.
The main character is at a bar, and overhears a conversation between a police officer and a student. They're having a discussion about the old lady who owns the pawn shop and about how rich she was.
The student says he wouldn't feel remorse if he killed and robbed that sick old hag.
"A hundred thousand good deeds could be done and helped, on that old woman’s money which will be buried in a monastery! Hundreds, thousands perhaps, might be set on the right path; dozens of families saved from destitution, from ruin, from vice, from the Lock hospitals and all with her money. Kill her, take her money and with the help of it devote oneself to the service of humanity and the good of all. What do you think, would not one
tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds? For one life thousands would be saved from corruption and decay. One death, and a hundred lives in exchange it’s simple arithmetic! Besides, what value has the life of that sickly, stupid, ill-natured old woman in the balance of existence! No more than the life of a louse, of a black beetle, less in fact because the old woman is doing harm. She is wearing out the lives of others; the other day she bit Lizaveta’s (her younger sister) finger out of spite; it almost had to be amputated.”
Is the death of 1 justifiable if its for the greater good? (hitler, darth vader, etc)
What intrinsic value does a single life carry?
(i recommend this book to anyone who hasn't already read it.)
(heavy marxism in this part, the book is not political)
The setting and context:
1860s st. petersburg, russia.
The main character is at a bar, and overhears a conversation between a police officer and a student. They're having a discussion about the old lady who owns the pawn shop and about how rich she was.
The student says he wouldn't feel remorse if he killed and robbed that sick old hag.
"A hundred thousand good deeds could be done and helped, on that old woman’s money which will be buried in a monastery! Hundreds, thousands perhaps, might be set on the right path; dozens of families saved from destitution, from ruin, from vice, from the Lock hospitals and all with her money. Kill her, take her money and with the help of it devote oneself to the service of humanity and the good of all. What do you think, would not one
tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds? For one life thousands would be saved from corruption and decay. One death, and a hundred lives in exchange it’s simple arithmetic! Besides, what value has the life of that sickly, stupid, ill-natured old woman in the balance of existence! No more than the life of a louse, of a black beetle, less in fact because the old woman is doing harm. She is wearing out the lives of others; the other day she bit Lizaveta’s (her younger sister) finger out of spite; it almost had to be amputated.”
Is the death of 1 justifiable if its for the greater good? (hitler, darth vader, etc)
What intrinsic value does a single life carry?
(i recommend this book to anyone who hasn't already read it.)
(heavy marxism in this part, the book is not political)
