Emmanuel J. Crespo
Ms. Coleman
Honors World Literature
April 13, 2016
Killing for Human Life
An analysis of the justification for criminality with the argument that it will better humanity in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Crime towards humanity has never been rightly justified, but it seems as if the crime towards humanity misinterprets the goal of the crime. Criminals would like to believe that their crimes were done for humanity rather than towards humanity. Fyodor Dostoevsky exposes the argument of bettering humanity as a scapegoat for criminality in his novel, Crime and Punishment.
The wealthy and those in poverty have had a strong dissonance for hundreds of thousands of years, usually caused by envy and frustration of the poor and the arrogance and lack of empathy of the rich. Raskolnikov, frustrated that he could not finish his studies in law and had to drop out of law school, has grown a type of soft hatred to the pawnbroker, Alyona Ivanovna. Due to her wealth and unfair treatment to the people that pawn items to her, Raskolnikov undoubtedly turns his soft hate into violent thoughts. He envisioned murdering her and taking her money, but the moral side of him always brought a sense of disgust to his own thoughts, and Raskolnikov would not want to go through with the crime. Although he tried to take the idea off his mind, the struggle of him having owe the landlady dues as well as him already behind on payments, Raskolnikov’s thought turned to a plan, but he still could not go through with it. Raskolnikov needed a good reason in committing the crime that would not come out as purely selfish. There was a consistency of the thought of humanity that always seemed to spark his plan back on his mind and Raskolnikov would once again envision himself doing the crime. In the novel, Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov says, “Kill her, take her money and with the help of it devote oneself to the service of humanity and the good of all.” (Dostoevsky 68). To devote oneself to humanity does not grant the pass for a murder, but it seemingly shows how clouded people’s judgement becomes if a reason to rationalize a crime arises in their favor. Criminal activities has revolutionized from thousands of years ago to the present day. The act of killing a person once had a glorified view and acceptance in the ancient times and by the society of the time. Although this had evolved into a norm during those times, societies influenced those norms highly from their beliefs, such as their culture, primarily based on their religion. A review article from the BioMed Research International clearly states “The practice of human sacrifice has been known to occur cross-culturally throughout history. Humans have been sacrificed in order to celebrate special events, […] to atone for sins committed, […] and to ensure fertility and health.” (Ceruti 1). A sacrifice to God or the gods did not cause uproar then, but rather a positive response because if humanity pleased God or the gods, then humanity would not suffer. Although life moved that way thousands of years ago, times had changed as well as moral or humane views. New excuses were needed to justify killing a person now that killing humans for sacrificial reasons no longer reached acceptance in society. More recent events of human history has shown how, once again, religion has atoned for the act of killing a human being in the excuse of bettering humanity. During the seventeenth century, the village of Salem – a strong religious based community - underwent witch trials due to the allowance of political and economic control they had given a minister over the citizens. Twenty citizens suffered conviction and execution, and the community, finally at ease and even gratification, saw nothing wrong with killing their fellow citizens, believing that they had freed humanity from the “evil” their religion had silently imposed on them. Through the years that have passed, the mindset of “bettering humanity” remains and continues its use as an excuse to rationalize criminal acts such as those from thousands of years ago and those from only a few centuries ago, which society could now view as murders. Fyodor Dostoevsky implies that to this modern day of age, humanity still uses the excuse to “better humanity” as a pass for criminal acts, as unlawful as murder. In Crime and Punishment, the protagonist, Raskolnikov, says, “I simply hinted that an ‘extraordinary’ man has the right [...] and inner right to decide in his own conscience to overstep… certain obstacles [...](sometimes, perhaps, of benefit to[...] humanity).” (Dostoevsky 260). Raskolnikov uses his “inner right” to throw his conscience out the window, which has been battling him since the first time he has even thought about killing Alyona Ivanovna (which he has now committed when he said this), rationalizing his act, once again, as the benefit to humanity. Throughout history there have been certain people that have shaped the world in various ways and have actually bettered humanity. Unfortunately, there have also been numerous people that have tried to mold humanity into what they saw as better. An excellent example would be Adolf Hitler. In his eyes, a well off humanity consisted of Caucasian people with blue eyes and blonde hair that did not believe in Judaism. The unsettling circumstance that he had an abundance of power actually allowed him to begin creating the humanity he saw fit, which also gave him the justification that allowed him to believe that he spoke the truth and due to that he can do whatever means necessary to achieve a better humanity. An article from Review and Expositor says, “Consequently, the power of rhetoric fueled the idea of racial supremacy that resulted in the belief in the elimination of those deemed as “weak” by the state […](the sick, the disabled, and the mentally ill) as well as the Jews.”(West 437). Thus, the Holocaust in Germany came about, and while the whole world watched in grief and disgust, Hitler viewed his actions as an act of good, justifying it with helping humanity. Hitler, however, was not the only person in history to cause harm to the human race for what he believe was the greater good. Raskolnikov, like every other criminal, would go on and try to justify his crime in the novel Crime and Punishment, saying:
I maintain that if the discoveries of Kepler and Newton could not have been made known except by sacrificing the lives of one, a dozen, a hundred, or more men, Newton would have had the right, would indeed have been in duty-bound... to _eliminate_ the dozen or the hundred men for the sake of making his discoveries known to the whole of humanity. But it does not follow from that that Newton had a right to murder people right and left and to steal every day in the market. Then, I remember, I maintain in my article that all... well, legislators and leaders of men, such as Lycurgus, Solon, Mahomet, Napoleon, and so on, were all without exception criminals, from the very fact that, making a new law, they transgressed the ancient one, handed down from their ancestors and held sacred by the people, and they did not stop short at bloodshed either, if that bloodshed--often of innocent persons fighting bravely in defence of ancient law--were of use to their cause. It's remarkable, in fact, that the majority, indeed, of these benefactors and leaders of humanity were guilty of terrible carnage. In short, I maintain that all great men or even men a little out of the common, that is to say capable of giving some new word, must from their very nature be criminals--more or less, of course. Otherwise it's hard for them to get out of the common rut; and to remain in the common rut is what they can't submit to, from their very nature again, and to my mind they ought not, indeed, to submit to it. You see that there is nothing particularly new in all that. The same thing has been printed and read a thousand times before. As for my division of people into ordinary and extraordinary, I acknowledge that it's somewhat arbitrary, but I don't insist upon exact numbers. I only believe in my leading idea that men are _in general_ divided by a law of nature into two categories, inferior (ordinary), that is, so to say, material that serves only to reproduce its kind, and men who have the gift or the talent to utter _a new word_. There are, of course, innumerable sub-divisions, but the distinguishing features of both categories are fairly well marked. The first category, generally speaking, are men conservative in temperament and law-abiding; they live under control and love to be controlled. To my thinking it is their duty to be controlled, because that's their vocation, and there is nothing humiliating in it for them. The second category all transgress the law; they are destroyers or disposed to destruction according to their capacities. The crimes of these men are of course relative and varied; for the most part they seek in very varied ways the destruction of the present for the sake of the better. But if such a one is forced for the sake of his idea to step over a corpse or wade through blood, he can, I maintain, find within himself, in his conscience, a sanction for wading through blood--that depends on the idea and its dimensions, note that. It's only in that sense I speak of their right to crime in my article (you remember it began with the legal question). There's no need for such anxiety, however; the masses will scarcely ever admit this right, they punish them or hang them (more or less), and in doing so fulfil quite justly their conservative vocation. But the same masses set these criminals on a pedestal in the next generation and worship them (more or less). The first category is always the man of the present, the second the man of the future. The first preserve the world and people it, the second move the world and lead it to its goal. Each class has an equal right to exist. In fact, all have equal rights with me--and _vive la guerre éternelle_--till the New Jerusalem, of course! (Dostoevsky 260)
Raskolnikov’s argument clearly claimed that the justification for killing another human being proves valid if it helps the greater of humanity. He even mentioned Newton, and said Newton had the justification to kill as many as he needed if it claimed to help out humanity for the better. Raskolnikov went on and claimed that all great people have a sort of criminality within them, but because of their title of greatness, they would all live under a justification for their actions. Great men and women have been died in the hands of making humanity better. Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, and many more, under their noble cause to actually want to better humanity, have all been assassinated by the very hand they all fought so hard to save. Ironically, in trying to save humanity, humanity has found these people expandable. People like Raskolnikov, who justify their criminal actions with bettering humanity, have not a clue in how to do so. People like Raskolnikov are the type of people that would assassinate the ones who genuinely want to see the success of humanity. All those great men and women that have been killed were killed by the people that did not care about humanity at all, for they do not see humanity as a whole but favor one side instead of all sides, thus, they kill the person that wants equality due to their views not matching their own, claiming their own views actually help humanity. All those murderers who have killed and claimed they have done so for the greatness of humanity, they are nothing but hypocrites. Humanity, as said in any dictionary, is of the human race. Any person or persons, who have claimed to do humanity a deed by killing another human being, have turned themselves into a symbol for hypocrisy because they are trying to stop humanity.

Sources
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, and Constance Garnett. Crime and Punishment. New York: Modern Library, 1994. Print.
CERUTI, MC. Frozen Mummies from Andean Mountaintop Shrines: Bioarchaeology and Ethnohistory of Inca Human Sacrifice. BioMed Research International. 2015, 1-12, Aug. 6, 2015. ISSN: 23146133.
West D. Preaching in Hitler's shadow: sermons of resistance in the Third Reich. Review & Expositor [serial online]. December 2014;111(4):437-438. Available from: ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, Ipswich, MA. Accessed April 13, 2016.