So i'm reading this book by Fyodor Dostoyevsky right now and he makes this totally bizarre, disgusting argument but one you just can't dismiss without feeling at least a lil bit stupid. Name of the book is Crime and Punishment. Dostoyevsky is a Russian writer. He was exiled in Siberia once for belonging to an underground intellectual circle. He was always in trouble with the government when Russia was under the autocratic reign of Tsar Nicholas I. The book is an old one actually.
Anyways, too much details. The guy seriously argues that for the good of humanity some people have a fundamental right to be criminals and are therefore not to be condemned by history for their seemingly criminal actions. According to him all great men and women have it in them to be criminals. Criminals in the sense that in one way or the other they go against the existing trend and what is considered by the society of their time to be the morally or even legally acceptable manner of behavior. These people are usually despised in their life time and sometimes killed but their genius is seen by future generations and are applauded. He divides the whole human race through out history into two categories; the ordinary and the extraordinary. The ordinary people are the conservatives who would be called law abiding citizens and would not do anything that would greatly offend society. On the other there are the extraordinary ones who absolve themselves from the strings of conscience and go against all society holds to be good. They may even kill if necessary. However they always do this with a certain altruism for humanity. This 'noble' desire to create something 'new' in the consciousness of humanity is the ground upon which they absolve themselves from the guilt that consciences imposes on deviants such as them.
The extraordinaries perceive that their new ideas will eventually lead humanity in an ultimately good direction. Dostoyevsky categorizes people like Corpenicus, Keppler, Galileo, Napoleon and Lycurgus in the class of the extraordinaries. In the context of the 20th and 21st centuries we could add Hitler, Fidel Castro, Gadhaffi, Robert Mugabe, Osama Bin Laden, Idi-Amin, Jerry Rawlings, El-Rufai Pope John XXIII etc. I wudda loved to add Abacha in this group but he didn't have any vision for something new. He was just an animal. Same goes for other Nigerian leaders who fall in the same mould. That's the point that must be borne in mind though. Dostoyevsky's argument doesn't excuse crime just because a person has no regard for objective morality but its about a person who acts from the conviction that what he does is for the good of all. Such people have a right to act in the way they do. However this right is not an objective right but a private one because it has to do with the individual's conscience. So what does this argument say about Boko Haram and world-wide terrorism? You be the judge. But this is the boring part!
The most exciting part is that Dostoyevsky says anyone who lives, even passively, in this frame of mind is a criminal. For him anyone who wants to say something 'new' in the sense that we have described it is a criminal. It may be something as simple as doing things a bit differently in your office or school. Whenever you go against orthodoxy you make yourself out to be in the class of the extraordinary and therefore a criminal because you are a social deviant. Conclusion, all ambitious people are criminals! That just might include you especially if you don't want to go with the flow...The question however is 'are you a valuable Criminal?
P.S- Having said that...im still reading the book and this argument might be one of his caricatures of Socialists! Will let you know when i'm done or you could read it yourself..or whatever..lol..
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