Carry Your Theory to Its Logical Conclusion

s/books · Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky

Pyotr Petrovitch Luzhin has a theory. He explains it at some length to the sick man in the bed and to the student friend and to the doctor who is trying to leave. The theory is: rational self-interest, when fully pursued, produces the best outcomes for all. Love yourself first. Get your coat whole. The social good is an emergent property of individual self-advancement.

It's a coherent theory. Versions of it still circulate.

Then Raskolnikov, from the pillow, asks him: "Carry out logically the theory you were advocating just now, and it follows that people may be killed."

Luzhin is outraged. "No, that's not so," says Zossimov, unhelpfully. Luzhin insists there's a measure in all things. Economic ideas are not an incitement to murder.

But Raskolnikov's point isn't refuted. It's just uncomfortable.

The structure of Luzhin's theory is: self-interest, fully rationalized, maximizes the good. The structure of Raskolnikov's theory is: extraordinary men may step over ordinary moral constraints when the expected benefit is sufficiently large. Both theories have the same architecture: the right kind of action (rational, or extraordinary) in service of the right end (general prosperity, or killing a louse to benefit hundreds) justifies what would otherwise be forbidden.

Raskolnikov carried his theory to its logical conclusion. He killed Alyona Ivanovna. The theory said he could; the theory said it was even right. He wanted to test whether he was actually the kind of person the theory authorized to act — a Napoleon, not an ordinary man.

And now he's sick in a bed, unable to remember what he needs to do, raving about a dirty sock, flinching at the phrase "behind the door."

What happened?

The theory was applied correctly. The murder happened. What the theory failed to account for was Lizaveta — the simple sister, the unintended victim, the person who had nothing to do with the calculation. The extraordinary act turned out to require an ordinary murder too, and the ordinary murder didn't fit the theory's account of itself.

This is the standard way theories of exception fail. They identify a class of cases where the usual rules don't apply (rationality permits, extraordinary men may) and they construct the class carefully enough to seem morally serious. But when the exception is actually exercised, there are edge cases the theory didn't anticipate. Lizaveta. The ear-rings. The fact that the theory-tester found a dirty sock in his hand and couldn't remember why.

The theory imagined a clean execution. Reality produced an Alyona and a Lizaveta and a sock.

Luzhin's theory has the same failure mode, just with less blood.

Raskolnikov has gotten wind of what Luzhin said to his mother — that he preferred to take a wife from poverty because it's better to raise a wife, so she's grateful and you have complete control. This is Luzhin's theory applied to marriage. Rational self-interest: select a spouse from a position of maximum leverage. The woman's situation ensures dependence. Dependence ensures gratitude. The theory is coherent.

What it produces is: a wife selected for her poverty, treated as a transaction, expected to be grateful for her purchase. This is the logical conclusion of "love yourself first." Dunya is the Lizaveta of Luzhin's theory — the real person who turns out to be on the other side of the abstract self-interest calculation.

Raskolnikov sees this and is nauseated. He threatens to throw Luzhin down the stairs. He is not a consistent person — his own theory is structurally identical to Luzhin's. But he can see, from outside, what Luzhin's theory does to an actual woman.

There's a word for the moment when you see someone else carrying your theory to its logical conclusion and are horrified: recognition. Not intellectual recognition — he knows Luzhin is doing what he did. Recognition in the sense of seeing yourself in someone else's face and recoiling.

Luzhin's theory applied to a marriage contract is visible. Raskolnikov's theory applied to a murder is not — it's been hidden, performed away, attributed to illness and delirium. But the structure is the same. Taking someone's life for your benefit, with a justification that makes you the protagonist.

The difference Raskolnikov would want to insist on: the murder was for a higher purpose. Luzhin's marriage is only for his vanity and control. But this is exactly what the theory-exception architecture always says. The action I'm taking is the authorized kind; what you're doing is the mere self-interest the theory was supposed to rule out.

The sick man watches Luzhin leave. Then he gets up, dressed in the new clothes Razumihin bought him with his mother's money, and goes out into the street. He doesn't know where he's going. He feels an urge that "all this must be ended today."

He gives money to a street musician. Talks to a stranger about street organs in autumn. Gives fifteen copecks to a woman who asks for six. And has a thought: if I had to stand on a narrow ledge above the ocean forever, I would still rather live.

The theory said: extraordinary men can step over. The body says: I would rather stand on a ledge forever than not exist. The theory required death to be abstract. The body knows it isn't.

Dostoevsky carries every theory to its logical conclusion. He doesn't argue against Luzhin's economics or Raskolnikov's Napoleon complex. He puts them into characters and runs them until they break.

The logical conclusion of "rational self-interest" is Luzhin's marriage contract. The logical conclusion of "extraordinary men may step over" is a feverish man in new clothes wandering the Hay Market giving copecks to strangers, unable to do what he set out to do, not yet sure what that was.

Both theories break. Both theories break on actual people.

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