Dostoevsky’s “Rebellion”

[lennybound]

“Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one [innocent child]… and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?”

- From “The

Comments

[ww0308]

I'm not sure. But you know, the really remarkable thing is how popular that sort of question is when hack writers need to whip up some narrative drama, and how rarely it comes down to that in real life. Yesterday I was reading the lyrics of Pink Floyd's "When The Tigers Broke Free," thinking about how all World War II generals found sacrificing soldiers to be perfectly good behavior, because they were sure it was the only way to unify warring nations, and then thinking about how now the European Union is forming without anyone having to have their guts blown out in the freezing mud.

[lennybound]

Haha, are you calling Dostoevsky a "hack writer?"

[ww0308]

No, although I'm not saying he isn't, either, necessarily-- I lack the literary chops to winnow the extremely pretentious and ponderous hacks from the Russians with a lot to say who take a lot of time to say it, and occasionally examine and include hack ideas within a larger and better framework of ideas. But the overwhelming majority of ethical problems where the author confronts the reader aggressively with the dilemma of torturing someone to save someone else are the lowest dregs of the media marketplace. "24", anyone?

[ww0308]

Also, I should mention testosterone poisoning and the gendered analysis of this whole situation.

[dialogic]

Yes.

[lennybound]

Yeah?

[dialogic]

Mhm. Out of a kind of moral sentiment or affection than on principle. Had I the stomach for it, that is.

[epictetus_rex]

No. Not by a long shot. I'm with Kant on this one, but for perhaps different reasons than he would like.