Dostoyevsky and Plato: The Power of Storytelling

Spoiler warning for Crime and Punishment

Story is a powerful tool in the dissemination of ideas, and few understood this principle better than the Greeks. In Classical Greece, traveling poets called rhapsodes dedicated their lives to memorizing the works of the poet Homer, the Iliad, and the Odyssey. Lines from both of these epic poems were also readily available to most Greeks from merchants on the street to lofty academics. The Greeks understood that by encapsulating their ideas within the context of a story, they brought those ideas to life and enabled people to empathize with them on a more personal level. Perhaps the best Greek thinker to understand this was Plato, who organized many of his philosophical works as dialogues, coming from the Greek roots “duo” (δύο) meaning two, and “logos” (λόγος) meaning thought or principle. A Platonic dialogue sets two opposing ideas against one another by pitting two characters against one another. Socrates is often the protagonist of these dialogues, arguing in favor of the beliefs that many scholars believe were Plato’s. Plato chose Socrates for this role because he had a reputation among Athenian philosophers for being truthful and straightforward. Plato also wrote a bevy of antagonists who challenged Socrates and Plato’s views. Among these antagonists, the sophist Gorgias stands out as one of the most famous, advocating that rhetoric should be prioritized over truth as the ultimate goal.

One might rightfully ask, “why would Plato go through the trouble of writing antagonists whose main goal is to unravel Plato’s ideas? Would it not be more effective to write more defenses of one’s own arguments instead?” Contrary to being perceived as a weakness, this strategy is one of the main reasons why Plato's dialogues continue to be widely read and enjoyed today. Plato does not simply create strawmen to attack, loading his antagonists with weak arguments and celebrating his victory over them. Instead, he subjects his thoughts to a great crucible of ideas to sort out the wheat from the chaff, as it were. In doing this, Plato puts his ideas under the stress of an intelligent and motivated opponent. The heat of this method forges Plato’s arguments into a stronger and more defensible version of what might have been written had Plato merely written treatises or essays on the various issues he dealt with. It also allowed everyday Athenians to digest and empathize with his works in a way that gave his ideas much more influence on society.

2,200 miles north and 2,300 years after Plato wrote his dialogues, another thinker interested in understanding human nature began writing novels: Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky’s novels are all incredible reads, and they employ a bevy of different stylistic and philosophical tools to make the writing more effective at conveying Dostoevsky’s underlying ethical philosophy. In his book on Dostoyevsky, The Sinner and the Saint, Kevin Birmingham writes that Dostoyevsky’s works were the first polyphonic novels to attract a large readership. This means that Dostoyevsky’s novels offer a wide range of positions on various issues, and the reader is trusted with discerning which position is the most veracious.

Whereas Plato casts a strong and virtuous protagonist to spout his ideas, Dostoyevsky often makes those with whom he most disagrees his protagonists. The best example of this is the character of Raskolnikov from his 1866 novel Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov is a poor law student and a utilitarian rationalist who justifies the murder of an old pawnbroker as being the morally upright thing to do. As we follow our protagonist around the dingy and labyrinthine streets of 19th-century St. Petersburg, we get to see him interact with others who represent various philosophical perspectives. We meet Luzhin, a rich businessman and a suitor to Raskolnikov’s sister Avdotya, who represents that upper-class materialist utilitarianism that makes Raskolnikov wince but which also reflects back a bit of himself. Razumikhin is a poor student and a charming raconteur who often acts as the voice of reason for Raskolnikov (razum meaning reason in Russian). Finally, Svidrigailov is an enigmatic benefactor with amorous designs on Avdotya and a shady past. He represents that which Raskolnikov purports to want to be: the “ubermensch” or the extraordinary man who does what he can while those around him suffer what they must. These characters and many more all come to life in vivid color through Dostoyevsky’s arresting prose, and the effect of their collective escapades creates an interesting commentary on poverty, morality, guilt, and madness. Raskolnikov is ultimately made to come to terms with reality; he cannot continue living with the guilt he bears for murdering two innocent women and must confess to his crimes. All of the rational thought in the world about how killing the pawnbroker is a moral act goes out the window the second the axe comes crashing down on her head. It is at that moment that crime turns to punishment.

The novel is effective at conveying the underlying meaning of Dostoyevsky’s philosophy because it turns Plato’s style on its head. Instead of the protagonist aligning with the author's beliefs, the opposite occurs, leaving us to follow a protagonist whom the author vigorously disagrees with. This structure is counterintuitive but is nonetheless effective because it forces the reader to empathize with the protagonist and to experience the pitfalls of his ethical philosophy from a first-person perspective. In this way, Dostoyevsky is able to embed his philosophy in a medium that is more broadly understandable. Anyone can pick up Crime and Punishment and learn a lesson about human nature, that is not the case for dusty, verbose academic works like Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals or Aquinas’ Summa Theologica. Those works are prescriptive in nature and seek to understand ethics as a philosophical theory; Dostoyevsky forces readers to see every possible utility and malady of the philosophical theories being examined by his novels, an emulation of a Greek storytelling device 2,500 years in the making.

“Those who tell the stories rule society.” - Plato