Points Of Views In Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime And Punishment

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One Murder, Multiple Point Of Views
Every occurrence has multiple points of views. Within those points of views exist opinions consisting of part truths. In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel, Crime and Punishment, such situations presents itself when the main character, Raskolnikov, plots and carries out the murder of an old woman who has a considerable amount of money in her apartment. Due to his action, an ethical dilemma arises questioning the morality of both the action and the consequence. Depending on the point of view, Raskolnikov’s actions can either be morally just under utilitarianism or morally unsound under deontology.
In the side of Jeremy Bentham, the actions carried out by the main character is ethical. The reason for this lies behind …show more content…

For Kant, Raskolnikov is not ethical because Kant 's theory is an example of a deontological moral theory, According to these theories, the rightness or wrongness of an action does not depend on their consequences but on whether they fulfill our duty. Kant believed that there was a supreme principle of morality, and he referred to it as the Categorical Imperative. Categorical Imperative is based upon Kant’s idea of an absolute non-negotiable universal moral law that holds up regardless of context and circumstance. This is to say that the ends do not justify the means and what 's right is right and what 's wrong is wrong. When taking Raskolnikov’s action and placing it next to Kant’s ideas this is where murder begins to be an issue. The reason for this is because it fails what Kant calls maxims which are a short, concise, and forcefully expressive statement expressing a general truth or rule of conduct. The first maximum is that all actions must have universality. In other words, you should only do something if you think it would be okay if everybody did it all the time. Therefore, when you take Raskolnikov’s murder, one will only be okay with it if one is okay with themselves or a loved one undergoing the same fate. The second maximum Kant mentions are that every human being must be treated as an end rather than a means to an end. So in Crime and Punishment, when Raskolnikov decides to murder the old lady in the

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