Dostoevsky, Science and Free Will

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Notes from the Underground" and his concern that if science is used as the only tool to discover meaning and lay blame, then human emotion and free will will no longer exist. The paper explains how Dostoevsky worries about the loss of responsibility for one's actions, which would eventually allows people to legitimately act with cruelty. The paper also shows how his words foreshadow the times that would come, when the German "scientific" culture would convince millions to take the lives of innocents in WWII.

From the Paper:

"Dostoevsky, lived in a time when science and new ideas were coveted all over the world, but when his homeland Russia oppressed it with zeal. Bureaucracy and administration censored new findings and ideas with a vengeance so great even great literary minds such as Dostoevsky would spend some time in exile in Siberia as a result of "subversive" wittings and political affiliations. Though Dostoevsky was initially sentenced to death, with several of his affiliation members, his sentence was commuted to four years of exile in Siberia, only after he and his fellow liberals were standing outside for some time awaiting execution. (Dostoevsky vii)"

Sample of Sources Used:

• Coulson, Jessie. Dostoevsky: A Self-Portrait. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.
• Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to His Family and Friends. Trans. Ethel Colburn Mayne. New York: Horizon Press, 1961.
• Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Notes from the Underground, and The Gambler. Trans. Jane Kentish. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

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