The Good, the Bad, and the Idiot: Dostoevsky on Human Nature

9 min readApr 26, 2023

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821–1881)

“We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.”
(Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment)

There is a kind of inherent knowledge that we all carry within ourselves from the moment we come into this world. We are also shaped by our experiences, which determine how we perceive and judge the world around us, others’ actions, and ourselves.

I never know where I might come across the advice or wisdom that could change my perspective — and potentially my life — for the better. So, as a reader, I like to give in to the narrative and the world of the story so that I may take it in for what it is — a fresh perspective. I’ve read many books — both fiction and non-fiction — that present philosophical explorations into the meaning or purpose of human existence, and while some of them are designed to satisfy the reader’s curiosity by presenting an ‘ending’ or conclusion to the narrative, most of them do not actually require that conclusion.

Confinement, punishment, and redemption: Literature and the Self (DALL-E)

Our notions of who we have been, and who we can be, are ongoing exercises in thought. Russian novelist and journalist Fyodor Dostoevsky is one such writer who expertly dissects and pushes the limits of these notions that we try to constantly define through widely accepted value and belief systems.

Over the years, I have read Dostoevsky’s novels The Idiot, Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, and Brothers Karamazov, and there are many insights I gained on human misery, judgement, and forgiveness, which are all aspects of human thought and behaviour that are often accepted as a part of daily life and not given deeper thought to. We all seek a level of contentment, happiness, and hope in our lives, and it is in search of these desires that each of Dostoevsky’s narratives and characters begin with a certain notion and find themselves on a path entirely different from the one they had imagined for themselves.

“Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.” (Fyodor Dostoevsky, Introduction, A Number of Articles about Russian Literature)

The Acclaimed Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky

I Love Misery and Misery Loves Company

The term “self-sabotage” is used so often in our daily conversations. People may say it frivolously in passing or out of masked insecurity, but it points to a human tendency that Dostoevsky understood well and dissected quite thoroughly in his novella Notes from Underground. The narrator, ‘The Underground Man,’ is a man so conscious of his every passing feeling and thought that he often contradicts himself, is unable to make decisions, and swims so deep in self-loathing that he is cynical of all things happy and beautiful and wishes misery to every other person who considers themselves to be a ‘conscious’ human being.

The Underground Man’s desire for freedom over his own will is driving him to a confined view of the world. At the point where Notes from Underground ends, The Underground Man has been so isolated from human connection that even the end of his own story isn’t a choice he makes — Dostoevsky is the one who decides to ‘stop’ his character’s ramblings as he sees no change. As readers, we can see the clear contradictions within this character’s perspective because Dostoevsky presents a man so extreme in his beliefs and so detached from the modern world. However, at some point, we have all found that our wants and what we end up seeking are in conflict.

“Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately in love with suffering, and that is a fact.” (Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground)

Most people live in the thoughts of “if only’s” and “what if’s,” thereby creating an ideology — or what Dostoevsky thinks of as delusion — for themselves because he is also of the belief that people have a knack for making themselves miserable. His observation is that people often wish for outcomes that they believe will eliminate their suffering and misery, but when they realise that even the most idealistic world has its flaws and those flaws bring them misery in new ways, Dostoevsky steers his characters and readers towards shifting the focus of their pain to something else.

This shift of focus is a way of staying grounded in the present moment and in reality, and of coming to terms with the fact that our complex selves will always seek perfection while simultaneously and contradictorily seeking new flaws to focus on. So, instead of seeing progress towards an ideal world as linear and smooth, we can accept that pain and suffering are one part of what makes our lives so beautifully — and miserably — complex.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

What draws me most to Dostoevsky’s works of fiction is the way in which he crafts his narrator or protagonist — they all isolate themselves from society due to a belief or delusion that ultimately leaves them in self-inflicted misery, guilt, and anguish.

In the writer’s acclaimed novel Crime and Punishment, the story follows Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished, educated man who is overcome with a need for money and status. Raskolnikov can’t stand the fact that there are people way less clever but far richer than him, and it is this delusion of superiority that leads him to commit murder, an act that soon makes him riddled with guilt as he realises in horror that he was not the monster he thought he was. Underneath the façade of a proudly educated man with supposedly noble pursuits lay a frightened man who was unaware of — and unwilling to accept — his own shortcomings as parts of his complex self.

Underneath this dramatised narration of a crime and the ‘monster’ that committed it lies the true purpose of the story. Dostoevsky makes his character Raskolnikov commit the ultimate crime of taking another life under the guise of his ideals, only to show his reader that there is no one better to torment Raskolnikov for his crimes than his own self. This returns to the point that in order to get closer to ‘knowing ourselves,’ we have to first untwist our critical and harmfully judgmental self-image. Dostoevsky portrays this fragmented character as someone who can be lent some sympathy because, to an extent, there is a part of Raskolnikov’s “monster” in us all, and there can always be a version of ourselves different — and maybe even better — than the one we perceive.

“To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.”
(Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment)

An Idiot in Disguise is a Realist

Dostoevsky takes a ‘villain,’ or a character with flawed values or morals, and sets the character on a path of self-discovery through adversity. Instead of having the character come out at the other end as someone who simply ‘learns from their mistakes,’ Dostoevsky adds a layer of human relatability by providing his characters with a clearer perception of their true selves, which is neither all bad nor all good.

“Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.” (Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot)

We all tip the scales in favour of the ‘bad’ or the ‘good’ at times, but Dostoevsky’s stories show the reader that if we sometimes distance ourselves from our perception of the life we want to live, we will see that there are always qualities within us that are admirable and ‘good’ if we simply appreciate and value the nature of existence. He brings forth this sentiment most concisely in his novel The Idiot, where, having had a near-death experience himself, he lives the rest of his life in a state of gratitude for the smallest of beauties surrounding him. This mere change in perception makes him live his life so differently from those around him that he’s perceived as an ‘idiot.’

Today, in times where we are told from a young age to constantly validate our emotions based only on our lived experiences, we are thickening the veil over our eyes and gradually becoming blind to the simple yet deep love and appreciation that we can have for the time that we spend alive in this world.

A portrait of Raskolnikov from Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment” (DALL-E)

The Pursuit of Perfection

In times like these, we are constantly trying to perfect ourselves — physically, morally, and socially — and we heavily rely on scientific and technological advancement to cover up or undo our individual and collective flaws. Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor, a story within his novel The Brothers Karamazov, presents a reality where Christ returns to implement his teachings of love and forgiveness. ‘The Grand Inquisitor,’ a leader who wields power, has Christ imprisoned with the reasoning that Christ’s work on Earth is a threat to societal balance and stability. To the eyes of the Inquisitor — the name itself suggesting an ‘inquiry’ or questioning — Christ’s ambitious teachings that strive for purity and perfection are faults in his judgements of human nature and potential. By presenting the Inquisitor as the admirable guiding figure in the community, Dostoevsky cultivates the idea of replacing self-loathing and anger towards our worst tendencies with a more graceful acceptance that we are inherently flawed.

“Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.” (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Dostoevsky understood the emotional toll of constant accountability and the collective or social expectation to be perfect. This is not to say that Dostoevsky glorifies the ‘flawed human,’ but that the mere preaching of ‘perfect’ values, thoughts, and actions is something that human beings are not built for. If it can be agreed that every human is flawed to an extent, then it can also be agreed that any manmade design or system — religious, social, or legislative — is also deeply flawed, especially when one considers each individual’s perception and interpretation of that system. It is Dostoevsky’s more flawed characters who become the ‘guides’ for his readers, as they represent significant thoughts, belief systems, values, and perceptions that clash with the prevailing ones — an alternate path that can lead to a hopeful and surprisingly positive outcome.

As readers, we have the luxury of looking at Dostoevsky’s works of fiction as frameworks for us to implement a more compassionate truth — that tragedy and suffering do, at times, present a bleaker view of the world and our lives, but true beauty and redemption lie in human complexity. When something breaks us — loss, failure, even bad luck — we can choose to let the cracks spread until we no longer recognise ourselves and the world around us, or we can fill them in with the little gold that does touch us.