BEAUTY IS OBJECTIVE:

Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov is a murderer. We know that from the start of Crime and Punishment. The suspense of Raskolnikov's story comes not from whether or not his crime will be discovered and brought to justice (it will--we know that, too). The suspense comes from whether or not Raskolnikov will turn away from his guilt and shame towards his redemption, which is by no means certain. The story is about how this might be.

Fyodor Dostoevsky's great novel chronicles Raskolnikov's violent psychological collapse. The young student's moral flaw isn't that he lacks a conscience or a soul, nor is it that he has been infected by the new philosophies of nihilism and radical atheism, though of course he has. Instead, Raskolnikov kills because he becomes obsessed with looking inward for his self-identity; he longs to find within himself a unique man. Dostoyevsky shows us that looking for truth within is itself the source of moral horror: Raskolnikov commits a double murder on principle in an attempt to become what he believes he is: a man apart, self-created and self-affirming. The young murderer implodes under the weight of his own idea of himself. [...]

Dostoevsky shows Raskolnikov to be even more alienated from others while serving his time in Siberia. He is even more heartless to Sonia, who has followed him there. And he is even less remorseful about the murders than he was before his confession. Raskolnikov's redemption is not about apology nor even about taking responsibility, for both these things serve as a kind of psychological balm that he craves as an antidote to anxiety. It feels good not to have to hide his secret. The emotional and psychological rapture Raskolnikov feels at the moment of public confession comes from no longer having to fear detection. It is a relief from his guilt. Confession is therapeutic, but it is not redemptive.

Ultimately, the murderer wishes to reveal his guilt because concealing it is exhausting. Raskolnikov's shame is deeper than his guilt, as shame always is. His shame has to do with not being seen rather than with avoiding detection. He feels guilt for what he did, but his shame is of a more subtle nature. Raskolnikov is intensely and personally ashamed of the self-knowledge he works so hard to avoid. It is the knowledge that the man he wanted to be--a desire so profound that he killed for it--was nothing more than an illusion in the first place, a wish-fulfillment fantasy played out in a grotesque experiment. He feels guilt that he came to resemble the grotesquery he created, but he is even more ashamed to admit that his sought individuation is itself the moral horror.

What would he expect to find within himself, other than what he already wanted to see there? The young man's inward search for truth, untethered from any external relations, is what he believes will free him. Instead, he finds himself trapped in a suffocating nightmare and lost in an expansive wasteland. The uncomfortable truth that Raskolnikov discovers is that one's inner self may be dark: cruel, evil, petty, and arrogant to the point of inhumanity. The hideous truth that Dostoevsky reveals is that perhaps one's inner self is even usually this way.

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