El asesinato como problema social en la obra de Fedor Dostoievski y Emile Durkheim

Una interpretación sociológica del hecho moral

Abstract

This essay aims to interpret some parallelisms between E. Durkheim moral sociological theory and Dostoievsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. The hypothesis of this paper is that both writers take moral fact, not as the product of an arbitrary and subjective perception, but as the result of a collective and historical construction. To do so, texts and ideas of both authors are compared with the purpose of explaining the moral’s ultimate foundations in each of their work bycriticizing the individualist conception of morality in Kant’s work, especially his nodal concept «the categorical imperative». We believe that some extracts of Dostoievsky’s work can help exemplify, more clearly, the theoretical systematization suggested by Durkheim since both of them share the same perspective about the sacred character present in all moral facts.