To conclude my blog posts based on reading, I would like to point out Dostoyevsky’s obsession with free will. For some time, he has his character analyze how people act upon their free will. He says that even if you end up generating some sort of calculation that can tell a person what decision will be in his best interest, they will still choose to do things that may not necessarily have any advantages. Some people might think, why would anyone choose something that is obviously to their disadvantage? I think that how people perceive advantages and disadvantages is entirely subjective. Deciding which has more weight is also up to the individual. Dostoyevsky is basically saying that this is what makes us human. We enjoy and cherish the fact that we can still decide for ourselves, we are at a different level from the rest of nature. If we weren’t, we would be like all the other animals; we’d do the same thing every day and others could essentially predict what we are going to do for the rest of our lives.
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