Dostoevsky and Nietzsche were two of the greatest thinkers of the nineteenth century, and they continue to be influential today. At first glance, they may seem like polar opposites: Nietzsche is one of the most vehement opponents of Christianity, whereas Dostoevsky is a novelist with Christian Orthodox roots. However, many scholars have seen a kinship between them. Karl Stern describes them as “twin brothers of the nineteenth century.”1
So, what do they have in common? Nietzsche and Dostoevsky respond to a similar cultural milieu. They are both prophets who announce the bankruptcy of modern rationalism. They apprehend that, despite modernity’s great rational systems, there is a loss of the sacred, noble, creative, and irrational elements of life. They sense nihilism at the threshold of modern culture on account of this forgetting of life. Although they share a similar diagnosis for modernity, they offer two different paths forward: Nietzsche offers a path beyond God, while Dostoevsky points us back to God. Nietzsche first encountered Dostoevsky’s work in 1887—six years after Dostoevsky’s death—in a bookshop in Nice, France. In a letter written on February 23 to Franz Overbeck, a German Protestant theologian and friend of Nietzsche’s, Nietzsche writes, “In a bookshop I came upon ‘L’Esprit souterrain’ (Memoirs from Underground) by Dostoevsky...It was pure chance...Immediately I heard the call of the blood (how else can I describe it?) and my heart rejoiced.”2 Nietzsche’s testimony shows that he was deeply moved by the book and that he felt a kinship with the author of this text. Nietzsche attempted to read everything he could by Dostoevsky, but unfortunately, he only had two years to devote to this task before his psychotic breakdown.3
Nietzsche also made public reference to Dostoevsky in The Wagner Case, Twilight of the Idols, and The Antichrist, which were all written in 1888.4 Friends testified that Nietzsche wept when he first read, and when he subsequently recalled reading, Humiliated and Insulted and Notes from the Underground.5 Nietzsche had a deep and fruitful inner dialogue with Dostoevsky, but it is unclear if Dostoevsky directly influenced any of Nietzsche’s writings or ideas. Most of Nietzsche’s works were written before his reading of Dostoevsky.6 For the purposes of this paper, this analysis will not show any direct influence of Dostoevsky’s ideas on Nietzsche’s work. Rather, this paper will focus on tracing parallel themes in their works and putting their ideas and characters in dialogue with one another.
What did Nietzsche find in Dostoevsky that intrigued him so much? Notes from Underground is an eavesdropping on the monologue of the Underground Man, a lonely and embittered man who describes his life as “forty years in a dark cellar.”7 Part One begins with the Underground Man saying, “I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. No, I am not a pleasant man at all. I believe there is something wrong with my liver.”8 The Underground Man continually refers to himself in subhuman terms, most often as a mouse; there is something sickly, brooding, and resentful about him. What emerges most clearly from the speech is his despair. The Underground Man’s sufferings all reinforce each other, and he suffers especially from the meaninglessness of life: “the whole purposelessness of your pain...is so humiliating to your consciousness.”9 The Underground Man confronts the fear of nihilism. Ultimately, he is a man disowned by the common mentality, which he, in turn, disowns.
The Crystal Palace symbolizes the society that the Underground Man confronts. In 1862, Dostoevsky visited the Crystal Palace in London which was largely built from materials from the Great Exhibition of 1851. He perceived that this great industrial exhibition embodied specific characteristics of modernity, “showing the latest machines, factory processes, buildings, and so on, the chilling symbol of contemporary purpose, progress, and triumph.”10 It is a symbol for the barrenness of modern society. In this palace, “Everything will be provided, man’s every desire will be satisfied, he will be insulated from pain—but the more he becomes the automaton consumer the more he will also suffer ... he will become imaginatively imbecilic.”11 For Dostoevsky, by providing for man’s every need and desire modern culture will not actually liberate man but turn him into a machine, which does not require the exercise of freedom.
Dostoevsky uses the character of the Underground Man to argue against “rational egoists” and utopian socialists who thought that reason could explain everything. According to the Underground Man:
Man likes to make roads and to create, that is a fact beyond dispute. But why has he such a passionate love for destruction and chaos also? Tell me that!...May it not be that he loves chaos and destruction...because he is instinctively afraid of attaining his object and completing the edifice he is constructing?...[P]erhaps he only loves building it and does not want to live in it, but will leave it, when completed, for the use of LES ANIMAUX DOMESTIQUES—such as the ants, the sheep, and so on. Now the ants have quite a different taste. They have a marvelous edifice of that pattern which endures for ever—the ant-heap.12
There is something in man that defies a simple rational explanation. He is not like the ants who simply build to reach their goals. Man is not merely practical; he may destroy as well as build. Man is free in a way that animals are not and may do things that seem irrational, such as intentional destruction, in order to assert himself. The “rational egoists” and utopian socialists would argue that destructive behavior is the result of a misguided understanding of one’s self-interest. When reason could explain what was really in everyone’s best interests—like Utilitarian ethics—then a perfect society would result. However, for Dostoevsky and potentially for Nietzsche, man’s free will makes it impossible to make him the object of a calculative explanation.
As an ironic criticism of rationalism, the Underground Man cries out, “Merciful Heavens! But what do I care for the laws of nature and arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact that twice two makes four?”13 He continues, “I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.”14 The Underground Man, as a human being, has an unlimited freedom by which he can reject even the most given datums of experience. The novel is a work of art, and Dostoevsky is purposefully making it absurd. The point is not to reject the evidence itself, but rather it is the rationalist claim that “it should apply to spheres which are outside its competence.”15 Dostoevsky is trying to escape from a life that is rationalized to the core; what he desires is a wider universe that can embrace man’s spiritual self.
Nietzsche found a brother in Dostoevsky because of this pessimistic reading of modern culture and the fear of nihilism and meaninglessness that would result from modernity’s failure to recognize man’s “irrational” and spiritual nature, the part of man that defies rational categories. It is not that our philosophical, moral, religious, and scientific systems are not yet perfect enough, but that they will always be lacking because they fail to address man and his freedom. Nietzsche said of Dostoevsky, “[He] was the only psychologist I had anything to learn from.”16 In 1888, in one of his letters to Georg Brandes,17 a Danish literary critic and scholar, Nietzsche wrote, “I am grateful to [Dostoevsky] in a remarkable way, however much he goes against my deepest instincts.”18 Nietzsche’s gratitude to Dostoevsky seems genuine. Dostoevsky was able to give a deep psychological account of a nihilistic consciousness. However, Dostoevsky goes against Nietzsche’s deepest instincts because, in the end, Dostoevsky affirms Christianity and the slave morality. The voice of Notes from the Underground may be Nietzschean, but while Dostoevsky’s faith is hard to perceive in Notes, Nietzsche would have gleaned it from other works.19 Although Nietzsche may identify with the ideas of some of Dostoevsky’s characters, he cannot in the end identify with Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky thematized the depravity of the world and nihilism in his works, not as a justification or reason to reject God, but to show where modernity had gone wrong and to point man back to God.
For Nietzsche, nihilism is the result of Christian faith and morality. Nietzsche says that Christianity is “the practice of nihilism [that] persuades men to nothingness! Of course, one does not say ‘nothingness’ but ‘beyond’ or ‘God’...When one places life’s center of gravity not in life but in the ‘beyond’—in nothingness— one deprives life of its center of gravity altogether...Nihilism and Christianism: that rhymes, that does not only rhyme.”20 This sentiment makes sense to Nietzsche precisely because he believes that God is literally “no thing.” God is merely a figment of the human imagination constructed in order to inhibit the strong. God is the counter concept of life created to devalue this world, “in order that no goal or aim, no sense or task, might be left to earthly reality.”21 In short, belief in God and the afterlife leads to a meaningless existence. Christianity has made the will to nothingness holy. To counter nihilism, Nietzsche declares a war on Christianity: “This eternal indictment of Christianity I will write on all walls, wherever there are walls—I have letters to make even the blind see. I call Christianity the one great curse...the one immortal blemish on mankind.”22 After uncovering the bankruptcy of Christianity, Nietzsche wants to inaugurate a new understanding of mankind and human history, not “after the first day of Christianity,” but “Why not rather after its last day? After today? Revaluation of all values!”23 Once Christianity has been defeated and nihilism with it, then human creativity and freedom will flourish.
Once the existence of God is denied, human freedom becomes unlimited. Nietzsche implies this in the metaphors of the infinite ocean and the open sea, as Stellino says: “These metaphors clearly symbolize the new and dangerous freedom that derives from the death of God and that man is now called to seize.”24 The madman in the Gay Science declares, “God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!”25 In this instance, Nietzsche is being ironic because Christians believe that men really did kill God when Christ was crucified. As an atheist, Nietzsche does not believe that God existed at some point and is now somehow dead; rather, “God is dead” applies to the general decline of faith in the West. Nietzsche sensed the collapse of the cultural and philosophical framework upon which belief in God had rested. The death of God leads to the deification of man: “Is the magnitude of this deed not too great for us? Do we not ourselves have to become gods merely to appear worthy of it?”26 Occupying the place of God includes absolute moral freedom. God was the lawgiver, but now that he is “dead,” we ourselves must fulfill that role. The temptation to self-deification leads to stepping over the conventional moral boundaries. Ivan Karamazov puts it well when he says,
As soon as men have all of them denied God...Once mankind has renounced God, one and all...the old conception of the universe will fall of itself...and, what’s more, the old morality, and everything will begin anew...Man will be lifted up with a spirit of divine Titanic pride and the man-god will appear...“all things are lawful” for him. What’s more, even if this period never comes to pass, since there is anyway no God and no immortality, the new man may well become the man-god, even if he is the only one in the whole world, and promoted to his new position, he may lightheartedly overstep the barriers of the old morality of the old slaveman, if necessary. There is no law for God.27
According to Ivan, if God does not exist, then man becomes God, and everything is permitted. Without God, man is in possession of a boundless freedom, with no moral law to constrain it.
Although Ivan and Nietzsche preach a similar denial of God, and hence of morality, Nietzsche is not an immoralist because he does not defend the moral indifference of Ivan. Those who believe that Nietzsche was an immoralist “need to explain why [he] felt so urgently the need to determine an order of rank among values, if he thought that every evaluative perspective was equally valid and justified.”28 What Nietzsche preached was a “transvaluation of values’’ as a counter to nihilism. In the wake of the death of God, it became necessary to propose a new set of values for human life, which, unlike Christian values, would not suppress life but allow the human being to achieve greatness. Nihilism can only be overcome “by means of a new interpretation of the world, a new goal for humanity, and a new evaluative perspective”; this is the task of the overman.29 This new perspective is one that assigns special rights to higher men and conceives the lower class as the “substructure and framework for raising an exceptional type of being.”30
Nietzsche and Dostoevsky both formulate similar theories that exemplify Ivan’s claim that the death of God results in the god- man: Nietzsche’s theory of the overman and Raskolnikov’s theory of extraordinary men. In Crime and Punishment, published in 1866 only two years after Notes, Dostoevsky reconceives the Underground Man with the character of Raskolnikov, an impoverished twenty-three-year-old ex-law student living in St. Petersburg. Raskolnikov is again a man “at war with the hypocrisy and injustice of a society that he believes prevents him from finding his rightful place within it.”31 He “sits in his room like a spider” and questions whether “he is actually a louse like everybody else or a man.”32 There is a clear parallel with the Underground Man who also identifies himself with less than human creatures. This choice of imagery reveals their mutual isolation from their fellow men. They both feel a sense of spite towards a society that has grown cold, and they want to reassert themselves. Raskolnikov’s vengeance, however, pushes further than that of the Underground Man and ends with murder. Raskolnikov’s ultimate motive for the murder of the pawnbroker Alyona and her sister Lizaveta is to test his theory of the rights of extraordinary men. When confessing his crime to Sonia, he lists many different explanations for the murder. He first says that it is because he needed money to support his mother and sister. He soon rejects this theory, however, because he recalls that he did not actually need money. He says, “If I’d killed them only because I was hungry...I would now be...happy.”33 Ultimately, he concludes that he committed murder to test his theory of extraordinary men and to prove that he belongs to this class of men.
The first and most complete exposition of Raskolnikov’s theory of the extraordinary man is to be found in his discussions wit the police inspector Porfiry Petrovich. Having read Raskolnikov’s article “On Crime,” Porfiry Petrovich summarizes it by saying that human beings are divided into two categories: “ordinary” and “extraordinary” men.34 The latter “have the right to commit all sorts of crimes and in various ways to transgress the law, because in point of fact they are extraordinary.”35 Raskolnikov sneers at this explanation. Although he admits that Porfiry summarizes his ideas well, he misses an important point: extraordinary men do not have the right to deliberately commit any crime. Rather, “an ‘extraordinary’ man has the right...that is, not an official right, but his own right, to allow his conscience to...step over certain obstacles, and then only in the event that the fulfillment of his idea—sometimes perhaps salutary for the whole mankind—calls for it.”36 To illustrate his point Raskolnikov offers an example: if a hundred people were standing as an obstacle in the way of Kepler or Newton and impeding their discovery, they would have had the right to remove them, and even to murder them.37 Raskolnikov’s paradigmatic example of an “extraordinary” man is Napoleon. In creating new laws and a new order, he broke the old social codes, thus becoming a criminal. “Extraordinary” men, like Napoleon, are not afraid of shedding blood in the pursuit of these new goals because they are aware of the greatness of their task. Extraordinary men “have the gift or talent of speaking a new word in their environment,” that is, they are creators.38 Furthering the theme of positive destruction from the Notes, they destroy something in the present in order to create something new and of value for the future. Ordinary men, on the other hand, are more similar to animals, living only to reproduce their own kind and to be obedient. They are the cause of the leveling of society. So “while ordinary men are by nature conservative, extraordinary men are inclined to transgress or even destroy the law. If one of them needs to shed blood for the sake of his idea, then, in Raskolnikov’s opinion, he is allowed to do so: he has a right to crime.”39 On account of their greatness, “extraordinary” men have the freedom to transgress the norms of society, including moral laws, if they are being creative.
While Raskolnikov claims that his theory is not novel, his friend Razumikhin perceives the originality of the theory because Raskolnikov delivers a moral argument to justify bloodshed. Raskolnikov’s theory is different from other theories because it allows “bloodshed in all conscience,”40 which makes Raskolnikov’s theory even “more horrible than if bloodshed were officially, legally permitted.”41 The theory of extraordinary men gives moral permission to do evil. Although one is not derived from the other, there are clear similarities between Nietzsche’s theory of “higher” men and Raskolnikov’s theory of extraordinary men. A point of clarification is that Nietzsche distinguishes between the overman and higher men, the latter being those who prepare the way for the former. In his biography, Ecce Homo, he explains the concept of overman “as a designation for a type that has the highest constitutional excellence, in contrast to ‘modern’ people, to ‘good’ people, to Christians and other nihilists.”42 The problem of clearly defining the overman is that besides this brief description, Nietzsche offers no other clear accounts. The concept of the overman, however, appears in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In the prologue, Zarathustra says to the people gathered in the market square, “I teach you the overman. The human being is something that must be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?”43 This passage suggests that the overman is a symbol of the human need for self-overcoming. Zarathustra says that man is a bridge, not a purpose. Man has to go under in order to give way to a new kind of humanity that will be “the meaning of the earth.”44 The overman will be the creator of new values, and thus fill the void that was created by the death of God. In him, human existence and life will find a new meaning and direction. The overman is contrasted to the “last man.” The last man is a symbol for modern man, the man who is happy to be comfortable and does not strive for anything great. Nietzsche fears what the last man stands for because he thinks the herd morality will be successful in destroying all that is higher and extraordinary in man. Creativity, works of astounding beauty, and the capacity to strive for ideals will all be absent from society, which will instead seek comfort. In a passage from On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche says, “We can see nothing today that wants to grow greater, we suspect that things will continue to go down, down, to become thinner, more good-natured, more prudent, more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent...The sight of man now makes us weary—what is nihilism today if it is not that?—We are weary of man.”45 Nihilism is the result of having lost any great ideals for which to strive.
Nietzsche thinks that Christian values are the cause of the nihilism and mediocrity that has spread over modern culture. The overman cannot be achieved until these values are destroyed. Zarathustra urges the destruction of morals because it will be a positive destruction: “Break, break, you lovers of knowledge, the old tablets” of values, which “hang over every people.”46 He shows that values are human creations. Since people view “good” and “evil” differently, they are not objective terms for society. Zarathustra concludes that each group’s table of values is merely an expression of the will to power. Those who recognize this should destroy traditional morality to create something better. The lion makes room for freedom by choosing not to be enslaved by the “thou shalt” of the traditional commandments. In spite of this, destruction is not the end goal. The lion-spirit becomes a child, a symbol of rebirth. The freedom to destroy gives space for the freedom to create something new. The goal of this new project is the arrival of the overman.
The overman, though, is a goal which has yet to be achieved. Zarathustra says to his disciples, “Never yet has there been an overman.”47 While the overman has not yet been achieved—and Nietzsche does not speak of it much in other works—he does talk about “higher men.” There are some figures whom he considers have been close to the overman. He references Napoleon as the paradigmatic example, which is the same example of an “extraordinary” man that Raskolnikov gives. In Napoleon “the noble ideal itself was made flesh.”48 While Napoleon may be the most paradigmatic example of a higher man, he is not the only one. Nietzsche also held Goethe in high esteem. Nietzsche describes Goethe by saying, “What he wanted was totality...he created himself.”49 Nietzsche also praised Alcibiades, Caesar, the Hohenstaufen Frederick II, and artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Shakespeare. This list shows that it is superficial to simply identify the overman with the physically strong and ruthless, or with military leaders. The overman can be a creative artistic genius as well. In Raskolnikov’s words, the overman is one who speaks a “new word.” What is important is not so much the product of what they create—be it a musical composition or laws—but rather their interior attitude of self-overcoming and creation.
While one must not simply equate Nietzsche’s concept with ruthlessness and power, it is also important to acknowledge the more troubling features of his philosophy. Besides those more positive characteristics mentioned above, “It is undeniable that a certain hardness of heart, malice, and unscrupulousness are all traits” of the overman.50 Zarathustra says, “You highest human beings...this is my doubt in you and my secret laughter: I suspect you would call my overman—devil!”51 This shows that the overman would do things that we would typically consider to be morally evil.
Now the paper will test the question of whether and to what extent Raskolnikov is an overman. Raskolnikov and Nietzsche share similar ideas about the division of humanity into ordinary and extraordinary men. They both recognize the rights of these extraordinary men to be actors beyond good and evil. The question, however, is how far do these rights extend? Do these “higher men” have the right to shed blood? Raskolnikov clearly thinks that they do. Nietzsche’s answer will depend upon our interpretation of the special right he ascribes to the “higher men.” Some scholars recommend a conservative reading, meaning that they do not want to unjustly charge Nietzsche with licensing murder, “[g]iven the fact that Nietzsche does not clarify where the boundaries exactly lie.”52 These scholars are in part motivated by the desire to counteract conceptions of Nietzsche’s philosophy as the catalyst for Nazi ideology.
Nietzsche has, whether intentionally or not, paved the way for that moral license. While as discussed above, Nietzsche may not be a full supporter of Ivan’s thesis that “everything is permitted,” however, he does seem to propose alongside Raskolnikov a double standard of morality. In section 260 of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche bestows on the higher men the permission to act as they please towards “inferior” beings.53 With his theory, Nietzsche does not seek a personal justification for criminal behavior; his establishment of a hierarchy between “higher” and “lower” men has to do with the overcoming of the nihilism of modernity and the self-overcoming of man as the project for future generations. Although it is not fair to judge Nietzsche from our perspective of having witnessed the atrocities of the twentieth century, it is not insignificant that the Nazis found justification for their ideas in his philosophy. Although he may have scoffed at German nationalism, and he was not racially anti-Semitic, one can sense foreshadowing of Nazi ideology in Nietzsche’s theory of the morality of higher men:
The fact that Nietzsche was used by the Nazis does not make him only or primarily a proto-Nazi thinker. And yet the uses that texts are put to cannot be ignored...The uses and abuses of texts become part of their history and thus must be taken seriously; especially if the texts have as part of their legacy an important totalitarian or racist phase...No matter how partial, dishonest, absurd, or grotesque their references to and uses of the name of Nietzsche were, Nazi idealogues were able to find and exploit within Nietzsche’s texts elements essential to Nazi ideology.54
It is also quite foreboding that Nietzsche proclaimed, “I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous—a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.”55 This shows that he understood the radicality of what he was proposing; Nietzsche could foresee his philosophy influencing an event like the Holocaust.
It could also be argued that Raskolnikov is not a higher man because he is unable to transgress moral norms in the achievement of his goal. Stellini follows this line of argument by saying that although Raskolnikov ends up confessing his crime, he does not renounce his theory. His repentance is a farce. All he regrets is “not having been able to endure the crime...contrary to those extraordinary men who endured the step they took, thus proving that they had the right to permit themselves that step.”56 Raskolnikov himself supports this view at certain points in the novel. He tells Sonia that the murder proved that he was not a Napoleon because he recoiled from his act. Is the only lesson to be gained from Raskolnikov’s psychological breakdown that he is not a man of value because he could not endure the responsibility of his action and was not ultimately capable of stepping beyond the boundaries of good and evil? Through this psychological breakdown, however, Dostoevsky makes a deeper point. It is because Raskolnikov is a man that he fails. Dostoevsky answers atheism and immoralism “by portraying their effects on the lives of his characters, not by attempting to demonstrate their lack of theoretical persuasiveness or rational coherence.”57 Dostoevsky shows that when man elevates himself to the place of God, the center cannot hold. It is not only that faith in God will disappear, but contrary to Nietzsche’s preaching, man will suffer, too. Zarathustra thinks that out of the ashes of our dead gods, the overman will be the incarnation of a new set of values beyond good and evil. In Crime and Punishment, however, it is precisely because of his belief in himself as a man-god capable of transgressing morality that Raskolnikov suffers a mental breakdown.
Dostoevsky not only demonstrates the negative consequences of atheism and immoralism, but he also offers a positive, contrasting ideal of freedom. He shows that freedom is not the unlimited will to power but the will to love, which stands in stark contrast to Nietzsche’s ideal:
The liberation Nietzsche espouses—the joy to be experienced in the sublimation of will to power and the self-overcoming of life is thought by Dostoevsky to be nothing more than a self-deceiving illusion that poses grave dangers to the moral and spiritual development of the individual...Nietzsche’s source of the over-man, the will to power, is explicitly linked by Dostoevsky to the devil...For Dostoevsky, the appropriate teleology is not will to power but will to love.58
In The Brothers Karamazov, Fr. Zosima is the mouthpiece of this gospel of love. He tells his disciples to
“love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love every thing. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all—embracing love.”59
He preaches a universal and personal responsibility for the other: “every one of us is undoubtedly responsible for all men—and everything on earth, not merely through the general sinfulness of creation, but each one personally for all mankind and every individual man.”60 Ivan and Raskolnikov fail to see themselves as responsible for their fellow men. Raskolnikov’s conversion will turn on his ability to recognize his guilt and responsibility towards mankind.
In Crime and Punishment, Sonia, a young prostitute, lives out the teachings of Fr. Zosima. Sonia shows that freedom is to be found not in asserting one’s will, but in humbly submitting oneself to the divine will and loving one’s brothers and sisters even when it requires great sacrifice. For both Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, the search for freedom and authenticity requires purity. But while for Nietzsche the purity of the overman is defined in terms of power, for Dostoevsky purity is related to humility and meekness, which are a certain kind of powerlessness. The purity of the overman is a cluster of personal traits, including “strength, courage, hardness, cleanliness, and beauty.”61 The purity that Sonia exemplifies is strength in weakness. Having power or strength, Sonia is instead depicted as a helpless child: she has “a little voice,” and “a little face,” and “little shoulders, and sleeps in a little bed.”62 Raskolnikov describes her as “a modestly, even poorly-dressed girl, still very young, much like a child, with a modest and decorous manner and a clear yet somewhat frightened-looking face.”63 Sonia turns Nietzsche on his head because her powerlessness becomes powerful, since through her, God touches Raskolnikov. As Fr. Zosima says, “Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strength of all things, and there is nothing else like it.”64 Christianity can envision a humble strength that is embodied in the gift of self— best exemplified in Christ’s sacrifice on the cross—that Nietzsche’s philosophy had no room for, and it is a strength capable of restoring life.
For Nietzsche, the overman’s journey is one of solitude and self-overcoming. Purity “is a precious, irreplaceable human quality that must be earned through effort, and deep solitude is the gateway to this revelation.”65 Raskolnikov is an isolated man; however, he does not reach redemption on his own. Sonia’s love becomes the catalyst for Raskolnikov’s moral resurrection. The Christian redemption through purity comes only through the other, who in turn is the means through which Christ’s grace reaches us.
Sonia embodies the purity of Mary Magdalene, not the Virgin Mary. As a symbol for female purity, Mary Magdalene “represents a crucial variation which allows for the recovery of virginity, in spiritual terms, without denying the loss of physical virginity.”66 If the Virgin Mary is paradoxical as a virgin-become-mother, Mary Magdalene is paradoxical as a prostitute and virgin combined. Mary Magdalene is “the new Eve, the first sign of the reversal of the fall of Adam.”67 She is the paradigmatic example of a great sinner become saint. Sonia and Mary Magdalene carry within them proof of the Resurrection because they reveal that through Christ’s grace, everyone can regain purity of heart.
Raskolnikov, however, struggles with the virgin-prostitute paradox in Sonia: “What had sustained her? Not depravity, surely? It was obvious that disgrace had touched her in a purely mechanical way; real depravity had not yet penetrated her heart, not even a drop. He could see it.”68 Although she is a prostitute, Sonia somehow maintains purity of heart. As a divided sinner himself, Raskolnikov cannot conceive how she can bear this paradox. He questions how she has not gone mad or killed herself, since the murder has made him go mad and seriously contemplate suicide.69 He concludes that her religious fanaticism is what has kept her from going over the edge:
“No, it’s the thought of sin that’s kept her from the Ditch until now...”
He paused stubbornly on this thought. This solution pleased him more than any other.
“So do you pray to God a lot, Sonia?” he asked.
...
“What should I be without God?” she whispered quickly and vigorously, glancing at him with a sudden flash of her eyes, then squeezing his hand firmly in hers.
“Just as I thought!” Raskolnikov said to himself.
Raskolnikov thinks he has finally found the clue to understand her: faith. He begins to question her, playing a sort of devil’s advocate by suggesting that since she is a great sinner, it would be reasonable to throw herself off a bridge. Sonia responds “with a look of suffering, and yet, it seemed, quite unsurprised by his suggestion.”71 Sonia’s response shows that she has at least pondered the idea of suicide. She feels the pain of having to live this dual life; nonetheless, she has come to accept prostitution as the difficult cross she has to bear out of love for her family.72 Her sacrifice is not meaningless, for in a paradoxical way she imitates Christ by carrying this cross and giving herself out of love.
Then, almost by force, Raskolnikov makes Sonia read the Bible to him. The passage that Sonia reads is John Chapter Eleven, which describes the raising of Lazarus from the dead. As Sonia reads about how Jesus miraculously raised Lazarus from the dead, she hopes for the same miracle for Raskolnikov: “‘And he, he— also blinded and disbelieving—he, too, will now hear, he, too, will believe, yes, yes! Right here, now,’ she dreamt, and shook in joyful anticipation.”73 The story of Lazarus is the perfect Gospel story for Raskolnikov because Lazarus has been in the grave for four days, and the murder happened four days ago. It holds the path to salvation for him because with grace he, like Lazarus, can hope to experience a new life. The mystery of the Resurrection “depends crucially on the interrelationship between purity and corruption, which is why Sonia becomes the perfect vehicle for conveying the mystery to Raskolnikov.”74 As St. Paul writes, “So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.”75 The mystery of the Christian resurrection is that it passes through death to life, from corruption to incorruption, through weakness to strength.
The following day, Raskolnikov comes to Sonia and confesses to the murder. Sonia jumps up, flings herself on his neck, throws her arms around him, holds him tight, and says in despair, “Oh what have you done to yourself?”76 Sonia does not recoil from him, or show disgust or fear, but rather embraces him. Her faith allows her to show the deep mercy and compassion of God to Raskolnikov. She continues, “No, no, nobody in the whole world is unhappier than you are now!”77 She understands the misery he has condemned himself to and thus weeps for him. As a fellow sinner, she promises to follow him wherever he goes. However, she first tells him that he must go and atone publicly for his sin: “Go at once, this minute, stand at the crossroads, bow down, first kiss the earth which you have defiled and then bow down to all the world and say to all men aloud, ‘I am a murderer!’ Then God will send you life once more.”78 Repentance is the path back to communion with God and his fellow men. In the name Raskolnikov there is raskol, which means schism and division. He has been distanced from his fellow men because of pride in his theory, and “that is why Sonia requires of him that he should do public penance. Separated from the human race, he cannot be reunited with it unless his heart is converted.”79 Raskolnikov is resistant to turning himself in, but Sonia’s insistence and his attraction for her finally convince him. However, Raskolnikov’s confession is taken as an act of drunkenness, and no one believes him. Sonia insists that now he turn himself in to the authorities, although again he resists: “‘But how will you go on living? What will you live for?’ cried Sonia.”80 For Sonia, it is clear that there is no path left for Raskolnikov except that of expiation: he must accept his suffering, and through it he will be redeemed. He will never be free if he remains unreconciled with God and man. For Sonia, to live a life without God is not to live at all. Raskolnikov finally lets himself be taken. The story does not end there, however, because he has still not fully internalized this new life. Acting with resistance, it seems as though Raskolnikov acts more to please Sonia than out of a completely repentant heart.
It is only in the Epilogue where Sonia’s initial expectation for Raskolnikov is fulfilled. When he is in the prison, he begins to think that choosing confession over suicide was a sign of weakness, and that maybe what he did was not a sin but an “error.” Raskolnikov then falls dangerously ill. During this illness, he dreams that a virus which makes everyone think they are the sole possessor of truth sweeps across the country. The madness induced by the virus results in everyone destroying each other. This dream allows Raskolnikov to recognize the flaw of his theory, namely, thinking himself superior to other people. Following the total breakdown of his theory, he realizes that he is a sinner like everyone else and is responsible for his fellow men. After this acknowledgment, Raskolnikov is finally able to love. He sits holding hands with Sonia, and instead of feeling a sense of revulsion, this time he breaks down and embraces her. He willingly accepts his imprisonment as a necessary expiation. That evening, thinking about Sonia’s love, Raskolnikov is inspired to open the Bible—which belonged to Lizaveta and then to Sonia—hidden under his prison bed. His pride in his theory has been shaken: “Dialectics had given way to life, and something quite different had to work itself out in his conscious mind.”81 Then it miraculously happens: a moment of grace, “[b]ut here a new story begins: the story of a man’s gradual renewal and gradual rebirth, of his gradual crossing from one world to another, of his acquaintance with a new, as yet unknown reality. That could be the subject for another tale—our present one has ended.”82 In the final sentences of the epilogue, Raskolnikov completes his repentance through this moment of grace and now begins the work of conversion, which is a lifelong journey.
Some scholars question the authenticity of Raskolnikov’s conversion. Does Raskolnikov truly find redemption at the end of the novel? In his book Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, Philosophy of Tragedy, Leo Shestoy argues that the will to power was Dostoevsky’s secret aim even before Nietzsche. The only difference is that for him it was a “hideous truth, which he did not dare to proclaim through the utterances of his heroes save with shame and terror,” whereas for Nietzsche it was a “declaration of rights.”83 The epilogue is added only to save Dostoevsky’s skin. When speaking of the concluding lines, Shestov writes, “Do not these words sound like a solemn promise? Has not Dostoevsky given an undertaking to show us this new reality and the new possibilities which are opening up for Raskolnikov? But the master left that promise unfulfilled.”84 This was not because of a lack of time, since he was still able to write many long novels after Crime and Punishment. It was rather because this was not actually Dostoevsky’s intention. De Lubac says that had Dostoevsky only wanted to write a story of rehabilitation, he could have done so, “but Dostoevksy would not have found it very interesting. He would not have written an analogue to Tolstoi’s Resurrection. A moral of that kind would have bored him.”85 There was something else going on in Raskolnikov, namely, the discovery of a new kingdom: “That, indeed, interested him enormously; but that was untellable. It was very truly ‘another story’ and he could not promise, and had not promised, to write it, for he knew very well that it could not be written...The ways in which God reached man will always remain a mystery.”86 The resurrection Raskolnikov experiences is mystical, and our language would fail to capture the essence and depths of this experience.
The self-sacrificing love of Sonia brings about the possibility of resurrection for Raskolnikov. In accepting this love and recognizing his guilt and his responsibility for his fellow men, Raskolnikov is offered the possibility of a new life. For Dostoevsky, this is the experience of true freedom because it means freedom from sin and the opportunity to experience the kingdom of God on earth through communion with others. Through the submission of the will to power in obedience, fasting, prayer, and self-sacrificing love of others, “with God’s help [one] attain[s] freedom and with it spiritual joy.”87
It is no wonder that Nietzsche’s works were experienced by Russians as already familiar to them, since “Nietzsche...echoed what Russian philosophy in the person of Dostoevsky had already grasped.”88 Many of the fundamental claims that Nietzsche proposes, Dostoevsky had already explored in the voices of his characters. Not only did Dostoevsky expound those theories, but he also gave an answer to them. Those of his characters, like Ivan and Raskolnikov, who thought of themselves as a “man-god,” capable of using their freedom to act beyond good and evil, ended up on the brink of a psychotic breakdown.89 Dostoevsky thus shows that the path man has to follow is rooted in love of God and his creation, and especially in love of one’s fellow men, which is made possible by Christ, the God-man. Those characters who grasp that true freedom is the will to self-sacrificing love in imitation of Christ, like Sonia, are able to bear suffering and love others, even at great personal costs. They are capable of humbly submitting themselves to Christ and his gospel of love. Through their death to self they become partakers in Christ’s death and thereby in his Resurrection, opening up the path to moral resurrection for the other characters. Raskolnikov, who through the witness of Sonia ultimately recognizes the truth of the gospel of love and personal responsibility, also experiences this same rebirth. On the other hand, Nietzsche believes that the ultimate source of nihilism lies in Christianity, and returning to it would be pointless. He instead calls for a hardening of humanity and a struggle for overcoming. The consequent hardening of humanity will then produce not Dostoevsky’s imaginary god-man, but an elite of higher men out of which the overman can be born. The overman will be creative and able to give human beings new values and purposes. This overman has clear parallels to the man-god Dostoevsky sees as the symbol of modernity’s failure.
Nihilism was and continues to be a relevant cultural force. Dostoevsky and Nietzsche both understood that the will to value and believe is paramount for human beings, as Nietzsche reflected, “And, to repeat in conclusion what I said at the beginning: man would rather will nothingness than not will.”90 They both recognized the human hunger for meaning in the face of nihilism. While for Nietzsche this meaning lies in the overman, a man who becomes like god, for Dostoevsky the clearest ideal to live for is Christ. The question of Christ turns on the same pressing concern for both thinkers: freedom or enslavement. Nietzsche will never surrender what he takes to be the most constitutive element of his personal and philosophical identity, that is, his sense of freedom. He says of Christianity that it is “from the beginning, [a] sacrifice the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit, it is at the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation.”91 For Nietzsche, the antithesis of freedom or Christ will forever stand. For Dostoevsky, however, this is a false antithesis because the only freedom possible for human beings is through loving surrender to Christ. Dostoevsky gets the last word since he, like Nietzsche, encountered the “purgatory of doubt.” Rather than succumbing to it, however, Dostoevsky emerged with his hosanna having become “purified in the chalice of temptation.”92
