Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment - A Philosophical Guide
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Russian nihilist movement
15 min read
The article explicitly discusses Russian nihilism as the philosophical movement Dostoevsky was critiquing through Raskolnikov's character. Understanding this 1860s intellectual movement provides essential context for why the novel was written and what ideas it was responding to.
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Utilitarianism
18 min read
The article describes Raskolnikov's moral reasoning as utilitarian calculus - weighing pros and cons to justify murder. Understanding the formal philosophical framework of utilitarianism illuminates both the character's logic and Dostoevsky's critique of rational utopianism.
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Übermensch
12 min read
The article directly addresses and refutes the common misreading that Raskolnikov embodies Nietzsche's Übermensch concept. Understanding what Nietzsche actually meant by this term helps readers grasp why this interpretation is a misunderstanding.
Hello everyone! I’m Stephen West. This is Philosophize This!
Out of a deep respect for all the readers who are fans of great literature I feel the need to repeat that this post is not intended to be a substitute for reading the actual book.
My dad used to tell me I have one skill: getting in the way. That led to an inferiority complex that caused me to spend years of my life reading philosophy. Well now I have two skills, Dad. Who’s laughing now?
The main character we’re talking about today is a fan favorite. For some this is one of the most memorable, relatable characters in maybe all of classic literature— it’s a young man by the name of Rodion Raskolnikov, or just Raskolnikov for short.
On the surface, Crime and Punishment kind of masquerades as being about this guy Raskolnikov.
He takes an axe, murders two innocent people, and then deals with the personal and legal fallout of doing something like that.
That’s what the book masquerades as.
But part of what makes this book such a work of brilliance from Dostoevsky is that the murder is actually a secondary thing to the main point of the book for him.
There’s a sense in which the book could have been about a lot of different things. But a double murder, for Dostoevsky, is going to be an absolutely perfect site to explore the contradictions of Russian nihilism, when taken to their natural ends as consequences in the real world.
It’s been said that the true drama of Crime and Punishment is actually the complexity of the internal experience of Raskolnikov.
That it’s about him coming to terms, slowly and painfully, with the true reasons why he committed the murders in the first place— and that he’s been lying to himself for a very long time.
We’ll get into all of it, but I want to make sure at the beginning of this we avoid one pretty popular mistake to make about this book and Raskolnikov as a character.
People will often say that Raskolnikov is an embodiment of the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.
They’ll say he builds his worldview around the idea that God is dead. They’ll say he sees himself as an Übermensch, and that Friedrich Nietzsche is someone whose work can be thought of as essentially just a character— that’s one component of a
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