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Against Nihilism: Nietzsche Meets Dostoevsky
Described by Thomas Mann as “brothers in spirit, but tragically grotesque companions in misfortune,” Nietzsche and Dostoevsky remain towering figures in the intellectual development of European modernity. Maia Johnson-Stepenberg’s accessible new introduction to these philosophers compares their writings on key topics such as criminality, Christianity, and the figure of the “outsider” to reveal the urgency and contemporary resonance of their shared struggle against nihilism. Against Nihilism also considers nihilism in the context of current political and social struggles, placing Nietzsche and Dostoevsky’s contributions at the heart of important contemporary debates regarding community, identity, and meaning. Inspired by class discussions with her students and aimed at first-team readers of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, Against Nihilism provides an accessible, unique comparative study of these two key thinkers.
- GenresPhilosophy
160 pages, Hardcover
Published February 15, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 16, 2021
A series of reflections on the comparative philosophies of Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky, centered around their respective approaches to the mutually-recognized specter of nihilism in western culture. Maïa Stepenberg, a humanities professor in Montreal, has taught an undergraduate course on the two writers for several years, so this text is the product of many discussions with young students who were engaging with their work for the first time. Her abiding love for two of the preeminent literary geniuses of the modern age is deeply apparent; but although she has been careful not to take sides between them in her courses, she makes it clear at the end of the book that Nietzsche is a character in Dostoyevsky’s world, and that the latter preempted the former with several of his literary creations, including Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment, Kirillov from Demons, and Ivan from The Brothers Karamazov.
It was Dostoyevsky, rather than Nietzsche, who first recognized and grasped the full implications of what Nietzsche called “the death of God”; and in my view, the events that have transpired since the end of the nineteenth century have vindicated Dostoyevsky’s consternation regarding the popularization of a nihilistic “ethic” of aesthetic (i.e., devoid of moral content) self-assertion. The neopagan golden age anticipated by Nietzsche after the decomposition of Christianity and Platonism—at least for a spiritual elite—has not panned out as expected; though to be fair to Nietzsche, he attributed to the disappearance of a transcendent moral and intellectual horizon a far more profound existential gravity and danger than many of his admirers have appreciated.
There are a number of instructive parallels between the lives of the two men. They were contemporaries—though Dostoyevsky was older—and Nietzsche seems to have been familiar with each of Dostoyevsky’s works, with the exception of his last (and arguably greatest) book, The Brothers Karamazov. Both were fascinated by the figure of the criminal as a bearer of authenticity in a society with a deteriorating system of normative values, and both identified Napoleon as a champion of this triumphant criminality, though they reacted to him in divergent ways that were oddly reflective of their respective nationalities: Dostoyevsky with a characteristically Russian aversion to him as an antichrist figure, and Nietzsche with an idolization born from a German inferiority complex. Nietzsche viewed the criminal as the harbinger of a new order of spiritual freedom, while Dostoyevsky, who had himself run afoul of the law, portrayed him, in the character of Raskolnikov, as a self-deceiver and a slave to the ignorance of his sinfulness, who could only be freed by a recognition and repentance—the medium of true authenticity—that, in Raskolnikov's case, was afforded to him by the spiritual chastity of Sonia.
Both men suffered from persistent physical ailments—Dostoyevsky from epilepsy and Nietzsche from both a general sickliness and a syphilitic infection that contributed to his mental collapse—and both embraced their suffering as a vehicle of enlightenment. But this enlightenment took oppositional forms. Both accepted the fact of nihilism as an emerging paradigm that had to be directly engaged and transcended through an attitude of authenticity and an embrasure of the suffering that must always accompany existential freedom, but they differed profoundly on both the nature of this malaise and the character of the salvation that waited on the other side of it.
Nietzsche placed the origins of nihilism in Christianity, and more specifically in the belief in an afterlife—a “world to come” that set itself against the beauty of this world and a “resurrected” humanity that stood in judgment of primeval man and his vital instincts—into which our inborn vivacity and our creative energies are displaced. His solution was tied to the concept of the eternal recurrence: the notion that we should embrace this life, with all its suffering, cruelty, and mutability, as if we were destined to live it over and again for all of eternity. As Nietzsche’s Zarathustra proclaims: “To redeem those who lived in the past and to recreate all ‘it was’ into a ‘thus I willed it’—that alone should I call redemption!”
Dostoyevsky, for his part, viewed atheism as the seedbed of nihilism and authentic Christianity—as opposed to the institutional kind exemplified by the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov—as the only means of obtaining freedom and inheriting a true, deified life. Like Nietzsche, he viewed freedom without suffering as an impossibility, and he worried (whereas Nietzsche would have gloated) that the burden of this freedom might simply be too heavy for most people to bear. But what waited on the far shore of this nihilistic interval was not a new, godless humanity that was free to create new normative values without the impediments of law or traditional morality, but rather a reconnection, through the renunciation of this idolatrous temptation (as Christ overcame the temptations offered by Satan in the desert) with the primordial law of life perpetuated by the eternal divine kenosis. For Nietzsche, nihilism would be overcome by the Superman; for Dostoyevsky, by the Saint.
It was Dostoyevsky, rather than Nietzsche, who first recognized and grasped the full implications of what Nietzsche called “the death of God”; and in my view, the events that have transpired since the end of the nineteenth century have vindicated Dostoyevsky’s consternation regarding the popularization of a nihilistic “ethic” of aesthetic (i.e., devoid of moral content) self-assertion. The neopagan golden age anticipated by Nietzsche after the decomposition of Christianity and Platonism—at least for a spiritual elite—has not panned out as expected; though to be fair to Nietzsche, he attributed to the disappearance of a transcendent moral and intellectual horizon a far more profound existential gravity and danger than many of his admirers have appreciated.
There are a number of instructive parallels between the lives of the two men. They were contemporaries—though Dostoyevsky was older—and Nietzsche seems to have been familiar with each of Dostoyevsky’s works, with the exception of his last (and arguably greatest) book, The Brothers Karamazov. Both were fascinated by the figure of the criminal as a bearer of authenticity in a society with a deteriorating system of normative values, and both identified Napoleon as a champion of this triumphant criminality, though they reacted to him in divergent ways that were oddly reflective of their respective nationalities: Dostoyevsky with a characteristically Russian aversion to him as an antichrist figure, and Nietzsche with an idolization born from a German inferiority complex. Nietzsche viewed the criminal as the harbinger of a new order of spiritual freedom, while Dostoyevsky, who had himself run afoul of the law, portrayed him, in the character of Raskolnikov, as a self-deceiver and a slave to the ignorance of his sinfulness, who could only be freed by a recognition and repentance—the medium of true authenticity—that, in Raskolnikov's case, was afforded to him by the spiritual chastity of Sonia.
Both men suffered from persistent physical ailments—Dostoyevsky from epilepsy and Nietzsche from both a general sickliness and a syphilitic infection that contributed to his mental collapse—and both embraced their suffering as a vehicle of enlightenment. But this enlightenment took oppositional forms. Both accepted the fact of nihilism as an emerging paradigm that had to be directly engaged and transcended through an attitude of authenticity and an embrasure of the suffering that must always accompany existential freedom, but they differed profoundly on both the nature of this malaise and the character of the salvation that waited on the other side of it.
Nietzsche placed the origins of nihilism in Christianity, and more specifically in the belief in an afterlife—a “world to come” that set itself against the beauty of this world and a “resurrected” humanity that stood in judgment of primeval man and his vital instincts—into which our inborn vivacity and our creative energies are displaced. His solution was tied to the concept of the eternal recurrence: the notion that we should embrace this life, with all its suffering, cruelty, and mutability, as if we were destined to live it over and again for all of eternity. As Nietzsche’s Zarathustra proclaims: “To redeem those who lived in the past and to recreate all ‘it was’ into a ‘thus I willed it’—that alone should I call redemption!”
Dostoyevsky, for his part, viewed atheism as the seedbed of nihilism and authentic Christianity—as opposed to the institutional kind exemplified by the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov—as the only means of obtaining freedom and inheriting a true, deified life. Like Nietzsche, he viewed freedom without suffering as an impossibility, and he worried (whereas Nietzsche would have gloated) that the burden of this freedom might simply be too heavy for most people to bear. But what waited on the far shore of this nihilistic interval was not a new, godless humanity that was free to create new normative values without the impediments of law or traditional morality, but rather a reconnection, through the renunciation of this idolatrous temptation (as Christ overcame the temptations offered by Satan in the desert) with the primordial law of life perpetuated by the eternal divine kenosis. For Nietzsche, nihilism would be overcome by the Superman; for Dostoyevsky, by the Saint.
February 9, 2025
I picked this up on a whim years ago because of my love of Fyodor’s writing. This was a well written exploration of the two others with philosophy that went a bit over my head.
January 2, 2023
Hmm ik weet niet goed wat ik hier nu aan nieuwe inzichten heb opgedaan. Wel zin gekregen het hele oeuvre van Dostojevski te lezen.
May 14, 2023
idk maybe god is just a prop
i-get-the-picture
March 12, 2025A revised Princeton dissertation.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews