Even as he tries to convince himself of his superman status, Raskolnikov is riddled with guilt and remorse. Raskolnikov knows he’s committed a crime-and the knowledge of that crime demands the existence of a supernatural standard neither relative nor man-made.Īs pain signals something is broken in our body, guilt signals something is broken in our soul. He may consider himself immune to legal punishment, but he cannot escape his own internal judge, the conscience God placed in all of us. The fact he feels the need to justify his actions to himself proves he’s an ethical being on whom the claims of morality are binding. In Raskolnikov, Dostoevsky presents us with a would-be Nietzschean superman, someone who doesn’t believe the rules apply to him, though he certainly expects others to follow them. Though it isn’t altogether fair to blame Nietzsche for Hitler, his theories have provided ample justification for totalitarian leaders of all political stripes to cloak their acts of injustice under the guise of tools for advancing civilization. Only an individual who frees himself from these strictures can lead society forward to a glorious future. Undaunted by religious codes and superstitions, the übermensch rises above such man-made strictures-moves beyond good and evil-to assert his will to power.
Whereas Marx would dismiss religion as the “opiate of the masses,” Nietzsche saw it as a slave ethic, a tool used by weak people to control the strong.
Just as Alfred Lord Tennyson, in his epic poem In Memoriam (published in 1850 but written mostly in the 1830s), wrestled with the implications of Darwinian natural selection more than a decade prior to the publication of The Origin of Species (1859), so Dostoevsky, in Crime and Punishment, exposed the dangers and delusions of Nietzsche’s theory of the übermensch more than 20 years before Nietzsche introduced that figure to the world in Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883).Īccording to Nietzsche, the übermensch (German for “superman” or “overman”) is a person who finds within himself the courage to shake off the chains of middle-class morality-the moral and ethical standards “imposed” on us by religion. He confesses and is exiled to Siberia, but there, accompanied by the saintly Sonya, he finds peace and forgiveness.Ĭrime and Punishment is rightly hailed for its psychological depth and realism, but it has another claim to fame that makes it required reading, especially for Christians concerned about moral relativism’s devastating effects on the modern world. Eventually, though, he discovers he cannot so easily fool his conscience. Convinced of his superiority over the laws of God and man, Raskolnikov brutally murders a pawnbroker and her sister, purportedly to steal their money, but ultimately because he feels he has the right to do so.
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