This episode explores Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov presented in Crime and Punishment and Nietzsche's concept of the Übermensch.   Raskolnikov’s pride separates him from society, he sees himself as a sort of “higher man”, indeed an Übermensch, a person who is extraordinary and thus above all moral rules that govern the rest of humanity, and so he cannot relate to anyone of the ordinary people "the herd", who must live in obedience and do not have the right to overstep the law.

Although it is almost sure that Dostoevsky, who died in 1881, had never even heard the name of Nietzsche. Nietzsche on the other hand, not only knew some of Dostoevsky’s principal works, but actually acknowledged that he regarded him as the only psychologist from whom he had anything to learn.

Nietzsche and Dostoevsky together both had strikingly similar themes, both were haunted by central questions surrounding the human existence, especially ones concerning God. They were both keen questioners and doubters.  Both were “underworld minds” unable to come to terms either with other people or with the conditions they saw around them and both of them desperately wanted to create truth.

However, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky take separate paths at the crossroads of illusion. But both understood reality in the same way; both faced reality with the courage of despair. Survival for one meant the embracing of illusion; survival for the other meant ultimately the rejection of illusion.

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⌛ Timestamps

0:00 Introduction1:57 Nietzsche’s Ubermensch4:02 Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov7:00 Conclusion Nietzsche and Dostoevsky