Nature and Nihilism in Crime and Punishment

Shreya Singh brings Crime and Punishment into its own time in her essay, deftly balancing close reading of Dostoevsky’s language with history of the social and political contest underpinning the novel’s belief system. She makes her claim clearly, backs it up confidently, and carefully considers alternative points of view, ultimately producing an analysis which not only questions and evaluates Dostoevsky’s story, but challenges her own readers to interrogate their concepts of justice, too. –Hyla Maddalena ’21, Editorial Assistant

Nature and Nihilism in Crime and Punishment

Shreya Singh ’23

Towards the beginning of Crime and Punishment, the protagonist, Rodion Raskolnikov receives a letter from his mother that reads almost like a prayer for his well-being. She writes to him, “I fear in my heart that you have been visited by the fashionable new unbelief. If so, I pray for you.” On first reading this line I assumed that this “unbelief” referred to a vague cynicism, but there’s something about the nature of this appeal that alludes to a more serious kind of “unbelief” – one redeemable only through prayer, notorious even in the remote provinces where Raskolnikov’s mother lives. A social subtext, perhaps, available only to a reader in 1866. Indeed, ideological and philosophical subtext is ever-present in the novel, there are entire scenes devoted to arguing over social theories. But in these moments, social subtext is no longer subtext—Dostoevsky brings it into the foreground of the novel, as if the novel itself was about social ideas and their pervasive influence on people. What is this “unbelief,” and what’s so “fashionable” about it? Why would it matter to a reader in 1866 that Raskolnikov was an “unbeliever”? I believe the answers to these questions allow us to interpret Crime and Punishment as a kind of “novel of ideas”—both a response and a challenge to the dominant social philosophy of its time.   

 To frame Crime and Punishment as a response to social thought I want to probe deeper into the tumultuous political and social terrain of Russia in Dostoevsky’s time.  Luckily, Joseph Frank’s account of the sources of Crime and Punishment provides a wide-ranging description of the ideological climate of the 1860s. Frank describes two main social theories that emerged during the 1860s in the Russian intelligentsia:  Nikolai Cherneshevsky’s “social utilitarianism” (Frank 67) and Dimitri Pisarev’s school of “Nihilism” (Frank 69). Cherneshevskian utilitarianism can be roughly simplified into three maxims: a)the value of something (or someone) is measured by their “utility” or degree of usefulness to society; b)the benefit of the individual “consists in humans identifying their personal desires with the majority of their fellows” (68) ; c) in order to do what’s best for everybody, we ought to do what’s best for ourselves. Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin, in his introductory scene in the novel, effectively sums up this position when he declares, “by acquiring solely for myself, I am thereby precisely acquiring for everyone” (Dostoevsky 149). 

The school of Nihilism was more extreme and is far more likely to be the “unbelief” Raskolnikov’s mother was referring to. Frank roots the origins of Nihilism in Ivan Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons, whose protagonist Bazarov calls himself a Nihilist and rebels against the prevailing social order (Frank 71).  “Nihilism” was championed and adopted by one of the leading radicals of the time, Dimitri Pisarev, as a new social philosophy that “encouraged an elite of superior individuals to step over all existing moral norms in an effort to advance the interests of mankind as a whole” (Frank 69).  Pisarev hypothesized the existence of  a special group of people “who not only exhibit extraordinary personal qualities but refuse to be bound by anything other than themselves and their desires” (Frank 71).  To the nihilists, the prevailing social order was corrupt and conventional moral norms had to be destroyed. At the same time, they borrowed heavily from utilitarianism and advocated the good of the majority above all else, designating whatever did not contribute to this good as effectively useless.  

Dostoevsky used both these theories as the ideas and motivations of the characters of Crime and Punishment. Compare Pisarev’s hypothesis to Raskolnikov’s account of his own theory to Porfiry Petrovich, and the two emerge as nearly identical. Raskolnikov says to Porfiry Petrovich, “The first category, generally speaking, are men conservative in temperament and law-abiding; they live under control and love to be controlled …The second category all transgress the law; they are destroyers or disposed to destruction according to their capacities” (Dostoevsky 260). Doestoevsky’s use of Nihilist language in Raskolnikov’s theory characterizes him as representative of the “unbelievers” — the poverty-stricken student who rejects social rules and alienates himself from a society he considers evil.  Indeed, the “society” of Crime and Punishment is itself shaped by “social ideas”—those theories of politics and economy debated relentlessly by the intelligentsia in salons of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Towards the beginning of the novel, Raskolnikov overhears two soldiers debating the merits and demerits of killing an old pawnbroker. This old woman, Alyona Ivanovna, is malicious and miserly, so she adds nothing “useful” to society. One of the soldiers declares, in true utilitarian fashion, “For one life thousands would be saved from corruption and decay. One death, and a hundred lives in exchange–it’s simple arithmetic!” (Dostoevsky 64). This moral calculus seems almost contrived to exaggerate utilitarianism. Yet this “negligible tavern conversation,” repeating nothing but “the most ordinary youthful thinking,” is profoundly influential to Raskolnikov: Dostoevsky writes that he felt “as if there were some predestination, some indication in it” (Dostoevsky 66). Nihilism possesses Raskolnikov, as if compelling him to murder. It is not simply an idea in the world of Crime and Punishment, but something of a force within it, constantly pushing and tormenting Raskolnikov.  

But this seems too shallow an interpretation of both Raskolnikov and Nihilism—it only gives us a vague sense of Nihilist theories, not their complication and implications. I was interested in looking for an analysis of nihilism that placed it within the context of Russian society: what were the faults of nihilist thinking? How did critics and writers of the time respond to it? Frederick Barghoorn’s essay “D. I. Pisarev: A Representative of Russian Nihilism” offers many of these crucial insights. Barghoorn sees the central ideas of the nihilists as confused and contradictory, caught between the notion of extreme individualism and Pisarev’s own assertion that man had no free will and was shaped completely by his environment. Barghoorn writes that “human psychology” was the “weakest aspect” (Barghoorn 193) of their philosophy: the nihilists assumed the entirety of the problem lay within social structures, and not human nature itself, that mankind “was essentially perfect and would blossom in all its goodness once the shackles of evil ideas and wrong social institutions were cast off” (Barghoorn 193). The important question to Nihilists was how to develop a logical and mathematical theory of development of social institutions, unconcerned with human nature. 

Crime and Punishment engages directly with this question of human nature vs social environment, challenging the nihilist conception of a logical theory of mankind. Raskolnikov’s journey through the novel is a case for the reintroduction of human nature into the nihilistic calculus, and a case for the power of innate human feelings. Take, for example, the scene in which Raskolnikov meets Profiry Petrovitch for the first time. Here, Razumikhin, Raskolnikov’s socialist friend and often the conscience of the novel, emphatically rebukes exactly the idea Barghoorn calls the “weakest link” of nihilism—that environment decides everything and “crime is a protest against the abnormalities of the system and nothing more” (Dostoevsky 256). Razumikhin says:  

Nature isn’t taken into account, nature is driven out, nature is not supposed to be! With them it’s not mankind developing all along in a historical, living way that will finally turn by itself into a normal society. But on the contrary, a social system, coming out of some mathematical head will at once organize the whole of mankind and instantly make it righteous and sinless…that’s why they so dislike the living process of life: there’s no need for the living soul. The living soul will demand life, the living soul won’t listen to mechanics, the living soul is suspicious, the living soul is retrograde!… you can’t overlap nature with logic alone!  (Dostoevsky 256) 

In this monologue, Razumikhin takes issue with the exclusion of human nature from the moral discussion, arguing that the nihilists are mistaken in disregarding nature in favor of belief in nothing but science. Throughout the novel, Raskolnikov is caught in precisely this conflict between pure logic and the “living soul.” Swept up by nihilistic ideas, he wants to be one of the scientific logicians who feel free to “step over the existing moral norms” and reject everything other than themselves and their desires. He isolates himself from society, is apathetic to his own mother and sister, and kills Alyona Ivanovna, rationalizing his murder by utilitarian principles of the greater good.

Yet, he cannot overcome his natural conscience—he cannot defeat human feelings of sympathy and shame by dialectics. He is torn between the soul that demands life and the apathy of nihilism. Raskolnikov’s repeated acts of charity emphasize his vacillation between these his natural feelings and Nihilist rationality: He gives twenty Copecks to the policeman to help a drunk girl he sees on the streets, then abruptly changes course and ignores her. Moved by sympathy and friendship, he gives Katerina Ivanovna all his money. Nihilists don’t believe in prayer, but Raskolnikov asks little Polya to pray for him. These spontaneous acts of charity are in no way rational or scientific, but Raskolnikov is so overcome by sympathy and feeling that he does them in spite of himself. The ending of the novel re-emphasizes this: Svidrigailov kills himself, and Raskolnikov no longer has any real threats to his freedom. But he confesses—human conscience is more powerful than reason. 

Where “unbelief” sickens Raskolnikov, confession begins to heal him. Only in the solitude of Siberia, removed from the social ideas and influences of St. Petersburg can he be “risen” (Dostoevsky 550).  At the end of the novel, Raskolnikov can no longer “concentrate his mind on anything,” he can only “feel” (Dostoevsky 550). “Instead of dialectics, there was life,” writes Dostoevsky, as if to say that the torment of rationalizing and reasoning has been replaced with the purity of feeling. “The new, completely unknown reality” of Raskolnikov’s “regeneration” has the promise of life, feeling, happiness. By ending with the promise of rebirth and happiness, Dostoevsky seems to be saying that only feeling can save us, give us life. Raskolnikov’s redemption is a rebuke to pure logic, an appeal for the return of nature and human feeling to the realm of social philosophy, a journey from the dialectics of nihilism and utilitarianism to simple feeling and the promise of happiness. Trying to suppress the ideals and defects of the human spirit sickens it—it is only faith and feeling that can give it life.   

The simplicity of Dostoevsky’s faith in the restorative power of human nature is intensely appealing: that one has only to give up living inside one’s own head to be truly, fully happy is a wonderfully easy first step in the obstacle-ridden quest for happiness. But beneath this simple faith lies yet another simple, even stronger one: Dostoevsky’s belief that a return to nature is restorative because human nature is essentially good, essentially joyful, essentially hopeful. His call for abandoning “pure reason” in favor of simple feeling in Crime and Punishment, then, is grounded in the assumption that feelings are always going to lead us to goodness. We are, when we don’t lose ourselves in incessant argumentation and theorizing,  pure, kind, and generous—all those traits we call the best of human character. This is a deeply hopeful view of humanity, especially to those accustomed to rooting all the evils of the world to the corruptibility of human nature. Dostoevsky, I think, would be most disapproving of such a cynical conception of human nature. He would, doubtlessly, direct us to the story of Crime and Punishment, of corruption and redemption, where a young man driven mad by dangerous beliefs finds restoration in his conscience, and peace in embracing the torrent of feeling- remorse, confusion,  acceptance, hope-  that he formerly sought to abandon in the name of rationality. And I am inclined to agree with him: the world is terribly bleak, but humanity– the very quality of being human- is the natural antidote to bleakness. Trust in your own goodness, listen to your conscience over the cold calculations of rationality, feel more deeply about the world and the people in it, and that elusive sense of meaning and fulfillment shall become easier to find. This is perhaps too naïve a hope, but Dostoevsky believes it. And so, I think, should we.  

Works Cited

Barghoorn, Frederick C. “D. I. Pisarev: A Representative of Russian Nihilism.” The Review of Politics, vol. 10, no. 2, 1948, pp. 190–211. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1404199.

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, Richard Pevear, and Larissa Volokhonsky. Crime and Punishment: A Novel in Six Parts With Epilogue. New York: Knopf, 1992.

Frank, Joseph. Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865-`1871. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996