Modern Philosophy Will RUIN Your Life | Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment

Yes, that's what it was. I wanted to become a Napoleon, that is why I killed her. These words were spoken by the protagonist of Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel, Crime and Punishment. A man on a journey to become someone beyond ordinary morality. A man chasing the idea of the extraordinary individual, a concept that would later be named the Übermensch by the moustached philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. From the very first pages of Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky pulls us into a world where a proud young man believes he can rise above good and evil, if only his ideas are powerful enough. But what was his ideology? Why did he kill a woman? And most importantly, was he truly successful in becoming an Übermensch like Napoleon? If not, what went wrong? This is what I'll discuss in today's video. But first, let's go through the novel itself, so you can have a better grasp of everything I'm going to discuss later. Rodion Raskolnikov is a broke, brilliant person, but barely hanging on. A former law student trapped in a suffocating St. Petersburg apartment, he's consumed by poverty, isolation, and one dangerous idea, that truly extraordinary people, like Napoleon, have the right to commit crimes if it leads to a greater good. This theory, which he once explored in an article, becomes his obsession. To test it, he murders an old pawnbroker named Alyona Ivanovna, someone he sees as a greedy parasite on society, but when her innocent sister Lizaveta walks in, he kills her too. From that moment on, things begin to fall apart. He doesn't spend the money, he doesn't feel powerful, he's tormented by guilt, paranoia, and fevered hallucinations. His inner world collapses, and he pulls away from everyone, except Sonia, a young woman forced into prostitution to keep her family alive. Sonia, grounded in deep Christian faith, becomes his moral anchor. She doesn't preach, she just stays, quietly, consistently, compassionately. The murder investigation unfolds in the background. Porfiry Petrovich, the investigator, suspects Raskolnikov early on, but he's patient. Rather than accuse him outright, Porfiry plays a psychological game, hoping Raskolnikov will be pushed to confess on his own. And he's not wrong. The theory that once gave Raskolnikov purpose now feels hollow. He didn't kill for justice or survival. He killed out of pride, to prove he was exceptional. But all the murder proved was that he wasn't. Raskolnikov confesses privately to Sonia first. In a powerful moment, she reads him the story of Lazarus, a symbol of death, rebirth, and grace. Still, Raskolnikov hesitates. He visits the murder scene. He debates turning himself in. Finally, broken and exhausted, he walks to the police station and confesses. He's sentenced to eight years in a Siberian prison. Sonia follows him there, refusing to give up on him. At first, Raskolnikov is cold and distant. He still clings to fragments of his old pride. But over time, Sonia's presence and his own suffering begin to chip away at his defenses. By the end, something changes. Not a dramatic conversion, but a flicker of hope. He opens the Bible she gave him. He breaks down and weeps in front of her. And for the first time, he begins to feel not just guilt, but love, humility, and the slow beginnings of redemption. This was the end of a profound novel. One that offers countless lessons about human nature, suffering, and redemption. But here, we're going to explore just one powerful angle. Why modern thinkers, trapped in their own ideologies, are destined for a life of misery. From the beginning, Raskolnikov is gripped by what we can call egoist individuality, a modern, seductive belief that some people are simply beyond good and evil. Inspired by figures like Napoleon, and fueled by philosophical egoism, Raskolnikov argues that extraordinary individuals have the right to commit crimes if it serves a grand idea. He even outlines this theory in a published article, writing that such a man may, inside himself, grant himself permission to step over a corpse if it is essential for his idea. There are two conditions. He must be exceptional. The idea must be great enough to justify the act. It's a radical extension of rational egoism, a worldview popular in Dostoyevsky's Russia, where thinkers like Chernyshevsky claimed that humans are governed entirely by self-interest and reason. Luzhin, too, echoes this belief when he tells Dunya that science says, love yourself before loving anyone else. Raskolnikov absorbs this ideology completely. Poor, isolated, and disillusioned, he sees the world through a cold, utilitarian lens. After overhearing a conversation about how cruel and useless a local pawnbroker is, he decides to act. If he murders her, he reasons, he'll rid society of a parasite and gain the money he needs to continue his education. The logic seems fair, until he actually does it. The murder, instead of proving his superiority, sends him into a downward spiral. He becomes paranoid, feverish, and emotionally unmoored. Despite trying to live out his great man theory, he withdraws from others, barely uses the stolen money, and falls into spiritual collapse. He becomes the embodiment of Dostoyevsky's underground man, isolated, proud, and slowly destroyed by his own ideas. Svidrigailov, a secondary character, stands as Raskolnikov's dark mirror. He has fully embraced moral detachment. He exploits women, blackmails Dunya, and kills himself when his empty pursuit of pleasure leads nowhere. Svidrigailov is what Raskolnikov could become, if he continues to follow egoism to its bitter end. They were both trying to create their own meaning, and in their ego, they believed they were better than others. But nature had a different role in store for each of them. And this is exactly what happens to many of us in life. Two people walking the same path, driven by the same ideals, yet ending up in completely different places. A contrast of outcomes, shaped not just by belief, but by being. And this is what I'm going to discuss now. Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. In Crime and Punishment, both Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov are haunted men, drifting in and out of depression, consumed by nihilism. Svidrigailov only sank into nihilism near the end, when his mask of pleasure and power finally cracked. When Dunya pointed a gun at him, Svidrigailov was forced to face a terrible truth. He meant nothing. His life, built on seduction, money, control, was hollow. That moment shattered his illusion of power. And without illusion, he collapsed into despair and killed himself. His life was the descent from absurdism to nihilism. He once laughed at meaninglessness, but it eventually devoured him. Raskolnikov took a different path. He murdered for an idea, but his conscience never let him rest. What he believed to be the devil's help became a curse he could not escape. His crime did not liberate him. It destroyed his inner peace. And yet, unlike Svidrigailov, he did not completely fall. Dostoevsky divided his life into two parts. The first, chaos and guilt. The second, a slow awakening. He found in Sonia something Svidrigailov never found. Someone who loved without condition. A prostitute yet morally unshaken, Sonia held to faith and sacrifice. In her, Raskolnikov saw a mirror of what he lacked. When he confessed to her, she stayed. When he was imprisoned, she followed. And when he finally realizes he loves her, it's the first time that he is portrayed as being truly happy. So what was Dostoevsky trying to say here? Happiness doesn't come to the proud arrogance. Luzhin, for example, clings to pride and manipulation and ends up alone and bitter. Svidrigailov, who thought pleasure would save him, dies in despair. But Sonia, Razumikhin, even the suffering Raskolnikov, they find something close to peace. As Dostoevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamazov, the mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for. And this is the difference between Nietzsche and Fyodor Dostoevsky. One is bitter, harsh, trying to create his own meaning, while the other believes he must not be mean at all, but simply believe in love and peace. And that meaning will find him. There is one major problem that Dostoevsky portrays very beautifully in almost all of his novels, which shows everything wrong with us. And that is what I'm going to discuss now. Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he cannot distinguish the truth within him or around him and thus loses all respect for himself and for others. This is the core tragedy of crime and punishment. Not just murder, not just guilt, but the slow, corrosive death of a soul that believes its own lies. Raskolnikov tells himself he's no ordinary man. He convinces himself that killing a greedy old pawnbroker isn't really wrong, that it's necessary, that he's doing the world a favor. He even cries to Sonia, I've only killed a louse, a useless, loathsome, harmful creature. But that's not reason. It's self-deception. A lie so deep that it numbs his conscience and distorts his very sense of reality. And yet, the lie doesn't protect him. It shatters him. His ideology, once a shield of superiority, becomes a prison of isolation. He loses his ability to connect, even with those who care for him. The guilt grows louder. The paranoia spreads. And in that descent, we see Dostoevsky's warning. The greatest threat to the soul is not what others do to us, but the lies we whisper to ourselves. Other characters fall the same way. Luzhin tells himself he's moral and noble, but he manipulates and belittles others to maintain control. Svidrigailov convinces himself that depravity is natural, that he's simply being honest about human nature. But deep down, both men know they're lying. And those lies lead them to misery, to destruction. This is not just a 19th century story. It's the story of modern intellectuals, philosophers, politicians, people who build entire ideologies on the premise that they alone see the truth. They construct systems where morality is relative, guilt is weakness, and emotion is obsolete. But the moment their ideas replace reality, they begin to rot from within. They stop seeing people. They see only categories. They stop listening. They only debate. They stop feeling. They only calculate. Dostoevsky saw it coming. He saw how modern ideology would sell us the lie that reason alone is enough. That we can justify anything if the argument is clever enough. But in Crime and Punishment, he shows where that path ends. Alienation, despair, and spiritual collapse. So what's the way out? The answer, Dostoevsky suggests, is not more ideology. It's intellectual humility. The courage to say, I don't know. The strength to value love, empathy, and goodness over abstract theories, as he once wrote. It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.