Image by Etienne Baudet, after Annibale Carracci.
by Hannah Baron
Is there virtue in wretchedness? In On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche details the rise of ‘slave morality,’ a framework which first characterizes power and oppression as ‘evil,’ then constructs ‘good’ as its opposites—meekness, powerlessness, and pity. He asserts that this moral system turns man’s natural aggressive and adventurous impulses inwards, creating the miserable self-persecution of ‘bad conscience.’ Nietzsche suggests that a moral system in which suffering is elevated is only able to survive by granting suffering moral value and meaning, thereby ‘anesthetizing’ it and rendering it bearable. One notable means of anesthetization that Nietzsche highlights is religion, particularly Christianity. The Christian salvation story idealizes and moralizes suffering, thereby granting it meaning. Raskolnikov’s struggle in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, when read through the framework of slave morality, dramatizes the process through which suffering is internalized, moralized, and given meaning. In murdering Alyona, he attempts to ‘step over’ ordinary morality. However, he is unable to escape the reactionary, oppositional structure of slave morality. After his failed attempt to exempt himself from morality, his aggression turns inward, manifesting as a drive for futile suffering and self-punishment reminiscent of Nietzsche’s concept of ‘bad conscience.’ By contrast, Sonya justifies and moralizes suffering, providing comfort through the promise, or possible illusion, of salvation. This justification resembles Nietzsche’s ascetic ideal insofar as it soothes the distress of suffering without addressing the underlying existential realities. It does not remedy the root causes of suffering; it simply provides a comforting escape through a certain detachment from reality. Through Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality, Crime and Punishment can be read as dramatizing the inward turn of aggression that produces bad conscience followed by the ‘anesthetization’ of the ascetic ideal; while characters’ attempts to transcend morality collapse into self-punishment, religion justifies and moralizes suffering through the myth of the salvation story in a way that resembles Nietzsche’s ascetic ideal.
Raskolnikov attempts to transcend conventional morality by murdering Alyona Ivanovna, but he is unable to rise above the constraints of ‘slave morality.’ Nietzsche describes slave morality as a reactionary concept that “always needs an opposite and external world . . . in order to come into being,” unlike ‘noble morality’ which “conceives the basic concept of ‘good’ in advance and spontaneously, starting from [itself]” (Nietzsche 19, 21). Instead of starting with a concept of ‘goodness,’ slave morality first defines evil as that which is powerful, violent, and oppressive. ‘Good’ is then derived through contrast as anything that is not ‘evil’—“good is what everyone is who does not do violence, who injures no one, who doesn’t attack, who doesn’t retaliate, who leaves vengeance to God, who keeps himself concealed . . . who avoids all evil, and in general demands very little of life” (26). Thus, in slave morality, ‘goodness’ is associated with powerlessness and ineffectuality. Nietzsche then details how slave morality has largely triumphed over the previous ‘noble morality’ to become the conventional and largely universal system of morality (30-32). Through this lens, Raskolnikov’s murder of Alyona may be viewed as an attempt to rise above the passivity and impotence of slave morality to embody the agency and power of ‘noble morality,’ hindered by the scheme’s grounding in the logic of slave morality. In the overheard tavern conversation which partially inspires Raskolnikov’s crime, the student argues that killing the old woman and redistributing her money would be a noble venture. The student suggests that one “great man” could step over the typical understandings of “duty and conscience” and could trade “one life [for] thousands of lives saved from decay and ruin” (Dostoevsky 80). However, this notion is fundamentally rooted in the structures and logic of slave morality. The murder would only be considered good because of Alyona Ivanovna’s ‘evil’—as a nasty, capricious, and rich money lender, she exerts power over others, embodying the oppressive, powerful ‘evil’ against which slave morality constructs its comparative concept of good. The murder scheme is not inherently ‘noble,’ as it simply reacts to a perceived evil instead of originating from a place of self-assured ‘goodness’ and righteousness. In “Disintegration, Salvation, And/or Madness in Dostoevsky,” Jerry Piven uses a psychoanalytic approach to analyze the motivations and delusions of Dostoevsky’s characters. Although Piven’s method is psychoanalytic rather than Nietzschean, his account of inward persecution, delusion, and the need for salvation is useful because it describes the psychic mechanisms through which suffering becomes internalized and then soothed through fantasies of redemption. In this sense, Piven helps to translate Nietzsche’s account of bad conscience and ascetic anesthetization into the psychology of Dostoevsky’s characters. Piven suggests that “enemies [to Dostoevsky protagonists] are less intrinsically antagonistic than idolized and abhorred mirrors of one’s own inferiority,” and explains that these ‘antagonists’ are “unaware of our hero’s existence and would just as soon ignore it” (Piven 6). Accordingly, Alyona Ivanovna does not personally antagonize Raskolnikov. In fact, she does not even recognize him when he visits to execute his plan (Dostoevsky 93). While she may be generally unkind, the antagonism is primarily constructed in Raskolnikov’s own mind. This one-sided animosity resembles the bird of prey analogy Nietzsche uses to illustrate the relationship between noble and slave morality. It is not on account of any personal malice that the bird of prey snatches the lamb, and yet the lamb views the bird of prey as evil, and thus “whoever is as little as possible a bird of prey” is good (Nietzsche 25). This moral framework assumes both that the strong one is free to be weak, and that, likewise, weakness is a “voluntary achievement, something willed, something chosen, a deed, a merit” (25). It is through this logic that power becomes synonymous with evil, and wretchedness with good. The murder’s grounding in slave morality is further demonstrated by Raskolnikov’s delirious ranting after he commits the transgression. He speculates that “maybe it’s not about [the hag] at all,” as he “was in such a hurry to step over her” (Dostoevsky 329). Perhaps “[he] didn’t murder a person, [he] murdered a principle! Yes, [he] murdered the principle all right, but [he] didn’t step over; [he] remained on this side . . . All [he] managed to do was kill. [He] didn’t even manage that, as it turns out . . .” (329). In taking initiative and killing Alyona to (theoretically) redistribute her money, he is attempting to exempt himself from and to “kill” the meek powerlessness of slave morality. However, in framing the murder as an exemption from ordinary morality instead of an inherently noble and just action, he still acknowledges the authority of the moral rules he attempts to transgress and ultimately acknowledges his inability to “step over” them; he remains “on this side,” in the domain of slave morality. He does not become noble or powerful; rather, he remains mired in the self-loathing and shame of slave morality. Instead of becoming a glorious figure above ordinary morality, he “may be still fouler and more horrid than the louse [he] killed,” as he accomplishes nothing but a violent and unjustified moral transgression (330). In exercising such vindictive and fatal power, he is no longer ‘good’ within slave morality, so in accordance with the reactionary structure, he must be evil. As he is unable to rise above the constraints of slave morality, his failed attempt to externalize his suffering and “discharge his affects” outwards collapses into guilt and self-punishment.
As Raskolnikov realizes that he is not the transgressive ‘extraordinary man’ figure he fancied himself to be, his hostility turns inwards, leading to the self-inflicted suffering of a Nietzschean ‘bad conscience.’ As conventional morality discourages violence and aggression, Nietzsche asserts that these natural instincts of a species adapted to “wilderness, war, [and] adventure” turn inwards when man is “enclosed once and for all within the sway of society and peace” (Nietzsche 56). He posits that “hostility, cruelty, pleasure in persecution, in assault, in change, in destruction—all of that turning itself against the possessors of such instincts . . . for lack of external enemies and resistance . . .: that is bad conscience” (57). The organization of peaceful society prevents violent instincts from being discharged outwards, so they “turn themselves inward,” leading man to persecute himself and pursue his own suffering (57). This severance from natural instinct, and the ensuing punishment, leads to the “leaden discomfort” of bad conscience (56). Raskolnikov’s self-sabotage and will to suffer after his murders offer a dramatic illustration of this bad conscience. He fails to transcend ordinary morality despite his attempt to externalize his aggression, so his malice turns in on himself. As Nietzsche states, “Those terrible bulwarks with which the organization of the state protects itself against the old instincts of freedom—punishments belong above all else to these bulwarks—brought it about that all those instincts of the wild . . . human [turned back] against man himself” (57). The moral framework of society causes humans to punish themselves even in the absence of actual enforcement, thus largely suppressing ‘wild’ instincts. Piven similarly discusses the “inner prosecutor” experienced by Dostoevsky protagonists (Piven 11). He conceptualizes inward-facing persecution as “internalized effigies. . . [that] haunt the self. . . [and evoke] moral and predatory anxiety, feelings of worthlessness and inferiority, depressive effects, and punishment fantasies” (11). The values of slave morality are internalized and thereby shape individuals’ behaviour, as is evident in Raskolnikov’s behaviour after the murder. No external forces initially resist or punish his transgression—even his victims scarcely put up a fight, and the second does not so much as raise her hands—so he persecutes himself, and seeks to increase his own suffering. He returns to the scene of the crime and rings the doorbell, relishing how “the excruciatingly awful, hideous sensation of before [comes] back to him” (Dostoevsky 208). He asks about the blood left by the murder, and urges the workmen to take him to the police bureau. He continuously pursues torment and self-incrimination. However, Raskolnikov’s suffering appears relatively useless—it is “not for anyone’s sake, but simply because ‘I must suffer’” (547). No amount of suffering can restore the lives he took. As Piven delicately puts it, “[Raskolnikov’s] victims remain rotting carcasses” (Piven 7). The murderer’s misery does nothing for the victim. It does not initially soothe his conscience either, as he remains fitful and tortured. It is his relationship with Sonya and the ideals she embodies that ultimately allow him to move out of this self-inflicted and self-destructive purgatory by providing a meaning for his suffering.
While Raskolnikov’s suffering is tormented and self-inflicted, Sonya provides a way of understanding and moralizing suffering through humility, sacrifice, and religion, which align with aspects of Nietzsche’s ascetic ideal. Nietzsche argues that the ascetic ideal provides meaning to suffering—including suffering produced or intensified by slave morality—by elevating wretchedness and suffering as righteous, thereby allowing the moral system to survive. He suggests that “the meaninglessness of suffering, not the suffering itself, was the curse that thus far lay stretched out over humanity—and the ascetic ideal offered it a meaning!” (Nietzsche 117). He argues that humans will willingly, even gladly, submit to suffering provided it has some meaning and purpose. The purpose of the ascetic ideal is not to remove causes of suffering such as material poverty or the bad conscience inflicted by slave morality. Instead, it aims to “anesthetize” the suffering, alleviating the symptoms while disregarding the underlying roots. While Raskolnikov is initially distressed and tortured in his purposeless suffering, Sonya influences him to recontextualize his situation by moralizing suffering in the manner of the ascetic ideal. Like Raskolnikov, Sonya experiences great suffering; however, she understands that suffering through self-sacrifice and piety, thus ‘anesthetizing’ it and making it bearable. Furthermore, Sonya’s suffering is not entirely self-inflicted and chosen as Raskolnikov’s is. Rather, it is situationally imposed. Her family’s poverty is largely caused by others’ actions, such as her father’s drinking. Sonya is “obliged to take the yellow ticket” in order to financially support her family (Dostoevsky 24). When Raskolnikov suggests that Sonya’s suffering is as futile as his, that she is “[destroying and betraying herself] for nothing,” and wonders why she doesn’t simply take her own life, her first thought is for her family and their dependence upon her for survival (386). Regardless of whether she is realistically able to save her family from their cruel fate, it is the sense of purpose through self-sacrifice that gives her suffering meaning and justification. Furthermore, religion is central to Sonya’s understanding of her life and her suffering. Nietzsche positions religion as an essential tool of the ascetic ideal. He states that “[t]he alleviation of suffering, ‘comforting’ of every kind,” is the “very genius” of the ascetic ideal, and that “[o]ne might call Christianity in particular a great treasure of the most ingenious means for comforting” (Nietzsche 93). The importance of religion in the moralizing and comforting of suffering is evident in Sonya’s relationship to Christianity. Sonya remains staunchly faithful in God even through her suffering, exclaiming “what would [she] be without God? . . . He does everything [for her]!” (Dostoevsky 388). Her faith in a higher power provides the comforting belief that there is some divine meaning and plan behind her suffering. Embracing suffering as the path to salvation reaffirms the values of slave morality, as weakness and wretchedness are made out to be virtuous and worthy. This provides meaning and purpose to what would otherwise be experienced as victimhood. Elena Volkova addresses the link between suffering and salvation in “The Salvation Story in Russian Literature.” She highlights that, in Russian literature, “no salvation is available without bearing one’s cross, that is, without suffering” (Volkova 32). Frequently, characters embrace suffering to become closer to Christ. Suffering is narrativized as a holy and worthy pursuit. In Crime and Punishment, Sonya urges Raskolnikov to “[a]ccept suffering, and through suffering redeem [himself]” (Dostoevsky 505). She convinces him to turn himself in, and to embrace the ensuing punishment as repentance, thus attaching a purpose to his suffering. She also urges him to take her cross, thereby embracing religion and the possibility of salvation. Volkova highlights two forms of the salvation story in Russian Literature which may be read as forms of the Imitation of Christ: “suffering with as a source of transforming love, and suffering for the sins of others” (Volkova 35). Both of these forms are present in Crime and Punishment. Most notably, Sonya bears suffering on behalf of others: first for her family’s survival, and later alongside Raskolnikov in Siberia, thereby affirming her characterization as a saint-like figure. In Siberia, Raskolnikov and Sonya suffer together, and it is under these conditions that Raskolnikov experiences his ultimate ‘revelation.’ For Sonya, and ultimately Raskolnikov, embracing suffering through religion and the promise of salvation offers a comforting sense of meaning and purpose in the face of harsh realities. Piven summarizes that “Dostoevsky passionately illustrates how human beings need God, salvation, deliverance from anguish, and something to provide convincing meaning, purpose, and worth” (Piven 9). Sonya and Raskolnikov find meaning through their relationship and the promise of salvation. These comforting narratives allow the characters to maintain hope and the will to live, even amid the bleak realities of a Siberian work camp. As Nietzsche stated earlier, the ascetic ideal—in this case, under the mantle of religious salvation—provides a meaning to soothe the “meaninglessness” of suffering (Nietzsche 117). However, comforting revelations do little to solve the underlying moral and existential problems.
While Sonya guides Raskolnikov towards ‘redemption’ through Christian submission to suffering, it may not truly resolve his suffering, but instead ‘anesthetizes’ it in the manner of Nietzsche’s ascetic ideal, producing what Piven reads as a state of narcotic oblivion. Piven argues that this Christ-like salvation through suffering is not a true salvation or resolution, but merely a comforting illusion that fails to address the underlying problems. While Raskolnikov’s revelatory moment in the epilogue seems to unlock “a renewed future, [and a] full resurrection into a new life,” Piven argues that it is oblivion, rather than deliverance, which Raskolnikov attains in Siberia (Dostoevsky 657). He claims that “Dostoevsky wanted salvation to be the answer, but his work confesses acidic doubts” (Piven 8). At this point, it is helpful to note the complexity of Dostoevsky’s own relationship with religion, which “like his fictional conversion narratives is fraught with mystery and paradox” (Bowers 103). Some of his religious uncertainty manifests itself in his fictional narratives. While Crime and Punishment seems to end on a hopeful note, some critics argue that it feels somewhat jarring in the context of the novel as a whole. Bowers outlines some of these reactions—various critics have called it “artistically weak,” inexplicably “miraculous,” or “too general” (Bowers 96). Piven is among those who argue that the epilogue is not a true resolution, suggesting that providing meaning does not solve the underlying troubles: “[p]eople don’t overcome existential wounds and scars by renouncing vanity and embracing mirages of divine redemption” (Piven 9). Instead, the illusion of salvation and the moralization of suffering simply numb the existential pain by soothing Raskolnikov’s ‘bad conscience’. Piven suggests that Raskolnikov’s exile and punishment “[bind him] in a womblike void blissfully dissolving awareness of [the] horrible world . . . Raskolnikov attains salvation through delirium” (Piven 6). Raskolnikov does not mentally come to terms with his crime or the conditions of his existence; rather, he evades them, entering a state of separation from reality. After his ‘revelation’, “[e]verything, even his crime, even his sentence and exile, now seemed . . . somehow alien and strange, as if it were not even him they had happened to. . . besides, he couldn’t have resolved anything now by conscious effort; he could only feel” (Dostoevsky 657-658). His rational faculties seem suspended, and he is detached from reality. He appears to have entered the anesthetized state which Nietzsche outlines as the ideal put forth by the ascetic priests – something akin to hypnotization or hibernation (Nietzsche 95). Nietzsche suggests that for those who suffer—the subjects of slave morality—the highest good is “the hypnotic feeling of nothingness, the rest of the deepest sleep, in short, the absence of suffering” (97). The ultimate goal is not a positive state of liberation or happiness, but simply numbness. This is what Raskolnikov seems ultimately to achieve. Piven summarizes this state effectively: if Raskolnikov’s ending constitutes salvation, then “salvation is the mental incapacitation and destruction of reality awareness, as well as the timorous refusal to confront actual brutality and injustice in the world” (Piven 9). From Piven’s skeptical perspective, this salvation is achieved through a delusional disregard for existential realities instead of self-reflection or repentance. However, this is not the only way to read the Epilogue. Bowers and Volkova help clarify why the ending’s suddenness may be a recognizable Russian salvation narrative rather than merely an artistic failure. Bowers examines the seemingly sudden ending through the context of generic expectation. She identifies “the redemption narrative” as one of the text’s main “generic plot model[s],” similarly to Volkova’s previously mentioned ‘salvation story’ (Bowers 100). Through the framework of the salvation story common to Russian literature, Dostoevsky’s Epilogue no longer seems so inexplicably miraculous. Volkova posits that in Russian hagiography and literature, salvation happens “in one’s heart and then is supposed to transform one’s mind” (Volkova 32). Thus, his dramatic and seemingly inexplicable epiphany may be read as the first step towards salvation—though “[h]is mind is still infected with a false philosophy . . . [h]is heart is transformed” (39). Volkova’s more hopeful reading suggests that while Raskolnikov appears to maintain his earlier philosophies, his transformative and redemptive love for Sonya will eventually engender a mental shift towards repentance. As Volkova points out, Raskolnikov’s epiphany does not necessarily represent total salvation; rather, it is the first step towards possible eventual redemption. The last lines of Crime and Punishment state that “[Raskolnikov’s] new life was not being given to him for free, that it would still cost him dear, that it would have to be paid for with a great, future deed” (Dostoevsky 658). This seems to imply the necessity of further reckonings and challenges on the path to repentance, indicating that salvation will require more than epiphanic moments and delusion. While the story of Crime and Punishment has ended, “here a new story begins: the story of a man’s gradual renewal and gradual rebirth” (658). This interpretation addresses the apparent lack of resolution, as it positions Raskolnikov at the beginning of a long and potentially difficult journey towards redemption rather than already having achieved complete salvation. Through Sonya and her ideals, Raskolnikov embraces the means of anesthetizing his suffering through the promise of salvation, which renews his will to continue living despite the continued existence of harsh realities and the likelihood of further suffering. Read through Nietzsche, this redemptive framework allows slave morality to perpetuate itself by moralizing suffering.
Throughout Crime and Punishment, the characters’ struggles can be read as a dramatization of Nietzsche’s account of suffering and morality. Raskolnikov’s murder is an extreme but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to rise above the constraints of the ordinary moral framework which elevates powerlessness and ineffectuality. After murdering two people, Raskolnikov realizes that he is not actually the morally unfettered extraordinary figure whom he strove to embody. Thus constrained by conventional morality, his hostility collapses inwards into self-punishment. His search for suffering suggests a Nietzschean ‘bad conscience’—the internalization of ‘natural’ instincts to aggression. He becomes fitful and tortured, inflicting suffering upon himself seemingly without reason. Sonya guides Raskolnikov towards a religious, moral, and purposeful conception of suffering, which grants a sense of comfort by providing meaning and justification for suffering. The justification of suffering as a Christ-like path to salvation follows the framework of the classic ‘Salvation Story’ common to Russian literature. By conceiving of suffering as morally valuable, it is given meaning, and thus rendered bearable. While Raskolnikov’s epiphany in the Epilogue seems to lack the self-reflection and repentance, placing suffering within the narrative structure of the salvation story provides hope for eventual redemption, towards which Raskolnikov takes the first steps in the Epilogue. The alleviation of suffering via moralizing can be read through Nietzsche’s concept of the ascetic ideal, which enables the survival of a slave morality by anesthetizing suffering. The ascetic ideal provides a sense of comfort by elevating—and thereby justifying—qualities such as self-sacrifice, weakness, and pity. Wretchedness is made out to be a virtue, so that the wretched remain satisfied with their station while the material realities and causes of suffering remain unchanged. While neither the ascetic ideal nor the promise of salvation remedy the causes of suffering, they do numb it enough to continue with life regardless.
Works Cited
Bowers, Katherine. “Plotting the Ending: Generic Expectation and the Uncanny Epilogue of Crime and Punishment.” Canadian Slavonic Papers, vol. 62, no. 2, 2020, pp. 95–108. Routledge, https://doi.org/10.1080/00085006.2020.1750765.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. 1866. Translated and edited by Oliver Ready, Penguin Classics, 2014.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality. 1887. Translated by Maudemarie Clark and Alan Swensen, Hackett Pub. Co, 1998.
Piven, Jerry. “Disintegration, Salvation, And/or Madness in Dostoevsky.” International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, vol. 23, no. 1, Mar. 2026, https://doi.org/10.1002/aps.70038.
Volkova, Elena. “The Salvation Story in Russian Literature.” Literature and Theology, vol. 20, no. 1, 20 Jan. 2006, pp. 31–45. Oxford Academic, https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/fri057.