Ubermensch morality in dostoevsky's crime and punishment
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Date
2021
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Université Oum El Bouaghi
Abstract
Ethics, also called moral philosophy, is the discipline concerned with what is morally good and bad and morally right and wrong. Humans have pondered upon how they ought to live, and what should govern them in their behavior ever since they have had a conscience. If we follow God's morality in our lives, then we are following the Divine Command Theory. If we judge moral actions by which produce the most pleasure, then we subscribe to Utilitarianism. If we choose to come up with our own moral and value system, then we are living by the words of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky discusses in his novel Crime and Punishment the above possibilities, and attempts to provide an answer to the aforementioned questions. This research probes Dostoevsky's novel in relation to deep moral concepts and discusses them in retrospect to various moral theories including: The Divine Command Theory and Utilitarianism. For a better understanding of all these theories, this study provides a comparison between Dostoevsky's and Nietzsche's philosophies, and sheds light on the divergences and convergences they have. It also applies these theories by analyzing the protagonist of the novel, Raskolnikov, that embraces many of Nietzsche's moral philosophy and concepts such as the ?bermensch, master/slave morality and will to power. In this research, I argue that morality is not subjective to an individual's perspective, but rather to an objective truth that should be followed to the dot. In this regard, I fully subscribe to Dostoevsky's representation of morality, God and truth in his novel, while I reject Nietzsche's philosophy and its interpretation of the world and its inhabitants.
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Keywords
Crime and punishment, Morality, Dostoevsky