and Nietzsche have most in common?<\/em><\/p>\nThey’re God-obsessed:\u00a0 they’re both obsessed by the idea of God.\u00a0 It’s a tormenting or all-consuming concern for them, whether God is there or not.<\/p>\n
The most interesting part is not where they coincide, but where they diverge.\u00a0 It’s actually like a labyrinth of concerns:\u00a0 the more you read each of them, the more you realize they would have probably profoundly agreed on practically everything \u2013 everything that really matters.\u00a0 That’s what’s really interesting.\u00a0 But where they begin to diverge is just as irrevocable as a train going down the tracks:\u00a0 there’s no turning back at that point:\u00a0 and so Dostoevsky ultimately chooses to believe (like St. Paul says, \u201cLord, help my unbelief\u201d), whereas Nietzsche ultimately chooses to reject all legitimacy of faith.<\/p>\n
Q2.What questions compelled these two thinkers and writers?<\/em><\/p>\nBeauty, truth, goodness \u2013 it’s basically these three eternal enigmas that drive their writings.\u00a0 So I’ve tried to organize them as large overarching themes in the book.\u00a0 There’s the liberating allure of criminality, for one (a very big one!) \u2013 and then there’s the existentialist crisis of meaning (because both men are certainly two of the most influential fathers of existentialism); then there’s the tension between paganism and Christianity (actually an argument between aesthetics and morality), and finally there’s the terrible disease or cultural malaise of nihilism.\u00a0 It’s the last issue that remains especially urgent and timely, so it appears in the title of the book.<\/p>\n
Q3.Why do you think nihilism is so urgent for today\u2019s world?<\/em><\/p>\nNihilism is the number one concern in our world today.\u00a0 Nihilism is the spectre of nothingness haunting our society.\u00a0 As I began to teach Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, I could see the rise of the very thing that they both had predicted with such dread:\u00a0 nihilism indeed, in virtually every expression or experience of modern life.\u00a0 Technology and globalization have removed all boundaries and reduced and flattened everything that matters, in human terms.<\/p>\n
Q4.Do Dostoevsky and Nietzsche provide a remedy for nihilism?<\/em><\/p>\nI`d say that each of them definitely do.\u00a0 They identify the same problem, but they come up with different solutions.\u00a0 One could say that Nietzsche’s way out of the problem has been tried, but misunderstood or misapplied:\u00a0 the fascist appropriations of Nietzsche’s \u201cwill to power\u201d or \u201caristocratic radicalism\u201d point to a failure to bring to life his cherished ideal of the individual overcoming \u201cthe herd\u201d (or the mediocre majority), alone and untrammelled.\u00a0 On the other hand, one could say that Dostoevsky’s solution has neither been tried nor understood since it’s all there in his last great novel The Brothers Karamazov<\/u><\/em> \u2013 a way to overcome the world while loving it, \u201cwatering the earth with your tears,\u201d as he had one character put it \u2013 something akin to what Chesterton said about Christianity being the greatest ideal in the world, still not fully tried.<\/p>\nI’d like to add that there is something undeniably hideous about the way the world is turning:\u00a0 something deeply wrong and sick in our failure to inculcate true values, support living institutions, nourish each other in true fellowship.\u00a0 There is so much that is wrong in the world today that no one can fail to recognize it. The question is, can anyone still feel enough love or energy to change it?\u00a0 For the flip side of nihilism is always apathy and despair.<\/p>\n
But the point of reading and thinking alongside Dostoevsky and Nietzsche is that they were anything but apathetic.\u00a0 They cared deeply and passionately about everything they wrote, and that is surely why fresh readers flock to them generation after generation: Dostoevsky and Nietzsche wrote with a palpable love and energy, and they each proposed vital solutions that demand individual effort, awareness, and spiritual work.<\/p>\n
Q5.Should we take this nineteenth-century remedy just as seriously today?<\/em><\/p>\nWell, Nietzsche once thought he’d provided a remedy to the perils of nihilism (or at least been on the road towards providing such a remedy).\u00a0 But only time can tell whether we can apply it correctly.\u00a0 Nietzscheans of every imaginable stripe have not in fact moved the world forward:\u00a0 the cataclysms of the twentieth century all somehow bear the palimpsest of Nietzsche`s signature.\u00a0 And it’s equally true that a Dostoevskian future has yet to be fulfilled in accordance with Dostoevsky’s own vision.\u00a0 Will beauty save the world?\u00a0 Can we ever set ourselves aside long enough to feel truly \u201cresponsible to all for all\u201d?\u00a0 This is all still in potentia:\u00a0 <\/em>the truly momentous imitation of Christ en masse <\/em>has yet to pass.\u00a0 Clearly, if neither man’s vision has yet succeeded in positively transforming the world, that does not mean it is irrelevant.\u00a0 Quite the contrary.<\/p>\nQ6.What value lies in reading Dostoevsky and Nietzsche in dialogue?<\/em><\/p>\nThe beginning of philosophy is defined by dialogue.\u00a0 You have two of the greatest minds of the nineteenth century whose writings still exist, and they seem meant to be read together because they so naturally complement each other’s voices and amplify each other`s points.\u00a0 So the actual debate they might have had never happened in time or space, but it can happen for the reader today.<\/p>\n
In addition, my own understanding has been infinitely enhanced by approaching Dostoevsky and Nietzsche in tandem.\u00a0 For me, it started in graduate school.\u00a0 Nietzsche was the focus of my doctoral dissertation, and Dostoevsky was the focus of the doctoral dissertation of my best friend.\u00a0 We consequently spent many wonderful hours discussing each other’s chapters together as study buddies.\u00a0 So the seeds for the book were planted for me back then.<\/p>\n
Once I started teaching I thought of combining Dostoevsky and Nietzsche in an original course, and I was immediately struck by the excitement that these two thinkers generated in students when they were presented together, rather than separately.\u00a0 The success of the course from the very beginning told me that there was a book that needed to be written, not only for the benefit of the students (since a book we could use did not exist in any library), but as a tribute to the students` generosity of involvement with both Dostoevsky`s and Nietzsche’s ideas.<\/p>\n
A research essay topic that I regularly assign in this course asks students to imagine a sustained and serious dialogue between Dostoevsky and Nietzsche based on assigned readings from each.\u00a0 Most students excel at this exercise.\u00a0 Since so many student scripts of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche turned out to be so refreshing and delightful, a shortlist of ten excerpts are showcased in an appendix to the book. Here\u2019s one example:<\/p>\n
![\"against_nihilism_front_cover_jpg_medium\"](\"https:\/\/www-chris.dawsoncollege.qc.ca\/humanities\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/95\/against_nihilism_front_cover_jpg_medium.jpg\")
<\/a>Q1.How would you describe what Dostoevsky <\/em>and Nietzsche have most in common?<\/em><\/p>\n