Dostoevsky And Nihilism

Nihilism as a philosophical discourse roots in Enlightening Modernity. Enlightening Modernity as a project which aims at getting rid of the crisis brought by Nominalism Revolution has a concealed theological core. Enlightening Modernity attempts to search for a new metaphysical/theological answer to the issue of the relationship and natural character of God, human being, and the Nature. It also wants to build the foundation of human’s happiness through self-assertion of human being. However, from the starting point, the Enlightenment attempts to avoid such a problem: in a world which an omnipotent God has determined anything, whether human being has free will or not. The Enlightenment has driven out God from the region of man, the Nature and God, which made man hastened to the Nature inseparably. Consequently, the previous problem which the Enlightenment attempted to avoid has transformed into a new problem:what is the relationship between freedom and man’s will in a world determined by natural necessity. Only transforming man or the Nature into God could the contradiction between natural necessity and free will of man resolve.Therefore, one route of the Enlightenment is to emphasize the free will of man and to believe that man could be God; the other is to regard man as merely the beast living in the natural necessity and as a kind of material guiding and motivating by desire and pure self-interest which has not any free will at all. The history of the development of Nihilism is the history of the strengthening of human’s will, which resulted from the deification of man through the first route of Enlightenment:man has occupied the position of God and become the governor of the nature. Besides, the will of man has been recognized as powerful and successful everlasting.Germany as a nation whose process of modernization initiated later had experienced the Enlightenment in the middle and late of18th century. The existed system of religion and traditional morality were threatened by the incoming of the Enlightenment and scientific discourse. As the result, Friedrich Jacobi, a philosopher in Germany, criticized the discourse of reason in the Enlightenment in order to defending religion and belief. He used the term "Nihilism" to refer the denial of God and revelation and the deification of human’s will resulting from the Enlightening Modernity.Russian in19th century faced similar situation like Germany------the traditional Eastern Orthodoxy and the establishment of government and church had been threatened by the incoming of western progressive thoughts. More specifically, most of Russian radical intellectuals of1860s, namely the so called "Nihilists", had the theological background, which revealed the concealed theological core inside the Modernity in a rather fierce way. Dostoevsky perceived insightfully that he was living in a great epoch of dialogue. Like Jacobi, Dostoevsky criticized Nihilism and Enlightenment Modernity through his literary writing in order to defending the Eastern Orthodox and the governing of church. The aim of writing of Notes from The Underground, Crime and Punishment, and Devils is to refute the Nihilists, namely the radical intelligentsia’s progressive thoughts and ideology borrowed from the West.As a journalist, Dostoevsky denounced Nihilism publicly in a high-profile with his literary writing as a way of political practice. In Dostoevsky’s view, the Russian radical intelligentsia has lost their traditional Eastern Orthodox and estranged themselves from the Russian people under the influence of western thoughts, but in other hand, due to the gap between the text interpretation and the author’s intention, the literary writings of Dostoevsky involved into Nihilism deeply, and this point has been typically represented by the fact that the literary Nihilists created by Dostoevsky have dramatically become the source of Nietzsche’s anti-Nihilism.