Creation, Tyranny, and Constitutionalism in Nietzsche and Dostoevsky

• In Event: Modern Political Theory

Abstract

Readers of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky have long observed and focused on common themes in their work, particularly with regard to ideas about crime, power, and creation. This paper seeks, instead, to analyze important differences within those common themes by focusing more explicitly on their political implications. Despite so many similarities between Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, I argue that we can draw different conclusions about how these to thinkers understood and valued individualism, democracy, constitutionalism, and tyranny. Indeed, I will suggest that they are antithetical political thinkers. Whereas Nietzsche champions the unrestrained tyrannical rule of a visionary genius, Dostoevsky’s work suggests that political greatness never arises from a single individual; it is only through the deep social ties of people working together that progress can be achieved. Given that both thinkers are generally considered to be reactionaries, significant differences in their ideas about democracy are particularly interesting to examine in an era of global democratic decline.

Author

• Dave Siegel, St. Joseph's University