Human, All Too Human

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.
(Dostoyevsky, 1866/1991, p. 317)

There is no redemption for one who suffers from himself ...
(Nietzsche, 1883-1885/2005, p. 33)

Nietzsche lived in books and books lived in him. In his influential work Nietzsche: Life as Literature, Nehamas asserted that Nietzsche viewed the world as if it were a literary text and that his goal as an author was to create a specific literary character. However, the self-fashioning of oneself as a literary character was just as important in the life of Nietzsche the man as it was in his philosophy.

Having accidently discovered Dostoyevsky in 1887, Nietzsche became instantly in awe of the Russian writer. He read The Notes from Underground, House of the Dead, The Insulted and Humiliated, The Devils, and probably The Idiot (as far as we know, all in French translation). It remains uncertain whether he read Crime and Punishment. If he had done, its chief protagonist, Raskolnikov, may have struck him as someone who attempted to become the Übermensch. In a fragment entitled The Criminal, Nietzsche proclaimed Dostoyevsky to be the only psychologist from whom he had something to learn. In the same passage, he wrote: "the criminal type is the type of the strong human being under unfavourable circumstances: a strong human being made sick".

Rodion Raskolnikov was a brilliant but impoverished former student whose family, uncannily resembling Nietzsche's, consisted of a devoted mother and sister, as well as a baby brother and a deceased father. He led a lonely existence amidst the faceless crowds in St. Petersburg. His deeply felt resentment and rage against the world's order led him to develop a theory of the extraordinary man. Such a man would stand alone, disdainful of established moral rules, and be a law onto himself. Above all, he would be hard and merciless in his attitude towards ordinary, mediocre men. But there was another side to Raskolnikov. According to his friend Razumikhin, he also had a noble nature and a kind heart, but did not like revealing his feelings and would rather do a cruel thing than open his heart; "it's as though there were two opposing characters alternating within him". Whilst "off guard", Raskolnikov gives his last money to the poor widow Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladov, and also risks his life by rescuing a child from a fire. Yet, to prove his own hardness, he proceeds to kill the pawnbroker Alyona, whom he considers something of a vermin. On the night before the murder, he has an extraordinary dream. He dreams of being a young boy again, who walks with his father along the road that leads to the graveyard, holding his hand. As they pass a tavern, he sees a drunken cabdriver mercilessly whipping his horse, trying to make it gallop. The beating continues even after the animal has collapsed. With tears streaming down his face, Rodion Raskolnikov approaches the dead horse, embraces its bloody head and kisses it on the eyes.

On 3 January 1889 in Turin, Nietzsche crossed the Rubicon to insanity. Having left his lodgings, he walked into the Piazza Carlo Alberto where a cabdriver was beating his horse. In tears, Nietzsche flung his arms around the animal's neck and collapsed. In the end, he had no joy to share - only pain.

The question arises: is not vulnerability, which makes a man "human, all too human", more precious than steely strength? In this may lie the enduring appeal of Christ, and perhaps even of Nietzsche himself. Raskolnikov ended up in Siberia and wasted many years of his life proving nothing. His ideal of the extraordinary man turned out to be a toxic vapour that only alienated him from himself and from those who loved him. Perhaps every lofty, uncompromising ideal, including the Übermensch, is doomed to failure? It is often a mask of unacknowledged weakness that parades as power.