Deep Analysis of Crime and Punishment: Guide to Existential Philosophy (Part Five) (Patreon)

What do we mean when we call Crime and Punishment an existential novel?

Well, Dostoyevsky was asking the questions typically the reserve of traditional religion.

What is the meaning of life? 

Is there a God? 

Who am I?

In Crime and Punishment, we bear uncomfortable witness to what Sartre called "nausea" and what Heidegger called the "herd". 

So let's talk about that in a bit more depth as we continue to hurtle to the sickening end of Dostoyevsky's devastating novel.

• 0:00 a season in hell
• 1:50 Anna Karenina vs Crime and Punishment
• 3:59 Jane Austen’s Persuasion and the Proust Project
• 5:00 my favourite line (plus reading assignment for you)
• 7:00 guide to existentialism
• 14:00 peak experience and Romanticism
• 16:00 negative vs positive existentialists (Turgenev and Frankl)
• 17:00 Karl Jaspers’ Psychopathology
• 19:00 Heidegger’s “herd”
• 22:50 Sartre’s nausea
• 25:00 Raskolnikov as Jekyll and Hyde
• 29:00 “Why do you ask what cannot be asked? Why such empty questions?”
• 30:00 Persuasion and Providence tie-in
• 32:00 what if C&P was written from Sonya’s POV?
• 39:00 poetry reading assignment (Blake’s Tyger and Lamb)
• 41:00 self-punishment is the most severe
• 44:20 share your thoughts

Happy reading!

I will do a formal poll and discussion once we've got some distance from Crime and Punishment, but let me know - did you like the novel?

How does Dostoyevsky compare to Tolstoy in your mind? Aesthetically? Philosophically?

Be as brutal and honest as possible - all insights are illuminating.