The Gospel of Chernyshevsky: Nihilism, Art, and Religious Asceticism

Abstract

The paper attempts to evaluate the philosophical and religious elements of Chernyshevsky’s book What is to Be Done. Taking into consideration a critical fortune that considered the book as a “new gospel”, the paper is divided into three parts. Firstly, we evaluate the religious trajectory of the young Chernyshevsky, his interpretation of Christianity, and the transformation of his religious convictions through his contact with Feuerbach’s philosophy. Secondly, the article analyzes the essay The Aesthetic Relations of Art with Reality, and Chernyshevsky’s redefinition of the concepts such as beautiful, tragic, and sublime, which will be at the base of his realism and of his materialist aesthetic. Lastly, the paper interprets What is to Be Done as a symptom of secularization of Christianity that translated the religious instinct of Chernyshevsky through a scientific and materialist Weltanschauung.

Keywords

• chernyshevsky
• art
• religion
• nihilism
• materialism
• christianity
• asceticism