The Pale Criminal, the Guilty Conscience, and the Constitution of Crime: Nietzsche Reading “Raskolnikov”

Abstract

Friedrich Nietzsche’s classic Thus Spoke Zarathustra contains a short chapter entitled “On the Pale Criminal.” The chapter provides rich insights into the psychology of the criminal by examining what Nietzsche calls the image of the deed. This article argues that “On the Pale Criminal” is well situated to reveal insights about the meaning of crime. The article subjects Nietzsche’s “On the Pale Criminal” to a detailed exegetical reading to unearth the possibility of theorizing crime anew. To aid in this endeavor, the article reads “On the Pale Criminal” alongside and against Fyodor Dostoevsky’s influential Crime and Punishment, focusing, again exegetically, on the psychological turmoil of Rodion Raskolnikov, the protagonist of the novel, who gives vivid color to, and brings to life, Nietzsche’s pale criminal. After explicating the essence of the pale criminal, the article explores what this might reveal about the meaning of crime. The pale criminal, the article contends, reveals the way guilt (in the legal sense) and the guilty conscience (in the psychological sense) precede thought and deed, and shows that crime is constituted not by thought and deed, but by an already present, ex ante, guilt which feeds the requisite culpability of crime, including the very birth of crime itself. Guilt, this article contends, precedes crime, not the other way around.