Key Ideas
The nihilist defined — one who bows to no authority.
Nature is not a temple but a workshop.
The duel between Bazarov and Pavel Petrovich.
Bazarov’s unrequited love for Anna Odintsova.
Bazarov dies of typhus from a cut during an autopsy — the denier undone by nature.
See Yevgeny Bazarov.
Characters
1Lines to Remember
3 quotationsA nihilist is a man who does not bow down before any authority, who does not accept any principle on faith, however much that principle may be revered.
Context & when to use it
Arkady explains his friend Bazarov to his father and uncle.
The definition of Russian nihilism — use it when someone calls themselves a free thinker.
A decent chemist is twenty times more useful than any poet.
Context & when to use it
Bazarov’s utilitarian contempt for art.
For science versus the humanities; utility versus beauty.
Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man’s the workman in it.
Context & when to use it
Against Romantic reverence for nature.
For instrumental reason, the technological attitude (Heidegger’s “standing-reserve”).
Explore Next
related by shared connectionsRussian Nihilism
The 1860s movement of young Russian radicals who rejected tradition, religion, art and authority in the name of science, utility and the people.
The Road of Nihilism
How “nothing matters” became an idea, a movement, a diagnosis, and a test — from Jacobi to Camus.
Anton Chekhov
Russian doctor, short-story writer and playwright who revolutionised both forms — stories without neat plots or morals, plays where the drama happens beneath ordinary talk — and became the great artist of wasted lives, quiet longing and compassion.
Nikolai Chernyshevsky
Radical critic and author of What Is to Be Done? — the utopian novel of “rational egoism” that inspired Lenin and provoked Dostoevsky’s Underground Man.
The Rebel
Camus’s history of revolt — metaphysical and political — arguing that rebellion that kills for history betrays its own origin. It ended his friendship with Sartre.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Macbeth, told that his wife is dead, delivers the bleakest speech in Shakespeare — life is a walking shadow, a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.