Abstract

In winter 1886-87 Nietzsche discovered Dostoievski’s work thanks to a strange French book entitled L’esprit souterrain. The philosopher’s reading of the “seconde partie” of this volume is documented in this essay and his main discoveries are set out in it as well, that is: the “underground’s” symbol and the features of an “underground existence”: loneliness, self-knowledge, sharp and evil conscience, passivity, pleasure on desperation , the ressentiment, anti-utopian pessimism and a conception of friendship and love as a fight between the strong and the weak ones and also as will to control and to tyrannize others. A decisive question remains open: what does the “real alive life” mean?