Two Classics: “Crime and Punishment” and “Columbo” (Dwight Longenecker, September 16th, 2025, Imaginative Conservative)
So Columbo, like Crime and Punishment, is a classic, and rightfully so because it too penetrates to the heart of a modern heresy and exposes it for the lie that it is. This is the Nietzschean idea of the ubermensch—the superman who can transcend ordinary law. Nietzsche formalized the idea later in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but Dostoevsky has Raskolnikov echoing proto-Nietzschean concepts: the utilitarian and Hegelian theories abroad in nineteenth-century Russia.
Columbo deflates the arrogance of his suspects; in the final scene each murderer is humbled. So Dostoevsky critiques the superman heresy by showing that Raskolnikov does not have the emotional fortitude to live with his irrevocable act. His final humiliation (and salvation) is to accept the unconditional love of Sonya and to pursue the path of repentance and reparation.