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Thematic content

Ideologies

Demons is often noted for the range of clashing ideologies present in the novel. As in most of Dostoyevsky's other works, certain characters are descriptive of specific philosophies.

• Nihilism, embodied by Pyotr Verkhovensky, is an extreme ideology that demands the destruction of the current social order. A description of Verkhovensky's philosophy of political change is posited as "the method of a hundred million heads," referring to the predicted death toll.
• Shigalovism (or "shigalovshina") is a philosophy specific to the book and particularly of the character Shigalyov. Very similar to barracks communism, Shigalyovism demands that ninety percent of society be reduced to a condition of inhuman slavery so the other actually useful ten percent of society is free to make progress. Dostoyevsky advances this bizarre doctrine, not with the intention of proposing a viable philosophy, but rather an inane one, that lends weight to his portrayal of Shigalyov and his fellow conspirators as radical "demons", themselves more caricatures than accurate reflections of revolutionaries.
• Conservatism is embodied by the provincial governor Andrei Antonovich Von Lembke, and is shown to be incapable of dealing with subversive extremism. Indeed, the elites of the provincial community initially find the radicals fashionable and charming, arranging at their request the literary banquet from which the fiasco of the planned revolution begins.

Existentialism

Dostoyevsky as a "spiritual realist" based his novels on the premise of the "life of ideas".^[7] In Demons, Dostoyevsky applies this theory not so much to the human condition and human suffering but rather to human political reality in general. Dostovesky's analysis is not to deal or honestly reflect the human condition (as in his other "existentialist" novels) but rather to portray the reality of power, mankind's desire to manifest its will and obtain power. Dostoyevsky defines evil here as the passion for power and control, showing that reason and logic are a ruse to justify rebellion against existence. The heart of nihilism is the belief that existence is meaningless and should be destroyed and that this idea is even more "irrational" in its reasoning and justification than the ideas it opposes. Nihilism, in its claims to overthrow the old order, which it calls irrational and unjust, is hypocritical, because the new order shows itself to be even more irrational and unjust in its ideas and the implementation of those ideas. Dostoyevsky takes a Russian Orthodox stance on ideas as demons: that it is the "isms" of mankind that, as demonic possessors of man, lead him away from God. The demons are ideas, such as: idealism, rationalism, empiricism, materialism, utilitarianism, positivism, socialism, anarchism, nihilism and ultimately atheism. Getting man to relinquish these ideas is to have mankind embrace the asceticism of Russian Orthodoxy. This is in direct opposition to the Nietzschean perspective that treated religion as tyrannical and as the basis for mankind's suffering.^[8]

"It was not you who ate the idea, but the idea that ate you."

Pyotr Verkhovensky

Camus also wrote a stage adaptation of the novel.