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In his novel Crime and Punishment (1866), Dostoevsky makes the young intellectual Rodion Raskolnikov take the historical death of God to its ultimate consequences: if God does not exist, everything is permitted. Therefore, Raskolnikov understands that capitalist, relativist and increasingly individualistic modernity revokes Thou Shalt Not Kill and opens up to it the impetus for the instrumentalization of the other – one of the facets of the banality of evil – as a true nihilist test: would Raskolnikov be capable of committing murder to assert the power of your ego and occupy the vacant throne of God? It is worth noting that, in Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov conceives and executes the murders – the initial planning only involved the death of the usurer Alióna Ivanovna, but, at the time of the crime, the victim's sister appears unexpectedly, and the young nihilist finds himself compelled to violate the boundary of Thou shalt not kill once more (and always).