Our times are under the sign of nihilism, a “disquieting guest” that, in the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, brings about “the fall of the highest values”, that is, the progressive disintegration of the theoretical and moral structures that have underpinned the life of Western man from the beginning. Initially a marginal phenomenon, highlighted only by a few eccentric figures, nihilism is now, whether we like it or not, the horizon and common denominator of all the phenomena of our culture. Reflection on it is therefore an unavoidable and urgent requirement for philosophical thought, to the extent that, through it, the very conditions of possibility for the survival of the West, of the Western way of understanding the universe and man, are called into question. The figure and work of F.M. Dostoevsky (1821-1881) emerges in this context as a particularly apt witness for an attempt at clarification and diagnosis: a contemporary of the first explicit manifestations of the nihilistic phenomenon, the author was able to identify with exceptional lucidity the transcendence of its implications, often going far beyond, in the depth of his intuitions, the formulations achieved by his own apologists. The whole of his work constitutes, despite its literary and not technically philosophical character - or precisely thanks to this, since the dimension of the problem far exceeds that of mere intellectual controversy - a response of surprising rigor and penetration to the challenge posed and a privileged instrument for reflection.