ABSTRACT
This chapter formulates the epileptic mode of being by examining Demons, particularly the building engineer Alexei Nilych Kirilov's project of suicide. It suggests that Kirilov also has a will to epilepsy. The chapter discusses Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals, his notebook commentary on Demons, and Maurice Blanchot's discussion of Alexei Nilych Kirilov in The Space of Literature. It explores how the will is related to the notion of time by focusing on Nicholai Stavrogin's confession and his suicide. The chapter also suggests that the will to epilepsy works in the same way as the will to 'heroize' the present, thereby showing that the epileptic mode of being illuminates the understanding of modernity. Kirilov explains his research on the subject of suicide to chronicler Govorov. Nicholai Stavrogin continues to ask Kirilov: Kirilov seeks eternity in the present instead of the future, just as Myshkin envisages eternal harmonies in the ecstatic moments of epilepsy.
