When you have read Part I and the first part of Frank’s article, then familiarize yourselves with Existentialism (Wikipedia believe it or not is good place to start). So armed re-read the footnote in Frank drawing on Hirsch’s definition of “meaning” and “significance.” Since Frank attempts to provide the meaning of the text, let your own response be to its significance for you. The Underground man desires a debate-give it to him. You can accept or refute his assertions on “two times two,” “The Crystal Palace,” “the toothache,” “the anthill,” “free will,” or whatever other topic might strike your fancy. (300 words is plenty-we do want to discuss the text.!
One other possibility is to remember Karamzin’s “Poor Liza.” As an alternative to the despicable actions and words of the Underground man, Dostoevsky provides us with a prostitute whose actions speak louder than words. What is the answer to the Underground Man’s ranting and ravings? Is it important or even essential that the response resides in a woman?
The Underground Man says that there is enjoyment in a toothache from the ability to express anger and pain at “someone unknown” through malignant moaning (10). These moans communicate the consciousness that you are in pain, and will continue to be in pain despite any of your desires or efforts otherwise. Unless “someone wishes” to stop your teeth from aching, they will continue to do so (9). The Underground Man’s toothache seems to support one of the basic tenets of existentialism, that the individual alone retains the responsibility to give his life meaning. His contradictory nature appears as he still acknowledges the higher power that can start or stop toothaches, but argues that the individual has the power to make of that toothache what he will – he can still find enjoyment in it. This discussion of the toothache immediately follows the Underground Man lamenting the inevitability of logic. If the logical progression that two plus two makes four disgusts you, do not believe in it or choose to uphold it as one of your values. I find this also to be inherently contradictory, because although I agree that man should choose the values and ideals by which he wants to live to truly live authentically, there are laws of nature like two plus two makes four. That is not absurd – mathematics is not the first value of society that I would reject. Those toothache moans convey “the whole legal system of nature on which you spit disdainfully” (9). The world may be absurd, but I think Dostoevsky’s “Swiftian satire” shows through when he chooses realities of life as innocuous as a toothache and as inoffensive as computation.
I don’t know much about ants, but if the Underground Man is citing them as a species that works towards concrete goals and achieves them and moves on, I think he made a poor choice. An anthill, for an ant, is surely an infinite and impossible undertaking, far more so than most of the goals we humans busy ourselves with. Ants don’t have the same instinct for destruction that we have, perhaps, but that may only be because they have no need to destroy what progress they have made if they are nowhere close to success. The Underground Man is anxious to draw lines between inferior and superior beings, even if he acknowledges the lives of those superior beings to be wretched. He is constantly complaining about the plight of being too intelligent and too conscious. It’s all very well to say that humans have a bent for self-destruction, but he has no right to use that as an excuse for his own self-destructive behaviors, claiming to be simply too highly evolved to succeed in a normal social setting. The Underground Man uses his self-perceived strengths to excuse his weaknesses. Of course he also uses his weaknesses to excuse his weaknesses. He would get on much better if he stopped identifying himself as a wicked man immune to walls. After all, the people he likens to ants, who go to work and to the pothouse every day, are still people, most likely as discerning as he is. Supposed brilliance is not an excuse for failure, or more accurately for failing to try.
As Frank points out the major philosophical question the underground man struggles with is that of determinism and the meaning that can be prescribed to a life preordained completely by natural law: “My anger, consequence of the damned laws of consciousness, is subject to chemical decomposition. As you look, its object vanishes into thin air, its reasons evaporate, the offender is nowhere to be found, the affront ceases to ban offence and becomes destiny, something like a toothache, for which nobody is to blame, and consequently there remains only the same outcome, which is banging one’s head as hard as one can against the stone wall.” The triviality on which human actions are based is a major concern for the underground man and is a contributing factor to his destituteness. Adhering to the d’Holbach school of thought, which dictates the supremacy of cause and effect, is clearly claustrophobia inducing and it largely defines the underground man’s character. While being aware of the limiting nature of existence is preferable to the underground man he still admits to envying the men of action who treat the wall less as an obstacle and more as a natural barrier that marks the ends of their ambitions. In this way we see an undercurrent of existentialism and scholars of Nietzsche would most likely argue that the underground man’s conflict with the wall is a result of his yearning to transgress the normal boundaries of human existence and achieve Ubermensch status. Yet since the underground man is so painfully aware of his bondage to natural laws and the walls that surround them he is made pathetic and subjected to his very own absurd social behavior. It is the rejection of existence – precipitated as Frank points out by a rationality derived from “hyperconsciousness” – that makes the underground man a dejected figure.
First, I must say that I do not wish to give an argument; I do not wish necessarily to oppose, for what good does struggling against the stone wall of the Underground Man by battering myself against it as he batters himself against the wall of nature? It is utterly futile, I tell you. And yet, here it goes.
Why must you, my pale underground friend, oppose the laws of nature? Why does your “hyperconscious” state of mind find it necessary to struggle against the stone wall, or to resign yourself bitterly to twice two makes four? It would be better to see the stone wall, to see cold, hard mathematical fact and accept it as such. Accept, mind you, not “be reconciled” or some other word carrying your spiteful connotations (8). Yes, the stone wall might be appalling, and you might prefer five immensely to four, but part of the human condition, a successful human condition at least, lies in learning to accept such facts and make the most of life in spite of them. By curling up into your underground hovel, you are but a coward. And yet, you yourself acknowledge that label, albeit dripping with self-loathing (27). All I’m really getting at is there’s no use in battering yourself against the wall except for self-destruction. And I understand you, my sun-fearing friend, I really do. I don’t like the stone wall or futility of the cold definiteness of mathematics. But it is necessary to learn to live with it. To flourish along side the wall, to spray paint on that wall “twice two makes five,” to take all actions short of “battering your head against it” (8). For who is stronger? A man overcome by his self-doubt, resigning himself to the underground, or a man overcoming that self-doubt and triumphing over it in the almost perpetual St. Petersburg summer sun?
With the existentialist theory stating as it does that man is responsible for attributing meaning to his own life, it seems apparent that the Underground Man is attempting to do just that. Throughout the Notes we are told much less about events of the narrator’s life, but instead the focus is predominantly on how these life events make him feel and think about himself. The claimed function of this work is pure introspection; he writes solely for his own benefit and claims that he “shall never have readers” (27). Obviously the narrator’s profession of his detachment from the rest of mankind has not been realized. We are reading these private ramblings with complete availability to the narrator’s relations.
Throughout the novel the Underground Man continuously oscillates through different “phases” or moods, from wanting prestige to reveling in his abhorrent conditions; from a desperate desire to be in the company of others to a refusal to leave his self-imposed solitude. His account is full of contradictions and hypocrisy, but one thought in his mind seems relatively constant. “The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key!” (21). There is nothing more loathsome to the underground man than the concept of predestination. He repeatedly makes the claim that if men’s lives can be calculated by two plus two is four than there is no reason to keep living. Choice, even though it is often resolutely “opposed to reason,” is the most important tool in a man’s arsenal.
Although the Underground Man may still be searching for his own purpose in life, it seems that he is claiming to already understand that of the general “man.” The narrator of the Notes concedes that the ultimate destiny of every man, death, is as inescapable as a mathematical sum. However, it is with what a man chooses to fill the time between birth and death that is of the utmost importance. Living, or the process of attainment, is much more important than the end goal.
I’ve got to agree with Barrett here. Arguing with the underground man is pointless. The reigning theme here should be the maxim, “Never argue with an idiot, for they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.” In the long run, this life is ours to live as we choose. We cannot stop the underground man from being spiteful and gnashing his teeth. If thats what he chooses to do that is what he will do, arguing with him will only fuel his fire. It would be very unfortunate to have him be the clerk at the DMV or whatever other beauracratic office with which you have to deal because he clearly has experience in being a nuisance to people. He is not about to listen to an argument like, “are you really getting your fill out of this short time you’re alive on earth?” Most importantly, and simply put, he is boring. And not worth any of the time or energy of arguing with him. What he does do very well though is act as a case-study in how humans can get so stuck in their own psyches, utterly lose any kind of perspective whatsoever, and thus become pointless. Emma describes this very well by saying “The Underground Man uses his self-perceived strengths to excuse his weaknesses. Of course he also uses his weaknesses to excuse his weaknesses.” Because he is so alienated, everything about him is self-perceived and self-decided. Therefore he can arbitrarily convince himself of whatever he wants because there will be no one there to check his rambling. The important part of this for this blog post is that he doesn’t want anyone there either. So be it. My take on existentialism is that there is no decree of an ultimate purpose for humanity. Humans are all left to themselves to figure out what it is they want from life and how to get it. You dont need to be smart to appreciate happiness. And besides, intelligence is relative.
The underground man isnt one to be beaten by logic, he is beaten by intuition.
I have a bone to pick with chapter 4, and I’d like to work my way backwards and start at the end of it. In conclusion, the underground man writes, “Can a man possessing consciousness ever really respect himself?” (12 Katz). To this statement alone I have no reply, but what bothers me is that, leading up to this, Mr. Underground goes on about this toothache concept on the grounds that “consciousness finds [the feeling] so humiliating” (11). How can somebody be humiliated if they do not respect themselves? I suppose the underground man could slip out of this one in remarking that it is not a being but consciousness as its own entity that feels such humiliation, but I wouldn’t buy that either. No, for in claiming that there needs an “enemy to be defined” (11) in order to explain this humiliation, the underground man inadvertently admits that the humiliated party must have some notion of self-respect while being entirely cognizant of its self. I agree with Tolstoy, who uses blushing as a motif throughout at least the first half of Anna Karenina, and through this blushing highlights the fact that humiliation (and therefore consciousness of self) is a result, in general, of self-defense — itself a product of self-respect.
Indeed, the underground man seems to find himself quite interesting (cf. 5), and the line between self-interest and self-respect is negligible, if even existent. This display of self-interest, moreover, lends a similarity between the underground man and other protagonists within the Existentialist canon. For example, immediately before beginning to write “about himself,” he asks, “what difference does it really make whether I leave Petersburg or not?” (5). This thinking brings him into direct comparison with someone like Mersault of Albert Camus’ The Stranger, who ultimately sees no difference between life and death, but only “there should be a crowd of spectators at my execution and that they should greet me with cries of hatred.”
What is perhaps the most painful element of “Notes from the Underground” is the Underground Man’s seeming need to maintain control even in situations in which it is in one’s best interest to relinquish it. Throughout the short novel, the narrator insists that he has decided to be wretched or repulsive—let the world try to impose their values on him! In reality, it is his social ineptness (on a deep and psychologically significant level) that leads him, unaware, to a number of poor choices. Thus, it is all the more pathetic when he attempts to rationalize his actions. Embracing the traditional existentialist outlook, in which one seizes control of his life, imbuing it with whatever meaning he feels appropriate, the Underground Man seems to have chosen a life of rather dry and practical intelligence, culture and literary knowledge. Contradictorily, the narrator so often laments his lack of power, crying out, “They won’t let me…I can’t be good!” Indeed, Dostoyevsky brilliantly captures the internal split of a fairly weak man attempting to conform to an occasionally flawed philosophical ideology.
The so-called “underground man” is very confused about life and happiness. He seems to be going through an existential crisis of some sort in which he is questioning if there is “meaning” (as Hirsch defines it). He talks about toothaches as a metaphor for change. He says that the pain from a toothache (or pain in general) is what ties us to the world. Feeling pain makes the underground man feel alive, it is how he grounds himself through his existentialism. He seems to think that pain is Hirsch’s “significance” for life. The underground man has totally forgone happiness as a fake emotion. Happiness lies to us, but pain is real. He could not be more wrong. Pain is an essential human emotion, but only as it sharpens and defines happiness. The underground man is risking sinking too far down the rabbit hole, and throughout the book it becomes more and more likely that he will not make it out the other side. In the end of the book, through his interactions with Liza, it is clear that he is lost into the depths of existential doubt. Happiness is the end reward of humanity. We feel pain, but there is a purpose to it. Pain awakens us to problems that we can fix, to the suffering of others, and to our own needs. Pain is a force that drives us towards happiness, it is not something to relish in and define one’s life by. The reason the underground man fixates on toothaches so much is because he is lost in his own mind, and pain reminds him that there is more to life. I was sad reading this book to find out that the underground man never makes it above ground; he never figures out what more there is to life, he only knows that it is there and that he does not (or maybe cannot) have it.
The narrator in Dostoyevsky’s “Notes from the Underground” propagates his existential philosophy when he pokes fun at the sarcastic phrase “you will find joy in a toothache” (9). By proclaiming that “even in a toothache there is enjoyment” (9), the narrator calls into question what is enjoyment. He claims that it is not what others view as enjoyable but what a person himself feels about a certain situation.
The moaning associated with a toothache are rationalized as mere entertainment to the person with the toothache seeing as they serve no distinct purpose. This claim is furthered by the assertion that he “does not respect [him]self” (10). He is a “man of perception” and he realizes that the moaning associated with a toothache, and other useless irritation to others, is a selfish form of pleasure, and yet he indulges in it. This is existentialism – he realizes that pain is individual and yet people put the misery of their pain on others, whether with unnecessary moaning or the general concept of complaints. In this way, the narrator seems to see himself, and most others, as weak by nature in character.
The Underground Man attaches unnecessary negative significance to trivial events in life because he has pre-determined spiteful opinions of everyone around him. Some gestures are simply not meant to be considered too deeply for they have no meaning. Just because the Dow Jones fell by 2 percent today does not mean that we are back in a recession; however, bearish analysts with this opinion in mind already can interpret this sign in favor of their opinion and support their assertion with many little facts.
I think he has successfully defied the laws of nature, especially by not going to the dentist for his toothache, but I also think it is an extremely stupid thing to do. Who is he trying to fight against, to prove a point to? He has no audience in real life that cares about him, because his despicable actions have pushed him away form friends.
He says that the laws of nature would guide him to go to a dentist to make himself feel better, and that is why he doesn’t go, because he wants to have made the conscious choice to be miserable. But why can’t we flip this whole thing around and say that the laws of nature continuously pushes us towards a lower equilibrium of sadness and dejection, and our efforts to seek happiness is the defiance against nature? If we are all doomed to die by nature, why not enjoy life while we are alive so that we can say we had a good time despite knowing that we’re all headed into the earth?
Two times two equals four is a law of nature and I understand to a certain extent the underground man’s disdain for nature. Nature is something that is there whether you like it or not and it can be restrictive. It puts up a wall that cannot be passed; it sets up limits to how we can act. Though I don’t share the need to define my own reality where two plus two equals five, I do feel that the ability to make your own choices, formulate your own ideas and influence the world around you is invaluable. His claim that man does not completely conform to the rational nature of the world is fairly accurate. People do not always act in a rational way and sometimes even choose to act in a way that could cause themselves harm. I myself feel the need to be independent and different from other people. Each one of us wants to be unique.
However, while I feel that the underground man has some insightful things to say, he contradicts himself so much that it is hard to tell what he actually believes. The underground man seems pitiful. He is so self abasing and masochistic that it is hard to have any respect for him or any regard for what he has to say. His attitude towards life makes him harsh and distempered towards other people. He cannot interact with people in a positive way because he is so self conscious and feels the need to prove that he is superior. In short, he is a man that is very unpleasant to everyone including himself.
The underground man speaks of freedom to make decisions as the most desperate need of mankind in general saying, “Man needs only independent wanting, whatever this independence may cost and wherever it may lead” (25 Peaver and Volokhonsky). Freedom has become as the underground man says a staple for the American culture. We do protect our freedoms blindly and have defended the most absurd assertions of freedom, especially in respect to business practices, even, when our populace is obviously harmed by these freedoms (Take the blind resistance to the universal healthcare bill for example, although I and the majority of my generation shows our bias in this issue). However, this emphasis on freedom is a cultural phenomenon rather than a fundamental value of mankind in general. The underground man emphasizes man’s struggle against control saying, “the whole human enterprise seems indeed to consist in man’s proving to himself every moment that he is a man and not a sprig!” (30). However, even in the time that the underground man describes, countless instances of man choosing to surrender freedoms for his own benefit can be seen. Society’s constructions such as religions, laws, governments, courts, etc. are all basic and obvious examples. Monks surrender even the freedom of speech in their reverence to their god and men submit themselves to regulations, which by definition restrict freedom blindly such as the accepted inability to purchase alcohol on Sundays. This law has no relevance to safety and no foreseeable benefit; however, even Americans with their emphasis on freedom don’t question it. The people, who choose to exercise their freedom against these restrictions, are outliers instead of the majority emphasized by the underground man. I feel that, with this assertion, this lonely man is subconsciously grasping out for his own correlation to the rest of humanity rather than making serious assertions.
The significance of free will. I, too, am less than happy with the systems that are, according to the narrator, being superimposed on life by all kinds of rational thinkers. I believe that there is a free will and that it adds the spice necessary in life. And while it might be dumb and counterproductive, I can think of a multitude of “toothache – situations” in my life. However there are two things I find curious about his statements. First of all he is Russian and I wonder how the general notion of fate happening to men (бывает) fits into this movement. Secondly, I disagree that the need to find a deterministic system, void of free will, is necessarily of a rational nature. Christianity, or at least some branches of it, believes in a similar concept: destiny. I would argue that religion is not the most rational of all institutions and yet they too insist that our life will happen in one certain way that has been assigned to us by “the book”.
Another aspect that makes me uncomfortable about the obsession with explaining the world in largely scientific unchangeable laws is that they try to determine rationally the path of humans. Now, humans are inherently emotional and consequently irrational. Taking one of humanity’s key features out of the equation when establishing theories about the same deprives the study off its validity.
Finally, the same development is still or again happening. The trend in the current job market is to look for people who have acquired subject specific knowledge, (i.e. economics, finance, big law firms… fit in a system) and not so much for those who know how to work creatively with the information they are given. ( history, philosophy, literature, etc.)
I take issue with UM’s claim that man would “purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude[, …] simply in order to prove to himself […] that men are still men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar.” (21) Maybe I’m misinterpreting UM, but he seems to go beyond merely existential here toward fatalistic or nihilistic. He appears to argue against his opponents, who posit that free will is fortunately aligned with both personal interests and rational science, by claiming mankind wants to suffer restrictedly and not attain its aims. In my opinion, that’s thinly veiled pessimism rather than realism. I won’t deny humans’ penchant for creating disturbances in the universe that ultimately cause evil and harm, especially to themselves, but I refuse to believe that this is a gratuitous practice. Self-interests are almost always at stake, and regardless of whether or not (determined, non-free-will) nature puts us on to it, it is a quintessentially human quality (i.e. what distinguishes men from piano keys) for man to desire more than is provided. At least, that has been my interpretation of sociology, psychology, and world-historical events; without desire, we would move nowhere—which might inspire some to go mad or rebel against their own natures, but out of frustration and justification, not ingratitude. Furthermore, if nature controlled man to such an extent as UM suggests, he could probably not “purposely do something perverse” to upset this power. To my mind, it doesn’t help one way or another to deny free will or reason, because doing so is not a constructive argument; determinism is usually an impossible position to maintain (one cannot be outside the system one supposes), and in order to make meaning or purpose in life, one must assume a difference between oneself and piano keys. Of course, UM might ask in retort “why must we make meaning of existence at all, especially if it will inevitably end,” but this is another question entirely, and more a matter of how one views water in a glass. However, I’m much less sure how to argue against UM’s pessimism there…
The Underground Man’s arguments against the “Crystal Palace” arouse certain sympathies within me – there is a degree of complexity in human society and interactions that the construction of a utopia is a futile and irresponsible endeavor. Life is not always a zero-sum game, but nonetheless individuals pursuing their interest will often conflict. On the other hand, I believe his rationale that it is futile out of a self-actualizing need to exercise free will is flawed. To stick out one’s tongue when it is not possible to stick out one’s tongue is such a meaningless act serving no real purpose. UM seems to believe that the exercise of free will is only possible if it lacks purpose. However, he ignores the fact that humans are constantly faced with difficult to evaluate decisions with multiple options each with results unknowable from the rest – it is as much an exercise in free will to arbitrarily choose one of a series of beneficial options as it is to act out of spite. Furthermore, UM seems to find it undesirable to acknowledge that our environments and conditions can, do and should dictate our actions. UM cannot act appropriately under any circumstances – he ignores the pain in his liver, takes pleasure in his toothache, a party with “friends” etc. What he doesn’t seem to realize is that the small pleasures he takes from these atrocities don’t measure up to the larger pain. It is similar to his argument about the “Crystal Palace”. Is such an idea realizable? No (although, in the 18th Century and still today there are those, who believe in the realization of utopia), but it is not a binary value – some change can be effected and that change can be made resilient to the pettiness of everyday life. This critique is difficult because the UM is simultaneously right and wrong – he argues from flawed premises, reaches a conclusion that is somewhat acceptable, but does not see the big picture.
“Say what you like, gentlemen, it’s extremely pleasing to hear such tributes in this negative age of ours,” (18). I think the negative age that Dostoevsky describes here is integral to the way that the Underground Man acts and existentialism in general. To me, the negative age meant that, in 19th century intellectual thought, humans had come to the place where they could only achieve by criticizing – intellectual thinking was critical thinking. I think it is the inability to feel rooted in anything larger than the critical faculties of the self that led Kierkegaard to base his philosophy in the crisis of existing on a deeply personal level. In terms of Underground Man, he is obviously tortured by this negative age. In interacting with Liza, Underground Man says, “I’d been humiliated, so I wanted to humiliate someone. I’d been treated like a doormat, so I wanted to show my power…” (110). The only way for him to establish himself is a totally perverse notion of what it means to be an existentialist – to come from a place of individual crisis and decide that the only way to exist is to create yourself in a negative frame, even if that means severe subjugation. In fact, he’s obsessed with subjugation – both towards himself and towards other people – and that seems to me because he’s the existential man taken to the nth degree. I thought Dostoevsky offered some insight to the root of this problem early on, when he said: “He loves progressing toward his goal but not quite achieving it, and this of course is terribly funny,” (31). When the process, and the other people involved in that process, aren’t valued and we shift to a purely goal-oriented society, existentialism (in its best and worst forms) seem to be the obvious conclusion. In my mind, there needs to be some sort of return amidst all this progress (I know, loaded word), a return to caring for others, to living life to do more than satisfy your existence, even if the leading philosophers of the day tell you it’s all self-constructed.