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.” Sine 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.! 🙂
31 thoughts on “The Notes from the Underground”
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I’m going to agree 100% with the Underground Man’s “Crystal Palace” theory. The Crystal Palace is the final state of rational egoism when man does everything right not because he wants to, but because science tells him he is only a tool. The U-man says this utopia cannot exist because men are ungrateful: “give him such economic prosperity that he would have nothing else to do but sleep… and even then man would risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish…”
Isn’t that what our consumerist society reflects? The American dream is to have everything possible to live a life without Suffering. We have top-notch dishwashers and fancy restaurants when we don’t want to cook, and 500 horsepower vehicles to take us there. Yet we fuel our bodies with McJunk just to feel like health rebels and leave our paper wrappers (forget dishes) in a wad near the trash when we over-dunk. We thrive as the most active, tyrannical country in the world, yet we complain when the dollar falls because now we can’t buy the McMansion we would only sleep in.
My point? By trying to avoid suffering we relocate it to another personal place and harm others along the way. And this is in our current world, a “Plastic Palace” you could say. If a Crystal Palace could possibly exist, we still simply wouldn’t care about our own advantages! Obsessed with making everything Easy, we forget about whether it’s Good.
Frank interprets that Suffering isn’t an answer for the U-man, it serves to liven one’s sense of ethical self-governance and remind us we aren’t just a tool. It’s funny that in our Plastic Palace we try to avoid physical suffering while in the Crystal Palace we resort to it, but both leave us wanting. What other sort of Palace, I wonder along with the U-man, would allow personality and let us FEEL something we like?
I completely agree with the underground man’s assertion that reason cannot completely govern man because there are other forces that will override reason. He attributes some of these forces to the evilness of men or simply to the need to prove they are not just “piano keys.” I also think that emotion plays a great role in overpowering reason in many decisions. Having read Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done?, I have seen the type of cold reason the underground man finds to be, ironically, unreasonable. In What Is to Be Done? the characters leave their emotions behind and solely rely on reason to solve every problem that arises. Although this seems to work in that novel, and obviously so since Chernyshevsky was writing in favor of it, it would never be able to be put into practice in real life because humans simply do not work that way. The laws of nature do not allow us to think rationally about everything and put reason before all else; emotion takes over on so many of our everyday decisions.
In What Is to Be Done the main characters find themselves entangled in a love triangle and let reason govern their subsequent actions so that the woman’s husband leaves her to live happily with her lover and even fakes his own suicide so that the two of them can remarry without any social repercussions due to him. In real life, I do not believe this could ever happen because the husband’s love for his wife would probably prevent his leaving without a fight, and his anger at the situation, and the other man, would make it very unlikely for him to bend over backwards for their happiness together. Therefore, cold reason cannot pan out in real life, just as the underground man points out, because emotion and man’s need to prove he is not a robot override reason, negating it as a chief force in life.
I accept the Underground Man’s thoughts on emotion versus reason and the laws of nature. The Underground Man gradually realizes that irrationality is man’s futile response to the unbending laws of nature. He explains that an emotive response serves as a rebellion against these laws. Such a sense of rebellion is what brings people satisfaction even when they act in completely irrational ways that hurt themselves and others. In essence, the Underground Man attempts to explain why humans act irrationally even when logic and reason seem to hold the answers; his explanations also suggests that man’s irrationality is forever unavoidable.
According to Joseph Frank, the Underground Man’s hyperconsciousness allows him to see that there is no free will and that man is at the mercy of the laws of nature. For example, when someone slaps you or you come to realize that you are a “scoundrel,” there is nothing you can do. The laws of nature have made it as it is, and according to reason, you should therefore not be upset with your situation. As Frank points out, logic and reason invalidate any emotional response. Unfortunately, the Underground Man goes on to explain that an emotional response to an insult or a slap is unavoidable. Thus, anger, spite, and emotions in general allow man to rebel against the laws of nature. The Underground Man further states his case with “two times two makes four.” Though this law of nature is unmistakable, the Underground Man still finds pleasure in denying it, even though to deny that two times two makes four is completely irrational.
In general, humans often deny what is logical and unmistakably true. Denial has always been a part of human nature; it almost always runs directly against logic and most often worsens the situation, yet humans will forever deny logic and their own reason. Humans have emotion and an emotional response to anything is inevitable. Perhaps it is a sad fact about humankind, but nonetheless true.
I have to disagree Underground man’s Crystal Palace theory. He claims that such a situation (one in which people’s actions are dictated by science and tabulated fates rather than free will) could not exist because men cherish their free will and their ability to “violate” He says, “man loves to act as he likes, and not necessarily as reason and self-interest would have him do. Yes, he will even act straight against his own interests.” The U-man suggests that these actions (like golden pins) would destroy the order and regularity of the future.
I am an economics major. Economists analyze the world with the presumption that everyone weighs the costs and benefits of every action and chooses the path in which the costs outweigh the benefits. Thus, it is impossible for man to “act straight against his own interests.” If this is impossible, then it is impossible for a “Crystal Palace” world to ever reverse itself.
I think the main flaw in the U-man’s argument is his suggestion that people think the crystal palace is an optimal place to be (like utopia). In fact, the Crystal Palace is not optimum. It is merely a stagnant state in which people act according to their own self interest. What may seem to the U-man as actions against people’s own self interest, according to economists, are impossible. It may seem to the U-man that to stick golden pins into things, and introduce chaos and destruction is done from mere boredom or want of free will, but in fact it is done in self interest. The benefits (perhaps they are sadistic happiness, the relief from boredom, the please of acting of one’s own free will) MUST outweigh the costs of a more turbulent society.
And, because economists assume that all humans are rational and act in their own self interests, we must also assume that we are always in the “Crystal Palace” state. Our actions must always be dictated by simple yes or no to the question of : does the benefit to this action outweigh the cost? And, these answers, in theory, could be scientifically tabulated were we to know the value humans place on self-destructive actions.
To explain my rant better I look back to Kaylen’s post that agrees with the Crystal Palace theory. She backs up her (and the U-man’s) argument with examples of people’s actions that defy their interests. She says:
“Yet we fuel our bodies with McJunk just to feel like health rebels and leave our paper wrappers (forget dishes) in a wad near the trash when we over-dunk.”
I (and economists), however, would argue that these actions are done not because of ungratefulness or boredom, but because they are scientifically predetermined (based on costs and benefits). It MUST be in a Mcdonald’s eaters self interest to eat it (whether it is because of the satisfaction he gets in being a “health rebel,” the cheapness of the food, or the convenience). It MUST be in our self interest to leave our paper wrappers near the trash, or we would not do it. It is not because we are intrinsically ungrateful. Rather, it is because the benefit to us of this ungratefulness or laziness outweighs the cost of getting up to throw away a wrapper.
I think that one day these costs and benefits could, in theory, be tabulated so that our actions and decisions could be anticipated like in a Crystal Castle world.
Dear Sophie,
If you are correct, and you might be, then we romantic dreamers are just deluding ourselves. But in the world of blogs you may never look back again to hear my lament. Sigh!!!
The problem with two times two equals four is not that it isn’t truthful – it can be proven beyond any doubt – but that it is not really very interesting. It is a fact, an unavoidable fact, but what exactly does it leave you with? Man cannot control it; it instead controls him. It does not leave man with a chance to think, to contemplate, to create. Instead, once man has discovered the fact that two times two does, in fact, equal four, there is nothing more he can do with it. Mortal man cannot compete with the indestructible laws of nature, and so he is forced to passively accept them.
As the underground man explains, some men may not see any problem with these monolithic laws of nature – absolute truth should be our highest goal, so shouldn’t discovery of these unchanging laws be our greatest triumph? But the problem with this philosophy is that it does not leave us with any real purpose for our lives. All of our actions are decided, commanded by higher laws. Nothing that we do shows any real ingenuity or intelligence because it is all just part of our blind following of some invisible plan. How can we convince ourselves that there is any purpose in our lives if it is all determined? The underground man says that the only exciting part of life comes from the pursuit of answers, because that part we can control. Once we have found the answer, it controls us. He is saddened because he feels that he has no free will when confronted with these universal truths. But I would argue that there are things that are not controlled by absolutes truths, that do not have only a single answer. Feelings and opinions are products of man, and are controlled internally, separate from the solid laws of nature. Man has control within his own mind, and only he has the power to determine which truths are present there.
“…I don’t respect myself. Can a man of conscious intelligence have any self-respect to speak of?” — OK, man of the underground, I’ll debate you on this one. Engaging with this question at face-value, I would say, “Hey now, I’m conscious, I’m intelligent, and I respect myself. What’s wrong with that?” The underground man’s existence seems to be plagued by his own invented idea that he is living a lie, and due to his overactive consciousness, he doesn’t really “live” like those average Joes with nothing (comparatively) in their heads, who are capable of blindly grinding out their lives through a veil of some semblance of productivity without thinking twice about what it might really all mean. I couldn’t agree more that an overactive consciousness is a burden to end all burdens, but here I think the underground man is pitying himself a little more than is… why not say, respectable. Given: all of this is existentialism. On a basic level. Where does that existentialist mindset arise from? Frank calls it the underground man’s penchant for juxtaposing “total human reaction versus scientific rationale.” That sounds like a recipe for existentialism if I ever heard one. The U-man’s just jumping levels on us. He’s saying this guy respects himself for his life because he sees everything at face value, whereas the U-man sees everything in that big “what does it all mean” way, and now he’s whining because obviously humans aren’t really respectable — we kill each other off on a regular basis and shoot ourselves in the foot left and right. There are different ways of looking at self-respect! If you want to respect yourself, narrow your scope a little brother, but don’t try and provoke the reader by equating all kinds of respect as resulting in a fundamental difference between you and the rest of mankind. Boo hoo, you don’t respect yourself, it’s your fault for thinking up all the reasons why.
Real quick — the U-man says something to the extent of: “Ok go with me on this one: what if the ‘right’ thing, the ‘advantageous’ thing (as proven by arithmetic, logic, traditions etc.) wasn’t necessarily ALWAYS the BEST thing for somebody? Eh? Maybe?” I say right on, U-man. This guy already goes against the conventional social thought pattern grain like it’s his job, but here I think he makes a valid point. Human beings are really quite moderate, as a product of society and an increasingly specialized and compartmentalized civilization. No one really pushes the limits of their humanity. It might be that there’s more out there and that we’ve all gotten really good at playing by the rules we as humans have set for ourselves. We ain’t nothin’ but mammals, man! We follow logic but it’s all a construct of humanity. I’m willing to bet there’s a lot more out there.
In short, live a little.
It’s hard for me to admit I agree with the underground man about anything, because I find him so insufferable. I can’t stand his complacent certainty in his own intelligence and logic, and I despise his delighted willingness to oversimplify any argument, even his own, for the pleasure of hearing himself talk and subverting the assumptions of his reader. All this business about the “mouse” of “heightened consciousness” versus the “real, normal” “man of action,” disgusts me—how could any supposedly intelligent person simplify all humanity into two clean, easy categories? Throughout the novel, the underground man repeatedly admits to his faults—he’s sick, spiteful, overly sensitive, petty, and all the rest; he’s even jealous of the “men of action” for their blissful stupidity. But when it comes down to it, he truly regards himself as unusually intelligent and perceptive, fully of lofty insight into the true workings of the universe and of human nature. While the “men of action” run about obeying pure rationality and the “laws of nature,” the underground man sits in his mouse-hole and boils with the spite afforded him by his heightened intelligence: he can see the stupidity and ignorance of the others’ actions, and though his uncommon perceptiveness causes him suffering, his insight gives him superiority. And this is my greatest qualm with the underground man: we may say that he’s “underground,” and he himself may insist that this is so, but in truth he conceitedly positions himself far above the rest—he’s in the sky, intelligently looking down on the common “man of action” and spitefully criticizing his petty, stupid actions. The underground man is contemptuous, he’s mean, he’s sick, he’s confused. He simplifies and attacks, and by assuming his own intellectual uniqueness and consequential superiority, he demeans and oversimplifies everyone else, and robs them of their humanity. What bothers me about him is his spiteful arrogance. A true philosopher allows for exceptions, for gray areas, for conflict and confusion, and above all, for the very possible correctness of another’s opinion and the equally possible wrongness of his own. The underground man, though he may make some important points about human nature, is wrong in the way he goes about making his arguments. He’s not a great philosopher; he’s just a troubled and vindictive loser.
So Underground Man, we meet at last. While I find some of your ideas a little premature, I must admit I like the section you wrote about a toothache, but I don’t think you developed it enough. Or possibly you developed it, but developed in a way that I disagree with or that I do not quite grasp. Beginning, yes, I would agree there can be pleasure in a toothache. I think your whole purpose of this illustration was to give a example of the pleasure found when a man hits bottom. Yes, that is it, is it not? I regret that you didn’t live long enough to see the movie Fight Club, I think you would have enjoyed it, but I’ll use it to shed some light on why I think it is possible to find pleasure in pain. “It’s only when we lose everything that we’re free to do anything.” – Tyler Durton. I think this is it, Underground Man, your main point with this. Once you embrace the physical pain of a tooth ache, once you endure it so much, the pain becomes a hug, a warm fuzzy hug, and you laugh. There is no where to go but up, but you might not want to go up because you are happy and content lying on the bottom, and you are laughing because you are one the bottom. And on the bottom laugh because the man above you is not on the bottom. You are laughing at him, Mr. Underground Man. He has never seen the bottom, and so you feel that you are some how greater or more enlightened than he because of your existing state on the bottom. Or perhaps you feel that you are more worthless than he, but either way you like the feeling. Yes, Mr. Underground Man, you like the pain of an enduring tooth ache because it reminds you that you are weak and subject to pain, and while the man above you tries to climb to the top, you laugh because you love the bottom and the feeling it gives you. Fragility and empowerment.
This isn’t very conventional…
I am reading Notes from the Underground and Native Son by Richard Wright simultaneously. It strikes me that Bigger Thomas, the protagonist in Native Son, is an underground man. Without going into details that are irrelevant to this class, I want to explore questions I have about the concept of amorality and social conditioning that present themselves in both of these works.
As a protagonist who is amoral, both Bigger and the underground man deal with the concept of responsibility and human agency. The question with Bigger is how much of this man is “bad” or “evil” versus how much is good, as well as how much each of these things is within his control. The nature/nurture argument you might say.
If laws of nature really do govern human existence (no free will), says underground man, then human behavior doesn’t exist because we do not act as entities- or rather, human behavior is at least meaningless because it isn’t actually representative of a person or being because he has no choice in the matter. Any impression otherwise is an illusion.
What is vital to understand, which I am also still trying to wrap my head around, is what to pay closest attention to in a psycho-social analysis of the underground man. His psychology is connected to the ideas he accepts and the way he chooses to live his life. For a being to accept a personal philosophy, an idea, a moral, or a fact of life it must first be presented to him. Therefore, nothing is of an individual’s construct that is not also inextricible from the role of society.
Just like Bigger Thomas, who leads his life under oppression, if one thinks of oneself in a certain way, as presented by the popular opinion of others- by society and authority and even by his peers- what choice does one have but to accept this image?
I see the underground man’s singular attempt at having control of his own being an personal universe through his masochism. He is a masochist in that by not seeking treatment for his pain, he is “not acknowledging” or not giving into the pain caused him by the “laws of nature” which are unfair because they reduce a person to helplessness while the “asserting force that is the law of nature” suffers naught. It is his only strike back at the existence that is beyond himself and yet he knows it doesn’t actually affect anything beyond himself. This condemnation can only be created through societal structure which dictates the terms of human agency through social condition.
To me, this is as close to getting his thoughts to make sense as I can get. If anyone has a different reading on this, I would love to hear it!
The idea of the toothache is partly the idea that man loves to wallow, and that even a rational man will howl in pain, even though he would or should know that the pain is temporary and can be fixed. Much of Undergroundskii’s argument(s) is that reason forces man to behave in a way that makes sense, but not necessarily in the way that he would deep down like to behave. Underground knows that he should get his tooth (and his liver) looked at, but he just doesn’t want to, so he doesn’t, because to get his tooth fixed is to be at the mercy of someone else’s will. I agree with what Stewart said, that the rational man will howl from his toothache because he’s free to act however he wants when he hits rock bottom, but I think Underground is saying a bit more. He says “I am keeping everyone in the house awake…feel every minute that I have a toothache” because he is not a “hero,” but a “nasty person.” Thus, I think the pleasure in the toothache isn’t necessarily a rock bottom pain-turned-europoria, but rather the happiness that comes from doing what you want to do (scream and yell) rather than what you should be doing (be calm). Also, there is a masochistic element to it: Underground is implying that when a man is miserable, he despises everyone else’s happiness, so he wants to make everyone else around him unhappy: sort of a “misery loves company” kind of thing.
I find that I agree with most of what Dostoevsky is getting across through the ‘Notes’; I do not think that it’s necessarily a matter of agreeing with the speaker or not, because as Frank’s article made clear to me, in many cases, it takes a scholar’s expertise to sort out the facetious and purposefully ironic from the serious.
I liked Frank’s use of the word “dialectic” to describe the underground man’s debate with himself–it implies that there’s no end or that it’s not necessarily even a conversation directed towards an end. Indeed, they’re “notes” without an immediate audience. Further, it’s ludicrous to imagine an individual or a society that could actually arrive at a place of total, perfected efficiency and utility (the crystal palace utopia), or at a place of total, random anarchic decision-making (…as much as we might be tempted to categorize some examples of history as near-examples of each).
Sophie’s comments on economic interests struck me. I think it’s one of the strong points of her, and accordingly Cherneshevsky’s, arguments in that both make very clear the import of choosing in favor of one’s interest. “Interest” is a sticky word, however; when making decisions, it’s hard to practically know what actually IS in one’s best interest–we cannot (in our current situation) predict the future 100% of the time–we make mistakes in judgment. So, I find, unlike Sophie, that in fact, we do, many times, make decisions that are NOT in line with our self-interest–from causes of misjudgment, and also for altruism.
What impresses me most about the underground man’s arguments is that he must recognize all of this–both sides of the coin, that is–and although he carries it to “spiteful” conclusions, these conclusions ultimately turn out to be as senseless as the supposition that a utopia could exist either. I don’t tend to be one to take people seriously at their first words, so personally I thoroughly enjoyed the narrator’s half-pretended, half-serious conceit that he believed everything he said. I highly disagree with Kara’s saying he’s not a great philosopher–I find it a brilliantly presented antithesis to Cherneshevsky’s thesis, in which we can find some very valuable syntheses.
“I repeat, I repeat with emphasis: all “direct” persons and men of action are active just because they are stupid and limited. How explain that? I will tell you: in consequence of their limitation they take immediate and secondary causes for primary ones, and in that way persuade themselves more quickly and easily than other people do that they have found an infallible foundation for their activity, and their minds are at ease and you know that is the chief thing.”
I found this passage to be particularly interesting as I believe that it applies to me and any other student or ambitious person. Here I believe the underground man is arguing that, since no one knows the real reasons for their actions nor has any idea what they should be doing, that people must justify their actions based on meaningless justifications in order to legitimize what they are doing. The ultimate goals that people strive for, such as success, wealth, or knowledge, have no significance at all, yet people must make these goals their ultimate goals in order to continue living their lives. I find this passage very relevant as a student as it forces me to consider why I strive to do well in college. While I found this work to be enjoyable, why should I study hard for tests, an unpleasant activity, if the ultimate goal of doing well on tests is to do well in college and thus help me be financially successful, which is an ultimately meaningless pursuit?
This brooding philosopher from the “underground,” a forty-year-old man with nothing tangible to show for his life, preserves only his rants, raves, and criticisms and at the same time contradicts of most everything that he says. It is tempting to assume that these wild (at times absurd and nonsensical) metaphors for the human condition come straight from Dostoevsky himself since the arguments are so compelling and convincing, but that is why, to me, the book is so fascinating; Dostoevsky intertwines the popular “revolutionary” ideologies of 19th century Russia, illustrates their most convincing arguments, and all along contradicts the narrator’s overarching statements.
Page 28 is a nice example. The first comment about humans is that what is most precious to us is “our personality and individuality.” The narrator then continues, a few lines down, to pinpoint man as “a creature with two legs- and ungrateful.” To me, these two notions are striking, especially being found on the same page. On the one hand, the narrator is showing a bit of compassion to man, relishing that which sets us apart from other animals and just a few moments afterward, he reduces man to two ungrateful legs. Comments such as these are so fascinating since it is evident in his other works Dostoevsky clearly has a much deeper respect for humanity and life. Though this book- and therefore Dostoevsky himself- was known as a great existentialist piece of the 20th century, that does not necessarily mean that the author himself believed in this doctrine that he illustrates; perhaps he was trying to paint a picture for us to disagree with in order for the reader to reexamine his/her faith in the meaning of life, a greater purpose, etc. etc.
These contradictions throughout the story are what make the Notes wonderful. They illustrate the inconsistencies and challenge that man face within himself and that he then, especially the philosophers, project into society.
And, just a note to the reader, if this blog entry seems nonsensical to you, perhaps even absurd-esque, the author has probably been influenced by recent literature which has scrambled this author’s mind….. I will end here because I am writing yet I continually say nothing.
It’s hard to address any one of these topics, since to me, they all seem to be interrelated. It seems to me that one of the main points the Underground man is attempting to make, if he has a point at all, is that as humans, we have a “wanting” for something more than just materials, or security, or our own profit as it is usually defined. What this wanting is, however, is the question that has him, and so many others confused. Although so many people think they want order and safety, the underground man points out that a safe life ordered by reason and logic would be boring, and that if such a world even could be achieved, men would quickly grow tired of it and seek excitement. They would be “ungrateful” for what they had.
For some, it appears that material objects are what they want; he points out that he would rather have a palace than a chicken coop, even if either could keep him dry. Just a bit earlier, however, he confesses that man could never be happy with what he has: unlike an ant with an anthill, man enjoys not what he has, but what he went through to get it. So if materialism is not what will satisfy us, than there must be something else. Maybe we just seek happiness. Even this he questions, though. Sometimes what we think of as making us upset, such as a toothache, actually pleases us. Amongst all these apparent contradictions, though, a truth emerges: perhaps man can simply never be satisfied. Maybe it is within us to never be fully happy with what we have. Even if we formed a perfect society, we would get bored. Even if we could predict all future events, someone would ruin it just to prove the existence of free will. Even when we get something we’ve for so long been striving for, we miss the journey that led us there. What would profit us we do not actually want, and what seems to bother us, may not be so bad.
To hear the underground man say it, it appears hopeless for us to ever achieve our wanting. Perhaps the most telling point he makes is that he can never truly be happy because he realizes he can never truly be happy. In the first chapter he laments that he is too conscious of everything that occurs, and that it paralyzes him. Maybe, then, the only way to achieve some sort of happiness is to not think about it. Unfortunately for him, he is an underground man, and can never go back.
Personally I loved the Underground Man’s assertions with regards to the Crystal Palace. Up until that point, I was honestly struggling to bear his character because he seemed to me do nothing else but whine and wallow in his own self-created misery. However, once he cast his hell-raising attitude (as already portrayed in his justification for the affected moaning from the tooth-ache) towards Chernyshevsky’s Crystal Palace ideal, his affirmation of mankind’s greatest use of free will simply to rear its head in defiance of monotonous reason really struck a chord in me.
While I do see the logic in Sophie’s approach to this passage, in that the benefit of breaking the monotony must logically outweigh the costs of sacrificing the harmonious order, I personally would not approach it that way and do not think that Dostoevksy or his fictional narrator intended it to be approached in such a manner. Rather the ultimate significance that I attach to this passage is that in a way, reason in the sense of promoting self interest is being cast down. Although the main focus of the passage is on the aforementioned use of free will by man to counter this use of reason and “go against his best interests”, the undertones of the passage present a contradiction in the sense that if man acted rationally and thus in his best interests, why would this process ultimately bring him to a monotonous state where he desires to act against these same interests. Obviously this point is part of Dostoevsky’s sharp criticism of Chernyshevksy and Frank also acknowledges in his article that Dostoevsky related the ideal of the Crystal Palace with the total elimination of the personality.
The “two time two equals four” passage is one that I think will stay with me. The underground man, in his convoluted way is trying to get at what I views as an inevitable question of life. What is more important, the solution or the process of arriving there? Throughout the first part of the book, he emphasizes the importance of the process as a means of both filling our time, entertaining us and helping us arrive at the correct “solution” to life. The underground man reinforces this text by making his text stream of consciousness like and often times difficult to follow. “Perhaps the whole goal mankind strives for on earth consists just in this ceaselessness of the process of achievement alone, that is to say, in life itself, and not essentially in the goal, which of course is bound to be nothing other than two time two is four – that is, a formula; and two times two is no longer life, gentlemen, but the beginning of death,” claims the underground man. This roundabout way of arriving at his point mimics his message, making it more believable to the reader.
The approach that the Underground man takes appears to be one of the only ways to deal with the existentialist view on life he propagates. Throughout the entire first half he emphasizes the sickness of life, and the impossibility of finding a cure, the only way to continue living through this sickness is to accept that the path is the solution, not end we arrive at.
With that being said, I think that the underground man sees too much into the pain and suffering of life instead of learning to accept the sickness and all of the good things life has to offer. Unlike the underground man I see the necessity in living a happy and good life, otherwise there is nothing to enjoy in life and we spend our time despising life and waiting for it to end.
A great deal of the Underground Man’s actions are done against his will, meanwhile he is a very internal person and creates an alternate life in his thoughts, which consists of endeavors and conduct the reader quickly learns will never be actualized. In this way, the UM divides his existence into two, that of his revolting actions and that of his thoughts. This resounds heavily of the existentialist belief in different conditions of existence. It is the divide and constant clashing of the UM’s actions and thoughts that tear him apart and ultimately lead him to break down in front of Liza and hate himself for it.
The character if Liza is a very important one although she does not say much in the book. Her presence is one that invokes very large reactions from the UM in the brothel and in his apartment. Liza is his mirror, and in the darkness of the brothel he preaches to a version of himself, offers a version of himself help all because Liza is a presence in the room. When she visits him he is unarmed and is forced to see himself the way she sees him, he is forced to look at himself honestly and falls apart in front of Liza’s reflecting gaze. This reminds me a great deal of the Crystal Palace theory because something like this is not 2X2, it is not calculable or logical. The UM has made decisions based on what the import of those decisions would mean to him, not their rationality. Reason does not beget meaning in this book. If anything, the opposite is true.
However, I think that the UM generalizes his own manner of existing too broadly. To think that, “man loves to act as he likes, and not necessarily as reason and self-interest would have him do. Yes, he will even act straight against his own interests,” is a bit too broad of a statement. I believe we are all naturally irrational beings but that many of us work to find the reason, to find the logic and to align it with meaning and happiness. To think that the fact that 2X2=4 cannot bring happiness is a bit overstated. Logic and cold facts can bring great comfort in that they are undeniable and unwavering. To think that happiness cannot be obtained unless rationality, meaning, and true desire are in alignment is, I think, to say that happiness is unattainable for man.
It seems that by writing Notes from the Underground Dostoevsky is slowly shrinking away from the advances a kind of socialist utopianism that though he at one time he may have embraced he now absolutely despises. The Underground Man retreats from the notion that man is good, and when governed by reason and science, he can form an ideal society. The Underground Man, disagrees with the idea that he is simply a piece of material confined to act only according to the laws of rationalism. He argues that man is irrational and even evil by nature; that he isn’t predetermined to act in any way. Dostoevsky advances this kind of existentialism throughout Notes from the Underground. The Underground Man strongly attacks any notions of central planning as he throws rocks at the Crystal Palace. Because our choices mean something, we have meaning too. Though the decisions we make may be irrational, and even wrong, they are still decisions of our conscious free will. This free will, separates man from the beasts, making him truly human, not just a piano key or an organ stop.
The necessary drawback to this free will, however, is the suffering that must indelibly accompany it. Yet to the Underground Man certain things are gained through such suffering that cannot be gained without it. Truth, for one, can only be a result of a kind of extensive physical and mental torture. The ultimate example of such beneficial suffering, such selfless love, however, is the crucifixion of Christ, who of course heaped a limitless benefit on mankind by sacrificing himself. Christianity defied reason: it wasn’t reasonable for Christ to die on the cross, yet His death was the most “beautiful and sublime” thing imaginable. Therefore, Doestoevsky does believe in a sort of irrationalism that can lead humans emotions of suffering, happiness, and love. Despite his to thin that everything must be rational, eventually the Underground Man will learn that it is not.
I’m a little irritated by the Underground Man’s harping on the boring stasis of the 2×2=4 formula, and on his heroic (with tiresome numbers of self-deprecating caveats) defiance in announcing that for him it will sometimes equal 5. It’s not just that it seems peevish and immature: in his own logical world, in which the world is fully determined by arithmetic, the Underground Man’s defiance, however childish, would fully excusable, even necessary.
What makes the whole thing tedious, even insulting, is that it doesn’t seem necessary to deny the multiplication table to find chaos and beauty and fertile turmoil in the universe. There is enough that science is helpless to explain, or for which scientific explanations do not address the full complexity of the object, or for which the scientific explanation is entropy, without going to the bother of attacking arithmetic.
I think the Underground Man’s assumption that someone will be able to provide a rational explanation for all of life’s and the universe’s complexities, and that such rational explanations will be universally acknowledged as sufficient, and that the only way to escape determinism is to deny rationality where it is clearly applicable, is one of the points of the novella. This assumption, and the resulting desperation, is the natural result of the indoctrination of society by people like Chernyshevsky. I don’t know enough about nineteenth-century scientific philosophy, however, to say much about the degree to which Dostoyevsky and his readers would have shared the Underground Man’s impression of the intentions of science, so all I can really say is that the mathematical convention of the cardinal numbers and their relationships does not bother me.
I was really struck by the Underground Man’s musing on creation and destruction. He says, “Man is…similar to a chess player, likes only the process of achieving the goal, but not the goal itself.” This is true. We set goals for ourselves, but the process of achieving those goals is always what’s important. If it weren’t, only the ends would be important, and not the means. A person is often defined by HOW they get somewhere or what they do to get there, vs. where they are. This is why, in our society, virtuous men are held in higher contempt than those with no morals. How you do things and how you act are important. Life is a process for us, and the process is what’s important, not the goal. In fact, when we meet our goals, we set more goals. We have to be continually striving for something. However, I’m not sold on the fact that we destroy simply so that we cannot reach our goals.
The Underground Man, in that same chapter (IX) has some interesting musings on suffering, which I also think are true. Well-being alone isn’t enough for a person. Suffering gives a person’s life definition and perspective. The Underground Man defines suffering as destruction and chaos, which is sort of true, but I think is more of an internal destruction and chaos. The Underground Man asks, “Maybe suffering is just as profitable for him as well-being?” I think that it is (for the reason that a person’s life is given definition and perspective through suffering, not well-being alone).
Has anyone else felt the inertia of consciousness? I am constantly stuck in it. Reading this book is in part a relief – it defines a part of me (sorry for the confessional nature of this post, but it’s my most available cogent piece of thought on the matter) that I have either been formerly unable or perhaps unwilling to define. The paralysis of consciousness of the Underground man leads to people like Walker Percy’s 20th century malaise. However, I feel the main tenets of U-man’s point most acutely…I think it’s ironic that people try to build academic walls, or make sense, of any of this, because they are searching for the easy/logical conclusion. We take two ideas, despair and belief, and multiply them by consciousness and inertia, and it isn’t four at all…
“But what’s to be done if the sole and express purpose of every intelligent man is to babble – that is, a deliberate pouring of empty into a void.”
I must stand behind the Underground Man’s problems with 2×2=4. This isn’t to say that I don’t have problems with how he carries on from that rejection, but questioning that mathematical premise is necessary and, unfortunately, rarely done. We often hear that we “are standing on the shoulders of giants.” This term is thrown around to dispel any concerns we may have on the direction we are headed, as if to say “well, they were much smarter than us, and they got us here, so calm down.” Well fine, but on whose shoulders were those giants standing? No one’s. Neither were they keeping themselves grounded on terra firma, they were standing on chaos.
It comes as no surprise to a mathematician that there are messy problems with much of our accepted premises. Euclid’s fifth theorem, for example, was never proven. He didn’t even attempt to prove it (that is, that for any point p not on a line l, only one line l’ can be drawn through that point such that l and l’ will never intersect). This seems pretty basic, huh? Well, now think of it this way: that’s not proven, it very well might not be true. What now? What’s true now? On math we built logic, on logic we base reason, and reason gave us language and government and philosophy, etc etc etc. The UM’s schizophrenia is based on the fact that he is seeing that nothing is so basic, so grounded, as to be unshakable. And then, people look at him and tell him he’s crazy! Dostoevsky did a very good job of writing this character, so well that I think it is often overlooked.
I agree with Lisa’s clarification regarding the toothache: “Thus, I think the pleasure…isn’t necessarily a rock bottom pain-turned-europoria, but rather the happiness that comes from doing what you want to do (scream and yell) rather than what you should be doing (be calm).” In Constance Garnett’s translation of “Notes from Underground,” the anti-hero claims that “[t]he enjoyment of the sufferer finds expression in those moans” (243), and by implying “suffering,” there is still clearly pain. He also says that the moans “express the consciousness that you have no enemy to punish, but that you have pain…” (243). While the Underground Man certainly seems to relish in his misery and repugnance, I don’t believe that “the pain becomes a hug, a warm fuzzy hug, and you laugh,” as Stewart writes.
My bone to pick with the Underground Man lies in his selfish approach to pleasure and pain. Regarding the moans, he says, “…even the audience before whom he is making his efforts, and his whole family, listen to him with loathing, do not put a ha’porth of faith in him…and that he is only amusing himself like that from ill-humour, from malignancy. Well, in all these recognitions and disgraces it is that there lies a voluptuous pleasure” (244). It is not enough that he reacts to pain by generating pain, disturbing his loved ones and causing them to grow irritated, but he derives pleasure from simply “recognizing” this. The Underground Man does not allow for compassion and human care in his philosophy: he is so concerned about himself that he does not consider the happiness or desires of others. He may argue that he has no feelings for others, but clearly he is not representative of the entire human race, and his extreme subjective view of humanity shows a serious gap in his self-proclaimed “self-consciousness.” Perhaps he has never truly experienced “pleasure,” for “pleasure in pain” is a degree separate from the pure form (first there is pain, then pleasure). The Underground Man can distinguish the two opposing abstractions, but he does not appear to comprehend the extent of either emotion. Thus, I challenge him to stimulate contentment by “taking pleasure in pleasure” and thus produce positive vibes rather than destructive gestures that only diminish others’ freedoms.
Our narrator suggests the masochism in his character when begins delving in detail about the ability for a conscious man to find pleasure in misery. He first preempts his audience’s reaction:
“’Next you’ll be finding pleasure in a toothache!’ you will exclaim, laughing.
“And why not? There is also pleasure in a toothache,’ I will answer.”
The narrator then goes on to explain that a toothache can be embellished so that a man can take pleasure from the occasion to which he administers the pain, as well as taking pleasure in the annoyance of the people around him as he makes his pain known. He also goes on to assert that his moans are those of a ‘conscious’ man, and is different from the moans that would be made by a normal person.
The concept that something even as trivial but annoying as a toothache can bring pleasure to a man such as the Underground man, while he rejects things which others might describe as “beautiful and lofty” confounds me, and further illustrates the complexity of his character. As Joseph frank stated, although the Underground man can be categorized as a nihilist, his beliefs and actions, unlike those of Bazarov, can be construed as perverse, not straightforward. Instead of believing nothing, the underground man believes in ideas so far apart from each other that he cannot write without contradicting himself many times. He also rejects reason completely, completely forgoing the use of doctors or medicine to care for his ailing health.
The narrator’s keen desire to remain “conscious” but irrational is a strange decision, as he explains it with an overwhelming sense of rationality. In this way, we are shown another one of many contradictions which the Underground man reveals.
…This is not the right blog, is it? …:-(