Philosophy Notes From Underground: A rebuke of Rationalism and Utopianism

Curved_Sw0rd

Just Like That Bluebird
Quite recently I finished Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground, which if you haven't read, is frustrating but ultimately a worthwhile read. It is the story of the nameless "Underground Man" who is defined by being a miserable bastard who overthinks everything and everyone, seeing the flaws and judging them harshly. This does, however, extend to himself, leaving him thinking himself the smartest person around while simultaneously pitying his own spiteful and ultimately weak nature. The story is told in two parts, first being his brutally honest accounts of his own life, his failings, and philosophical insights through the suffering he's endured and given, presented as notes but reads more like a confession. The second part is a more traditional short story from the Underground Man's perspective, detailing three key events in detail, as well as his day to day antics.

You might be wondering what a wretched man has to do with the questions of Rationalism and Utopianism, so a little context is needed. Dostoevsky's early life was one belonging to a socialist, furious at serfdom in Russia, and joined a group of illegal propagandists. This ended with him and everyone involved getting arrested, sentenced to death, and marched out to the firing line only to have it revealed to them that it was all psychological punishment, and then Fyodor was sent to Siberia for 4 years, breaking rocks. Afterwards, he joined the army.

This prison sentence lead him to rejecting socialist ideas all together, in no small part due to prisoners in Siberia associating the well to do socialist ideas with the aristocracy that put them all in chains. In fact, some think that Dostoevsky wrote Notes From Underground in response to a novel called "What Is To Be Done?" by a "Rational Egoist" by the name of N. G. Chernyshevsky. Rational Egoism is of the idea that man can be perfected by sufficient scientific reason and self-interest, which would've been popular in socialist circles at the time Dostoevsky was a young man.

So what is his argument against this sort of idea, that man can be perfected, made entirely rational? Allow me to pull up a quote:

In short, one may say anything about the history of the world--anything that might enter the most disordered imagination. The only thing one can't say is that it's rational. The very word sticks in one's throat.

And, indeed, this is the odd thing that is continually happening: there are continually turning up in life moral and rational persons, sages and lovers of humanity who make it their object to live all their lives as morally and rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light to their neighbours simply in order to show them that it is possible to live morally and rationally in this world.

And yet we all know that those very people sooner or later have been false to themselves, playing some queer trick, often a most unseemly one.

Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities?

And there is a very salient point to be made here. The history of mankind is a bloody one, rational is not a word that describes our journey from caves to cellphones. And that crack about sages and humanitarians is true, they are no saints themselves when you take a close look. While Chernyshevsky posits that man can be saved rationalism, critical thought and scientific progress have been with us for a lot longer than people seem to realize, and yet history shows no evidence of things getting "better" in that sense. We are even today still sinful, still fighting, still irrational. Perhaps there is no cure.

And that question at the end is answered thusly:

Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him
economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and
even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick.

He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself--as though that were so necessary-- that men still are 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.

And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point!

He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), may be by his curse alone he will attain his object--that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key! If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated--chaos and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point!

I'm sure many of those reading this can think of someone they know who has been given oodles of help and they refuse to change. People who have it all, yet remain unhappy (our protagonist in this book is not well off, but yet has no true reason to be resentful and unhappy). And there is also that spark of Individualism, of Pride, of Self-Worth, that demands freedom. That contrariness, that little spark of rebellion in your heart? It's in us, I think, in all of us. Again, the historical context makes evidence of this. How many times has man rebelled against a system, real or imagined? Would a perfectly rational man not simply erect his utopia and prevail?

But this all sounds rather grim, doesn't it? A very pessimistic view of mankind. Unless it's not?

You will scream at me (that is, if you condescend to do so) that no one is touching my free will, that all they are concerned with is that my will should of itself, of its own free will, coincide with my own normal interests, with the laws of nature and arithmetic.

Good heavens, gentlemen, what sort of free will is left when we come to tabulation and arithmetic, when it will all be a case of twice two make four? Twice two makes four without my will. As if free will meant that!

Maybe the irrationality of mankind is a feature, not a flaw. One's Free Will is what makes a man different from other animals, and is that not what makes us great? We are free to make our own choices, unlike an ant that only knows its designated role in the colony. An animal in the throes of suffering cannot think for itself, it simply lashes out until the pain ceases or the lights finally go out, whichever comes first, but not man. Man can make use of suffering, and can even come out the other side of it better for it. We see evidence of this in Dostoevsky himself, and in the Underground Man, as Dostoevsky went through hell and transformed into something a bit more real and thoughtful than an air-headed socialist. The Underground Man does not fully transform, as is his tragedy, but all the same is more honest about himself to himself, which is a damn sight better than lacking any self awareness, isn't it?

So allow me to ask this, is Dostoevsky right about human nature? Is he right to deny Rationalism, to deny Utopianism? Or is he wrong, and how so?

And if you wish to read Note From Underground yourself, I'll post a link to it here, in pdf format.
 

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