Notes From Underground (1864) Dostoevsky
[Man] has always and everywhere liked to act as he wants
The underground man is a writer in mid 19th century Russia. He has a government job, but has not done well in life; he is insecure and constantly ruminates on everything. In his diaries, he points out the ridiculous nature of the intellectual movements of utopianism, foreshadowing what would come in the 20th century in the USSR. People have wants and desires – you cannot force them otherwise, and cannot tell them what they can and cannot, which causes frustration. From preface, a quote from Demons, “’I got entangled in my own data, and my conclusion directly contradicts the original idea I start from. Starting from unlimited freedom, I conclude with unlimited despotism’... A direct line leads from metaphysical naivety to murder; a direct line leads from the anti-unity of utilitarian aesthetics to the false unity of the crystal palace... what was in question was the complex reality of the human being... a true articulation [of which] could only come [from]… an artistic image.” From preface, “Giftlessness, as Dostoevsky feared... became the dominant style in Russia; it eventually seized power, and in the process of ‘making people happy’ destroyed them by millions...”
· “...before a wall, these gentlemen—that is, ingenuous people and active figures—quite sincerely fold. For them a wall is not a deflection, as it is, for example, for us, people who think and consequently do nothing; it is not a pretext for turning back, a pretext which our sort usually doesn’t believe in but is always very glad to have. No, they fold in all sincerity. For them a wall possesses something soothing, morally resolving, and final, perhaps even something mystical...” Thus, knowing what you can change, what you can achieve, and what is folly. Whereas, for the man who does nothing, a wall is something which “one doesn’t believe in” -- thus, they are better than walls – but, when one presents itself, they are actually glad the excuse is there.
· “And above all, it is he, he himself, who regards himself as a mouse; no one asks him to, and that is an important point.” Thus, people see themselves in a low light all on their own, it is not forced on them by others, per se. It is their own perception of their self which has developed.
· People manufacture feelings and circumstances merely so that they might feel alive and cure their “unproductive living” through it. “And you ask why I twisted and tormented myself so? Answer: because it was just too boring to sit there with folded arms, that’s why I’d get into such flourishes. Really, it was so... I made up adventures and devised a life for myself so as to live, at least somehow, a little. How many times it happened to me—well, say, for example, to feel offended, just so, for no reason, on purpose; and I’d know very well that I felt offended for no reason, that I was affecting it, but you can drive yourself so far that in the end, really, you do indeed get offended. Somehow all my life I’ve had an urge to pull such stunts...”
· “Because profit for you is prosperity, wealth, freedom, peace, and so on and so forth; so that a man who, for example, openly and knowingly went against this whole inventory would, in your opinion—well, and also in mine, of course—be an obscurantist or a complete madman, right? But here is the surprising thing: how does it happen that all these statisticians, sages, and lovers of mankind, in calculating human profits, constantly omit one profit? They don’t even take it into account in the way it ought to be taken, and yet the whole account depends on that... there may well exist something that is dearer for almost every man than his very best profit... that there is this one most profitable profit... which is chiefer and more profitable than all other profits, and for which a man is ready, if need be, to go against all laws, that is, against reason, honor, peace, prosperity... only so as to attain this primary, most profitable profit, which is dearer to him than anything else.” The Russian intellectuals of “collective” interests would speak of virtue, real human interests, and what people should want, but it did not take their desire, their humanity, into account.
· “But man is so partial to systems and abstract conclusions that he is ready intentionally to distort the truth, to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear, only so as to justify his logic. That’s why I’ve chosen this example, because it is an all too vivid one.”
· Man does not want to live his life according to formulas and “a table.” It would be “terribly boring then (because what is there to do if everything’s calculated according to some little table?), but on the other hand, it wil all be extremely reasonable.”
· “Man really is stupid, phenomenally stupid. That is, he’s by no means stupid, but rather he’s so ungrateful that it would be hard to find the likes of him... I, for example, would not be the least bit surprised if suddenly, out of the blue, amid the universal future reasonableness, some gentleman of ignoble, or better, of retrograde and jeering physiogonomy, should emerge, set his arms akimbo, and say to us all: ‘Well, gentlemen, why don’t we reduce all this reasonableness to dust with one good kick, for the sole purpose of sending all these logarithms to the devil and living once more according to our own stupid will!’... And all this for the emptiest of reasons, which would seem not even worth mentioning: namely, that man, whoever he might be, has always and everywhere liked to act as he wants, and not at all as reason and profit dictate... one’s own free and voluntary wanting, one’s own caprice, however wild, one’s own fancy, though chafed sometimes to the point of madness—all this is that same most profitable profit, the omitted one...because of which all systems and theories are constantly blown to the devil.
· “...what is man without desires, without will, and without wantings, if not a sprig in an organ barrel?”
· “... wanting is a manifestation of the whole of life—that is, the whole of human life, including reason and various little itches. And though our life in this manifestation often turns out to be a bit of trash, still it is life and not just the extraction of a square root.”
· “But, I repeat to you for the hundredth time, there is only one case, one only, when man may purposely, consciously wish for himself even the harmful, the stupid, even what is stupidest of all: namely, so as to have the right to wish for himself even what is stupidest of all and not be bound by an obligation to wish for himself only what is intelligent. For this stupidest of all, this caprice of ours, gentlemen, may in fact be the most profitable of anything on earth for our sort... it preserves... our personality and individuality.”
· “I even think the best definition of a man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful.”
· Shower him with all earthly blessings, drown him in happiness completely... give him such economic satisfaction that he no longer has anything left to do at all except sleep, eat gingerbread, and worry about the noncessation of world history – and it is here, just here, that he, this man, out of sheer ingratitude, out of sheer lampoonery, will do something nasty. He will even risk his gingerbread, and wish on purpose for the most pernicious nonsense, the most noneconomical meaninglessness, solely in order to mix into all this positive good sense his own pernicious, fantastical element. It is precisely his fantastic dreams, his most banal stupidity, that he will wish to keep hold of, with the sole purpose of confirming to himself... that human beings are still human beings and not piano keys... 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.” Thus, we cannot deny the human will. It is everything.
· Of his relations with his compatriots in his younger years (second half of book), “They had so little understanding of the most essential things, so little interest in the most impressive, startling subjects, that I began, willy-nilly, to regard them as beneath me... they understood nothing, no real life, and I swear it was this in them that outraged me most of all... they took the most obvious, glaring reality in a fantastically stupid way, and were already accustomed to worshipping success alone. Everything that was just, but humiliated and downtrodden, they laughed at disgracefully and hardheartedly. They regarded rank as intelligence... much of this came... from the bad examples that had ceaselessly surrounded their childhood...” Thus, class is something older than time, and it is an inherent part of the human condition, perhaps escapable by some in some ways.
· On his experience with the prostitute Liza, “...without power and tyranny over someone, I really cannot live... but... but reasoning explains nothing, and consequently three’s no point in reasoning.” Love and relationships with women for him become not about love, but about power and domination.
· “First, I was no longer able to love, because, I repeat, for me to love meant to tyrannize and to preponderize morally. All my life I’ve been incapable even of picturing any other love...”
· Liza understood, “understood from it all what a woman, if she loves sincerely, always understands before anything else—namely, that I myself was unhappy.” He rejects Liza out of spite and rage, and she understands why he has done it, not out of nastiness, but out of a defense of himself.
· “... we’ve all grown unaccustomed to life, we’re all lame, each of us more or less... we feel a sort of loathing for real ‘living life,’ and therefore cannot bear to be reminded of it.”
· “Go on, try giving us more independence, for example, unbind the hands of any one of us, broaden our range of activity, relax the tutelage, and we... but I assure you: we will immediately beg to be taken back under tutelage... I have merely carried to an extreme in my life what you have not dared to carry even halfway, and what’s more, you’ve taken your cowardice for good sense, and found comfort in thus deceiving yourselves. So that I, perhaps, come out even more ‘living’ than you... Leave us to ourselves, without a book, and we’ll immediately get confused, lost—we won’t know what to join, what to hold to, what to love and what to hate... It’s a burden for us even to be men—men with real, our own bodies and blood; we’re ashamed of it... we... keep trying to be some unprecedented omni-men.” Thus, people do not want to be free, they don’t want to look, and sometimes do not want to actively live.