Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground is considered by many to be one of the foundational (or pre-foundational) works of existentialism. It is the portrayal of the introspection of a man in St. Petersberg, a city founded with the intention of creating a rationalistic utopia. The “underground man”, the fictional author, furiously rejects the restraints put upon him by those who wish to construct an enlightened society, and to include him. Man is an irrational animal, Aristotle was wrong, says the underground man. His introspective critique undermined previous essentialism in a literary way, and therefore opened the way to existentialism. The influence of this work is seen prominently in the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, who acknowledged that Dostoevsky's little book had a profound influence on him.
There are many comparisons worthy of discussion between Notes and Sartre's philosophy. It is necessary to be cautious to avoid anachronism. Sartre's writings are significantly later than those of Dostoevsky, and while Dostoevsky stands at the very beginning of existentialism, Sartre comes after many permutations of the philosophy. Therefore this essay will focus on the self-alienation of the underground man, and describe this in Sartrean terms.
One of Sartre's most radical claims is that human beings are not subject to the law of non-contradiction.i Man, by virtue of his transcendence, is not subject to all the restrictions that belonging to Being requires. This is evidenced by the ability of man to ask questions, and thus place himself and the object outside the deterministic structure of being.ii A man can both be something and not be something, simultaneously. This is irrational, but for Sartre this is not problematic. Man is largely irrational.
While man can take on roles, he cannot ever allow them to touch his being. Sartre elaborates with the example of a waiter in a restaurant: “[A] waiter in the cafe cannot be immediately a cafe waiter in the sense that this inkwell is an inkwell.”iii The role of the waiter is something someone takes on. He understands the responsibility of being a waiter, he understands the characteristics a waiter is supposed to have, and he assumes them. But at the same time, he is not the waiter, and he is separated from being the waiter by nothingness. He is the waiter in the mode of “being what [he] is not.”iv Likewise, when one is speaking, he is not “the speaking,” rather, it is an act that he is assuming but that does not determine his being. Likewise, Sartre says one is not his body. One is not even his own consciousness in an unqualified sense.
This division of a person creates a gap that does not allow anything to truly touch ones being, and makes one's true essence appear to be nothingness – or at the very least unintelligible. This recognition that one cannot truly lose oneself in ones roles is seen acutely in Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground.
The protagonist of the Notes is unnamed, and will be called the underground man. He describes himself as a sick, mean man with a liver problem. v He does not wish to go to the doctor because he is spiteful, yet he is aware that his spite has no object. He was a civil servant for much of his life, wiling away his time by being difficult to civilians. He said he enjoyed being rude. But after recounting several encounters with his customers, he retracts that claim. Though he acted rude, he was not really rude, not deep down.vi He was simply “playing a role,” much like Sartre's waiter. Except he was playing his role because he was bored. The underground man says “the intelligent man [among whom he included himself, of course] cannot really turn himself into anything,” thought the same is not true of fools. But what does the intelligent man have that the fool does not? Lucidity, the underground man declares. But being a lucid man is not something the underground man desires. At times, he declares, he tried to become an insect. He envies those men of action who simply do, and do not over analyze what they do. He is “bilious” with envy.vii They are lower than him, men of lesser intelligence. But they can act! They are not paralyzed by their anxiety. If they wish to take revenge, they take it. They can take pleasure in the misunderstanding that revenge is justice. They are not mired down in insecurities; they do not have to find their pleasure in filth.
The underground man can not act against those who wrong him. He simply takes the abuse, and even takes pleasure in it. Then he scurries off to his “mouse hole” to fixate on his wounds internally. The underground would even confess to sins he did not commit, taking on roles one does not normally find desirable, and all because it is better than doing nothing. He played at love, made himself believe it, but this too could not touch him. At one point he attempted to befriend his co-workers, but it didn't last. The underground man oscillated between a feeling of superiority and a feeling of inferiority for others. And, even after spending time with his co-workers, could not really become their friends. His recognition of the gap between his roles and himself rendered him unable to engage in society.
Though he “became” a sinner and a rude man, he – like Sartre – realized that he wasn't really these things. He talks of how he wished he could even be lazy. He longs to hear others call him lazy, to identify him as something, anything. A lazy man who could dream of the true and the beautiful. But the underground man claims he could never be known as this, he could never be a real, positive person.viii But after all this introspection, the underground man could not believe his own words. He said them about himself, but even they are not true. He has no core; or at least, nothing which can become something else. He can tell stories about himself; he can relate events. And though these are colored by his memory, he can believe them. But when he talks about what he is, nothing rings of truth, it is all superfluous.
The lucidity of the underground man may be expressed in Sartrean terms as this: the consciousness of the separateness of the self, of the nothingness that separates oneself from being something positive. The underground man can never be anything fully, not even the underground man. Even this he takes on as a role. This self-alienation gives rise to agony, loneliness, and absurdity. It is an illustration not only of Sartre's notion of the self, but of the acute anguish the consciousness of this in oneself brings.
iSartre, Jean-Paul. 2001. The Humanism of Existentialism. In Existentialism: Basic Writings, Second Edition. 335. Hackett Publishing Company: Indianapolis, Indiana.
iiSartre, 319-320. Due to space, the issue is dealt with briefly here. The whole of section 3 deals with this notion.
iiiSartre, 336-337.
ivSartre, 337.
vDostoevsky, Notes from Underground. (London: Signet Classic, 1961)p. 90.
viDostoevsky, 90.
viiDostoevsky, 96.
viiiDostoevsky, 104-105.
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