Work · Life & Existential Philosophy
Notes from Underground
Humans would rather be free than rational.
Introduction
Dostoevsky published this short novel in 1864 in Epoch, the journal he ran with his brother. It has two parts: a monologue in which a retired official of forty rails against reason, science and the idea that people always act in their own interest, and a story from his youth, “Apropos of the Wet Snow”, in which he humiliates himself and others. The target is the rational egoism of Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s novel What Is to Be Done? (1863), with its utopian Crystal Palace. Two times two makes four, the narrator concedes, is an excellent thing – but two times two makes five can be charming too. The text is often read as a forerunner of existentialism.
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Connections
Criticizes
- What Is to Be Done?1863 · Nikolai Chernyshevsky
Taken up in
- Dostoevsky and Nietzsche: The Philosophy of Tragedy1903 · Lev Shestov
More works by Fyodor Dostoevsky
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