In both Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard the inexplicable and irrational acts of man are explored. In Fear and Trembling Abraham’s actions – in the name of God – are portrayed as a leap into the religious realm of morality, achieving a sudden faith in the absurd. Conversely, in The Underground Man, the protagonist espouses a belief that one must sometimes wish “what is bad for himself, and what is not profitable;” (Dostoevsky 17) believing that not all acts are purely rational, that sometimes man is responding to something more powerful than reason or, in other words, something absurd. While Abraham’s religious realm and the underground man’s “most profitable profit” (ibid.) seem to contradict …show more content…
In this exploration, Di Silenctio – the story’s protagonist – focuses on Abraham’s motivation and rationale in relation to his belief that “God could give him a new Isaac, [and] bring the sacrificial offer back to life” (Kierkegaard Loc. 948). Abraham’s faith was not “that he should be happy in the hereafter, but that he should find blessed happiness here in this world” (ibid.). Abraham’s belief in the absurd serves to illustrate Kierkegaard’s rejection of Hegelian ethics; Kierkegaard uses the story of Abraham as an example of his belief that the religious realm is somehow higher than the ethical realm of Hegelian ethics. It is this religious realm of ethics, wherein a “teleological suspension of the ethical” (Kierkegaard 1267) occurs that Di Silenctio attempts to explain. This teleological suspension of the ethical serves as both a rejection of universal ethics, and an acceptance of the fact that “as soon as the single individual wants to assert himself in his particularity, in direct opposition to the universal, he sins, and it is only by recognizing this can he again reconcile himself to the universal” (Kierkegaard 1225). Additionally, it is Abraham’s paradoxical acceptance of the absurd that allows him to fulfil his “duty to God” (Kierkegaard 403) while acting immorally (Isaac’s sacrifice amounts to murder,) and justifies his decision to not “reveal his intention to the parties …show more content…
Like Abraham, the underground man’s “most profitable profit” (Ibid.) acts as a suspension of the moral, and as a rejection of determinist philosophies. Ostensibly, the underground man’s refusal to be “nothing but a sort of piano key” (Dostoevsky 19) seems incompatible with Di Silenctio’s portrayal of Abraham, but this is not the case. The underground man and Abraham share an identical belief in the absurd nature of human behavior and both reject the universal ethics of
1985. “The Logic of Sacrifice” in Anthropological Approaches to the Old Testament. Ed., Bernhard Lane.
Kierkegaard suggests that Hegel, at his core, does not understand that the nature of man, or at the very least the nature of faith, which is in a constant state of moral uncertainty. He illustrates the state of man with various analogies on Abraham's sacrifice of Issac in “Fear and Trembling,” suggesting that Abraham should either be considered a murder because he would have killed his son, or a man of faith because of he obeyed God unwaveringly. Kierkegaard wirtes, “I return, however, to Abraham. Before the result, either Abraham was every minute a murderer, or we are confronted by a paradox which is higher than all mediation” (Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 51). He makes the claim that while the ethical is universal, the individual who has a personal relationship with God takes on a higher importance than one would with Gies...
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment begins with Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov living in poverty and isolation in St. Petersburg. The reader soon learns that he was, until somewhat recently, a successful student at the local university. His character at that point was not uncommon. However, the environment of the grim and individualistic city eventually encourages Raskolnikov’s undeveloped detachment and sense of superiority to its current state of desperation. This state is worsening when Raskolnikov visits an old pawnbroker to sell a watch. During the visit, the reader slowly realizes that Raskolnikov plans to murder the woman with his superiority as a justification. After the Raskolnikov commits the murder, the novel deeply explores his psychology, yet it also touches on countless other topics including nihilism, the idea of a “superman,” and the value of human life. In this way, the greatness of Crime and Punishment comes not just from its examination of the main topic of the psychology of isolation and murder, but the variety topics which naturally arise in the discussion.
Often times in literature, we are presented with quintessential characters that are all placed into the conventional categories of either good or bad. In these pieces, we are usually able to differentiate the characters and discover their true intentions from reading only a few chapters. However, in some remarkable pieces of work, authors create characters that are so realistic and so complex that we are unable to distinguish them as purely good or evil. In the novel Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky develops the morally ambiguous characters of Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov to provide us with an interesting read and to give us a chance to evaluate each character.
He constantly attempts to seek out revenge, but the concept of revenge, paired with the underground character’s actions and inertia, becomes problematic with the underground ideal. The underground character is steeped in contradiction, and how one interprets his actions, or his inactions, is what ultimately determines whether the he is, truly, an underground man. Notes from the Underground and Taxi Driver both depict a protagonist, the underground character, who scoffs and scorns at those aboveground, termed the “normal man” (PDF 15). Notes describes the normal man as someone with “normal interests,” who “act[s] in accordance with the laws of reason and truth” (). Notes were written at the time of the Enlightenment, and used to criticize the then-popular theory of material determinism: that “all choice and reasoning can be.calculated” by science, and if this is applied to human behavior, it is possible that “there will some day be discovered the laws of our so-called free will” (PDF 42)....
The tone of “Notes from Underground” is sharp, strange and bitter. The bitterness of the book is traced to the multiple personal misfortunes the author suffered as he wrote his novel. Through these personal tragedies it can be argued that the author presented the position of the “underground man” through his own experiences. Additionally, the research holds the second belief that the novel’s presentation of “underground man” is founded on the social context the novel addresses (Fanger 3). Through this, it was found that Dostoevsky presented the suffering of man under the emerging world view directed by European materialism, liberalism and utopianism. As he began writing his novel, Dostoevsky had been directed by the romantic error that looked at utopian social life and the social vision of satisfying and perfecting regular life for man. The failure for the society to gain these achievements was as a result of the distant liberalism and materialism that reduced the power of reasoning and...
Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Henrik Ibsen were two famous writers of the nineteenth era who became famous by writing about realism with their masterpieces; Dostoyevsky with the “Notes from Underground” and Ibsen with “Hedda Gabler”. Both works are based on the realistic picture of the whole society, between rich and poor, where their protaonist’s actions are result of social determinism. Social determinism is the theory that describes a person whose behavior is influenced by the society. According to this concept, the characters of “Notes from Underground” the underground man, and “Hedda Gabler” Hedda Tesman, are products of social determinism.
In Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, the Underground Man proposes a radically different conception of free action from that of Kant. While Kant thinks that an agent is not acting freely unless he acts for some reason, the Underground Man seems to take the opposite stance: the only way to be truly autonomous is to reject this notion of freedom, and to affirm one's right to act for no reason. I will argue that the Underground Man's notion of freedom builds on Kant's, in that it requires self-consciousness in decision-making. But he breaks from Kant when he makes the claim that acting for a reason is not enough, and only provides an illusion of freedom. When faced with the two options of deceiving himself about his freedom (like most men) or submitting to ìthe wall,î (a form of determinism), the Underground Man chooses an unlikely third option - a 'retort'. I will conclude this paper by questioning whether this 'retort' succeeds at escaping the system of nature he desperately seeks to avoid.
The Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, explores the psychology of humanity and freedom through “The Brothers Karamazov”, found in his short story “The Grand Inquisitor”. Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor” is perhaps one of his greatest works ever known in modern literature because Dostoevsky’s philosophy is aimed towards free will, religion and human nature. For decades, many have criticized the short story because Dostoevsky gives a profound understanding of the confrontation between Jesus and the Grand Inquisitor. Also, the story ends in ambiguity, leaving the readers with wonder and confusion. Critics have argued over Dostoevsky's religious and political thoughts on contemporary society.
Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher in the mid 1800s. He is known to be the father of existentialism and was at least 70 years ahead of his time. Kierkegaard set out to attack Kant’s rational ethics and make attacks on the Christianity of our day. He poses the question, how do we understand faith? He states that faith equals the absurd. In “Fear and Trembling”, he uses the story of Abraham and his son Isaac to show an example of faith as the absurd. The story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac signifies a break in the theory that ethics and religion go hand in hand. He shows how the ethical and the religious can be completely different. “I by no means conclude that faith is something inferior but rather that it is the highest, also that it is dishonest of philosophy to give something else in its place and to disparage faith” (Fear and Trembling, 12).
Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky was among those philosophical thinkers who grappled with the task of explaining why evil exists in a world created by a perfect god. Despite the powerful influence of Christianity in his early childhood and throughout his life, Dostoevsky encountered difficulties in answering this question, which he described, “Nature, the soul, God, love – all this is understood by the heart, not by the mind” (Gibson 1973, 9). Nevertheless, Dostoevsky not only felt obligated to discover a solution to the problem, but also “responsible to his fellow believers for its success or failure” (Gibson 1973, 169). This quest for a solution to the problem of theodicy ultimately led Dostoevsky to write The Brothers Karamazov, a novel that attempts to explain the need for evil in the world. In posing his solution to this problem, Dostoevsky explains the necessity of suffering for the realization of human redemption, as well as the role of Christ’s atoneme...
Dostoyevsky's characters are very similar, as is his stories. He puts a strong stress on the estrangement and isolation his characters feel. His characters are both brilliant and "sick" as mentioned in each novel, poisoned by their intelligence. In Notes from the Underground, the character, who is never given a name, writes his journal from solitude. He is spoiled by his intelligence, giving him a fierce conceit with which he lashes out at the world and justifies the malicious things he does. At the same time, though, he speaks of the doubt he feels at the value of human thought and purpose and later, of human life. He believes that intelligence, to be constantly questioning and "faithless(ly) drifting" between ideas, is a curse. To be damned to see everything, clearly as a window (and that includes things that aren't meant to be seen, such as the corruption in the world) or constantly seeking the meaning of things elusive. Dostoyevsky thought that humans are evil, destructive and irrational.
In Notes from Underground, Dostoyevsky relates the viewpoints and doings of a very peculiar man. The man is peculiar because of his lack of self-respect, his sadistic and masochistic tendencies, and his horrible delight in inflicting emotional pain on himself and others. Almost instantly the reader is forced to hate this man. He has no redeeming values, all of his insights into human nature are ghastly, and once he begins the narrative of his life, the reader begins to actively hate and pity him.
According to Raskolnikov’s theory in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”,there are two types of people that coexist in the world; the “Extraordinary” and the “Ordinary”. The ordinary men can be defined as “Men that have to live in submission, have no right to transgress the law, because they are ordinary.”(248). To the contrary “extraordinary” men are “Men that have a right to commit any crime and to transgress the law in any way , just because they are extraordinary”(248). Dostoevsky’s theory is evident through the characters of his novel. The main character, Raskolnikov, uses his theory of extraordinary men to justify contemplated murder. There is a sense of empowerment his character experiences with the ability to step over social boundaries. He is led to believe the killing of the pawnbroker is done for the perseverance of the greater good. It is ironic that character who is shown to be powerful in the early stages of the novel subsequently go on to show many weaknesses.
The introspective and self-scrutinizing nature of Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment, allows for us to delve into the existential rationales that warrant and influence the decisions and courses of action that he carries out. It is crucial to explore the workings of Raskolnikov’s mind, to understand the motives by which he is compelled by to perform the heinous murder of Alyona the pawnbroker. By examining Raskolnikov’s psyche, characterization, and decision making processes, which are characterized by his constant schisms and dichotomies, we can gain an understanding of how the portrayal of existentialist ideals as represented by Raskolnikov, evolve through the plot of the novel. The changing attitude of Raskolnikov, the environment by which he is surrounded by, as well as the relationships and encounters he has, influence and form the existential tendencies that Raskolnikov personifies. The existential philosophies portrayed by Raskolnikov range from embodying Nietzsche's Übermensch to Kierkegaard’s Christian existentialist theories.