We must all go into the dark, the place of not knowing, the underground if you will, if we want
to emerge as whole creatures. Our integrity, our wholeness, depends on this struggle in the darkness.
Some make attempts to escape this travail by grasping at religious dogma or by following charismatic
leaders who tell them what to do, and thereby think they can avoid the struggle. Some develop
elaborate theories of human behavior that claim that the kind of rigorous selfexamination required in this place of anxiety and uncertainty is unnecessary, is even counterproductive. Every era has its preferred methods, or its recycling of older materials into new garments, to relieve the pressures of the dark. Two thousand years ago Paul of Tarsus formulated the problem in this way: “That which I would I do not: but that which I would not, that I do.” (Romans 7:19) This is the nature of man, every bit as much a part of him as his reasoning mind and his wild heart. Dostoevsky’s underground man writes “reason, gentlemen, is an excellent thing, there is no disputing that, but reason is only reason and can only satisfy man’s rational faculty, while will is a manifestation of all life, that is, of all human life including reason as well as all impulses.” (p. 45) The underground man seeks wholeness, to live all of his faculties, but he becomes mired in his darkness, stuck in the power of his own spite.
Dostoevsky’s underground man insists that the determinism conceived of by the scientists and utilitarian thinkers of his day is incoherent. It cannot relieve of us the dark. The notion of rational determinism was gaining traction among the thinkers of Dostoevsky’s time. The underground man pushes back strongly against this theme, railing against the idea that man acts in accordance with the dictates of his reason to promote his own good. The utilitarian idea that if we can only calculate our
elaborate theories of human behavior that claim that the kind of rigorous selfexamination required in this place of anxiety and uncertainty is unnecessary, is even counterproductive. Every era has its preferred methods, or its recycling of older materials into new garments, to relieve the pressures of the dark. Two thousand years ago Paul of Tarsus formulated the problem in this way: “That which I would I do not: but that which I would not, that I do.” (Romans 7:19) This is the nature of man, every bit as much a part of him as his reasoning mind and his wild heart. Dostoevsky’s underground man writes “reason, gentlemen, is an excellent thing, there is no disputing that, but reason is only reason and can only satisfy man’s rational faculty, while will is a manifestation of all life, that is, of all human life including reason as well as all impulses.” (p. 45) The underground man seeks wholeness, to live all of his faculties, but he becomes mired in his darkness, stuck in the power of his own spite.
Dostoevsky’s underground man insists that the determinism conceived of by the scientists and utilitarian thinkers of his day is incoherent. It cannot relieve of us the dark. The notion of rational determinism was gaining traction among the thinkers of Dostoevsky’s time. The underground man pushes back strongly against this theme, railing against the idea that man acts in accordance with the dictates of his reason to promote his own good. The utilitarian idea that if we can only calculate our
best ‘good’ we will choose to act according to that calculation is held up for examination and roundly
defeated. The underground man is a keen observer of human nature and human history and will not be
swept up in the utopian zeal that reason can solve problems of human behavior. This idea has returned
to us clothed in the language of cognitive neuroscience where claims are made that it can be shown
empirically that humans do not have free will. New window dressing for a new age.
The underground man insists that humans have this freedom of will, even to their own hurt. He cites the obvious historical truth that we often choose to do what harms us, clinching his argument that man has this freedom. He calls it man’s “most advantageous advantage”; “one’s own fancy free unfettered choice” arguing that this “right to desire for himself... may be more advantageous than anything else on earth... because it preserves what is most precious and most important that is, our personality, our individuality.” (p.43) This acting against our own interests is then not irrational at all. It preserves our sense of our own “quidditas” our “thisness/meness”, something needed for survival. Man will stubbornly assert “What I do is me! For that I came.” (G.M. Hopkins) He goes further though. He thinks that man will choose against his own good sometimes just to prove to himself and to others that he has this freedom, that he is alive and not just a cog in a machine, or a piano key to hammer. Even at the price of harming himself man will choose against his own good out of sheer spite.
But spite against what? Against a sense of meaninglessness of the absurdity of the universe? The underground man repeats four times that man is ungrateful:
“Or rather he is not stupid at all, but he is so ungrateful that you could not find another like him in all creation.” (p.43)
“But if he is not stupid, he is just the same monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. I even believe that the best definition of man is a creature that walks on two legs and is ungrateful.” (p.46)
“... even then man, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer libel, would play you some loathsome trick.” (p.47)
“Man... would purposely do something perverse out of sheer ingratitude, simply to have his own way.” (p. 47)
The underground man insists that humans have this freedom of will, even to their own hurt. He cites the obvious historical truth that we often choose to do what harms us, clinching his argument that man has this freedom. He calls it man’s “most advantageous advantage”; “one’s own fancy free unfettered choice” arguing that this “right to desire for himself... may be more advantageous than anything else on earth... because it preserves what is most precious and most important that is, our personality, our individuality.” (p.43) This acting against our own interests is then not irrational at all. It preserves our sense of our own “quidditas” our “thisness/meness”, something needed for survival. Man will stubbornly assert “What I do is me! For that I came.” (G.M. Hopkins) He goes further though. He thinks that man will choose against his own good sometimes just to prove to himself and to others that he has this freedom, that he is alive and not just a cog in a machine, or a piano key to hammer. Even at the price of harming himself man will choose against his own good out of sheer spite.
But spite against what? Against a sense of meaninglessness of the absurdity of the universe? The underground man repeats four times that man is ungrateful:
“Or rather he is not stupid at all, but he is so ungrateful that you could not find another like him in all creation.” (p.43)
“But if he is not stupid, he is just the same monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. I even believe that the best definition of man is a creature that walks on two legs and is ungrateful.” (p.46)
“... even then man, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer libel, would play you some loathsome trick.” (p.47)
“Man... would purposely do something perverse out of sheer ingratitude, simply to have his own way.” (p. 47)
But what is he ungrateful about? Who or what is he being ungrateful towards? And what would gratitude look like, if man was grateful? In “On the Shortness of Life” Seneca suggests a way of thinking about the gratitude man ought to feel. He writes:
“Of all people only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only those are really alive. For they not only keep a good watch over their own lifetimes, but they annex every age to theirs. All the years that have passed before them are added to their own. Unless we are very ungrateful, all those distinguished founders of holy creeds were born for us and prepared for us a way of life. By the toil of others we are led into the presence of things which have been brought from darkness into light.”
By looking beyond ourselves and beyond our own age, there is a connection to be found to those around us and to those who came before us. This is a profound gift from that same universe that tortures us. We may be reeling from life’s slings and arrows, but not to acknowledge this gift is both ungrateful and stupid.
But the underground man is not stupid. He sees the gifts there to be grasped, but he cannot yet grasp them. The absurdity of the universe has driven the man underground. He has observed that
events are often random, that some men prosper and others do not, and that the causes for this are impossible to determine, and explanations unsatisfactory. Life is not fair. The wicked prosper. Those who do good are not rewarded. There is no certainty of any meaning to be found in these random incidents or to the seeming patterns that men desperately construct to try to make meaning where
there is none. He sees this and so he is forced underground because he will not turn a blind eye to what he sees. He has tried to find meaning in work and in relationships, in building a life for himself. But he keeps crashing into this wall of meaninglessness, of ennui. The traditional forms of selfinterest leave him bored and unconvinced. Absurdity (randomness) can strike anyone at anytime, regardless of their virtue. The proverbial bus could run him over at any moment. And so he falls into listlessness and futility and nurses his sense of spite. This is preferable to living in mimicry, as one supposedly ‘should’ live. It is more authentic to live underground in a kind of despair than to play act on the world’s stage.
But is there no other way than to persist underground? Can one emerge from the darkness as a whole being, living authentically in the outer world? Can one grasp the gifts that are there for the taking? Dostoevsky does not illustrate an answer for this question in Notes from Underground, or at least not in the novel as it comes to us. He did write a section that was heavily censored by the Russian authorities, which purportedly (as he wrote in a letter to his brother Mikhael) offers his ideas on a way to emerge from the dark. He wrote that the “swine of a censor ... suppressed all the passages where I drew conclusions that faith in Christ is needed." (Roberts, James)
The underground man has succumbed to a sense of his own importance/unimportance. He is trapped in a strange play of narcissism. He is no monster, his suffering is not more than that allotted to any of us, his behavior no worse than what is common to all of us. He behaves badly, and then compensates for this by indulging his own sense of pathos and futility as he remains mired in selfhatred. This is moral laziness of a very desperate and determined kind. It is not the illness of depression that can swallow a man up. It has too much energy and determination, too much selfindulgence rather than the selfabnegation of those in the grip of a killing depression. His refusal to connect to others, to see the “quidditas” of others, which he insists on for himself with his freedom to choose, traps him in his darkness.
Dostoevsky illustrates for us, in the parable of the Grand Inquisitor, a choice which has radically different implications for what freedom means. The Grand Inquisitor lectures the imprisoned Christ on His error in leading humans to freedom. In his compassion for mankind, the Inquisitor wants only to alleviate their suffering, the greatest of which comes from this freedom and the burdens of responsibility that it implies. We can see that the underground man is suffering from his freedom as well, mired in his spite and anxiety and self absorption. But Christ, and Alyosha after him, show in one gesture that a different choice can lead to a greater freedom. Each of them approaches their adversary and kisses them. A simple gesture of connection, signifying both love, acceptance and forgiveness, this kiss has profound transformative power. It brings us outside ourselves, connecting each to the other, when we give the kiss. It connects the adversary to their own humanity when they receive it. The underground man also receives a form of this kiss this kiss of gratitude from Liza, even after he mistreats her. We do not get to see if the underground man will be able to grasp this gift. The Russian censors have left us with a mystery. Dostoevsky left his readers with an empty tomb. We don’t get to know for certain if there is a resurrection into the light for this man. But I am hopeful. And I think that there is.
Title: Eliot, T.S. The Four Quartets
Hopkins, Gerard Manley, “As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame” Roberts, James L. Cliffs Notes on Notes from Underground. 25 Sep 2014
Hopkins, Gerard Manley, “As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame” Roberts, James L. Cliffs Notes on Notes from Underground. 25 Sep 2014
