Spencer Hudson

Morality and Justice

December 19, 2012

An Analysis of Dostoevskys Notes From the Underground

The final result, gentlemen, is that its better to do nothing! Conscious inertia
is better Im lying because I know myself as surely as two times two, that it
isnt really the underground thats better, but something different, altogether
different, something that I long for, but Ill never be able to find.

While the Underground Man retreats into apathy because he cant find the solution,
Dostoevsky implies that he has found it. Instead of the underground, he recommends faith.
The Underground Man has given up in the face of the problem in front of him. This problem
is his inability to reconcile the conflict between scientific determinism and free will. As
science and technology progress it becomes more and more difficult to refute the
predictive powers of science, but if science is absolute and irrefutable then it seems to
imply fate. The more we learn about the world, the more our paths seem pre-determined.
As the Underground Man puts it: you know there is no such thing as choice in reality.
Most people ignore this fact and continue to believe in free willnot because of any
rational argument, but because humans desperately want to be free. According to
Dostoevsky, when confronted by structure and rules, people rebel just to prove to
themselves that they are indeed free. Thus, the proposed solution to the perils of

rationalism is irrationalism. To the Underground Man this means masochism and selfdestruction. He takes pleasure in his toothache because not seeing a doctor is an attempt to
be irrational and unpredictable. Unfortunately his attempts are futilepsychology can just
as easily explain this line of thought and action as it can orthodoxy. The more plausible
solution is the one offered by Dostoevsky. Faith is the polar opposite of rationalism. God
cannot be proved and there can be no logical explanation of religion.
The reason that the Underground Mans problem is indeed a problem is because of
the implications of scientific determinism. First, and most obviously, if science is
deterministic then freewill is impossible. If your choice could have been known beforehand
than it wasnt really your choice to begin with. It must have been determined by something
else. Without freewill morality also effectively ceases to exist. It is impossible to praise or
blame someone when they really had no choice in the matter. It doesnt matter which
actions are seen as valuable if those actions cannot be affected. Individualism is equally
affected. A person is defined by his choices and if he really has no choice than there is no
him to begin with; for what is a man without desires, without free will and without
choice, if not a stop in an organ? It is easy to see why the Underground Man struggles with
this idea. He cant refute the premise (scientific determinism), but he finds it almost equally
impossible to accept the conclusions. No sane person wants to be an organ-stop in a
world devoid of morality and being forced to cope with this reality drives him insane.
The Underground Man argues that mans free choice is that very most
advantageous advantage which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification
and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms. His
argument is that mans choice is beyond the laws of nature and completely unpredictable

to the extent that he chooses to behave irrationally. He claims that if hes wrong and if
there really is some day discovered a formula for all our desires and caprices then, most
likely, man will at once cease to feel desire and be transformed from a human being into
an organ-stop.
I reject this account on two bases. First, because if one-day man discovers a formula
for all our desires then he wont be transformed into an organ-stop; he will have always
been an organ-stop and just not known it. While it is very difficult to definitively prove free
will, fate can easily be proved by creating such a formula. Second, his argument is based
on the belief that man isnt man without free will. Whos to say that there is anything wrong
with being an organ-stop? The Underground Mans solution is to choose what is contrary
to one's own interests in order to practice and prove his free will. He thinks that
masochism is unpredictable, but it isnt and it is impossible to act against ones own
interests. What he is really doing re-evaluating his interests and placing his supposed
freedom above self-preservation. This doesnt make him any less of an organ-stop; it just
makes the organ hes part of a little more complicated.
Life does not require faith as supplement and hope. This is first because the
Heisenberg uncertainty principle disproves fate. As science progresses, it becomes more
and more apparent that the universe contains an inherent randomness. Even if you ignore
this fact, it is possible to live without free will. While the thought of nature controlling your
actions can be scary, it can also be a comfort. It can take the blame off your shoulders if you
screw up and make it easier to try again. The Underground Man says that humans will do
perverse things just to prove their own free will, but if this were absolutely true, than

everyone would live like him. His explanation that the rest of the world is stupid is not a
justification for his lifestyle, or a reason why anyone else would act the way he does.

Works Cited

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, and Andrew R. MacAndrew. Notes from underground, White nights,
the dream of a ridiculous man, and selections from the House of the dead. New York:
New American Library, 1961. Print.