Utopian Thoughts & Existential Crisis in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground
Abstract
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground forms the basis of nineteenth-century critical utopian rationalism and is considered an antecedent of modern existential thought. In Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky challenges the notion of human rational egoism, which was considered a basis for establishing a utopian society. The novella exposes the contradictions of utopian ideals through its exploration of irrationality, self-destructive excessive-freedom, and psychological-alienation. The extremely self-conscious nature of the narrator, the Underground Man, discloses the tension between individual excessive-freedom and determinism. In this paper intends to explore Dostoevsky’s utopian thought, especially rational egoism embodied in Nikolay Chernyshevsky, while at the same time pointing to the existential themes embodied in philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre as well as Søren Kierkegaard. In terms of exploring some such themes of alienation, freedom, suffering, and identity-crisis, Notes from Underground divulges the contradiction between utopian ideals and human nature, and how existential crisis forms an inevitable part of modern human consciousness.
References
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Translated by Justin O’Brien. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. Print. https://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil360/16.%20Myth%20of%20Sisyphus.pdf
Chernyshevsky, Nikolay. What Is to Be Done? Translated by Michael R. Katz, Cornell University Press, 1989. Print. https://files.libcom.org/files/2023-05/what_is_to_be_done_nikolai_chernyshevsky.pdf
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Notes from Underground. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Vintage Classics, 1994. Print. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/notes-from-underground-fyodor-dostoevsky/1100272106
Emerson, Caryl. The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature. Cambridge University Press, 2008. Print. https://reees.princeton.edu/news/2023/caryl-emerson-cambridge-introduction-russian-literature-cambridge-university-press-2008
Kierkegaard, Søren. The Sickness Unto Death. Translated by Alastair Hannay, Penguin, 1989.https://www.amazon.com/Sickness-Unto-Death-Psychological-Kierkegaards/dp/0691020280
Markova, Ekaterina A. Notes from Underground in Twentieth-Century English Criticism. RUDN Journal of Studies in Literature, 2021, pp. 112–120. Print. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359245340_Notes_from_Underground_by_FM_Dostoevsky_in_20th_century_English_criticism
Polo, Kim Albert A., and Dwyne Valerie C. Grado. “Rationalism and Utopian Thought in Dostoevsky’s Underground.” Journal of Language and Literary Studies, 2023. https://doi.org/10.59652/blls.v2i3.632
Rapoport, Yelizaveta. Existential Paradox in Notes from Underground. UCLA Undergraduate Research Journal, 2011. Print. https://international.ucla.edu/media/files/Rapoport.pdf
Sari, Dian Eka. The Tragedy of Existence in Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. International Journal of Literary Studies, 2019. Print. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dian-Sari-23
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Translated by Hazel E. Barnes, Washington Square Press, 1992. Print. https://www.amazon.com/Being-Nothingness-Jean-Paul-Sartre/dp/0671867806
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism Is a Humanism. Yale University Press, 2007. Print. https://www.rizzolibookstore.com/product/existentialism-humanism
Authors retain copyright of their published work and grant the International Journal of Social Science Research and Review (IJSSRR) the right of first publication.
Articles published in IJSSRR are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.
Authors are permitted to share, archive, and distribute the published version of their work, provided that proper acknowledgement of the original publication in IJSSRR is given.
