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.