Notes from underground by Dostoevsky

¶ … Underground

Dostoevsky, lived in a time when science and new ideas were coveted all over the world, but when his homeland Russia oppressed it with zeal. Bureaucracy and administration censored new findings and ideas with a vengeance so great even great literary minds such as Dostoevsky would spend some time in exile in Siberia as a result of "subversive" wittings and political affiliations. Though Dostoevsky was initially sentenced to death, with several of his affiliation members, his sentence was commuted to four years of exile in Siberia, only after he and his fellow liberals were standing outside for some time awaiting execution.

Dostoevsky vii)

According to a.P. Milyukov, a contemporary and friend of Dostoevsky who new him from 1848, just before his sentence in Siberia began

Coulson 49-69);

That was a momentous period for enthusiastic and cultured youth. After the February Revolution in Paris, the reforms of Pius IX., the risings in Milan, Venice, and Naples, the victory of liberal ideas in Germany and the revolutions of Berlin and Vienna, everyone believed in the renaissance of the whole European world. The rotted pillars of reaction were crumbling one after the other, and all over Europe new life seemed to be in bud. Yet in Russia, at that time, prevailed the most crushing reaction: Science, no less than the Press, could hardly breathe beneath the heavy yoke of the administration, and every sign of mental vitality was stifled. From abroad, a quantity of liberal writings, partly scientific, partly literary, were smuggled into the country. In the French and German papers, people, despite the Censorship, were reading stirring articles; but among ourselves all scientific and literary activity was rendered well-nigh impossible, and the Censorship tore each new book to pieces. Naturally all this had a highly exciting effect upon the younger generation

Dostoevsky 271)

Though, Notes from the Underground was published in total in 1864, and had taken some time to compose, there is no doubt that Dostoevsky's time in Siberia as well as the censorship of the day played a huge role in his writing of the piece. One gets the impression that the narrator is hiding, possibly of his own volition, but mostly as a meek attempt to not get "caught" thinking and writing anything subversive. In his work, he almost wholly rejects science and is obsessed with the, l'homme de la nature et de la verite (man of nature and truth). This ideology is not something he admires it is in fact difficult to pinpoint in his musings what his anger is based upon, but it is clear that the narrator, the underground man, is a product of civil service and feels the stinging guilt of having fit the bill so well.

Dostoevsky 7-10) in the work he makes mention of science repeatedly and admonishes the culture for buying it, completely and not leaving more to nature, or at least discussion. It would seem that to Dostoevsky the concern with equating human nature to scientific method is flawed in that it takes away human free will. Dostoevsky asks, if all the answers of humanity and earth are to be found and codified to a predictable form by science, then what free will is left to man? Free will, to Dostoevsky, had not always been a gift to man, as he continues to step back from progress, even as he points to other times as more barbarous.

We are told that Cleopatra (excuse me for using an example from Roman history) loved to stick gold pins into the bosoms of her slaves and took pleasure in their shrieks and convulsions of pain. You will say that this was during relatively barbaric times; that today is still a barbaric period because (also relatively speaking) people today still stick pins in people; that even if man has now learnt at times to see more clearly than in barbaric periods, then he is still far from accustomed to behaving according to the dictates of science and reason. But you are nevertheless absolutely convinced that he undoubtedly will grow accustomed to it when he completely discards various old, bad habits and when human nature is completely reeducated and generally governed by common sense and science. You are convinced that man will then of his own accord cease to err, and will, as it were willy-nilly, not wish to separate his will from his normal interests.

Dostoevsky 25)

The ability to err, to be unscientifically cruel, as a matter of reality, rather than natural law is man's development, and he according to Dostoevsky has not come as far as he wishes the world to believe, but more importantly, removing all fault by calling the actions of man "scientifically" driven is not only untrue but problematic. Dostoevsky is saying, What right do we have to allow a scientific formulation to take responsibility for our actions, and what will we as people learn from it?

Moreover, you say, science itself will then teach man (although it's really a luxury, in my opinion) that in actual fact he has neither will, nor caprice, nor did he ever have them, and that he is nothing more than something in the nature of a piano-key or an organ-stop; and that, besides, there are still the laws of nature in the world, so that whatever he does is done not through his own volition, but automatically, following the laws of nature. Consequently these laws of nature only have to be revealed and man will no longer be responsible for his own actions and life will become extremely easy for him. All human action will automatically be computed according to these laws, mathematically, like a table of logarithms, reaching to 108,000 and compiled in a director

Dostoevsky 25)

Dostoevsky, complains that without human free will, and more importantly emotion, (having been downplayed by science) human actions become not our own, but that of an organism. If we are to continue to seek science as the answer to our nature than it does no more than equate humanity with that of animals, as if there is no concrete distinction.

HA, ha, ha! You see, as a matter of fact, if you want, this desire doesn't exist!' you interrupt with a guffaw. 'By now science has succeeded so far in its dissection of man that we know that desire and this so-called free will are nothing other than..."Stop there a moment, gentlemen, I was just about to say that myself. I confess I took fright. I was just about to shout out that the devil only knows what desire depends on and that perhaps we should thank God for that, and then I remembered about science and... I subsided.

Dostoevsky 27)

In this diatribe Dostoevsky is seeking the reader's understanding that if science is used as the only tool to discover meaning and lay blame, that human emotion and free will no longer exist. Despite our reality, which is that we feel and can sometimes even see desire, as one of the strongest human emotions, science says it does not exist. In the previous passage he satirically says that eventually, science as a common denominator will censure humans so much that they do not even believe that they can think. He makes fun of this idea in his work, with self-censorship. He then goes on to say that in science nothing is sacred, and that even "free will" will likely be censured by science, through its full understanding.

And since all desire and reasoning can really be calculated, because at some time they will discover the laws of our so-called free will, they will therefore, quite seriously, be able to establish something in the nature of tables in order that we really will desire according to this tabulation. You see, if at some stage it were calculated and proven to me that if I made an aggressive gesture at someone then it was for the very reason that I could not help making it, and that I was absolutely bound to make that particular gesture at him, what kind of freedom would I have left, especially if I'm learned and have studied science somewhere? You know I'd then be able to calculate the next thirty years of my life; in short, if they do work this out, there will be nothing we can do about it -- we'll have to accept it anyway.

(Dostoevsky 28)

Dostoevsky, criticizes science because it removes responsibility from action, secondarily, as a default to explanation from an outside "table." If there is no free will, or human emotion, what is stopping people from the barbarous cruelty that we like to think of as only in the past. In other words if it is found to be scientifically founded then any action can be excused, as the doer was doing nothing but acting as "nature" intended. To Dostoevsky this was not development, or refinement, it was further allowance of bad actions, by anyone who wished to develop a scientific theory that would explain them away.