English comp 4CW
Spencer Jackson
May 14, 2014

Dostoevsky: Rationality and Reason

Many philosophers believed that reason could provide critical, informed solutions to social issues and in turn improve the human condition. Fyodor Dostoevsky conducts an assault against this notion in Notes From the Underground, making this work one of the most famous anti-enlightenment novels. Through this novel he showed what he believed were gaps in the idea that the mind could be freed from ignorance through the application of reason, and the rejection of the idea that humankind could achieve a utopian existence as a result. The narrator in this novel also known as the underground man is a pessimistic man who symbolizes what could happen to mankind should endless application of reason take over. Without any care for his health or well being out of spite, he becomes a perfect character for Dostoevsky to illustrate his argument against the enlightenment ideas. The narrator decides upon actions that oppose his interests for the sole reason of proving that he is an unpredictable man who enjoys his own free will and ability to make voluntary decisions of his own, without being restrained by the ideas of rationality and reason.

Dostoevsky seems to be making the statement that rationality is indeed useful for analyzing situations but is ultimately damaging if focused on constantly. Reason does not, as many Enlightenment thinkers believed, free man but reduces us to something that can be scientifically explained, forcing us to lose a fundamental piece of what makes us human in the process: “All human actions will then, of course, be classified according to these laws – mathematically, like a logarithm table, up to 108,000 – and entered in a special almanac…with such precision that there will no longer be any actions or adventures in the world” (pg. 24). The Underground Man