Dostoevsky Dostoyevsky was a big influence on Nietzsche and it's very interesting to read them in parallel because Nietzsche Dostoyevsky is of course a dramatist and Nietzsche is a philosopher and it's almost as if Dostoyevsky wrote the drama and Nietzsche provided the philosophical commentary they're very very powerful to read together this is from notes from underground it's a very short book about this character who is a bureaucrat nasty sort of bureaucrat he knows he's a nasty sort of bureaucrat all he does he spends his whole life trying to make life more miserable for people because he's so resentful and and crushed and weak and so he just did nothing but abused his bureaucratic position and used his trivial bit of power to lord it over people he gets a little bit of an inheritance and and quits and this is his confession notes from underground he's the underground man it's a brilliant book it's viciously funny and it's so psychologically alive if you're if you're interested in psychology it's a spectacular book and it's only about a hundred pages long anyways he's arrogant and nihilistic and resentful and what he does is he tries to justify his life to himself and does a very poor job of it even though he's trying to be honest there's a lot of honesty in it at one point he meets a woman who's been forced out onto the streets because there weren't very many options for women in the Victorian period who who had fallen a follow of economic necessity and he basically ineffective false messiah nism offers to save her which he can't because he's completely useless he can't save himself even but he offers to save her and she more or less accepts and then when she shows up having sacrificed a tremendous amount to do so he basically tells her that he was toying with her and joking and and and makes her situation far worse than it was to begin with it's a brilliant book because you see he repents and he says what he's like he's this horrible person he knows that we can resentful and then he confesses and then he says well now I've confessed I'm a better person then he tries to do something good but he hasn't changed a bloody bit not a bit the confession was just to make himself feel better and so he offers to help someone and pulls them right into the right under the where they drown it's an amazing book and this is from notes from underground in short one may say anything about the history of the world anything that might enter the most disordered imagination the only thing one can say is that it's rational the very word sticks in one's throat this is a good example of the existential criticism of the idea of rationality Dostoevsky says well lots of things operate according to rational principles but let's think about history for a minute especially from from the perspective of a thinking and feeling bit being history is a is a slaughterhouse it's a catastrophe and how would you ever consider that something rational Dostoyevsky's point his rationality fails in its analysis of something as complex and terrible as history the only thing one can say is that it's rational the very word sticks in one's throat in short one may sorry and indeed this is the odd thing that is continually happening there are continually turning up in life moral and rational persons sages and lovers of humanity who make it their object to live all their lives as morally and rationally as possible so to be to be so to speak a light to their neighbors simply in order to show them that it is possible to live morally and rationally in this world and yet we all know that those very people sooner or later have been false to themselves playing some queer trick often a most unseemly one now I ask you what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with such strange qualities this is a criticism of utopianism that's what he's trying to do right because the utopian ideas were starting to emerge in Russia at about this point in the 1880s the idea that you could reorganize society so that material privation would disappear and that as a consequence the the paradise would be ushered in all Dostoyevsky was no fool he knew perfectly well a that that was never going to happen but even more importantly that if you gave people exactly what they wanted even what they needed there's no reason whatsoever to presume that would make them any more sane than than they already are now and then he takes that further because he says well you can give people cake and and material goods until they are satiated and they'll still be ungrateful and insane and you might think well that's pessimistic but then he says well wait a minute what makes you think that that insanity isn't exactly what's valuable about people what makes you think you would ever want to take that away and that's the case that he makes shower upon him every earthly blessing drown him in a sea of happiness so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface give him economic prosperity such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species and even then out of sheer ingratitude man would play you some nasty trick he would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish the most unethical absurdity simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his faithful fantastic element it is just his fantastic dreams his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain simply in order to prove to himself as though that were so necessary that man are still man and not the keys of a piano which the laws of nature threatened to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar and that is not all if even if man really were nothing but a piano key even if this was proved to him by natural science and mathematics even then he would not become reasonable but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude simply to gain his point and if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos will contrive suffering of all sorts just to gain his point he will launch a curse upon the world and as as man is the only animal that can cursed it's his privilege the primary distinction between him and other animals may be various curse alone he will attain his object that is to convince himself that he's a man and not a piano key and if you say that all of this 2 can be calculated tabulated chaos and darkness and curses so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all and reason would reassert itself then man would purposely go bad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point I believe in it I answer for it for the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he's a man and not a piano key it might be at the cost of his skin it might be by cannibalism and this being so can one help being tempted to rejoice that it has not yet come off and the desire still depends on something we don't know you will scream at me that is if you condescend to do so that no one is touching my free will that all they're concerned with is that my will should of itself of its own free will coincide with my own normal interests with the laws of nature and rithmetic good heavens gentlemen what sort of free will is left when we come to tabulation and arithmetic when it will all be a matter of twice two makes four twice two makes four without my will as if free will meant that it's brilliant I think it's one of the most remarkable criticisms of utopianism I've ever read it's like and it's sold it's so intelligent it's like what makes you think that if you had everything you asked for that that would satisfy you what what if being dissatisfied is part of what satisfies you what if the fact that you have to have limits and need them and that there's an element of insanity in the world and that there's an element of insecurity and vulnerability what if that's what you need what if it's what you want it's what what if that's what gives your life meaning going to be like a lion after he's eaten a zebra and do nothing but sleep it hardly constitutes the appropriate human paradise what makes people think that merely providing economic security would be sufficient who wants that it's what you it's what you offer a cow in its pen so that it remains calm and fat it's not something for human beings and that's Nietzsche's fundamental point and he formulated that what forty years before the damn Soviet Revolution when that sort of utopianism was put into practice without absolutely catus traffic consequences
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