Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky,
1821-1881
• Raznochinets -- father an
army doctor, mother from
petty gentry
• Early success and
recognition by literary
critic Belinsky for Poor
Folk
• Joined secret society,
Petreshevtsy, and
conspiratorial Speshnev
group
“Life is everywhere, life is in
ourselves, not in the exterior”
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Arrested April 23, 1849,
incarcerated in Peter and
Paul Fortress
Mock execution on
Semyonovsky Square Dec. 22,
1849 orchestrated personally
by Nicholas I,
10 years of penal servitude
and exile, service in the
Russian army
Horrified by moral depravity
of convicts, Developed
epilepsy, Converted to
Christianity
Charles Fourier, 1772-1837
• Believed that mutual
concern and cooperation
key to human progress
• Envisioned utopian
community/complex
Phalansteries
• Identified 12 common
passions that resulted in
810 character types
• Ideas influential in
revolution of 1848
Dostoevsky and the New Men
• Auguste Comte (1798-1857),
founder of sociology,
European Positivism -applied scientific principles
to the study of social life
• Nikolai Chernyshevsky
(1828-1889), radical
journalist, literary critic
writer, martyr. Arrested for
criticism of Emancipation,
wrote supremely influential
novel What is to Be Done?
While in Peter and Paul
Fortress
The Underground Man’s Refutations:
Comte
• Auguste Comte: history rational “law of the three
phases” (theological, metaphysical, positive). In positive
phase all obscure and supernatural forces are denied,
and only observable laws of nature recognized.
Humankind advances through stages by force of intellect,
reason, logic. Believed that human beings could find
scientific solutions to social problems
• Emphasis on quantitative, mathematical basis for
decision making basis for modern quantitative statistical
analysis and business decision making
The Underground Man’s
Refutations: Chernyshevsky
• The Anthropological Principle in Philosophy (1860)
Denies free will, every action of man due to the laws
of nature, not own initiative
Rational Egoism: if human kind becomes completely
enlightened as to their own interests, they will be
unable to act contrary to them (and thus
irrationally)
Chernyshevsky’s Crystal Palace vs.
Dostoevsky’s Crystal Edifice
• Crystal Palace embodiment
of Chernyshevsky’s utopia:
everyone good, happy,
prosperous by conformity
w/ laws of nature
• Dostoevsky’s narrator
refuses to accept what is
foisted upon him by laws
of nature as ultimately
desirable, the ideal
“Well, do change it, tempt
me with something else,
give me another ideal”
The Underground Man: A History of
Misreadings
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Not read at all: no critical
response until after
Dostoevsky’s death
Chapter X of Intro. mutilated
by censorship: the essential
idea of the work “necessity of
faith and Christ”
A series of affirmations:
affirms the whole of man
(irrationality, impurity);
affirms free will and thus
moral conscience, good and
evil
Discussion Questions for “Apropos
the Falling Sleet”
• How do the Underground Man’s arguments about
the following in Part I play out in the events he
relates in his confession?
-- suffering
-- free will vs. determinism
-- rational self-interest
-- thinking (consciousness) as a
disease