The broken life in Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground Cover Image

ŻYCIE PĘKNIĘTE W NOTATKACH Z PODZIEMIA DOSTOJEWSKIEGO
The broken life in Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground

Author(s): Paweł Pieniążek
Subject(s): Studies of Literature, Philosophical Traditions
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
Keywords: the underground man; normal life; modernity; evil; freedom; faith

Summary/Abstract: This article is dedicated to a philosophical interpretation of Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground. In contrast to the existential interpretation proposed by Shestov (in Philosophy of tragedy) the author defends the thesis that Dostoevsky’s novel has to be interpreted from the perspective of modernity, and the tragedy of his hero, the underground man, has to be interpreted in categories of alienation and inauthentic existence. From that perspective the divide between normal life and underground life expresses the fundamental contradiction of the modern world. The author indicates the proximity between Dostoevsky’s and Kierkegaard’s and Nietzsche’s analyses of modernity. He then shows that Dostoevsky contrasts the arbitrariness of the underground man to a deterministic, scientistic vision of the world and makes it an important premise of his understanding of an authentic existence based on freedom and faith.

  • Issue Year: 2019
  • Issue No: 45
  • Page Range: 61-86
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Polish
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