Abstract
The essay examines the Underground Man’s ambivalent position in Dostoevskij’s hierarchy of values in light of the Nietzschean concept of ressentiment. To elucidate the problem of free will in Notes from Underground, I propose to supplement Nietzsche’s theory with the concept of ressentiment as developed by Max Scheler, whose endorsement of Christian love as a means of overcoming ressentiment suggests an affinity with Dostoevskij’s own deeply religious worldview. With the help of Schelerian phenomenology, I read the novel as an early statement of the problem of Christian freedom in Dostoevskij’s oeuvre. Like the “Pro and Contra” section of The Brothers Karamazov, Notes from Underground turns our attention to the “costs” of the Christian ideal: in a world exposed to the ultimate horizon of desire through Christ, those lacking the serenity of faith may be doomed to the merciless torment of ressentiment.
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Notes
Richard Weisberg has applied Scheler’s concept of ressentiment to Notes from Underground in his book The Failure of the Word: Protagonist as Lawyer in Modern Fiction, but, in my opinion, his analysis of underground psychology is fragmentary and at times pedestrian (See Weisberg, 1984). In Rancor Against Time: The Phenomenology of “Ressentiment” Richard Ira Sugarman also discusses both Notes from Underground and Scheler’s Ressentiment, but in this work the two texts, presented as alternative philosophical considerations of the same phenomenon, are examined independently of each other, in separate chapters (Sugarman, 1980).
The concept of ressentiment is developed by Scheler (much more fully than in Nietzsche’s work) in Ressentiment and The Nature of Sympathy (“Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen” (originally published in 1912) and Wesen und Formen der Sympathie (originally published in 1913). See Scheler (1954–1993): vols. 3 and 5.
Robert L. Jackson, who notes that “absolute chance” chosen as a paradoxical “strategy” of the underground revolt “is indistinguishable from absolute necessity” (1981: 186), is one of such scholars, whose criticism targets the fundamentally reactive nature of the Underground Man’s protest. Similar views are also expressed by Frank (1986) and Wasiolek (1964).
The stage of “organic mendacity” (“organische Belogenheit”) is discussed in Ressentiment (Scheler, 1961: 77–78).
In modern German, “scheel ansehen” means “to look askance or disparagingly at somebody.”
This expression was coined by Jackson (1981: 173, 174).
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Wyman, A. The specter of freedom: ressentiment and Dostoevskij’s notes from underground . Stud East Eur Thought 59, 119–140 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-007-9016-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-007-9016-9