Dostoevsky on Total Freedom: Notes From The Underground

Did you read Notes From The Underground?

What Dostoevsky argues through his antagonistic protagonist's monologue in the novella is the same thing as what John the Savage demands in Auldux Huxley's Brave New World. They both seek total freedom... Freedom from the shackle of the pursuit of happiness.

They want to be able to choose to be unhappy... To choose caprice over prudence, free from any preordained objective of human contentment, just to exercise free will. The basic idea is to attack the stasis in the model of rationalism and result-orientedness. The vital question he throws here is that If we are biologically designed for self-preservation and self-actualization then are we really free? He says that being free we should be able to make choices beyond well being or happiness, that being acutely self-aware a man cannot become anything. Only ignorant can become something.

Dostoevsky says that we humans have almost a pathological inclination towards dread and suffering. Contrary to the idea of rationalism, that man is a rational creature and will always act in her best interests, Notes From the Underground focuses on the fact that we often don't know what our best interests are. That also makes us idiots. Needless to say, that's the name of his other influential work.