Although I think that the arguments Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor provide an insightful outlook on humanity, I don’t believe that overall story expresses Dostoyevsky 's own point of view. This type of narrative may seem peculiar considering many existentialists’ convictions regarding free will and autonomy. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the Grand Inquisitor is simply a fictional character. Therefore, the reader cannot attribute his characters’ beliefs to his own view. As an existentialist author, he uses this story to emphasize the absurdity surrounding this ideology present in his community.
Tolstoy’s ability to interweave the environment with themes of materialism and death makes The Death of Ivan Ilych stand out as a piece that criticizes societal values. In his article “Tolstoy and the Moran Instructions of Death,” Dennis Sansom focuses on the influence of fighting chaos in Ivan’s eventual acceptance of his own death. Socrates wrote, “The unexamined life is not worth living,” and Ivan’s life mirrored this until the end (qtd. in Sansom 417) .
It is a study of what Dostoevsky thought the human condition was creating, not what humanity should become.” Much like the nature of Russian to English translation, it is not clear wether Dostoevsky based his novels on his personal experiences or if they were purely fiction. It is widely believed that Dostoevsky had a smilier temperament to that of the Narrate in Notes From Underground. “According to some biographers Dostoevsky was prone to drink and a gambler who wrote about men with even more anti-social tendencies than himself…It is possible that his life made him what he was: bitter, cynical, miserable…” These characteristics are all shared by the Narrator, and seem to define him.
Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing – as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. ”1 In this statement Sartre proposes the idea of human’s having no prior nature since there is no God to conceive of the idea. Along with God not being the one to conceive of human nature, seeing as he’s nonexistent or he’s abandoned us, we humans are what we will ourselves to be during our time on this world. “Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm of values, any means of justification or excuse.
Raskolnikov 's act of violence is what causes him to go insane, impacts the lives of the people around him, and finally violence is Raskolnikov’s way of proving himself as an above-average individual. Dostoyevsky used violence to change the course of not only Raskolnikov’s life but also the lives of the people around him. The story shows how one man 's image of himself as a higher being can cause him to commit violent acts, which impact everyone around
The voices of history and tradition are present in quite a few of Jean-Paul Sartre’s pieces. Jean-Paul Sartre, born Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre, was a very complex man. In the 1940’s, Sartre served in the military during World War II. The war heavily influenced Sartre, causing him to relate many of his pieces to his experiences in World War II. Sartre was a French philosopher, and was a major contributor to existentialism - the 20th century way of thinking.
Existentialism is a cultural movement that flourished in Europe in the 1940s and 1950s. It may be defined as the philosophical theory which holds that a further set of categories, governed by the norm of authenticity, is necessary to grasp human existence. To approach existentialism in this categorical way may seem to conceal what is often taken to be its “heart” (Kaufmann, 1968), namely, its character as a gesture of protest against academic philosophy, its anti-system sensibility, its flight from the “iron cage” of reason (Crowell, 2004). Existentialism has many different themes, one of which is Freedom and Choice. If any single thesis could be said to constitute the doctrine of existentialism, it would be that the possibility of choice is the central fact of human nature.
In the novel, “What Does It All Mean” by Thomas Nagel, it talks about different things throughout chapters 6 through 10, from free will, all the way up to death. In chapter 6, the prompt is free will, speaking about what it all means to have your own free will, for example the author explains that the person was given a choice between a chocolate cake, and a peach. The person decided to eat the cake, and did so in pleasure, knowing the side effects of what could happen. The next morning, the person looks in the mirror and wishes that she would’ve taken the peach because they think the chocolate cake is what made them look the way they do, but once you make a decisions you constantly wish you would’ve done the complete opposite, wishing you
Petersburg is a labyrinthine city whose streets mirror the maze-like jumble of thoughts ever-present in Raskolnikov’s mind and work to remove his sense of free will. Whenever Raskolnikov leaves a small space, such as his apartment, or someone else’s apartment building, he loses the ability to navigate from one place to another in an ordinary fashion of his own free will. His feet take him places he does not consciously intend to go. For example, Dostoevsky writes, as Raskolnikov walks home through the Haymarket as opposed to by a more direct route, “it had happened to him dozens of times that he would return home without remembering what streets he had taken.” The streets, like the new utilitarian ideas, are inorganic and have a tendency to discombobulate the pedestrian protagonist.
Maybe we don’t want you at all”’ (Dostoevsky 65). The Underground Man invites himself to an expensive dinner with his peers, rather than expecting a nice evening he torments himself about it. “I dreamed of getting the best of them, winning them over, carrying them away making them love me - if only for my lofty mind and indubitable wit” (Dostoevsky 70). He wishes to go in and have them beg for his friendship so that he can have a sense of authority by deciding to accept theirs pleads.
Although Sartre agrees with Dostoevsky who says, “If God does not exist, then everything would be possible,” he tries to pull back from nihilism by saying that each human must act “for all humanity” and before the audience of all of humanity. Sartre claims that all humans have no nature or essence, he disqualifies himself from calling them “all humans.” First Sartre affirms that human beings lack a nature, but if we lack a nature, then the term “human being” has no reference at all. The descriptive term that applies to something with inherent qualities and do what is required of the qualities can be identified as “human being”.
There Is More Than One Type of Hero In “Notes from the Underground”, a fiction book by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the Underground Man is not like the traditional main character in most other fiction books. Often books have a tragic hero where he or she either saves the days or unfortunately is killed. But that is not the case for this book, the main character shows characteristics that do not fit along the lines of a tragic hero at all. This paper argues that the Underground Man is most definitely not the tragic hero, but instead an anti-hero.
‘“Let him come, if he wants to so much, “But we have our own circle, we’re friends,”. . . Maybe we don’t want you at all”’ (Dostoevsky 65). The Underground Man invites himself to an expensive dinner with his peers who do not want him present, rather than anticipating a nice evening, he torments himself about it. “I dreamed of getting the best of them, winning them over, carrying them away, making them love me” (Dostoevsky 70).
Ultimately, Dostoevsky’s critique of society attempts to explain the societal problems of individuals alienating themselves from each other by living in the
The argument Jean-Paul Sartre, a French philosopher, presents on existentialism helps to prove the foundation which is “existence precedes essence”. Existentialism is normally understood as an ideology that involves evaluating existence itself and the way humans find themselves existing currently in the world. For the phrase existence precedes essence, existence’s etymology is exsistere or to stand out while the term Essence means “being” or “to be” therefore the fundamental of existentialism, literally means to stand out comes before being. This can be taken into many different ideas such as individuals having to take responsibility for their own actions and that in Sartre’s case the individual is the sole judge of his or her own actions. According to him, “men is condemned to be free,” therefore “the destiny of man is placed within himself.”
