Theories of existence - The Problem of Delusions and Reality

 

The Problem of Delusions and Reality

 

This expedition into the mind of the underground man may well begin by his various fantasies and delusions of being a ‘king of morality’.[1] Take, for example, near the beginning of part two, after giving up hope on avenging the nonchalant officer. The underground man calls these dreams,

 

Escapes into everything beautiful and lofty: though it was a fantastical love, though it was never in reality applied to anything human, there was so much of it, this love, that afterwards, in reality, I never even felt any need to apply it; that would have been an unnecessary luxury…. [In the end of these dreams], for example, I triumph over everyone; everyone, of course, is lying in the dust and is forced to voluntarily acknowledge all of my perfections, and I forgive them all. I fall in love, become a famous poet or court chamberlain; I receive countless millions and donate them immediately to mankind, and then and there confess before all the world my disgraces, which, of course, are not mere disgraces, but contain an exceeding amount of “the beautiful and lofty,” of something Manfredian. [2]

 

It is this “beautiful and lofty” that the underground man seems always to strive for; it is a phrase coined by British philosopher Edmund Burke in his eighteenth century philosophical treatise, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and the Beautiful, and has special meaning to our forlorn narrator. “The beautiful and lofty” is what the world should be—it is a romantic version of our hellish planet, a sort of way to transcend the conscious inertia we are all bound to suffer. The escapade into all that is “beautiful and lofty” is, as the narrator admits, only a façade, but a noble one: he explains how he envisions himself as the hero, because in life, you are either the hero or mud—as anything in between, you are insulted by being muddied, but a hero is too “lofty” to be fully muddied. So when he undergoes a little ‘debauch’, as he calls them, he redeems himself by being the hero, turning everything into “the beautiful and lofty”, and remains comforted by his romantic delusions.

The underground man does remind us, however, of how Russian romantics differ from French or German romantics: a Russian romantic is not a “stupid and translunary” fool, but a practical, honest man who instils “the beautiful and lofty” inviolate within himself until his dying day, and protects his ideals—perfectly untouched, but still honestly guarded in his soul—to the point of tears. A Russian romantic is a pragmatist, and the underground man infers to us that the romantic, on Russian soil, is one who is highly conscious, as is he; the narrator has already demonstrated to us how our human reality is not logical (using the history of ‘civilization’ as an example), which shows as that not only are romantics overly-conscious, but they have almost lost touch with the reality of les hommes de la nature et de la vérité—that is to say, the reality of those who are solely awake, but nothing more.[3]

If this is the description of a Russian romantic—one who deliberately wishes for all to be “beautiful and lofty”, with a practicality reminiscent of the most prudent lawmaker—then where does love fit? Of course, one must remember that the underground man’s delusions are, despite wishing for all this “beautiful and lofty” quixotism, to be virtuous and, foremost, loved by all ab aeterno[4]. So what is the nature of this ‘love’, according to the underground man? “Where there is no love, there is no reason,” he tells Liza during their first meeting at the brothel.[5] To transcend into love, he tells her, is the truest means to real happiness; even the quarrels will lead to a stronger bond in love, which will create boundless, infinite joy. But love, however, is something that you must will yourself to achieve, and if you chose not to your life will be forever ensconced in the miserable crevices of blackness, your heart forever ebony in it’s abjection. The underground man himself, he explains, never received love as a child, and as a result he remains miserable; so the nature of love, then, is such that although it leads to a life strayed from reality—as we have already determined that there is no logic in true existence—it will create happiness, which is something even the narrator himself, it seems, would adore more than his apparent superiority over les hommes de la nature et de la vérité.

Our narrator, a miserable being of conscious superiority over others, deems himself a romantic of the Russian sense, yet he abhors love in its truest nature—“Never before had I endured so much suffering and repentance” for falling in love with Liza.[6] The underground man’s forays into delusional thinking and romanticism show that evil is a quality inherent to us all, since they beckon us to be muddied under the veil of happiness; love is for les hommes de la nature et de la vérité, and nothing more. The more evil we are, the more we develop our consciousness and ignore the pleads of French romanticism, the more we will dream of being the hero, and we will be able to ignore our muddiness; in the end, nonetheless and continually, we are vile beings.

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[1] Some terms in this essay, such as ‘king of morality’, are invented by myself, and not by the author of any given piece I am acquainted with; therefore, discrepancies with language or meaning are solely my own, and not based on another work.  

[2] Dostoevsky, F. (1864), pp. 57-58

[3] L’homme de la nature et de la vérité is Dostoevsky’s parody on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s ‘man of nature and truth’; Dostoevsky uses the term to imply those of common nature, those of the ‘true’ human existence.

[4] Latin for “From eternity”, in the sense that the underground man wishes to be loved not only now, but believes that he always should have been.

[5] p. 95

[6] p. 128