Both Friedrich Nietzsche and Fyodor Dostoevsky existed at the epicenters of churning changes in thought and contributed to the forward movement of ideas by provoking further philosophical progress. Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil is described as “one of the most remarkable and influential books of the nineteenth century” on its back cover, and Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground is billed as “one of the most revolutionary novels ever written.” These philosophers share vastly similar theories with slight, undulating differences. Indeed, the two men seem to build off of one another in certain ways; when combined, their philosophies become all encompassing though occasionally contradictory. Within their bodies of work, both Nietzsche and Dostoevsky repeatedly return to the same two themes: new ideas about the true character of human nature and searing attacks on contemporary society. For Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, these themes intermingle and interact. Dostoevsky uses the exaggerated plight of an individual in modern society as a scaffold to reveal original ideas about the true character of the human soul or self. Meanwhile, through Nietzsche’s works focusing on the many aspects of human nature in Beyond Good and Evil, and the drawing of a devastating picture of “the last man” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, one may clearly view Nietzsche’s societal perceptions and attacks. Both philosophers use these two themes to define and shape the other.
Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground is a depiction of a deranged man, or perhaps it is simply a representation of what contemporary society at its worst forces a man to become. In many ways, Notes from Underground is an underhanded criticism of “enlightened self-interest,” the idea that society’s competitive, self-seeking attitude is justified and rightful. The plotline from Part II of Notes from Underground, “Apropos of the Wet Snow,” largely clarifies Dostoevsky’s criticism of contemporary society. Dostoevsky paints a picture of society as a series of trivial competitions, such as when the Underground Man witnesses a bar fight and desires to be involved in a fight himself. Our society is one that encourages and creates needless antagonism. The Underground Man challenges an officer at the bar, who, rather than deigning to the Underground Man’s silly and needless threat, gently shoves him aside. After this, the Underground Man becomes obsessed with the idea of a confrontation with the officer and births the idea of a simple, staged collision on the street to force the officer to recognize his presence. Our fanatical protagonist spends months preparing for his “revenge” – he buys a new hat, gloves, shirt, an expensive fur collar. All this inconsequential superficiality testifies to Dostoevsky’s disdaining view of the materialistic aspects of contemporary society. As a result of the competitive nature of contemporary society, the cut-throat rivalries of today, the Underground Man, a simple exaggeration of the average individual, is self-deprecating and completely isolated physically and mentally: “no one else is like me, and I was like no one else. ‘I am one, and they are all,'” says the Underground Man. This mindset is certainly counter-intuitive and damaging to a functioning society.
It is contemporary society that makes Dostoevsky’s character self-loathing and isolated, but Dostoevsky also writes his character in that vulnerable and exposed state to illuminate many of his own ideas about the true character of the human. The Underground Man is self-deprecating for a reason; through this character, Dostoevsky presents the importance of suffering in terms of human nature. “Maybe suffering is just as profitable to him [human] as well-being?” asks the Underground Man, and “suffering – why, this is the sole cause of consciousness,” he declares. Complacency is sub-human. Such simplified ease to life is undemanding and unencouraging. Because suffering is important to make one feel truly alive, Dostoevsky philosophizes that some pain is self-inflicted. Dostoevsky explains, “the pleasure here [in the pain] lay precisely in the too-vivid consciousness of one’s own humiliation; in feeling that one has reached the ultimate wall, that, bad as it is, it cannot be otherwise.” This idea is mirrored in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “‘We have invented happiness,’ say the last men, and they blink.” The idea that happiness is an invention thrusts again the suggestion that it is necessary for the good life to involve a lot of struggle.
Our pain and suffering mirrors our futile desires to deny the laws of nature. One may self-inflict distress, or “consciously wish for himself even the harmful, the stupid, even what is stupidest of all: namely so as to have the right to wish for himself even what is stupidest of all and not be bound by an obligation to wish for himself only what is intelligent.” This natural human avoidance of the laws of nature are self-designed to make us feel elevated and unpredictable, but the fact that we make the unsuccessful choice to avoid them is predictable and asinine in itself. “Consequently, these laws of nature need only be discovered, and then man will no longer be answerable for his actions, and his life will become extremely easy,” writes Dostoevsky. “Needless to say, all human actions will then be calculated according to these laws, mathematically, like a table of logarithms.” Humans sub-consciously or consciously want to avoid that predictability, that sub-human, animalistic complacency. Nietzsche agrees: “Living – is that not precisely wanting to be other than this nature? Is not living – estimating, preferring, being unjust, being limited, wanting to be different?”
In Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, we also see, briefly, the idea of the human as a collection of drives and internal power struggles rather than an ephemeral soul. There is no simple unity of the soul, there is truly not something greater. The Underground Man mentions the process of “anatomizing man up so that we now know that wanting and so-called free will are nothing” perhaps in a direct reference to one of Nietzsche’s main theories of the will to power. In speaking of the true character of the human soul or self, Nietzsche writes that “the belief which regards the soul as something indestructible, eternal, indivisible… this belief ought to be expelled from science!” Instead, Nietzsche, in Beyond Good and Evil, describes the human self as a collection of competing drives. It is not as though one can step back, away, from these drives, these wills, and view them as a separate entity – the human is the drives. “Life itself is will to power; self preservation is only one of the indirect and more frequent results,” Nietzsche explains.
Based on his definition of the human as a mere collection of drives, Nietzsche goes on to characterize and attack modern society, mainly in his writings in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche describes humanity as constantly attempting to ignore their inner emptiness; “A little poison now and then: that makes for agreeable dreams. And much poison in the end, for an agreeable death.” Think of poison as a metaphor for all of the distracting factors presented to the average individual in today’s society: the entertainment industry, materialistic desires that we have been convinced we need, or perhaps literal poison: sleeping pills, increasingly popular anti-depression medication, alcohol, and the booming underground industry of illegal drugs. Without these diversions, life becomes a pointless, animalistic ritual of working, eating, and sleeping. Also according to Nietzsche, we are subconsciously aware of our own emptiness and we seek the love of others only to escape from that. Your love of the neighbor is your bad love of yourselves. You flee to your neighbor from yourselves… when you have seduced him to think well of you, then you think well of yourselves.” Not only does this illuminate the human’s sense of unfulfillment and emptiness, but also reveals another of Nietzsche’s blistering attacks on contemporary society. We only begin to love ourselves when the neighbor loves us. A strong value in contemporary society is placed on envy, jealousy, and competition. We can remember Dostoevsky’s similar stance in Notes From Underground when the Underground Man felt strongly compelled to compete in trivial ways with others. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche creates another metaphor to describe the same idea. A tightrope walker tiptoes on a string between two buildings; the crowd watches from below. Suddenly, a jester jumps onto the rope and follows him with fast footsteps, quickly overtaking him. “This man [the tightrope walker], seeing his rival win, lost his head and the rope, tossed away his pole, and plunged into the depth even faster, a whirlpool of arms and legs.” This metaphor portrays society as an over-the-top series of competitions and rivalries. Nietzsche, with the death of the tight-rope walker, strongly articulates that this aspect of society is destructive and damaging, as does Dostoevsky’s character, who plans his revenge for month and then sinks into a deeper depression and isolation after “losing” his imagined struggle with the officer.
Both the philosophies of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche share much common ground, but they also follow some dissimilar tangents of consideration and thought. Dostoevsky and Nietzsche share their views in different formats. While Nietzsche, on the surface, lays out his philosophy in clearly written aphorisms, much of what he says has multiple meanings. Nietzsche’s writing is deceptively multi-layered. Dostoevsky, too, carries underlying themes throughout his novel that he gives the reader the liberty to detect or ignore. For example, one may take the mocking tone of Notes from Underground and see the Underground Man as Dostoevsky’s sarcastic parody of a disturbed man, or one may recognize this but also take away some societal and human truths from Dostoevsky’s writing. Dostoevsky’s more obvious focus in Notes from Underground is societal criticism. But under that layer of social commentary, he also presents a lot of elucidated, fully formed truths about human nature. In the same way, Nietzsche seems to concentrate on a definition of the true human self; with that, though, Nietzsche’s thoughts on societal wrongdoings and inconsistencies become visible and rise up subtly into the reader’s thoughts. Ultimately, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky focus on similar themes and patterns of thought but present their ideas in unlike manners.
(Quotations from Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground and Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil and Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
