How did Dostoevsky regard intellectuals?

Question by ♥: How did Dostoevsky regard intellectuals who sought to “cure men of their old habits and reform their will in a
I am reading notes from the underground for a class assignement and i have no idea what this statement means or how this question can be answered. Any help would be appriciated.
accordance with science and common sense”?

Answers and Views:

Introduction

Biography

Chronology

Commentaries

Quotations

Bibliography

Existentialism
Introduction

Definitions

Ethics

Divisions

Context

Resources

Suggested Reading

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Introduction
Many students of literature would state, with certainty, that Fyodor Dostoevsky was one of the first of The Existentialists. As students of philosophy know, this classification is problematic, as Dostoevsky’s writings include characters with existential natures, but the writer himself was dedicated to religious mysticism.

Also, existentialism should not be interpreted to mean mere depression or obsession with the dark aspects of human nature. Dostoevsky’s fascination with the dark side of human will does not make him existential.

Biography
According to some biographers Dostoevsky was prone to drink and a gambler who wrote about men with even more anti-social tendencies than himself. According to these accounts, he more closely resembles the orgy-loving father Fyodor Karamazov in Dostoevsky’s last novel than the religious and pure son Alyosha in the same novel.

Other biographers insist Dostoevsky remained true to his Orthodox religion — and its accompanying guilt. Not that either alternative seems cheerful, I cannot say without doubts which view is accurate. It is up to historians and biographers, aided by whatever records exist, to determine what made Dostoevsky so cheerful a writer.

It is possible that his life made him what he was: bitter, cynical, miserable…. Any number of negative adjectives can be applied to Dostoevsky. The defining moments in Dostoevsky’s life were the murder of his father and his own imprisonment for treason.

His father was an army doctor, who demanded order and morality. While Dostoevsky was studying at an army school, his father was killed by serfs on the family estate. This murder made no sense to Dostoevsky. He never escaped a fascination with murder and crime, trying to understand why the poor might be illogically violent. Much of Dostoevsky’s writings deal with death as a result of his obsession to understand it.

In 1846, after serving in the army, Dostoevsky wrote Poor Folk, a psychological novel. It was recognized as a masterpiece by many, and secured a good income for the author. It would be nearly two decades between this success and his next popular novel. One reason for this dramatic gap in creativity is Dostoevsky’s involvement in the political upheavals of Russia.

With money came access to Western European ideas and culture. Dostoevsky, like many of the Russian middle-class, found himself wanting Russia to adopt Western political structures. He began writing and publishing calls for democratic reforms, an illegal and dangerous undertaking. Because of such activities, Dostoevsky and other writers were arrested, tried, and convicted as traitors to the tsar. On the day of his planned execution, Dostoevsky was bound and blindfolded, waiting to die. Then, a messenger same to deliver word of a commuted sentence from the tsar. The writer was sent to Siberia, after a severe emotional torture the tsar had planned all along.

While in Siberia, Dostoevsky’s political and philosophical views changed radically. In fact, his views began to mirror those of his father. Dostoevsky became a nationalist; he believed that Russia would become the primary world power within his lifetime. More importantly, he believed that Russia was a chosen nation, with a sacred future blessed by God. Dostoevsky became a religious zealot, telling all who would listen that suffering as the only way to purify a sinful soul. Russia’s suffering made the country pure.

Notes from Underground, published in 1864, reflects the pain and suffering of a man — but not Dostoevsky, as is often assumed. The narrator is fictional, the values expressed in contrast to the writer’s own religion. It is a study of what Dostoevsky thought the human condition was creating, not what humanity should become.

Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment in 1866 to illustrate how suffering leads to redemption of a lost soul. The book’s anti-hero, Raskolnikov, commits an irrational murder. Dostoevsky did not want to trivialize the crime, but instead wanted to explore the process of redemption. Unlike Camus’ The Stranger, Raskolnikov’s crime is meant from the beginning to test his beliefs. For Raskolnikov, murder is an experiment in morality.

Sometimes, Dostoevsky gave little thought to what he wrote, especially when writing merely to settle gambling debts. Dostoevsky could write novels at incredible speeds, when he had to pay bills. At other times, he gave a great deal of thought to philosophy and human nature.

One very important note to students: do not confuse the writer with his characters. The existential ideas presented in Dostoevsky’s works are not his own, in fact they conflict with his beliefs. Remember this, and it changes how one approaches his works. Walter Kaufmann describes Dotoevsky as follows:

Dostoevsky himself was a Christian, to be sure, and for that matter also a rabid anti-Semite, anti-Catholic, and anti-Western Russian nationalist. We have no right whatsoever to attribute to him the opinions of all of his most interesting characters.
– Existentialism; Kaufmann, p. 14

Chronology
1821 October 30 Born, the second of seven children.
1831 Father purchases the village of Darovoe.
1832 Father purchases villege of Cheremoshna. Family estate is approximately 1400 acres with 100 serfs.
1834 Sent with brother to boarding school.
1835 July Mother develops tuberculosis.
1837 February 27 His mother dies.
1838 Enters the Russian Engineering Academy as an army cadet.
1839 June 8 His father dies, apparently murdered by his serfs.
1839 June Has his first epileptic seizure.
1843 August 12 Graduates from the Russian Engineering Academy.
1843 December Renounces any claim to his family estate in exchange for money from his brother-in-law.
1844 October 19 Resigns army commission as an lieutenant.
1846 Publishes Poor Folk, The Double, and A Novel in Nine Letters.
1847 Publishes The Landlady and An Honest Thief.
1847 Ends friendship with literary critic Vissarion Grigorievich Bielinsky after argument about Bielinsky’s atheism.
1847 Begins attending political meetings. Does not agree with violence against government, however.
1848 Publishes A Weak Heart, White Nights, and Another Man’s Wife.
1849 Convicted of conspiracy against the Tsar. While in front of the firing squad, Dostoevsky and his companions are reprieved, as the Tsar intended the firing squad as a form of emotional torture. The writer is send to a labor camp in Siberia.
1854 Released from prison, Dostoevsky is forced to remain exiled in Siberia. The period from 1849 through his exile shapes the writer’s view of life.
1854 Meets Maria Dmitrievna Isaev, wife of a bureaucrat.
1855 Maria’s husband dies.
1857 February 6 Marries Maria.
1859 Resigns army commission again, this time as a second lieutenant, and receives permission to return to European Russia. Dostoevsky returns to St. Petersburg.
1860 Relationship with actress Alexandra Shubert.
1861 Publishes The Insulted and Injured and The House of the Dead.
1862 Visits England and France. Western Europe are both an attraction to Dostoevsky and a threat. He fears Western Europe might influence Russian culture — something for which he once hoped. Publishes Nasty Story.
1862 Relationship with feminist writer Apollinaria Suslova.
1864 April 15 His wife dies.
1864 July 10 His brother, Mikhail, dies.
1864 Publishes Notes from Underground, now considered one of the major works in philosophical literature.
1865 Publishes The Crocodile.
1865 Borrows 10,000 roubles from his aunt, Alexandra Kumanina. He loses much of the money gambling in Wiesbaden.
1866 Publishes Crime and Punishment, featuring an existential anti-hero. Also publishes The Gambler.
1867 February 15 Marries Anna Snitkina, his stenographer. Lives abroad, in Germany and France, until 1871.
1868 Publishes The Idiot.
1868 March 5 Daughter Sonya born.
1868 May 24 Sonya dies of pneumonia.
1869 September 14 Second daughter, Lyubov, born in Dresden.
1871 Returns to Russia after living in Western Europe. Vows to never gamble again.
1871 July 26 First son, Fyodor, is born.
1878 His three year-old son, Alyosha, dies
1879–1880 The Brothers Karamazov is published.
1881 January 28 Dies.

Works
Poor Fo

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What do you think?

Comments ( 1 )

themonotonyofrepetit says

"Notes from Underground" was written, at least in part, in response to the influential novel "What is to be done?" by Russian critic Nikolai Chernyshevsky. Chernyshevsky was a socialist, and was heavily influenced by the Utilitarian philosophy of Bentham and, especially, John Stuart Mill. Like the political Left, Chernyshevsky believed that human beings are nothing more than the product of their environment; given the relevant environment, they could act as saints or the lowest scoundrels. Thus, what is needed, according to him, is a revolution which would overthrow the current Tsarist system prevalent in Russia, and supplant it with a socialist system which improves the people by providing them with an environment which would create peaceful, productive citizens.

In the passage that you have cited (part IX), Dostoevsky has taken issue with Chernyshevsky's view that people are nothing more than the product of their environment. Chernyshevsky embraces this view and essentially denies the freedom of the will [This is also influenced by the popular scientific opinion in the West in the 19th century. Fourier, for instance, had made a "table" to calculate and predict human emotions. Also, French physiologist Claude Bernard, whom Chernyshevsky mentions a few times in his novel, also held deterministic view about human beings and the effect of the environment on them].
To answer your question, Dostoevsky rejected the idea of determinism, a consequence of which is that people are not really responsible for their own actions. Constantly recurring in his works are themes of individual responsibility, the importance of the irrational as opposed to cold reason, and the importance of suffering as a purifying influence on the soul.

I hope this is helpful.

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