Title Notes From Underground

Author  Fedor Dostoyevsky Translation: Jane Kentish

Kind of Book Novel/Philosophy

How strongly I recommend it 9/10 

My Impressions This book is broken into two parts. The first is written much more like a philosophical treatise. The narrator deals with the problem of determinism, the irrationality of humans, and the human need for suffering. The second part is a story the narrator tells of his youth about an affair he had with a prostitute. The story is filled with angst, regret, and self-loathing. You get the sense that this very unlikable man, who has been living isolated without a job for the last decade, has drifted into a permanent state of madness. He resembles a modern day INCEL. Intelligent, but unable to form human connection because he is guarded, arrogant, and petty. A classic. Dostoyevsky doesn't disappoint.

Practical Takeaways

  • Don't strive for prosperity or suffering. Strive for caprice (ie. Listening to your impulse in the moment and doing whatever it tells you even if it is not "rational")

 

Big Ideas

  • Action requires ignorance

  • Hyperconsciousness makes people indecisive and not take action in the world

  • People of action get overrun with emotion and take action as a consequence

  • People don't need to have as much consciousness as they have now (in the 19th century) in order to meet their everyday needs

  • People take pride in their illnesses

  • One can get the most intense kind of pleasure from despair and hopelessness

  • When someone wrongs you, you can't be angry because there is no free will and therefore wasn't their fault they did what they did it, but you can't forget about it either because you are still offended

  • Nature has it's own laws that apply regardless of what you want to be true

  • There is no justice in revenge. Only spite

  • Humans love chaos and to destroy things sometimes

  • Laziness is a better justification for doing nothing than indecision Because Laziness is at least a value which can be attained, whereas indecision doesn't commit to and attain any value

  • There are certain things we've done in our lives that we don't tell everyone, only close friends

There are certain things we've done in our lives that we don't tell our friends, only ourselves

There a certain things we've done in our lives that we don't divulge to ourselves, and they remain repressed

When we get the point where all of our actions can be calculated to meet our goals

We will grow so incredibly bored that we will look for ways to torture and harm ourselves, just so we can feel alive