"What men need - is only an independent will, no matter what the price of that independence". This is the thesis of the man in the underground. This man is 40 years old, and in Notes from underground, Dostoyevsky stages his inner monologue against life, against the world and above all against himself. Dostoyevsky is at an important point in his career: his last books have been less popular with the critics and his state alternates between frenetic writing and anguish. It is in Notes from underground that all these deep states of mind, these incommunicable words, these appeals from the heart that are addressed to everyone and to no one, will resurface. For this is how the man in the underground lives. He lives in a shabby flat, where he spends his hours in despair, talking to himself, vilifying. What Dostoyevsky imagines through his book is the desperate consciousness of modern man and its tragic consequences on social relations. The notebooks arethus divided into two main parts: "The Underground'', in which the man expresses himself freely on paper, and "On the Wet Snow", which is the story o fhis life in Russian society. In Dostoyevsky's work, each character is possessed by an idea, a world view that dictates his actions and has extreme consequences for his social life. In this case, the man in question could not be more representative of Dostoyevsky's conception of modernity.
Notes from underground is a real call to freedom. It is about a man who, according to his own words, wants to be evil, but is consumed by his conscience. This mental state is rooted in modernity. His big idea is that men are naturally spontaneous and foolish, and that they make death "something mystical". But such men are disappearing: it is now "mice" or "retort men" who rule the world. The latter are thinkers, driven by a sense of revenge, permanently humiliated, locked in their underground and condemned to shout their humiliation at the rest of the world. But why such a fall? Because science has built a wall that rises everywhere before modern man, and he can no longer be free. Science acts against human interest, because human interest lies in the will, there is nothing rational about it. Man may want his own downfall, his own downfall, for he is "the most ungrateful animal". One can observe how this man seems to be a bridge between Blaise Pascal's and Nietzsche's thoughts, as if he were this camel carrying the weight of the world, which is only waiting to be transformed into a lion, then into a child. He admits that 'man loves to make paths', but he argues that men 'love suffering', that they do not desire the good. In short, this man's original sin is that he was born in the 19th century. If men are "frivolous creatures", they do not seek a reasonable life. They simply want to want. But they can no longer want, and this is because of modern science which has reduced man to an organ pin. Man can no longer exercise his cruelty, nor his will, nor his spirituality. From this point of view, life is nothing but constant humiliation. Here we can see the link with Nietzschean philosophy, which will unify this phenomenon under the concept of "passive nihilism", which must be reversed. And if it has to be overthrown, it is because such ideas are mortifying for the human species. "What's the point of doing anything if it's already written on a tablet?" the narrator pretends to ask. Life then becomes deadly dull, and everyone turns against himself what he cannot express outside. This is why the man in the underground scribbles in notebooks: "all this, gentlemen, was out of boredom".
However, the man cannot be reduced to writing alone. The narrator may still feel the need to socialise. However, these inevitably turn out to be catastrophic. When the 'mouse' emerges from his hole, his relationship with others can only be one of duality, expiation and revenge. With his former friends, he tries to assert himself, but his humiliation will only be stronger. Faced with such a situation, how can he not fall into excessive alcohol consumption? And when, by chance, he comes across a young woman he could seduce, how can he resist the temptation to humiliate her, to talk to her about his malaise, to see the tears running down her face? From then on, this type of relationship cannot last, as modern man is doomed to failure, condemned to fall back on his damaged mind, his disturbed flat and his endemic loneliness.
It is thus the philosophical underground of his work that Fyodor Dostoyevsky delivered to us in 1864. In a Russia troubled by modernity, suffering is the only cause of consciousness and science limits human potential by mistaking its perfectible essence. If man is "condemned to make his own way", this freedom must be regained in order to avoid the victory of nihilism and the destruction of human relations.