Existentialism in Notes from the Underground Through the Lens of Gita’S Philosophical Discourse

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Existentialism in Notes from the Underground through the Lens of Gita’s Philosophical Discourse

*Mudita Choudhary Student, M.A. (Eng.) The IIS University, Jaipur **Dr Sucharita Sharma Assistant Professor, Department of English The IIS University , Jaipur

Abstract

Existentialism is an incredible aspect because of its intrinsic aspect in solving the fundamental human problem. Its applicability has gone beyond the era, time, space and culture. The article explores the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground through the existential discourse of Sartre, dealing with the shaken existence of an individual who is very intricately characterized. The research is an endeavor to trace the long existing tussle amidst human perceptions and actions. The world that is weaved in the text projects a very universal frame of human conscious. The characters are endowed with a wide array of scope to understand the man’s self crafted illusionary trap, and this trap is displayed in the cognitive conflict of man’s internal and external world. This research also attempts to find evidences of existential ideas in Indian classical texts like Bhagvad Gita, exploring the dispute of ‘existence’ and ‘being’ vis-à-vis the Philosophical approach of Gita in projecting a wide spectrum of human psychology with their multiple nature and needs to attain the ultimate ‘freedom to choose’.

Keywords: Existential, Self - Deception, Conflict, Action, Freedom

People say that we are all seeking is the meaning of life…I think what we are really seeking is the experience of being alive

- Rudyard Kipling

Existentialism was never a single specific doctrine. Its meaning kept on changing with the time and the list of much diverse existentialists kept on emerging. Therefore “ There was no single voice of authority, its definition has always had blurry edges .It grew up in the public domain, as a drawing of a new way of thinking about life that emerged at a particular moment in history. It could be seen as a historical necessity or inevitability, an effort to adapt to a new confluence of cultural and historical forces” (Cogswell, 1).

Existential views helped in expanding man’s vision and his views of the universe. Discoveries, scientific explorations opened new vistas in people’s life and gradually the old biblical view that God

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© 2019 JETIR March 2019, Volume 6, Issue 3 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) created world in six days shattered as people gradually realized that earth had a long history to munch upon. Therefore a more realistic approach was needed that could accommodate with the expanding universe. But even with the increase in scientific probe, people exercised power over the material world. Man surely became powerful but not as powerful to control the catastrophic destructions of his own over ambitions. “Even science, with its cold objectivity lacked the human dimension, so it failed as an all-encompassing belief system that could guide human judgment and actions.” (Cogswell, 5)

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian novelist, emerged in nineteenth century, much before his contemporaries perceived the calamities the world was about to suffer due to their “naïve belief in a coming technological Utopia.” (Cogswell, 28) Dostoevsky in his works portrayed the classic problems of existentialism. For instance Notes from the Underground deals with an existential point of view, “beginning with the unreliability of reason.” However man is allured with logic and rationality, Dostoevsky claims that originally man is not a logical creature he rather believed that what triggers man’s choice, is not just most “advantageous advantage” but a “freewill” as his choices are not always guided alone from his rational side but also is a manifestation of his impulses and desires. He says “and how these wiseacres know that man wants a normal, a virtuous choice? What has made them conceive that man must want a rationally advantageous choice? What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead” (Cogswell, 30)

His novella Notes from the Underground likewise wrangles with the most fundamental existential framework of Sartre i.e. “the world is founded upon the absurd”. Dostoevsky’s novella can be regarded as definitive voice of existential beliefs.

In Notes from the Underground the protagonist consistently and repeatedly deals with inner conflicts, self contradictions, self pity which engrosses his mind so rigorously that his life becomes an embodiment of an unknown suffering. The work openly declares the paradox of human mind. Underground man exists without any sort of sanctuary and refuge from the pain and agony of modern consciousness alongside Eliot’s ‘Prufrock’, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and so on.

He addresses the world from that crack; he has also spent a lifetime listening at it. Everything that can be said about him, and more particularly against him, he already knows; he has, as he says in a typical paradox, overheard it all, anticipated it all, invented it all. “I am a sick man….I am a wicked man.” In the space of that pause Dostoevsky introduces the unifying idea of his tale: the instability, the perpetual “dialectic” of isolated consciousness. (Dostoevsky, ix)

The novella is known for its absurd narrative, unorganized framework and a general sense of disdain which runs through it. It is majorly divided into two major parts. Part one contains no plot and deals with an

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© 2019 JETIR March 2019, Volume 6, Issue 3 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) unending chaotic philosophical pondering and descriptions of surrounding. Part second however deals with his failure or incapability of forming meaningful relationships. Underground man’s interaction to people gives him joy but at the same time tear him down, which is why he chooses to be underground. The work is an unorganized memoir of an unknown narrator, who throughout the novel has been called as ‘Underground man’ whose logic is twisted and often contradictory. A man who concludes, that the universe is without any reason.

Underground man is an aggressive, conflicted and indecisive man living alone in St. Petersburg, Russia, in the 1860s. He is a Russian civil servant who has recently retired as he has inherited money out of a will. The novella consists of the confused, contradictory statements and confessions of his detachment from the society. It is an epitome of modern tragedy; and efficiently put up to the fore, it is an absurd destruction of human self and life in its totality. His inability to act generates from several important factors working together. First, the Underground Man is suffering from a major existential crisis, he thinks that nothing in the world can provide his life any meaning, and in fact there is no meaning in trying. He believes that traditional social values have no basis and that human existence is essentially useless. As a result the Underground Man detests the society he is living in. He is filled with bitterness and hatred toward all aspects of society, but he is aware that he is powerless to act against the hypocrisy which lies within it. Man’s sadism, the pleasure he takes in his own pain and humiliation explores the further idea in more depth later in the novel.

I am a sick man…I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts. However, I don’t know a fig about my sickness, and am not sure what it is that hurts me. I am not being treated and never have been able, though I respect medicine and doctors. What’s more, I am also superstitious in the extreme; well, at least enough to respect medicines. (I am sufficiently educated not to be superstitious, but I am.) No sir, I refuse to be treated out of wickedness. Now, you will certainly not be so good as to understand this. Well, sir, but I understand it. I will not, of course, be able to explain to you precisely who is going to suffer in this case from my wickedness; I know perfectly that I will in no way “muck things up” for the doctors by not taking their treatment; I know better than anyone that by all this I am harming myself and no one else. But still, if I don’t get treated, it is out of wickedness. My liver hurts; well, then let it hurt even worse ( Dostoevsky, 5)

The Underground Man has great contempt for prevailing school of thought that attempted to use practical, rational and logical line of thought to cope up with man’s desires and choices.He complains that man’s primary desire and choice is to practice freedom of thought. This explains the reason of Underground Man taking pleasure in his own toothaches and liver pains and he accepts his situation without even questioning the value of going to the doctor. He predicts that man would be bored in a society based on

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© 2019 JETIR March 2019, Volume 6, Issue 3 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) scientifically derived principles for moral behavior, rather, in his views man should overturn this logic and should rely on his own and live according to their own irrational free will. According to him, in any circumstance, a man prefers to think he is acting as he desires to act, not as reason dictates. Thus, the most important thing to man is that his freedom of choice should not be constrained by anything— not even reason.

He further implies that his heightened consciousness is the reason behind his inactiveness. He says that all those people who are active are always “duplicitous”. By saying this he make some rational points to justify his inability to act. However, the Underground Man’s alienation from society and his self delude statements does not mean that Dostoevsky necessarily wants to glorify the “man of action” by mocking inactivity, indeed the novel no only criticizes those people who spend too much time in contemplating but also those people who act but act blindly, without giving their action a proper thought.

Existential crisis thus encompasses every aspect of a person’s life and can manifest in many different ways, including a sense of loss of meaning, deep detachment from people, or denunciation in the Universe? And all these questions trouble the underground man too. Underground man also displays a conflict between his beliefs towards literature of the Enlightenment and Romantic periods. He feels pride in “beautiful and lofty” but at the same time is disgusted with society that has crushed all those ideals and faiths. Thus “ one of the main thematic strand of the book is the underground man’s denunciation of the estranging and vitiating influence of books, so that from his perspective of the 1860’s, when he begins to write, the word “literary” has become one of the most sarcastic he can utter”.( Dostoevsky, x)

Underground’s man inability to act gives us one of the major dimensions of Sartre’s Existentialism i.e. the necessity to act. Sartre presents several arguments to justify why it is only through action and responsibility that man can transcend human subjectivity, and according to him, it lies in the fundamental principle of existentialism. Sartre says “If I decide to marry and have children-granted such a marriage proceeds solely from my own circumstances, my passion or my desire-I am none-theless committing not only myself, but all the humanity, to the practice of monogamy. I am therefore responsible for everyone else, and I am fashioning a certain image of man as I choose him to be. In choosing myself, I choose man”. ( 24)

Underground man is thus not only a victim of inactivity but also of bad faith as he runs away from his responsibility by seeking pleasure in inactivity. He lies and excuses himself and is therefore struggling with bad conscience. Sartre gives a precise example of a café waiter, identifying himself with his role as waiter only. He is thus denying the transcending of self beyond the role that he has accepted so strongly.

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This further gives us an insight into understanding some more complex words such as ‘anguish’ and ‘despair’ playing a crucial role in the development of existential crisis. Anguish according to Sartre is a state where a man becomes aware of his responsibility towards humanity as a whole. Sartre believes that people who don’t suffer anguish are not the ones contented but are merely hiding it or not facing it. The Underground man can be seen as an inactive man who is contended in his inactive position and therefore is a victim of an “anguish can be seen even when concealed”. (Sartre, 25)

The second part of the Novella describes specific events in the Underground Man’s life when he was young. The underground man is so alienated that his interaction with people turns out to be a mixture of disgust and fear. His alienation is evident in all kinds of relationships. His interactions with soldier and his school acquaintances are mixed with several feelings of fear disgust and also craving their attention and friendship. He meets a prostitute named Liza and clearly moves her by a long whole argument about the importance of marriage and family despite being a man who is himself detached from society, that too out of wickedness. All in all, throughout the novel we see that the Underground Man contradicts himself and never been able to come out of that contradiction which goes on in the novel throughout and leads him towards inactivity. He is able to imagine the variety of consequences that every action could have, and make possible arguments against the statements which he just made. As a result, the Underground Man sees that every choice a person makes is more complicated than it may seem on the surface and it is this complexity of circumstance that makes the decision to act so difficult for him.

Sartre provides very interesting example of leaders across the world who have suffered this kind of conflict. He says

All leaders have experience that anguish, but it does not prevent them from acting. To the contrary, it is very condition of their action , for they first contemplate several options, and , choosing one of them, realize that its only value lies in the fact that it was chosen. It is this kind of anguish that existentialism describes, as we shall see it can be made explicit through a sense of direct responsibility towards the other men who will be affected by it. It is not a screen that separates us from action, but a condition of action itself. (Sartre, 27)

Underground man’s inability to decide leads to an anguish that makes him develop a heightened conscious .He is not inhuman, in fact he is an extreme individual. He is an individual, struggling with the nature of his being, with his existence and with the universe around him. The “underground man” struggles to define himself, and to place himself into the world, into a reality in which he feels he does not belong.

There seems to be a couple of philosophically interesting ways of understanding the debate between our actions exclusively in terms of observable causal and the intuitive self understanding for freedom of

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© 2019 JETIR March 2019, Volume 6, Issue 3 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) choice. This is the moment when one feels an existential gap between understanding himself as a free agent and actual experience of absurd existence. Man suddenly realizes how brutal the commonness of the world and human life outside philosophical pursuit of truth and meaning is. This perspective thus leads us to a revised notion of freedom not as “self-determination” but as “existential achievement”.

Ancient Hindu Scripture Bhagwat Gita is a brilliant text in which this existential perspective is very deeply manifested.. Krishna speaks the philosophy in the midst of the battle ground where opposing armies are ready to fight a destructive war. While most religions advocate kindness, love, compassion, mercy, forgiveness. Krishna Himself urges Arjuna to fight but for Dharma. Arjuna on the other hand, stands conflicted between the two opposing ends of action and inaction. The Bhagavad Gita takes up his subject from the viewpoint of the human soul acting in the world. The interaction between Krishna and Arjuna centers on the issue of Arjuna’s existential crisis when he is faced with the brutal reality of external world. Thus the question raised is not about achieving the ultimate purified state but rather dealing in the world that is full of conflicts, issues, motives, values, calls and loyalties. Arjuna faces a total emotional breakdown at the moment and stands conflicted.

The reply of Sri Krishna to Arjuna’s conflict can be interpreted in many ways- the social, personal and ultimately spiritual. Krishna convinces Arjuna of his responsibility and herein lays the fact the whole Bhagwat Gita is a systematic, step by step argument towards more satisfying answers.

The Bhagavad-Gita enlightens man with an unending probing on the knowledge of self and world. Our understanding of the world is generally dependent upon our ability to correlate, interpret, and assimilate information gained through observation and experience through our senses. Man’s understanding of the world is framed through his abiltity to comprehend what lies within him. There exists a correlation between the self and the outer world and the most important key to self knowledge begins with self evaluation .Many people have confused swadharma to be their religion.. Swadharma is something unique to every individual in the world. So the question that arises here is that how can all people in the same religion have the same Swadharma? Hence Swadharma is not religion, neither Swadharma has something to do with one’s creed or profession. It has a deeper meaning. Swa means the consciousness or Atma and Dharma means Duty. Thus, all duties and action that has been guided by Swa (Self) can be called as Swadharma. And if swadharma means following this inner voice, then Paradharma is just the opposite of Swadharma. Hence all activities which are not guided by Swa (Self) can be called as Paradharma.

श्रेयान्स्वधर्मो विगुणः परधर्माात्स्वनुवितात्। वधर्मे वनधनं श्रेयः परधर्मो भयािहः।।3.35।।

Thus, Bhagwat Gita provides many answers when it comes to life and existence and those answers are surely free from any dogma and recognizes an individual’s liberty to choose and act and therefore it

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© 2019 JETIR March 2019, Volume 6, Issue 3 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) leave the ultimate choice in the hands of the seeker. The objective of of Gita is therefore not to restrict any action, nor to bar any choice, it just demands from its actors to exercise their choices in a self channelized and enlightened manner so as to preserve one’s own Dharma as well as the Dharma of the entire world.

Sartre believed that we solely are responsible for our choices and its result, and by not exploring the myriad possibilities life presents to us, we restrict our freedom. Underground man fails to interpret the world, or interprets it too much and thus falls in the middle of action and inaction. Likewise at many places man restricts himself because however free, he is incapable to internalize that freedom. For him, freedom is randomly given to man, not achieved by the free state of mind.

Underground man too, is free to act but is unable to and probably the reason for his inaction and schizophrenic duality is the state of freedom that has not been internalized. Myriad possibilities lie beyond the circumference of observable causal, and desire. The state of not being imprisoned or enslaved can be a form of freedom, but the idea is that power and right to be able to speak or act is a limited understanding of freedom. While one may be free to act and choose, one cannot escape the result of these actions. Complete responsibility of an action demands a free mind .But if a man allows himself to become controlled and directed by his mind and senses in the hope that he is going to get some actual lasting happiness, then he will remain unfulfilled, empty, and a slave to those desires, or a slave to his own mind.

The truth is that man is defined by not the body or the mind as these, but the spiritual being (atma) within. Living in the illusion that this body is “me”, man mistakenly concludes that by trying to satisfy the desires of the mind and senses he will experience real happiness. This is untrue. What is atma in Gita , is radical freedom for Sartre ie. The state of absolute freedom is where one’s actions are channelized by man’s own choices, choices that does not result from any cause and effect, but that result from his own freedom of mind.

The absolute freedom or ability to make choice leads man to act. Action constitutes major part in Gita’s philosophical discourse. Most famous soliloquy in Hamlet “To be or not to be” is not really a conflict of whether to live or die but rather the conflict between action and inaction. For every human being since the beginning of time, the question has not been life or death. The question has been what is in between life and death. The question has been the point of life, the meaning of life, and the definition of humanity.

Throughout the play, his speeches have an undercurrent of existential philosophy as he keeps on comprehending and contemplating the various circumstances in life , his fate and actions in life and gradually the question –whether to suffer or to take weapons, becomes the pinnacle of existential crisis.

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Gita emphasizes on action that results not from one’s moral faculty or observable causal but from the free state of mind that transcends individual freedom for the sake of common good and therefore the real ‘karma’ is to act without thinking of any consequences- with a free will.

कर्माण्येिावधकारस्ते र्मा फलेषु कदाचन। र्मा कर्माफलहेतुभभार्माा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मावण।।2.47।।

The Bhagavad Gita clearly preaches the notion that it is not society that imposes its values on the individuals , instead individuals chose an independent path keeping in mind the interests of the world and society as Jean Paul Sartre also says that “when a man chooses , he chooses for mankind”.

Man’s focus, as revealed to Arjuna by Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, is not our bodies but our souls. Mortal bodies are not man’s true identity but rather it is an appearance that man presents to the world. Man’s true identity is the soul (freedom of mind) and, unlike our bodies (observable cause), it does not change and alter over time, it remains eternal.

सहजं कर्मा कौन्तेय सदोषर्मवप न त्यजेत्। सिाारम्भा वह दोषेण धभर्मेनाविररिािृताः।।18.48।।

As long as individuals do not take the responsibility to make their own choices and take responsibility of their actions, they will remain stuck in the duality of mind. Underground man being highly conscious of himself resist action and somehow escapes the inevitability of action and is unable to understand that it is impossible. Bhagavad Gita enables man to contemplate the hidden lessons and philosophical discourses beyond religious interpretations and allows man to gain insight into every aspect of our lives, right in the world full of conflicts, and existential dilemma.

Sartre’s existentialism therefore seems collaborating with the philosophical discourses of Gita. Concepts of choice, freewill, responsibilities, action find their extension in Bhagawad Gita, where actions seems to inevitable but must trigger from a free will of an individual realizing that he is free from the traps of obligations of outside world. Arjuna doesn’t realize that his actions should not be affected by the worldly concerns rather should be directed for the sake of humanity, for common good.

‘Atma’ thus is not necessarily the eternal soul, but an individual who has internalized his freedom, therefore becoming free and unaffected. In the world of twenty first century, in which man is standing on the edge of world war III. Underground man’s dilemma therefore is the dilemma of ‘us’, dilemma of conscience of a common man, who is torn between his determine cycle of birth and death and his freewill that offers him to choose freely for himself. Underground man understands this very absurdity of ‘being’

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© 2019 JETIR March 2019, Volume 6, Issue 3 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) and thus shatters the same every time. Existential crisis of underground man to a very extent is same as the dilemma of Arjuna, who falls hopelessly on his chariot, coming face to face with this very ugliness of life.

Gita and its philosophical teachings therefore is a journey from the state of uncertainty to certainty, from inaction to action, determinism to freewill, body to ‘atma’, individual to common good of humanity, state of dilemma to a state of internalized freedom.

Consulted readings

Primary sources

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, et al. Notes from underground. Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Print

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Aho, Kevin. Existentialism: an introduction. Polity Press, 2014.Print

Appignanesi, Richard, et al. Introducing. Icon Books, 2014.Print

Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. Penguin, 2005.Print

Cogswell, David, and Joe Lee. Existentialism for beginners. For Beginners, 2008.Print

Dostoievski, Fedor Mikhailovich, and Michael R. Katz. Notes from Underground: an Authoritative Translation,

Backgrounds and Sources, Responses, Criticism. Norton, 2001.Print

Gandhi. The Bhagavad Gita. Jaico Pub. House, 2010.Print

Ghose, Aurobindo. Essays on the Gita. Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1996.Print

Flynn, Thomas. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2006.Print

Kaufmann, Walter. Existentialism: from Dostoevsky to Sartre. Plume, 2004.Print

Pattanaik, Devdutt. My Gita. Rupa, 2015.Print

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Sartre, Jean-Paul, et al. Existentialism is a humanism = L Existentialisme est un humanisme. Yale University Press,

2007.Print

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Literature and Philosophy. Pennsylvania State University, 1997.Print

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