Utilitarianism was first founded by British philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, but the general idea can be traced back to Ancient Greece. In his theory, a person is solely interested in minimizing pain and maximizing happiness. This philosophy is more focused on the outcome of an action rather than the reason behind the action. In other words, according to utilitarianism, murdering someone would be acceptable if the person who was murdered was going to somehow negatively impact the rest of the community. Even though murder isn’t a morally sound action; the outcome is still beneficial in the grand scheme. Dostoevsky’s opposition to utilitarianism is apparent through the thoughts and actions of the narrator, the Underground Man. This opposition serves as better insight into the themes of his other novels and nineteenth century Russia.
Through his work, Jeremy Bentham equivalents happiness, or also pleasure, with good and pain with evil. Actions are determined to be morally wrong if it produces pain, and right if it is beneficial, as described in the previously mentioned example. As stated by John Stuart Mill, a student of Bentham and co-founder of utilitarianism, “Actions are right to the degree that they tend to promote the greatest good for the greatest number.” Which offers the idea that the individual happiness is not as important as the happiness of the whole community.
Notes from Underground is considered to be Dostoevsky’s response to Chernyshevsky’s 1863 novel What Shall We Do?, also translated as What Is To Be Done?. In which, Chernyshevsky proposes that people are guided by one law, self-interest. All people’s actions can be related to the fact that they love themselves, even seemingly selfless actions, such as helping out a friend, ultimately benefits the person because they receive gratification through that friendship. He even goes as far as to say, “a self-respecting person would prefer death to degradation.” In contrast to the theory presented by Mill, Chernyshevsky promotes individuality. People can control their own fates; they act only to change circumstances that are the sources of unhappiness. He also proposes a utopia based upon the principles of utilitarianism, rationalism, and socialism. In this utopia, people would experience happiness simply due to the security this community has to offer.
Dostoevsky, as reflected through Notes from Underground, mocks Chernyshevsky’s ideas. Throughout the novel, he expresses that the ideas of individuality and the utopia coexisting are hypocritical. The security that Chernyshevsky’s utopia offers in itself would destroy a person’s freedom. People cannot simply be given happiness and security and still maintain their freedom. The mere experience of happiness cannot be attained if a person simply has security.
The Underground Man expresses Dostoevsky’s ideas concerning man’s rationalism through the argument of two times two equal four. Rational thought is merely part of a human, in contrast, utilitarianism thinks of it as the main driving force of a human. It doesn’t always act rationally which undermines the basic idea of utilitarianism. There is a fight between these levels of humanity within a person. One accepts that two times two is four and anything else is absurd, but there’s also a side that wants to rebel. It wants to take revenge for the actions that undermined his superiority.
The idea in utilitarianism that good is happiness and bad is pain is directly confronted. There is an overlap between the pain and pleasure in a toothache. In Chapter IV, he states that when a person has a toothache, they moan,
“but these are not straightforward moans, they are crafty moans, and
the craftiness is the whole point. These moans express the pleasure of
the one who is suffering; if they did not give him pleasure, he wouldn’t
bother moaning.” (pg. 14)
One of the issues with the parallel of pain and pleasure and evil and good is that not everyone has the same qualifications for pain. As shown in the quote above, some view the pain from the toothache as pleasure. The moans are a direct response of this. Moaning doesn’t do anything to the curb the pain; it lets everyone else know that there is pain. It is also not simply the lower class affected by this,
“listen sometime to the moaning of an educated man of the nineteenth
century who is suffering from a toothache, not like some coarse peasant,
but like a man touched by development and European civilization, like a
man who has ‘renounced the soil and popular root,’ as they say nowadays. “(pg. 14)
the higher and “refined” people demonstrate this and show that is to not obscure. This does not fit into the utilitarian theory at all.
The Underground Man also criticizes rational society through the Crystal Palace, an iron-glass structure in London that held the Great Exhibition in 1851. This is a symbol of modernity and showed the technology of the western, industrialized world. To the Underground Man, this world is not a place for happiness either. No one would or should wish to live in this fashion. There is a stress on construction and improvement and not on living and being happy with how things are; there is also a stress to improve and that there has to be something to improve. People can never reach their perfect utopias since they seem to be inherently predisposed to changing things for the better, even if this change doesn’t really improve anything.
Upon the Underground Man’s interactions with others, it is discovered that he is obsessed with how others view him. In the utilitarian society, people are independent of each other; they are entangled in the web that the Underground Man conceived for himself. This obsession is seen at the dinner with Zverkov and the former classmates. He is jealous of Zverkov’s popularity, which he could never have for himself. He tries to tear down Zverkov, while still attempting to maintain a sense of appeal to the others present by ridiculing Zverkov. Instead of being rationally driven, the Underground Man is driven by his personal desires. Even in relation to his servant, the Underground Man is still inferior. His servant isn’t punctual and frequently shows contempt, but the Underground Man is constantly at a lost because he cannot care for himself. With Lisa, the prostitute, the Underground Man is also seen as inferior. He tries to pretend to be richer and higher socially than in reality. He wants to be some sort of savior for her, but she is neither above nor really below him. She is a prostitute and he is a former civil servant; only one of the two is an outcast of society. When she comes to his house later, he’s embarrassed and lashes out and flips between acting humane and trying to insult her. He and tries to make her feel worse by paying for sex, but she leaves the money on the table and leaving him, again, in an inferior position. From these interactions, the Underground Man’s personality is more exposed. He changes himself to fit a situation. He wanted to be popular and appealing to his school friends, a master to his servant, and a savior to Lisa, but he is incapable of fulfilling any of these roles. The Underground Man is the one that needs to be saved; he can never be himself because he doesn’t believe it is enough. Based upon these interaction, a rational pattern is formed.
Concerning the arguments on both sides of utilitarianism, Dostoevsky’s is stronger. He allows for people to misbehave, or to simply behave as humans do, which is related to one of his complaints with utilitarianism. The Underground Man’s entire existence and ideas cannot be explained by utilitarianism, but then again neither can most people’s. Utilitarianism isn’t as realistic; it doesn’t allow people to be three-dimensional and complex. I do not know if a person such as the Underground man exists, or could ever exist, but the complexity of this character and his thoughts are apparent in every person.