this after school presentation was written and recorded by internalized the one essential condition of human existence is that man should always be able to bow down before something infinitely great if men are deprived of the infinitely great they will not go on living and will die of despair the 19th century Russian novelist fyodo Dostoyevsky is considered as one of the greatest writers in the world his work explores existential and psychological issues with theology this interplay between the human and the Divine allows us to get to the depth of the human condition it is a testament
to his genius that his work is still widely read and discussed today for it expresses fundamental and Timeless concerns of the human being Dostoevsky had studied engineering but his passion for literature made him resign from the career he was trained for and devoted himself to writing despite remaining in great financial difficulty he became part of a group of revolutionaries and was eventually arrested finding himself incarcerated and in solitary confinement this was however the true beginning of his inner life from the deepest Darkness he found the light with which he later wrote his greatest works he
was led to be shot by a firing squad but at the very last minute a messenger arrived waving a white flag it had been a mock execution a twisted form of psychological torture afterwards he was sensory prison labor camp in Siberia in extremely harsh conditions in his book The Idiot Dostoyevsky sets himself to depict a good soul in a cruel world and describes the thoughts of a person before execution mirroring his own experience it seemed that he had only five more minutes to live and said that those minutes were like an eternity he calculated the
exact time he needed to take leave of his companions and decided that he could do that in two minutes then he spent another two minutes thinking over his life and another minute for a last look around there was a church not far off its gilded Spire shown in the bright Sunshine he remembered staring with awful intensity at it and the Rays of light sparkling from it he could not tear his eyes from those rays of light they seemed to him to be his new nature and he felt he had somehow merged with them feeling of
disgust with what must ensue almost immediately and the uncertainty were Dreadful but he said that the thing that was most horrible to him was the constant thought what if I had not to die what if I were to return to life again oh what an eternity of days and all mine I should count every minute separately and waste none he said that this reflection finally filled him with such bitterness that he wished to be shot as quickly as possible to understand dostoyevsky's works we should know that he wrote in a time of increasing atheism nihilism
utilitarianism materialism and what would later become communism man's ego became the center of the world and the goal was the maximization of Happiness through a calculated and rational approach moreover technological progress would guide man to attain a Utopia and finally be happy however the exact opposite happened these ideas were partly the result of the Bloodshed of the 20th century the totalitarian States took over people's freedom and Justified murdering all dissenters in the name of progress man is a strange animal he wants to be happy but ends up being miserable he likes to count his troubles
but does not count his happiness happiness cannot be pursued it must ensue seeking happiness solely through money material acquisition power or fame only gives us a temporary sense of Happiness after covering our basic needs we must proceed to the task of self-realization and self-transcendence or else we will feel stagnated and empty there's no satiation point for a spiritual longing by physical means by losing touch with our soul the essence of our being and to our spiritual relationship with a higher self we become neurotic and split in crime and punishment Dostoyevsky portrays the results of this
inner split through the character raskolnikov whose name literally means split or Schism Dostoyevsky uses this character as a mouthpiece for the ideals espoused by the Society of his time for raskolnikov God is dead and in order to fill the void he must become God himself one cannot help but to notice the similarities between resconikov and Nietzsche's tragic Declaration of the death of God a historical event that inevitably would lead to nihilism and God had to be replaced by the man God or ubermench who would conquer nihilism through sheer willpower whereas kolikov writes a paper on
how extraordinary men can trespass the accepted moral standards for the common good with a clean conscience while ordinary men blindly follow societal norms and conventions like sheep raskolnikov sees an opportunity to put his ideals into practice after overhearing people talk in a Tavern about a wicked and greedy old woman who works as a pawn broker and takes advantage of everyone he decides to murder her because in the utilitarian approach society would be better off without her as she is a Laos and her money could be used to help his family and to pay for his
studies in order to become a lawyer and perform Good Deeds for society raskolnikov carefully plans the murder and kills her with an ax but while looking for her money and goods her half-sister unexpectedly walks in so he quickly kills her too here Dostoyevsky brilliantly portrays the psychology of a murderer raskolikov as planned kills the wicked old woman but also a totally innocent human being who was in the wrong place at the wrong time at the very moment of committing the murder prescholikov also killed a part of himself he was not the extraordinary man he believed
himself to be instead he is tormented by his own conscience and his Guild overwhelms him to the point of psychosomatic illness the book does not so much explore the legal consequences of crime but rather what happens to a person after trespassing the moral boundary in fact the original Russian title of the book cannotes a stepping across as is the religious implication of transgression sometimes one lacks knowledge and thus cannot make the right choices other times however one knows the right thing but still doesn't make the right choices this is an age-old problem and as the
result of a conflict between intellect and will what we know and what we choose it is likely that we have all experienced something that appeared to be good but was in fact bad therefore we must learn to use the intellect as a basis for making good choices and to discipline our will we want to be healthy but are unhealthy we are addicted to something destructive but cannot get ourselves out of it we believe in love but rarely express it to others Etc this cognitive dissonance further results in an inner split raskolnikov knows what he did
was wicked but does his best to avoid the consequences of his crime which results in him slowly descending into madness suggesting that if we find ourselves in such a situation it is better to confess and face whatever one has to face eventually raskolnikov confesses to his crimes and is sent to prison interestingly this is when he goes through a spiritual journey the only way he can deal with his mental anguish and be redeemed but it is not clear that he ultimately attains spiritual freedom for his ego is still at play and considers what he did
not as a sin but simply an error the word religion comes from religare which literally means to put things back together again in order to reunite our fragmented inner self we must undergo a complete transformation of our entire being which can only be attained with a relationship to a higher self with God this is the job of the religious life paradoxically we can only become ourselves by surrendering to a higher self ecstasy is to stand outside oneself without ceasing to be oneself after his serious illness Ras konikov has a dream of a virus that causes
its victims to think that they are the sole possessors of Truth there is no objectivity everything becomes subjective however this does not lead to Freedom instead people try to impose their views on others and no one gets along so they tear themselves apart without religion to provide an objective view of morality and rival authoritarianism it is the strongest who finally impose their view on everyone without God everything is permitted this is an allegory of the dangerous ideas that Dostoevsky witnessed in his time that caused millions of deaths which he brilliantly prophesized a note from underground
Dostoyevsky portrays one of the darkest and least sympathetic of all his characters the nameless protagonist simply known as the underground man and though it is a fictitious character Dostoyevsky states that he not only may but must exist as a product of the ideologies of his time the underground man is a bitter spiteful and self-hating retired 40 year old civil servant who was rude and intimidating towards his customers though it was all part of a game as he admits he could never be genuinely Wicked he describes listening to others through the cracks under the floor as
if he were a mouse his inability to interact with other people causes his attempts to form relationships and participate in life to end in disaster driving him deeper underground until he is completely locked away from the world the underground man distracts himself by reading novels but is disappointed by the real world representing his profound alienation from society I am a sick man I am a spiteful man I am an unattractive man I believe my liver is deceased no I refuse to consult a doctor from spite that you probably will not understand my liver is bad
well let it get worse these are the words of the underground man which introduces us to his psychological distress right from the beginning he is unable to properly Define himself and constantly revises what he says as he's nothing more than a chaos of conflicting emotional impulses just like raskolnikov he experiences an inner split the underground man is very envious of the so-called man of action for whom ignorance is bliss and simply goes about his day living without ruminating too much in life but the underground man finds solos in his intellectual superiority nevertheless he is constantly
Paralyzed by his thoughts and cannot Act he is a man of acute Consciousness stuck in his own reflective hyper-consciousness thinking too much is a disease and since he cannot choose he is characterless and has no identity he writes I did not know how to become anything neither spiteful nor kind neither Rascal nor an honest man neither a hero nor an insect out of pure boredom the underground man has given birth to his self-created hell out of his own internal ruminations which led him to write his notes man is by no means a rational animal but
innately irrational and destructive and it is not reason that saves him from his impulses and desires but rather Faith the underground man says that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped he would sacrifice all his advantages just to choose for himself even if it were happiness wealth health or Security in order to preserve his individuality shower upon man every Earthly blessing crown him in a sea of Happiness so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface give him economic Prosperity such that he should have nothing else to do but
sleep eat cakes and busy himself with a continuation of his species and even out of share in gratitude sheer spite man would play you some nasty trick simply in order to prove to himself as though that were so necessary that men still are men and not the keys of a piano life is not a mathematical formula or problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced if we could access the perfect formula for happiness so that everything would be so clearly calculated and explained that choices would cease to exist we would act against reason
in order to prove our free will this is how deep craving for self-expression men love to create and build but also loves chaos and destruction Perhaps it is because he is instinctively afraid of attaining his goal and only loves looking at it from a distance he loves building it but does not want to live in it we will never renounce to destruction nor suffering thinking about a world without suffering will only sink us further into suffering for happiness cannot exist without suffering it is our capacity to endure suffering that makes us truly great for years
the underground man would desire revenge over any small injury and remember it down to the smallest details and every time would add even more details teasing and tormenting himself with his own imagination he admits that he invents Adventures for himself for he really has nothing else to do with his life many times he even takes offense simply on purpose though he knows that he's offended at nothing but convinces himself at last to the point of being really offended he continuously lies to himself so that he cannot even distinguish it from truth and loses all respect
for himself and others and having no respect he ceases to love in the end he destroys and betrays himself for nothing nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery the underground man ends his notes by stating as far as I myself am concerned I have merely carried to an extreme in my life what you have not dared to carry even halfway and what's more you have taken your cowardice for Good Sense and found comfort in thus deceiving yourselves so that perhaps after all a small life in me than
in you it is interesting that Dostoyevsky though an Orthodox Christian usually has his main characters espousing the opposite of his own views of life he does not criticize his opponents but gives strong and reasonable Arguments for them to the point that we can even relate to them and develop sympathy with them rather than telling us what to do Dostoyevsky pains the psychological hell that we sometimes send ourselves into his work allows us to explore ourselves through the characters portrayed where we may see a reflection of our own life experiences we learn from Dostoyevsky that we
should always put our own existential condition first and not the ideas others tell us to believe in to adjust our life views as we ourselves experience life to be aware of Utopias that seduce us and leads us astray to see Life as a polarity and suffering as a necessary compliment to happiness and to focus on what truly matters in in the end our relationship with our deepest self and God without which there's no salvation at all I hope you found this collaboration valuable if you're interested in learning more about the works of Dostoyevsky and other
prominent thinkers head over to my channel eternalized thank you for watching foreign [Music] [Music]
