In Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground, the Underground Man offers a conception of free action radically different from that of Kant. While Kant believes that an agent does not act freely unless he acts for some reason, the Underground Man seems to take the opposite position: the only way to be truly autonomous is to reject this notion of freedom and to assert one's right to act for any reason. no reason. I will argue that Underground Man's notion of freedom builds on Kant's, insofar as it requires self-awareness in decision-making. But he breaks with Kant when he asserts that acting for a reason is not enough and only provides an illusion of freedom. Faced with two options: to be mistaken about his freedom (like most men) or to submit to the "wall" (a form of determinism), the Underground Man chooses an improbable third option: a "retort". I will conclude this article by asking whether this “replica” succeeds in escaping the natural system it desperately seeks to avoid. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay I'll begin by explaining how the underground man argument builds on Kant's notion of freedom. Throughout the work, the Underground Man speaks of consciousness. He states that consciousness is a disease and that most men are (fortunately) not fully conscious (10). This constant reference to consciousness is reminiscent of the Kantian notion of autonomous action. Kant believes that humans decide what actions to take as a result of conscious thought. That is, when they have a desire, they must first step back from that desire, consider possible courses of action, and then endorse that desire as worthy of fulfillment before they can act on it. If people acted without this type of thinking, then their actions would not be truly free – freedom depends on the individual's conscious approval, on a temporary distancing from their immediate desires. So far, Underground Man and Kant agree. However, Kant believes that the endorsement of desires consists of having a reason to act on that desire, a reason based on what we perceive to be good. The type of good is not specified: it can range from the satisfaction of selfish goals to the betterment of the human race. What is important is that we ourselves establish what kind of basis our reasons are. Free action is impossible unless we formulate our reasons independently; more precisely, we must decide for ourselves what is a good reason to act. Although the Underground Man agrees that we must formulate our own reasons, he rejects the idea that reasons based on any concept of perceived good can actually be ours. This rejection of reasons as the basis of autonomy stems from his belief that freedom is virtually impossible in a largely deterministic and evolutionary universe, where everything is determined by the "laws of nature" to which he constantly refers. The Underground Man believes that the feeling of freedom brought about by acting for a reason rather than acting blindly is an illusion. He says of men of limited consciousness that they take immediate and secondary causes for first causes, and that they are thus more quickly and more easily convinced than others that they have discovered an indisputable basis for their activity? (19). In other words, these “men of action” convince themselves that their choices are based on a higher faculty, on reasons that they formulate independently.(root causes). However, their action is actually based on causes determined externally, by their instincts, their biology, etc. (immediate or secondary causes). If we had the intellectual capacity, all human reason and desire could be predicted in advance, “calculated on paper according to various laws of nature which man will never discover” (28). He describes these men of action as those “born from the bosom of nature” (13). The Underground Man believes that everything we perceive as "good" was intended by nature for the preservation of the species, the survival of the individual, or some other natural purpose. So while we may think that our reasons are the result of a higher faculty, this feeling is an illusion. Nature provides us with this illusion because, as individuals with higher consciousness, we do not want to realize that all of our actions are determined by reasons beyond our specific existence. As the Underground Man describes it, “man has continually proven to himself that he is a man and not an organ” (31). In other words, man wants to believe that freedom is possible, that it is not just an instrument to preserve the species or act as nature intended. However, most men have a "limited conscience" and easily succumb to the illusion of freedom: they do not examine their reasons rigorously enough and are quickly convinced that their reasons are their own. He often compares man to an animal: This kind of gentleman heads straight towards his target, like a panicked bull, with his horns lowered (13). Men with limited consciousness are capable of convincing themselves that reason aims for a greater good than that provided by nature. This is how nature intended it, because if men realized the futility of their action, they would be paralyzed. They would no longer act in a way that would preserve the species, and the human species would disappear - so a higher level of consciousness is a "disease". This is the disease that consumes the Underground Man, who “did not appear”. from the bosom of nature but from a retort” (13). Having a higher level of consciousness, he sees that the ultimate causes of all reasons are external. Consequently, he has two choices: he can deceive himself about his freedom as others do, or he can submit to the laws of nature and recognize that freedom is an illusion. The first option is clearly impossible, because his heightened conscience "managed to accumulate around himself so much additional disgust in the form of questions and doubts that he, willingly or unwillingly, gathered around himself a kind of fatal bog" ( 14). However, he also refuses to submit to the laws of nature, to act unconsciously and to respond immediately and without thinking to any desires or whims. This is why he desperately tries to exercise his freedom in the only way he deems possible: by deliberately acting against any reason that can be perceived as "good." In doing so, he hopes to realize the highest good, “the most advantageous advantage” of man: his individuality and autonomy (23). But what exactly does this activity consist of? How does the Underground Man formulate this “reply”? He doesn't give many specific examples of truly free action, but defines it primarily as a negative concept. He sees the cue as working against everything he thinks nature intended - he takes whatever impulse people most often avoid and attempts to derive pleasure from it (like in the middle of a toothache or in being humiliated). So not only does he act unnaturally, but he derives pleasure where it seems most unlikely. But we must ask ourselves whether this type of action is truly autonomous. In his very specific attempts to.