F.  DOSTOEVSKY 'S NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND

Written in 1864 in response to Chernyshevsky's What is to be Done? (1863).  Response to his rationalism and positivism.  "Strangely Protestant" mood to this work and many other existentialist writings.  Recall Luther's three stages above.

"Original Sin"-human corruptibility, ineptitude, and incompetence.  The Second Fall:  First Fall in the Garden, but Second Fall is the existentialists' rejection of any redemption from the First Fall.

SK's "sickness unto death"and the underground (UG) man's sickness?

SK:  "a healthy open wound" sometimes it is healthier to keep a wound open; sometimes it is worse when it closes.

Is the underground man a Titan?  No, anti-hero type that prefigures Camus' Sysiphus, except that Sysiphus is happy.

What is our greatest advantage, according to the UG man?

                     DOSTOEVSKY'S KIRILLOV (FROM THE POSSESSED)

1.         Differences between him and the UG man?

2.         How does Kirillov's nature mysticism and his mystical view of time fit with existentialism?  (Clue:  Beyond good and evil.)

3.         Did Jesus teach that all things were good?

4.         Why the difference between the God-man and the man-God?

5.         What's unique about Kirillov's suicide?

6.         The will as a Godhead.  Does that make sense?  Aquinas--will is like God in that it is unmoved mover.  Existentialists would prefer Plato's idea of the soul as a self-moving mover.

7.         Grand Inquisitor's Christ and Kirillov's Christ?  Also there is the protagonist in the novel The Idiot who is a passive, virtuous man who is constantly abused.

                                        THE GRAND INQUISITOR

Has Dostoevsky confused "negative" freedom with "positive" freedom--the freedom to do what you want vs. the freedom to do what you ought?

The obstacles to the first are external, but obstacles to the second are internal, viz., greed, lust, craving--so that one is then free to obey God's will--to do what you ought.

But negative freedom is indeed fearful and dreadful.  This is the freedom of the existentialist. 

Christ "increased freedom" (free choice of good and evil?) and had a high view of human nature?  Freedom, free thought, and science.  Is this the religion of Jesus?

You have taught them to be proud?  Even Alyosha knows that this is not Christianity--not even Roman Catholicism.

Titanism is not possible:  "these poor rebels can never turn into giants." But the Inquisitor and his henchmen are Titans?