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"I am a sick man...I am a spiteful (zloi) man."(1) So begins Dostoevsky's brilliant novel, Notes From Underground. In the course of the work we come to realize the significance of those first words--the nature of the underground man's sickness and spite. Although there are elements of humor and parody, tragedy, existential themes of freedom, psychology, and, of course, religion in the book,(2) I would like to explore yet another way of appreciating the richness of Dostoevsky's text--that the underground man examines the question of meaning.
What is the question of meaning? Philosophically this question might be understood as the exploration into whether human beings have inherent meaning and value, which we can then try to discover and articulate, or whether our existences are meaningless, which then allows us to bestow whatever meaning we want upon them. In the former view, the meaning of our lives is already determined, and a human being's interpretation of that meaning can be right or wrong in relation to the pre-established meaning. With the latter view, meaning is not fixed but fluid; human beings create their own meanings ex nihilo. If the meaning of our lives is changeable, how does that affect our notions of morality and of ourselves? With the rise of the influence of science in the nineteenth century, people in Western Europe began to believe that human reason provided the foundation for all knowledge. In Notes From Underground, Dostoevsky questions whether human beings can be their own source of meaning. It is through an exploration of the underground man's sickness that provides the key to answering this question. Why is the underground man zloi?
When we encounter the underground man, we find a peculiar person. He describes himself as zloi, usually translated as "spiteful," but "zloi" also carries the connotation of immorality--that the spite and nasty, mean-spirited wickedness are due to some moral imperfection. In the Russian language, it stems from the same root as "malicious." "Spiteful" and "malicious" are words that imply conscious intention. One is not zloi by nature; it is something over which a person has control. In the unfolding of the underground man's "confessions," we begin to find the reasons why the underground man is zloi. These reasons stem mainly from his...