Paper Details

Name: Jasajit Ashangbam
Country: India

Year: 2025
Volume: Vol-12, issue-2, (July-December)
Page Number: 83-88
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18046353

ABSTRACT
The authorship of the relatively unknown novel What Is To Be Done? provoked the
existential novelist, Fyodor Dostoyevsky into writing another novel, Notes from
Underground, as a diatribe, due to the former’s high regard of “rationality”. To be rational, and to focus solely on self-interest becomes a paradox in itself, but this philosophical system, also known as “rational egoism”, had been brought into the limelight in Chernyshevsky’s novel. Dostoyevsky, being a proponent of “freedom” detested the idea of human beings subsisting solely on rationality. Being uncertain of rationality epitomises its antithesis, and for Dostoyevsky, an evaluation of “truth” using considerations from both sides of the coin becomes imperative. The hive mind that depends on rationality rather than the facets of freedom has also been pointed out as being questionable, by the German sociologist, Max Weber. The extreme obsession with stratification, and rationalisation of society disenchants the mind from perceiving natural spectacles as they are and not riddles to be solved. For both Dostoyevsky and Weber, the pervasion of rationality would slowly hollow out the presence of the sublime and reverent incredulities of the cosmos. An acquiescence of irrationality, or the
absurdity embedded within the workings of the grand design denotes a holistic understanding about the reality of existence.

Keywords: Rationality, Disenchantment, Underground, Truth,