Insects: the Bearers of Truth

Dostoevsky's Underground man is the epitome of Kierkegaard's esthetic man. He is questioning everything, tearing down theories, but unable to accept anything as truth himself. The difference in Kierkegaard's description and the Underground Man however, is that the Dostoevsky presents the esthetic man as somehow greater than the ethical:

"an intelligent man of the nineteenth century must be, is morally obliged to be, principally a characterless creature; a man possessing character, a man of action, is fundamentally a limited creature" (1308).

This is much in opposition to Kierkegaard's idea of the ethical. Kierkegaard speaks of the ethical, the ability to choose and to live by laws which have been put in place, as if it is a great revelation which changes man indefinitely. He speaks of the ethical becoming "manifest" to a man. Thus it would seem that Kierkegaard does not view the ethical to be completely limiting as the Underground Man is proposing it to be, or, at least he does not view this limiting nature in a negative manner. For, to speak of the ethical as a power that becomes "manifest" certainly implies that he sees some great advantage or purpose in the ethical life itself.

But what is this advantage which Kierkegaard sees, but the Underground Man completely denounces and trades in for his "disease" of being "overly-conscious?" What is so advantageous about the ethical life that is worth the "limitations" which it implies?

Well, Kierkegaard speaks of the Underground Man's exact predicament. He states,

"Ordinarily we view the ethical altogether abstractly and therefore have a secret horror of it. In that case the ethical is viewed as something alien to the personality, and we shrink from devoting ourselves to it, since we cannot be really sure of what it will lead us to in the course of time." (81)

However, Kierkegaard attributes this fear of the ethical to a lack of transparency. He states, "if a person fears transparency, he always avoids the ethical, because the ethical really does not want anything else." (81)

So quite possibly could the Underground Man's inability to accept the ethical be due to an underlying fear of being "transparent," the fear of realizing that the web of objections and rational theories he has created as a sort of rebelling against society are ultimately "unreasonable" (Kierkegaard 81). Thus, he cannot accept societal norms because with this acceptance comes the confirmation that all of his own theories and reasoning against it are useless and devoid of true reason. In such a theory, Kierkegaard seems to be presenting the limiting nature of the ethical as equivocal with the limits of the truth. In a way, the ethical becomes the truth. This would explain his use of the word "manifest" in describing such an idea.

But, would Dostoevsky agree that one can find such truth within the limits of the ethical life? For after all, if this is true, truth is not found in the individual mind, but instead in the anthill, in the system. Insects hold the truth whereas "overly conscious" men are "nothing."

I commented on Meghan's : "The Cure for Boredom: The Unexpected"