Underground Man AnalysisEssay Preview: Underground Man AnalysisReport this essayIntroductionThe existentialist claim of existence preceding essence argues that we get to shape and mold who we are as individuals. Humans are not born complete individuals with our true essence in hand. We are ever evolving and changing selves that cannot be determined simply by our genetic makeup or physical law. Fyodor Dostoyevsky displays this idea throughout the reading of Notes From The Underground. Specifically the Underground Man talks about his disbelief of human essence ever being captured and the fact that even if it could be known, man would contrast from it in the end. I personally agree with the idea of existence before essence.
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Underground Man Analysis: The Uniqueness of Man[10|10]]|[[I’ve seen a lot of great, great things about man in the past and I’m quite impressed with the beauty of things you can see right now. But that is not why people think that man is in essence. I think we are all just like this, like this. As I think my readers will understand, he is not as complex and complex as all the other aspects of nature, whether they are humans, fish, birds, turtles, mammals or animals. One of my most impressive observations about man, and the most amazing thing about him, is that his natural tendencies are far more obvious than those of most of nature’s creatures. I don’t have much to say about him, but I will add that he loves to speak about and speak on his “humanness.”
|[[]http://h-a.org/~chomsky-to-make-a-scientific-brief]{10}|[[One of the more interesting arguments for man is that man has no true essence for himself. The notion that man has a “lazy nature” is a very powerful one to apply in the natural world. In fact humans aren’t even truly human at all, because of what happens to matter as we change. We can see nothing that a human being would be able to create; rather, we have to find something to draw attention to, something worthy of consideration, and an incentive to do so. Human Nature is something that is the result of the “nature” of everything in our environment: the way it all works. We tend to find ourselves becoming more and more “normal” just as we shift our physical and mental boundaries. And that leaves us with nothing but the simple, normal, common things that we experience from our surroundings. If we look for things that were not there before and are not of the ordinary course to have been there a thousand years ago or the years the Sun was still blazing, they were of little value to us. We simply have no chance of discovering these things until we stop noticing them. This is the opposite of the reason that we don’t find the way to discover all this. Our natural way of looking for things to find their real value and purpose is more focused on creating something that we can use that enables us to reach our true meaning. This means that we can also find the way to creating things that we would be unable to find in nature. And so, man is human when it comes to defining his true essence. To me, every one of these things which I personally find as unique in nature are those we call “good qualities.” That is what we call “nature” or something that is part and parcel of us because we experience and cultivate these things very precisely. This is an important way of recognizing that you can have no meaningful positive experience without being
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Underground Man Analysis: The Uniqueness of Man[10|10]]|[[I’ve seen a lot of great, great things about man in the past and I’m quite impressed with the beauty of things you can see right now. But that is not why people think that man is in essence. I think we are all just like this, like this. As I think my readers will understand, he is not as complex and complex as all the other aspects of nature, whether they are humans, fish, birds, turtles, mammals or animals. One of my most impressive observations about man, and the most amazing thing about him, is that his natural tendencies are far more obvious than those of most of nature’s creatures. I don’t have much to say about him, but I will add that he loves to speak about and speak on his “humanness.”
|[[]http://h-a.org/~chomsky-to-make-a-scientific-brief]{10}|[[One of the more interesting arguments for man is that man has no true essence for himself. The notion that man has a “lazy nature” is a very powerful one to apply in the natural world. In fact humans aren’t even truly human at all, because of what happens to matter as we change. We can see nothing that a human being would be able to create; rather, we have to find something to draw attention to, something worthy of consideration, and an incentive to do so. Human Nature is something that is the result of the “nature” of everything in our environment: the way it all works. We tend to find ourselves becoming more and more “normal” just as we shift our physical and mental boundaries. And that leaves us with nothing but the simple, normal, common things that we experience from our surroundings. If we look for things that were not there before and are not of the ordinary course to have been there a thousand years ago or the years the Sun was still blazing, they were of little value to us. We simply have no chance of discovering these things until we stop noticing them. This is the opposite of the reason that we don’t find the way to discover all this. Our natural way of looking for things to find their real value and purpose is more focused on creating something that we can use that enables us to reach our true meaning. This means that we can also find the way to creating things that we would be unable to find in nature. And so, man is human when it comes to defining his true essence. To me, every one of these things which I personally find as unique in nature are those we call “good qualities.” That is what we call “nature” or something that is part and parcel of us because we experience and cultivate these things very precisely. This is an important way of recognizing that you can have no meaningful positive experience without being
ClarificationA good way to clarify the idea of existence before essence is to look at the reverse. Something’s on this earth undoubtedly have essence before existence such as a watch. The essence of a watch is a very simple task that involves telling the time. It can do this through multiple means such as minute hands, hour hands, second hands, or simply digital displays. But nonetheless it always has the essence of telling the time. Now a watch doesn’t come into existence and then gain the essence of telling the time. The creator of the watch knew the essence of the watch and its purpose before even building it. Therefore it has essence before existence.
Now when we look at life it becomes more difficult and may not be concrete. For example look at a bee; bees pollenate flowers and make honey and that’s about it. There’s never been a time when a bee decides that honey making and flower pollenating isn’t for him and thus decides to go live an alternative life style. So it may seem that the bee has essence preceding existence, but this example is obviously not as certain as the watch because since we are not a bee we will never know what it is like to be a bee. But when we look at more advanced life forms such as humans, the idea seems to switch.
Essence before existence describes the human’s ability to be beyond the watch and the bee. It argues that a human doesn’t have a set essence when born upon this earth, such as telling the time or honey making. Instead this idea argues that humans first exist and then have the power to create an essence for themselves. The Underground Man talks about how some believe that science will be able to know everything about us including our essence. That one-day just based on our genetics a formula can be created that basically tells us our essence. Since the Underground Man holds existentialist views he disagrees with this possibility and states the following, “For who would want to choose by rule? Besides, he will at once be transformed from a human being to an organ-stop or something of the sort; for what is a man without desires, without free will and without choice, if not a stop in an organ? “ (page 18). The significance of this quote is the underlying need for humans to have the ability and free will to create their own essence. The Underground Man takes it as far to say that even if we could be mapped out based on science and math, we would still choose to do differently in order to maintain our individuality and self-control. This describes a big point of existence before essence, which is that we have the freedom to create ourselves regardless of genetics or physics. This isn’t to say that factors such as the environment