When people think of existentialism, the names that usually come to mind are Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, or Sartre. Yet Walter Kaufmann, one of the twentieth century’s foremost interpreters of the movement, begins the story somewhere unexpected—with Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground.
In the opening essay of Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, Kaufmann makes a striking claim: Part One of Notes from Underground is “the best overture for existentialism ever written.” The choice is deliberate. Kaufmann is not arguing that Dostoevsky belonged to the existentialist movement. Rather, he believes the novel introduces the emotional and philosophical atmosphere that later existentialists would spend decades exploring.
Existentialism Is Not a School
Before explaining Dostoevsky’s importance, Kaufmann first clears up a common misconception. Existentialism, he argues, is not a unified philosophical system.
Instead, it is a collection of revolts against traditional philosophy. What unites existential thinkers is not agreement, but a shared dissatisfaction with abstract systems that ignore lived human experience.
According to Kaufmann, existentialism is characterized by:
- A refusal to belong to any rigid school of thought.
- Opposition to closed logical systems.
- Dissatisfaction with academic philosophy detached from life.
- A fascination with extreme human experiences—dread, anxiety, failure, guilt, freedom, and death.
This framework explains why Dostoevsky becomes the movement’s opening act.
Why Notes from Underground Is the Overture to Existentialism
1. It Introduces Existentialism’s Central Themes
Kaufmann argues that Notes from Underground presents, with remarkable force, the very ideas that later define existentialism.
The novel revolves around:
- dread,
- anxiety,
- inner conflict,
- freedom,
- and the burden of individual choice.
These are not presented as abstract concepts but as lived psychological realities.
Long before existentialism became a philosophical movement, Dostoevsky had already dramatized its emotional landscape.
2. It Places the Inner Life Above Everything Else
Perhaps the novel’s greatest innovation is its radical inward turn.
Instead of focusing on external events, social conditions, or elaborate settings, Dostoevsky pushes the reader deeper into the consciousness of a single individual.
As Kaufmann observes, the narrative moves so completely toward man’s inner life that “no scenery at all remains.”
This departure from literary naturalism becomes one of existentialism’s defining features. The real drama is no longer happening in society—it is unfolding within consciousness itself.
3. It Rejects Comfortable Illusions
The Underground Man refuses comforting lies.
He insists that no achievement or happiness is worth even “an ounce of self-deception.”
For Kaufmann, this relentless confrontation with unpleasant truths distinguishes existentialism from romantic idealism and optimistic philosophical systems.
Existential thought repeatedly demands that we face reality without disguises—even when reality is ugly, painful, or absurd.
4. It Revolts Against Rational Systems
One of the novel’s central targets is Enlightenment optimism.
The Underground Man mocks the belief that human beings can be perfected through reason, scientific planning, or an ideal social order.
His symbolic enemy is the Crystal Palace—a perfectly rational society where every human action is predictable.
Dostoevsky argues that people would rather sabotage such perfection than surrender their freedom.
Human beings, the Underground Man insists, will choose suffering, irrationality, or even self-destruction simply to prove that they remain free individuals rather than obedient machines.
This rebellion against total rationalism echoes throughout existential philosophy.
5. It Places the Individual Against the System
Existentialism consistently asks whether the individual can survive beneath large philosophical, political, or social systems.
Dostoevsky answers by portraying a man who rebels against calculated happiness and “insufferable comfort.”
Kaufmann even remarks that reading Notes from Underground sometimes feels as though Kierkegaard had stepped directly out of Dostoevsky’s pen.
Both writers resist an age determined to simplify life. Instead of making existence easier, they deliberately expose its tensions, contradictions, and difficulties.
The Thinkers Who Follow
Having opened the story with Dostoevsky, Kaufmann traces existentialism through its major figures.
Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard places the individual at the center of philosophy.
Against Hegel’s vast rational system, he argues that ethical life ultimately depends on decision rather than detached knowledge. While Kaufmann admires this emphasis on individuality, he also criticizes Kierkegaard for sometimes abandoning clear reasoning in favor of passionate commitment.
Nietzsche
Nietzsche shares Kierkegaard’s rebellion against traditional philosophy but follows a different path.
Rather than opposing reason, Nietzsche attacks Christianity as reason’s great enemy and introduces ideas such as the Dionysian spirit and amor fati—the joyful affirmation of life and fate.
His existential vision is far more life-affirming than the darker moods often associated with later thinkers.
Jaspers
Karl Jaspers insists that philosophy must be lived rather than merely studied.
For him, philosophy becomes an appeal to human freedom rather than an academic discipline.
Heidegger
Although frequently labeled an existentialist, Heidegger’s primary concern is not humanity itself but Being.
His philosophy investigates the meaning of existence at the most fundamental level, employing a complex vocabulary to move beyond traditional distinctions between subject and object.
Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre is the only major thinker to openly embrace the label existentialist.
His famous principle that “existence precedes essence” captures the movement’s central claim: human beings are not born with predetermined purposes. We create ourselves through our choices and actions.
Kaufmann’s Final Concern
Kaufmann concludes with an observation that remains surprisingly relevant.
He sees modern philosophy divided into two unsatisfying camps.
On one side stand analytical philosophers, whose arguments are rigorous but often disconnected from life’s deepest questions.
On the other stand existentialists, who confront freedom, suffering, death, and meaning but sometimes sacrifice clarity for passion.
For philosophy to flourish beyond the university, Kaufmann argues, it must unite both strengths: the existentialist’s concern for life with the analyst’s intellectual precision.
Conclusion
Walter Kaufmann’s decision to begin existentialism with Notes from Underground is more than a literary preference.
He sees in Dostoevsky the first unmistakable expression of a new philosophical voice—one that rejects comforting systems, turns inward to the complexities of consciousness, insists on radical honesty, and defends individual freedom against every attempt to reduce human beings to rational formulas.
In that sense, Notes from Underground is not merely a precursor to existentialism. It is the opening movement that allows everything from Kierkegaard to Sartre to be heard as part of the same conversation.
Leave a Reply