Dostoevsky’s guide to destroying your life (Notes from The Underground)

How to destroy your life? It is an age-old question and the counterpart to the philosophical quest to live a good life. Luckily, one of my favourite ever-so-slightly grumpy Russian philosophers has an answer - and he gives that answer through the character of the man from the underground - a bitter and spiteful ex civil servant. The novel Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky tackles lots of subjects - how to confront a world in which meaning is scarce, whether it is better to have ordinary pleasure or unique, aesthetic suffering. But it also shows how to become just...the worst kind of person, and how ultimately how to ruin your life.

Typo: at one point the subtitles read “content” as opposed to “contempt”

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00:00 Notes from The Underground
00:34 No action, all thought
02:54 Nihilism
05:30 Evading challenge
07:44 Avoiding responsibility
09:50 Intellectual arrogance

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