The historical context of Dostoyevsky’s life is one that better explains Notes from Underground. While the novel can be seen as a critique of the progressive view of history, government, and human perfectibility in general, the text is also a direct satire of the Russian novel What Is to Be Done by Nikolai Chernyshevsky. In this novel, a poor, uneducated girl is saved from ruin by a series of enlightened benefactors. This girl, Vera, goes on herself to found a series of workshops where through enlightened benevolence, she is able to transform quite a few other poor women into educated entrepreneurs. The novel directly suggests that through enlightened self-interest, we would all arrive at the same conclusion: that working together in a spirit of harmony and open-heartedness combined with scientific methods can lead to a total transformation of human society.
Similar to Dostoyvesky, Alan Mathison Turing’s biographical information is essential to understanding his ideas and the conditions in which they emerged from. Turing, was born in London in 1912 and died by the age of 41 as he was a homosexual, which at the time, in the United Kingdom, was illegal, so he received hormonal treatment for libido …show more content…
This, to Dostoyevsky is not enough as he argues that the one advantage that opposes all other human advantages is free will. Simply put, Dostoyevsky opposes the notion that rational capacities, ones that Turing equates to thinking are the answer to the question of being. Dostoyevsky, instead, argues that “reason is an excellent thing,” however, “reason … can only satisfy man’s rational faculty, while will is a manifestation of all life.” For this reason, the particular combination of rationality and irrationality that informs human decisions cannot be replicated through a
Similar to Dostoyvesky, Alan Mathison Turing’s biographical information is essential to understanding his ideas and the conditions in which they emerged from. Turing, was born in London in 1912 and died by the age of 41 as he was a homosexual, which at the time, in the United Kingdom, was illegal, so he received hormonal treatment for libido …show more content…
This, to Dostoyevsky is not enough as he argues that the one advantage that opposes all other human advantages is free will. Simply put, Dostoyevsky opposes the notion that rational capacities, ones that Turing equates to thinking are the answer to the question of being. Dostoyevsky, instead, argues that “reason is an excellent thing,” however, “reason … can only satisfy man’s rational faculty, while will is a manifestation of all life.” For this reason, the particular combination of rationality and irrationality that informs human decisions cannot be replicated through a