Notes from Underground
Novella by Fyodor DostoevskyWikipedia
27
MENTIONS
21
EPISODES
19
PODCASTS
Search complete. 27 mentions across 21 episodes found for "Notes from Underground".
Oct 18, 2026
speaker_2NARRATOR
He has withdrawn from his former employment and has a great deal to say about the life from which he has withdrawn.
speaker_2NARRATOR
He is the unnamed narrator of Notes From Underground.
speaker_2NARRATOR
Before we have settled into any impression of him, he is already correcting it.
speaker_2NARRATOR
He describes himself as spiteful.
James BoiceHOST
Perhaps the Most frank statement about human ingratitude apart from the Bible that I have come across is in the writings of the Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky.
James BoiceHOST
In Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky writes of man, if he is not stupid, he is at least monstrously ungrateful.
James BoiceHOST
phenomenally ungrateful.
James BoiceHOST
In fact, he says, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.
Ian GallowayGUEST
And so I read some of those books.
Ian GallowayGUEST
I picked up notes from underground.
Ian GallowayGUEST
Speaking of Dostoevsky, then I read through of Mice and Men, which is very short.
Ian GallowayGUEST
And then I read through the end of the affair.
Dallas WillardSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Kierkegaard is a famous Christian who understood this, understood the importance of what he called the subjective, and told people that it was what they chose that made them individuals.
Dallas WillardSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Another Christian, the writer Dostoevsky, I think probably the m- still the greatest post-modern document may be his book called The Underground Man, where the inner, hidden, subjective reality, uh, full of self-contradictions, uh, resistant to objective order.
Dallas WillardSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
One of his famous sayings is, "Defiant, I am not a piano key.
Dallas WillardSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
I am not something that you just come and whack, and then I respond.
Nick DixonGUEST
But, but i- it...
Nick DixonGUEST
When I say he had his own philosophy, if you think about greats like Dostoevsky, perhaps he did that with Notes from Underground.
Nick DixonGUEST
He sets up the ph- the philosophy first, then he explores it in fiction.
LucaHOST
Mm.
Karol MarkowiczHOST
I never read that one.
Karol MarkowiczHOST
Um, I always thought Notes from the Underground was a very accessible one of his.
Rob HendersonGUEST
Mm-hmm.
Karol MarkowiczHOST
And I would say that that book also speaks a lot to our current times, a guy who stays at home, like doesn't really leave his house, lives in like a basement, and, um, doesn't see people and becomes more depressed and angrier.
Ben KelleranHOST
But before I, uh, let you go, I do wanna ask my final closing question, which is what book should I add to the reading list? I think if there's, uh, one specifically that'd be up the, uh, critical thinking alley or something along those lines, if you have something that would fit that mold, I think that'd be a good one for today.
E.M. BurlingameGUEST
Yeah, so if people are ready, meaning go do Filter, go do Filter first, right? And then I would read Notes From the Underground by Dostoevsky to understand what type, what, what a resentful is and, and who's behind most all, you know, the mindset behind most of what we're dealing with.
E.M. BurlingameGUEST
Or I would g- we- and/or I would go read, uh, Machiavelli's The Prince again, but this time without your teacher telling you what things mean, and you will find that Machiavelli was saying something extraordinarily different.
Ben KelleranHOST
Yeah.
Jay DyerHOST
But it's like, I mean, t- two people can play the moral one-upping game here, right? And it's funny too because he's got a painting of Dostoevsky, who was Orthodox.
Jay DyerHOST
Uh, and you know, Dostoevsky wrote pretty consistently about the types of things that I'm talking about, weird moral hypocrisies Notes from the Underground type stuff, right? What actually motivates people.
Jay DyerHOST
Notes from the Underground is very important for that, because Notes from the Underground is about the fact that people, uh, can sometimes just be wicked people even with a high IQ, right? Having a high IQ doesn't mean that you're gonna be virtuous.
Jay DyerHOST
Anyway, let's get to this.
Gavin OrtlundSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
I do worry about how Christians are treating each other on the internet, and I think that's a fair issue to put on the table and say, "Let's slow down here a second." And even if it just means let's stop turning the temperature up, we just keep it...
Karol MarkowiczHOST
never read that one.
Karol MarkowiczHOST
I always thought Notes from the Underground was a very accessible one of his.
Karol MarkowiczHOST
And I would say that that book also speaks a lot to our current time as a guy who stays at home like crazy.
Karol MarkowiczHOST
doesn't really leave his house, lives in like a basement and doesn't see people and becomes more depressed and angrier.
Edwin FrankGUEST
One of the ways, I mean, I'm speaking sort of abstractly, but, but I, I guess what I'm trying to say here is I didn't exactly...
Edwin FrankGUEST
There is a starting point, which is Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, and the whole first part of the book shows, in effect, looking at books going through the First World War, but going back, not only, um, like Machado de Assis's, um, Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas is published in the 1880s in Brazil.
Edwin FrankGUEST
Some books are from the 1890s and the-- But looking at how in a period when, on the one hand, the novel had sort of come of age, the-- This is a, a big difference between what Fiedler is talking about, which is basically the making of a novel in a country where, you know, the first novel in America is published in 1789.
Edwin FrankGUEST
There are very few novels.
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