Does the Center Hold?: An Introduction to Western Philosophy by Palmer Donald

Author:Palmer, Donald [Palmer, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Humanities & Social Science
Published: 2010-01-27T05:00:00+00:00

pal35753_ch06_210-247.qxd 12/31/09 4:27 PM Page 240

It is this kind of writing that provokes peals of laughter, or rage, on the part of analytic philosophers. In fact, most of Sartre’s presentation seems to be in a different philosophic world from that of a Ted Honderich, a Peter van Inwagen, or a Robert Kane. Yet it seems to me that parts of Sartre’s theory of freedom overlap with the ideas of Kane, especially the role of arbitrary thoughts and images in the construction of freedom, and the creation through free choice of the persons that we are.

Perverse Freedom

Besides Sartre’s existentialist the-

ory, there is yet another radical

theory of freedom in the litera-

ture, called “perverse freedom.”21

This theory appears not in a

philosophical treatise but in a

novel, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s

Notes from the Underground.

(Apparently a more literal

translation would be Notes

from under the Floorboards,

implying that the “underground

man’s” perspective on life is,

like that of a rat, looking up at it

through the cracks in the floor.)

The Man under the Floorboards

The novel begins with the follow-

ing curious passage:

I am a sick man. . . . I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease and do not know for certain what ails me. I don’t consult a doctor for it and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand.

Well, I understand it though. Of course, I can’t explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot “pay back” the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don’t consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well—let it get worse!22

As the “argument” of the novel develops, we discover that the underground man takes deep offense at all the restrictions imposed upon his 240

Philosophy of Freedom

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