The Inability to Act

The Underground Man resists the idea of rational egoism, believing man to be an inherently irrational creature. Man will always try to assert his free will, even if asserting this free will goes against reason and self-interest. The Underground Man believes so because he can think of no other explanation for the way others have treated him in his life. If human nature were inherently good, no one could ever act the way most people act toward him. However, the Underground Man, as he mentions in Chapter I, would prefer to have a rotting liver than bend to a doctor’s authority. He is clearly obsessed with free will, and seems to project this obsession onto others.

In these chapters, the Underground Man continues to use his intelligence as an excuse for his inactivity, and his inactivity as proof of his intelligence. He considers active men universally “dull and narrow-minded”—the very traits that allow them to act. In contrast, the Underground Man’s supreme intelligence does not permit him to assuage any of the doubts that encumber action. Every question that he begins to resolve presents him with new, unanswerable questions. In earlier chapters, he says that intelligence necessarily results in inactivity, but now he implies that inactivity is in itself an indication of intelligence. The Underground Man claims that it is possible that he only considers himself intelligent because he has “never been able to start or finish anything.”