Socially Constructed Reality and Meaning in Notes from Underground

Socially Constructed Reality and Meaning in Notes from Underground

Just as the hands in M.C. Escher’s “Drawing Hands” both create and are created

by each other, the identity of man and society are mutually interdependent. According to

the model described in The Sacred Canopy, Peter Berger believes that man externalizes

or creates a social reality that is in turn objectified, or accepted by him as real. This

sociological model creates a useful framework for understanding the narrator’s rejection

of ultimate reality or truth in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. The reality

in which the narrator tries to live in part II, and the reality that he rejects in part I, are

both created and, as such, are ultimately meaningless. The underground man’s refusal to

objectify social reality causes a feeling of meaninglessness and raises a fundamental

question of purpose that confronts people of all dispositions.

Berger’s theory is based on a dialectical relationship between man and society. To

explain his theory he defines three terms. “Externalization is the ongoing outpouring of

human being into the world. Objectivation, the attainment by the products of this activity

of a reality that confronts its original producers as a facticity external to and other than

themselves. Internalization is the reappropriation by men of this same reality,

transforming into structures of the subjective consciousness,” (Berger 4). He believes that

society is a wholly human invention created by man’s tendency to externalize. This

created entity is then objectified by man, giving society and its features the appearance of

true reality. His newly created reality then acts upon and shapes man through

internalization. Man, his identity...

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...fulfills his societal roles. Chernyshevsky’s utilitarian is happy

when individual needs are met. The man of consciousness can be happy, even if his

happiness comes from the rejection of happiness altogether. There is no superior

happiness; there is no superior type of fulfillment. The individual achieves these ends by

acting individually. No hand can avoid drawing, and man finds completeness when he

fulfills the purpose that he has drawn for himself.

Works Cited

Berger, Peter L. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion.

New York: Anchor Books, 1990.

Escher, M.C. “Drawing Hands.” Cover of Norton edition of Notes from Underground.

Katz, Michael R., ed. Notes from Underground. New York: W.W. Norton & Company,

2001.

Chernyshevsky, Nikolai. “What Is to Be Done?” Katz 104-123.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. “Notes from Underground.” Katz 3-91