Overview
Please only use the link thats the book PDF
Nikolai Chernyshevsky wrote What is to Be Done? (the novel from which "Vera Pavlovna's 4th Dream" is taken) in order to support his idea that through aesthetics human beings could be taught that a rational ordering of the word could bring about utopia. As a Utopian Socialist, Chernyshevsky believed that equality and equity could be instantiated in the world through fulfilling the material needs (hunger, thirst, shelter, food) of the person, and that to achieve paradise they would freely give up everything that was not in their best interests—and therefore not in the best interest of all of humanity.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, author of Notes from the Underground, disagreed. The Underground Man, is his argument against Chernyshevsky and specifically the aesthetic argument—that beauty could bring about material peace.
For this writing diary, please write responses to the following two questions, making sure to support your analysis with quotes:
1) Who is the Goddess, where does she come from, and how does she related to the above notions of Utopian Socialism? How does Vera Pavlovna's dream represent the relationship between the human and the divine? Do you believe that Chernyshevsky's idea of utopia is plausible? And if so, is it based on human free will?
2) How does Dostoevsky refute the idea of free will in Chernyshevsky's work? Are humans free, according to the Underground Man? And where is the divine in this work?