mind

Minds under failure, minds from inside

What does resistance to a correct explanation of yourself protect?

Fyodor Dostoevsky. Notes from Underground. 1864. literature.

What it argues

The Underground Man prefers self-laceration to being explained: he asserts that a man may choose what harms him precisely to prove he is not a piano key. It is the strongest literary warning against any system that claims to have modelled you completely.

The probe

Find one place where you resist a correct explanation of yourself. Note what the resistance protects.

The source

Notes from Underground — Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1864. The link goes to the text or to a catalogue record for it, not to a summary. This one is a catalogue record: the entry gives you the question and the probe, not the argument in the author's words.

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