The theory of self-interest in Notes from Underground


Author: Doctor Terence Rajivan Edward (or 0161__Rajivan, if that helps)
Last draft: 2022
  
In chapter 7 of Dostoevsky's 1864 novel Notes from Underground, the narrator argues against a certain theory. The theory consists of the following claims:
(i)        Necessarily, each human being acts according to what they think is in their self-interest.
(ii)       If each human being acted according to what really is in their self-interest, then no wrongful acts would ever be done.
 
The narrator initially observes that this conflicts with empirical evidence: 
"What is to be done with the millions of facts testifying to how people knowingly, that is, fully understanding their real profit, would put it in second place and throw themselves onto another path, a risk, a perchance, not compelled by anyone or anything, but precisely as if they simply did not want the designated path, and stubbornly, wilfully pushed onto another one, difficult, absurd, searching for it all but in the dark. So, then, this stubbornness and wilfulness were really more agreeable to them than any profit." (p. 21)
 
From what he initially says, it sounds as if the narrator is against claim (i). It sounds as if he does not think that each human being acts according to what they think is in their self-interest. A human being often thinks that path X is in their self-interest, but pursues some other path out of stubbornness.
 
However, the narrator is aware of an objection: that a person who pursues some other path actually believes that there is more satisfaction for them in pursuing this other path.
 
The narrator appears to concede this point and accept claim (i). He denies claim (ii) instead: 
"One’s own free and voluntary wanting, one’s own caprice, however wild, one’s own fancy, though chafed sometimes to the point of madness – all this is that same most profitable profit, the omitted one, which does not fit into any classification, and because of which all systems and theories are constantly blown to the devil… Man needs only independent wanting, whatever this independence may cost and wherever it may lead." (p. 26)
 
The narrator believes that what is most in the self-interest of a human being is to pursue an independent wanting. He implies that this can sometimes only be satisfied by doing wrongful acts. Thus he regards claim (ii) as false.
 
The narrator proposes that there is a desire that it is most profitable to satisfy. There are at least two ways of understanding this desire. On the first interpretation, it is a person’s desire to do what they like, whether or not it is profitable to them, when what is profitable to them is conceived in a way that does not take into account this desire. On the second interpretation, the desire is a desire to do something which is specifically not profitable to them, again when what is profitable to them is conceived in a way that does not take into account this desire. The first interpretation fits better with references to an independent wanting, while the second fits better with references to stubbornly not wanting the designated path.
 
Source
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. (translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky). 1993. Notes from Underground. London: Vintage.
(Dostoevsky himself appears to have been much influenced by Edgar Allan Poe’s 1845 work “The Imp of the Perverse.”)