22 November 2016

Dostoyevsky’s character above is rather an abstract model in our discourse about the addiction. Alcoholism as a conscious and totally will-controlled phenomenon is a rare thing, in my opinion. Although, I think drinking stories suggest an evident analog. We mean John O'Brien’s Leaving Las Vegas , a novel we spoke about earlier. Unlike its film version the novel itself shows two types of addicts: Ben willing to go his woeful way to the end and Sera trying to break with these vicious bonds. As a matter of fact, both the types can be generalized and even named somehow. Let’s find an analog to Ben and go back to Dostoyevsky. The Notes from the Underground main character phenomenon is in Russian tradition an insignificant individual. The society has pressed this individual to unbearable conditions.

Each living being must interact with its environment  in order to survive. For living beings,  vital contact between organism and environment  must always be maintained—in the face of all the  risks of breaking away, in a manner of “continuous  discontinuity,” so to speak. We can call this  principle of sustaining contact the “Subject” of  life in the precise etymological sense of subjectum,  which designates what lies at the base of  all living behavior. In so far as the “Subject” can  be effective only as long as the organism continues  to live, it certainly belongs to this organism,  but it by no means resides inside of it.