Comparison of Spinoza's Ethics and Dostoyevsky's Underground NotesPerhaps my choice of topic may seem a little eccentric to say the least. However, appearing quaint and fanciful is not my intention, so I thought that in the introduction I would explain my choice. As far as I know, philosophy, or the search for truth, has too often been equated with certainty. This quality of certainty has been particularly amplified in the rationalist branch of philosophy. Building on Descartes' vision of a philosophy with mathematical certainty, rationalists claimed to have grasped quite a large part of reality, including the world, God, consciousness, and everything in between. As the empiricists argued, most of this “knowledge” was in fact assumed, a habit, because it had no representation in the real world. The rationalists' notorious abstraction and disregard for the apparent discrepancy between their evidence and the real world were the main reasons for the fearful opposition and caricature they faced: even Voltaire, although influenced in a largely by the philosophy of Leibniz, ridicules it in his book. Candide's masterpiece in the form of a ridiculously optimistic Pangloss. . Kant, in particular, made a rather impressive dent in the shell of rationalist philosophy, calling it dogmatic metaphysics. As he pointed out, rationalist philosophy ignores the sensory component of human perception when it embarks on its ill-fated quest to find a metaphysics with absolute knowledge. I find this criticism the most powerful, because it highlights the gap between the real world and the abstract world of the rationalists. Spinoza's system stands at the cutting edge of rationalist thought, attempting to establish certain, necessary and universal truths of reality and nature. by reducing Descartes' philosophy to a set of axioms and definitions, as one would with a proof of geometry. Dostoyevsky is at the opposite end of the spectrum, exposing the flaws of reason with chilling realism. In my opinion, he makes some incredibly insightful points about this gap between the way things “should” be and the way they are. Comparing the manifestos of these two thinkers, Spinoza's Ethics and Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground, one can easily see the difference between language. Spinoza's language is strictly mathematical. He doesn't care about involving the reader. His main concern is to present his idea clearly and coherently. Dostoyevsky's language differs due to the difference in his intention.