How does Notes from the Underground challenge determinism and utopian socialism?

In Notes from the Underground (1864), Fyodor Dostoyevsky mounts a fierce critique of the rationalism and scientism prevalent among 19th-century radicals, specifically targeting Nikolay Chernyshevsky’s utopian novel What Is to Be Done?.123

Dostoyevsky challenges the deterministic belief that human behavior can be reduced to predictable laws of self-interest or historical necessity. Through his narrator, the "underground man," he argues that human beings possess an innate desire for free will and caprice, which often leads them to act against their own rational self-interest simply to assert their individuality.12

The novella posits that even if a perfect, utopian society were constructed based on scientific principles, humans would ultimately reject it because such a system would define them as predictable objects rather than autonomous agents. By demonstrating that the underground man’s own irrational, spiteful behavior is as flawed as the rigid systems he opposes, Dostoyevsky rejects both the cold logic of utopian socialism and the chaotic nihilism of the underground, emphasizing the complex, often contradictory nature of the human spirit.2