Definition of Man

In Notes from Underground, Underground Man says, "But even if [man]'s not stupid, he is, nevertheless, monstrously ungrateful.  Phenomenally ungrateful.  I even believe that the best definition of man is this: a creature who walks on two legs and is ungrateful."

As Ms. King mentioned in class, Underground Man's words are a sort of parody of Plato's definition of man: a creature that stands upright on two legs without feathers, or a featherless biped.

(Sidenote: a story I found interesting is that Diogenes allegedly brought a plucked chicken to Plato's Academy and announced, "Behold!  I've brought you a man.")

In summary, Underground Man says that people are "phenomenally ungrateful" because we could have pretty much anything in the world, and still, we would "commit some repulsive act" and "even risk losing [our] gingerbread" all for the sake of proving that we are indeed unique and special.

Now, we may not traditionally think of Underground Man as "romantic," but I think that a lot of what he says ties in with that philosophy.  If anyone recalls from Mr. Shipman's class, the 5 I's of Romanticism are: inspiration, idealism, imagination, intuition, and individuality.

I think especially, Underground Man focuses on intuition and individuality.  That is, rather than simply following logic and reason, people are driven also by emotion and irrationality.  Furthermore, each person wants to feel individual as opposed to the Enlightenment idea of the "universal" man or a "piano key" or "organ stop."  I think it's really interesting to note that Romanticism wasn't just influential in literary and artistic pieces, but also as a political force.  For example, in Germany, Romanticism was used also as the idea that each nation has its own unique culture, and this tide of German nationalism (especially prevalent in universities) led to clubs called Burschenschaft which were used for political discussion.  There was even a nationwide Burschenschaft congress in 1817 at Wartburg.  However, there was also a violent undercurrent; for example, in 1819, the German writer Kotzebue was assassinated by a theology student, apparently for being an informer to the tsar.

My question is, to what extent is being "ungrateful" (as according to Underground Man) a bad thing? For does human ungratefulness and perpetual dissatisfaction not also lead to progress?