London: Asia Publishing House. Stephen Kemp - - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 42 4 Kevin J. Cathcart , John F.
Conversations About Reflexivity. Margaret Scotford Archer ed. Tolstoy on Education: Tolstoy's Educational Writings Lev N. Christina Behme - - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 Michael L. Levin - On the Review of Mr. Archer-Hind's Edition of the Timaeus. Archer-Hind - - The Classical Review 3 04 Sasha, the Life of Alexandra Tolstoy. Dave Elder-Vass - - Sociological Theory 25 4 - He particularly cites the faith of the working people.
To live humanly is to believe in something beyond proof. He points out that the superstitions of religion are not essential to that faith. He states that real faith is that which alone gives meaning and possibility to life. Truth 2 was the fact of death. Truth 3 is faith. Recommended Background Reading Introduction: Tolstoy was a Russian novelist, moral philosopher, and religious reformer.
He made the Russian realistic novel a literary genre that ranks in importance and influence with Classical Greek tragedy and Elizabethan drama. He stressed the ethical and moral side of Christianity. Tolstoy was very much interested in childhood education and self-improvement. His views on living life as simply as possible led to problems with his wife after he put all his works in the public domain. He died at a railway station on his way to spend his remaining years at a monastery.
Note how Tolstoy describes his life in almost exactly the same terms as Russell's practical man:. Formation of the earth: 4. Homo erectus : 1. Java scripts programmed by johnarchie emeraldis. I felt that what I was standing on had given way, that I had no foundation to stand on, that which I lived by not longer existed, and that I had nothing to live by. My life came to a standstill.
I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep, and could not help breathing, eating, drinking and sleeping; but there was no life, because there were no desires the gratification of which I might find reasonable. If I wished for anything, I knew in advance that, whether I gratified my desire or not, nothing would come of it. If a fairy had come and had offered to carry out my wish, I should not have known what to say.
If in moments of intoxication I had, not wishes, but habits of former desires, I knew in sober moments that was a deception, that there was nothing to wish for.
I could not even wish to find out the truth, because I guess what it consisted in. The truth was that life was meaningless. It was as though I had just been living and walking along, and had come to an abyss, where I saw clearly that there was nothing ahead but perdition. And it was impossible to stop and go back, and impossible to shut my eyes, in order that I might not see that there was nothing ahead but suffering and imminent death, — complete annihilation. What happened to me was that I, a healthy, happy man, felt that I could not go on living, — an insurmountable force drew me on to find release from life.
I cannot say I wanted to kill myself. The force which drew me away from life was stronger, fuller, more general than wishing. It was a force like the former striving after life, only in an inverse sense. I tended with all my strength away from life. The thought of suicide came as naturally to me as had come before the ideas of improving life. That thought was so seductive that I had to use cunning against myself, lest I should rashly execute it. I did not want to be in a hurry, because I wanted to use every effort to disentangle myself: if I should not succeed in disentangling myself, there would always be time for that.
At such times, I, a happy man, hid a rope from myself so that I should not hang myself on a cross-beam between two safes in my room, where I was by myself in the evening, while taking off my clothes, and did not go out hunting with a gun, in order not to be tempted by any easy way of doing away with myself. I did not know myself what it was I wanted: I was afraid of life, strove to get away from it, and, at the same time, expected something from it. All that happened with me when I was on every side surrounded by what is considered to be complete happiness.
I had a good, loving and beloved wife, good children and a large estate, which grew and increased without any labour on my part. I was respected by my neighbours and friends, more than ever before, was praised by strangers, and, without any self-deception, could consider my name famous. With all that, I was not deranged or mentally unsound, — on the contrary, I was in full command of my mental and physical powers, such as I had rarely met with in people of my age: physically I could work in a field, mowing, without falling behind a peasant; mentally I could work from eight to ten hours in succession, without experiencing any consequences from the strain.
And while in such condition I arrived at the conclusion that I could not live, and, fearing death, I had to use cunning against myself, in order that I might not take my life.
The former deception of the pleasures of life […] no longer deceives me. Now I cannot help seeing day and night, which run and lead me up to death. I see that alone, because that alone is the truth. Everything else is a lie. They are precisely in the same condition that I am in: they must either live in the lie or see the terrible truth. Why should they live? Why should I love them, why guard, raise and watch them?
Is it for the same despair which is in my, or for dullness of perception? Since I love them, I cannot conceal the truth from them, — every step of cognition leads them up to this truth.
And the truth is death. But life lost all its attractiveness for me. How, then, could I entrap others? So long as I did not live my own life, and a strange life bore me on its waves; so long as I did not live my own life, and a strange life bore me on its waves; so long as I believed that life had some sense, although I was not able to express it, — the reflections of life of every description in poetry and in the arts afforded me pleasure, and I was delighted to look at life through this little mirror of art; but when I began to look for the meaning of life, when I experienced the necessity of living myself, that little mirror became either useless, superfluous and ridiculous, or painful to me.
Rational knowledge in the person of the learned and the wise denied the meaning of life, but the enormous masses of men, all humanity, recognized this meaning in an irrational knowledge. This irrational knowledge was faith, the same that I could not help but reject. That was God as one and three, the creation in six days, devils and angels, and all which I could not accept so long as I had not lost my senses.
My situation was a terrible one. I knew that I should not find anything on the path of rational knowledge but the negation of life, and there, in faith, nothing but the negation of reason, which was still more impossible than the negation of life. From the rational knowledge it followed that life was an evil and men knew it, — it depended on men whether they should cease living, and yet they lived and continued to live, and I myself live, though I had known long ago that life was meaningless and an evil.
From faith it followed that, in order to understand life, I must renounce reason, for which alone a meaning was needed.
Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina is regarded as a pinnacle in realist fiction and still enjoys huge critical and popular success. Do you want to get more out of your reading? This free course, Approaching prose fiction, is designed to develop the analytical skills you need for a more in-depth study of literary texts. You will learn about narrative events and perspectives, the setting of novels, types of characterisation and genre. Free course.
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