Tolstoyism - the main ideas. Philosophical doctrine of L. Tolstoy L n Tolstoy philosophy doctrine
The brilliant writer and deep thinker L.N. Tolstoy occupies an important place in Russian philosophy of the second half of the 19th century. At the center of his religious and philosophical quests are questions of understanding God, the meaning of life, the relationship between good and evil, freedom and moral perfection of man. He criticized official theology, church dogma, sought to substantiate the need for social reorganization on the principles of mutual understanding and mutual love of people and non-resistance to evil by violence.
For Tolstoy, God is not the God of the Gospel. He denies all those of its properties, which are considered in the Orthodox dogma. He seeks to liberate Christianity from blind faith and sacraments, seeing the purpose of religion in delivering earthly, and not heavenly, bliss to man. God appears to him not as a Person who can reveal himself to people, but as a vague, indefinite Something, an indefinite beginning of the spirit, living in everything and in every person. This Something is also the master, commanding to act morally, to do good and avoid evil.
Tolstoy identified the moral perfection of man with the question of the essence of life. He evaluates the conscious, cultural and social life with its conventions as a false, illusory life and, in essence, unnecessary to people. And this applies, first of all, to civilization. Tolstoy considers it as a lack of people's need for rapprochement, as a desire for personal well-being and ignoring everything that does not directly relate to one's own person, as a conviction that the best good of the world is money. Civilization, according to Tolstoy, cripples people, separates them, distorts all the criteria for evaluating a person and deprives people of the enjoyment of communication, the enjoyment of a person.
For Tolstoy, a genuine, unclouded civilization is the “natural” primary life, which includes eternal nature and the starry sky, birth and death, work, life, as it is represented by an unbiased view of the world of a simple person from the people. This is the only life that is needed. And all life processes, Tolstoy believes, are directed by the infallible, universal, all-penetrating Spirit. He is in every person and in all people taken together, he puts in everyone the desire for what is due, tells people to unconsciously huddle together, the tree to grow towards the sun, the flowers to wither towards autumn. And his blissful voice drowns out the noisy development of civilization. Only such a natural beginning of life, and its primordial harmony, can contribute to the earthly happiness of a person, says Tolstoy.
Tolstoy's moral position is most fully revealed by his doctrine of non-resistance to evil by violence. Tolstoy proceeded from the assumption that God established the law of Goodness in the world, which people must follow. Human nature itself is naturally beneficent, sinless. And if a person does evil, it is only out of ignorance of the law of Good. Good in itself is reasonable, and only it leads to well-being and happiness in life. The realization of this presupposes a "higher intelligence" which is always stored in man. In the absence of such an understanding of rationality that goes beyond everyday life, evil lies. Understanding good will make it impossible for evil to appear, Tolstoy believes. But for this it is important to “awaken” the highest rationality in oneself by negating the usual ideas about the rationality of everyday life. And this causes spiritual discomfort in the experience of people, because it is always scary to give up the familiar, visible for the sake of the unusual, invisible.
Hence Tolstoy's active denunciation of the evil and lies of real life and the call for the immediate and final realization of good in everything. The most important step in achieving this goal is, according to Tolstoy, non-resistance to evil by violence. For Tolstoy, the commandment of non-resistance to evil by violence means an unconditional moral principle, obligatory for all, the law. He proceeds from the fact that non-resistance does not mean reconciliation with evil, internal surrender to it. This is a special kind of resistance, i.e. rejection, condemnation, rejection and opposition. Tolstoy emphasizes that, following the teachings of Christ, all of whose deeds on earth were counteracting evil in its diverse manifestations, it is necessary to fight evil. But this struggle should be completely transferred to the inner world of a person and carried out in certain ways and means. Tolstoy considers reason and love to be the best means of such a struggle. He believes that if any hostile action is answered with a passive protest, non-resistance, then the enemies themselves will stop their actions and the evil will disappear. The use of violence against a neighbor, whom the Commandment requires to love, deprives a person of the possibility of bliss, spiritual comfort, Tolstoy believes. And vice versa, turning one's cheek and submitting to someone else's violence only strengthens the inner consciousness of one's own moral height. And this consciousness will not be able to take away any arbitrariness from outside.
Tolstoy does not reveal the content of the very concept of evil, which should not be resisted. And so the idea of non-resistance is abstract in nature, significantly at odds with real life. Tolstoy does not want to see the difference between a person's forgiveness of his enemy for the sake of saving his soul and the inactivity of the state, for example, in relation to criminals. He ignores that evil in its destructive actions is insatiable and that the lack of opposition only encourages it. Noticing that there is no and will not be a rebuff, evil ceases to hide behind the guise of integrity, and manifests itself openly with rude and impudent cynicism.
All these inconsistencies and contradictions cause a certain distrust of the position of Tolstoy's non-resistance. It accepts the goal of overcoming evil, but makes a peculiar choice about ways and means. This teaching is not so much about evil, but about how not to overcome it. The problem is not the denial of resistance to evil, but whether violence can always be recognized as evil. Tolstoy failed to solve this problem consistently and clearly.
So, the development of Russian philosophy in general, its religious line in particular, confirms that in order to understand Russian history, the Russian people and its spiritual world, its soul, it is important to get acquainted with the philosophical searches of the Russian mind. This is due to the fact that the central problems of these searches were questions about the spiritual essence of man, about faith, about the meaning of life, about death and immortality, about freedom and responsibility, the relationship between good and evil, about the destiny of Russia, and many others. Russian religious philosophy actively contributes not only to bringing people closer to the paths of moral perfection, but also to familiarizing them with the riches of the spiritual life of mankind.
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... the meaning of life in the understanding of L.N. Tolstoy”, “Social philosophy L.N. Tolstoy". To the main source compiled ... specified purpose Tolstoy sees in principle non-resistanceevil violence." Shifting ... the creator of history, the decisive force historical development. So …
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… 2. Features of Russian philosophy 2.1 The role of writers in the development of Russian philosophy(L.N. Tolstoy) Conclusion The list of used ... abstracts of which is the thesis about " non-resistanceevilby force" Criticism Tolstoy and Tolstoyans Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod ...
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… direction to philosophy, in force which... philosophy; philosophy systems of writers F.M. Dostoevsky and L.N. Tolstoy; revolutionary democratic philosophy; liberal philosophy. 2. Decembrist philosophy… should be non-resistanceevil; state …
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My abstract was written according to the book by A.A. Galaktionov and P.F. Nikandrova: “Russian philosophy of the 9th-19th centuries”, pages 563-576. The topics of this passage are “True religion and the meaning of life in the understanding of L.N. Tolstoy”, “Social philosophy of L.N. Tolstoy". Ten questions were made to the main source, the answers to them are given with quotations from the main text. In addition, answers are given from other sources.
“True Religion and the meaning of life
In the process of creating his religious and ethical teaching, Tolstoy studied and rethought all the main religious doctrines, selecting from them those moral principles that fit into the system of views that formed in his mind. For the most part, he turned to Eastern, Asian religious and philosophical teachings, where the patriarchal element was more pronounced than in the corresponding ideological currents in Europe.
Philosophical views of L. N. Tolstoy
As for Christianity, it has undergone a kind of processing by him.
Although Tolstoy denied church Christianity, i.e., a doctrine that, in his opinion, was distorted in official theology, it was still precisely this that determined the main direction of his religious and philosophical searches. From Christianity, he singled out those features that are essentially equally characteristic of all religions, namely: the equality of people before God, non-resistance to evil by violence, moral self-improvement, derived from the need to serve God, etc. But, on the other hand, Tolstoy is very good imagined the anti-people role that the church plays in the life of society, and therefore treated it with a strong prejudice. He believed that Christian dogma was only a “pretext” for the church, but in reality the church has always pursued mainly its own benefit, exploiting the ignorance of ordinary people and their naive faith. Having set himself the task of purifying the original Christianity from later accretions, he interpreted it in the spirit of all-encompassing love, that is, he accepted its main moral testament.
Of Western European thinkers, Tolstoy is closest to Rousseau, Schopenhauer, and Bergson. Rousseau mainly influenced the social philosophy of the writer and his pedagogical views. As for the moral-religious doctrine, here its connection can be easily traced, first of all, with Schopenhauer. Both thinkers have a lot of consonance in the interpretation of the categories of will, conscience, virtue. Both are characterized by an ascetic and pessimistic orientation of the teachings in general. Bergson, apparently, influenced Tolstoy in understanding some general philosophical and epistemological problems, such as causality and expediency. Just like Bergson, Tolstoy was prone to irrationalism, bringing intuition to the fore.
Tolstoy's views were formed, of course, mainly under the influence of the social and intellectual atmosphere of Russia in the second half of the 19th century. Russian thought gave a whole range of ideas and currents, which were melted in the mind of the writer in a peculiar way. But with all the influences experienced by Tolstoy throughout his long life, he followed his own, unique path. For him, there were no indisputable authorities before whom he would stop. All teachings and ideas were refracted by him through the prism of Russian life in its transitional period.
Tolstoy associated all plans for the transformation of life with the improvement of man. Hence, naturally, the problems of morality are put forward in the center of philosophy and sociology. But he did not conceive of the construction of a doctrine without a religious basis. All religions, according to Tolstoy, contain two parts: one is ethical, that is, the doctrine of people's lives, and the other is metaphysical, containing basic religious dogma and talking about God and his attributes, about the origin of the world and people, about their relationship to God. Since the metaphysical side of religions is not the same, being, as it were, a concomitant feature, and the ethical side is the same in all religions, then, therefore, it is precisely this side that constitutes the true meaning of any religion, and in true religion it should become the only content. And no matter how much the church replaces ethics with metaphysics, no matter how much it puts the external, worldly above the internal for the sake of its earthly, selfish goals, people, especially ordinary people, far from understanding dogmatic tricks, have preserved the moral core of religion in all its purity. Therefore, Tolstoy rejected the church, church dogma and ritualism and called to learn the true faith from ordinary people.
At the same time, humanity, during its long existence, has discovered and developed spiritual principles that guide all people. The fact that these principles coincide in the consciousness and behavior of people is for Tolstoy one more proof of the possibility and construction of a single “true” religion: infinity and governs his actions.” And then he explains that the provisions of this “true” religion are so characteristic of people that they take them as long known and self-evident. For Christians, the "true" religion is Christianity, not in its external forms, but in moral principles, according to which Christianity coincides with Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Buddhism, and even Mohammedanism. In turn, the true in all these religions is that which coincides with Christianity. And this means that the diversity of beliefs testifies to the failure of individual religions, teachings or churches, but this cannot serve as an argument against the necessity and truth of religion in general.
An important place in the system of religious and ethical views of Tolstoy is occupied by the concept of God and especially the meaning of this concept in relation to man. The definitions of God in the ontological sense, that is, as an infinite being, and also in the cosmological sense, that is, as the creator of the world, are of no interest to Tolstoy. On the contrary, he declares as metaphysical superstition the idea that the world came from nothing, only as a result of an act of divine creation. He considers the essence of the deity mainly in moral terms. He presents God as an "unlimited being", which is recognized by every person in himself within the limits of time and space. And even more precisely, as Tolstoy liked to repeat, “God is love,” the “perfect good,” which is the core of the human “I”. He was inclined to identify the concept of God with the concept of the soul. “Something incorporeal, connected with our body, we call the soul. This incorporeal, not connected with anything and giving life to everything that exists, we call God. The soul, according to his teaching, is the cause of human consciousness, which, in turn, must be an immanation of the “universal mind”. This universal reason, or God, is the highest law of morality, and the knowledge of it is the main task of mankind, because the understanding of the meaning of life and the ways of its proper organization are directly dependent on this.
But before deciding the question of the meaning of life, a person must realize what life is in general. Going through all the definitions of life then known in the natural sciences, Tolstoy considers them, firstly, tautological, and, secondly, fixing only accompanying processes, and not determining life itself, since they reduce the diversity of man to biological existence. Meanwhile, Tolstoy points out that a person’s life is impossible without social and moral motives, and therefore he opposes his own to all definitions of life: weakness is chosen by people who have come to terms with the deception in which they live. Tolstoy considers all these positions illusory, not containing a satisfactory solution to the problem, because they are derived rationally. But besides the mind, which covers the relationship between "I" and "not-I", a person has some kind of internal, overmind "consciousness of life", which corrects the work of the mind. She, this life force, lies in the common people, the understanding of the meaning of life which is not deformed either by the influence of false knowledge, or by artificial civilization, or by church theology.
The "foolish knowledge" of the people is faith. Therefore, in the people and it is necessary to look for the meaning of life.
Indicative in this respect are Tolstoy's arguments on behalf of Levin in the last chapters of Anna Karenina. Where, for what, why and what is life, what is its meaning, as well as the meaning of human motives and aspirations - these are the polls put by Tolstoy before Levin. “Organism, its destruction, the indestructibility of matter, the law of conservation of force” development - these were the words that replaced his former faith. These words and related concepts were very good for mental purposes; but they gave nothing for life. Finding no answer in the theories of the materialists and naturalists, Levin turned to kidealistic philosophy, to the writings of Plato, Kant, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer, but rationalistic constructions with vague concepts collapsed as soon as he remembered that there is much more important in human life, than reason, such that with the help of reason it is impossible to explain. In his search, Levin got to theological literature, including the writings of Khomyakov. At first, he agreed with the ideologue of Slavophilism that the comprehension of "divine truths" was given not to an individual person, but to a set of people united by the church. But the study of the history of different churches led him to the conviction that the churches are hostile to each other and each of them claims to be exclusive. The latter circumstance made him distrustful of church theology and forced him to seek the truth in his own soul. In the words of the peasant Fyodor: “to live for God, for the soul”, “to live in truth, according to God”, the meaning of life was suddenly revealed to him.
Tolstoy proves that all scientists and thinkers who raised the question of the meaning of life either gave an indefinite answer or came to the recognition of the meaninglessness of the finite existence of man in the face of an infinite world. However, Tolstoy sees the essence of the question in what is the meaning of the finite in the infinite? What timeless and spaceless significance does the individual life, taken by itself? And this new formulation of the question leads Tolstoy to an even more categorical statement that only religious faith reveals to a person the meaning of his life, directs him on the path of perfecting himself and society, “There is only one goal of life: to strive for that perfection that Christ indicated to us, saying: "Be perfect as your heavenly Father." This only goal of life accessible to man is achieved not by standing on a pillar, not by asceticism, but by developing in oneself loving communion with all people. From striving for this goal, correctly understood, all useful human activities flow, and all questions are resolved in accordance with this goal.
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The life path of Leo Tolstoy is divided into two completely different parts. The first half of Leo Tolstoy's life, according to all generally accepted criteria, was very successful, happy. An earl by birth, he received a good upbringing and a rich inheritance. He entered life as a typical representative of the highest nobility. He had a wild, wild youth. In 1851 he served in the Caucasus, in 1854 he participated in the defense of Sevastopol. However, his main occupation was writing. Although novels and stories brought fame to Tolstoy, and large fees strengthened his fortune, nevertheless, his writing faith began to be undermined.
Philosophical ideas in the work of L. n. thick.
He saw that writers do not play their own role: they teach without knowing what to teach, and constantly argue among themselves about whose truth is higher, in their work they are driven by selfish motives to a greater extent than ordinary people who do not pretend to the role of mentors of society. Without giving up writing, he left the writing environment and after a six-month trip abroad (1857) took up teaching among the peasants (1858). During the year (1861) he served as a conciliator in disputes between peasants and landlords. Nothing brought Tolstoy complete satisfaction. The disappointments that accompanied his every activity became the source of a growing inner turmoil from which nothing could save. The growing spiritual crisis led to a sharp and irreversible upheaval in Tolstoy's worldview. This revolution was the beginning of the second half of life.
The second half of Leo Tolstoy's conscious life was a denial of the first. He came to the conclusion that, like most people, he lived a life devoid of meaning - he lived for himself. Everything that he valued - pleasure, fame, wealth - is subject to decay and oblivion. “I,” writes Tolstoy, “as if I lived and lived, walked and walked, and came to an abyss and clearly saw that there was nothing ahead but death.” It is not certain steps in life that are false, but its very direction, that faith, or rather the unbelief, which lies at its foundation. And what is not a lie, what is not vanity? Tolstoy found the answer to this question in the teachings of Christ. It teaches that a person should serve the one who sent him into this world - God, and in his simple commandments shows how to do this.
So, the basis of Tolstoy's philosophy is Christian teaching. But Tolstoy's understanding of this doctrine was special. Lev Nikolaevich considered Christ as a great teacher of morality, a preacher of the truth, but nothing more. He rejected the divinity of Christ and other mystical aspects of Christianity that are difficult to understand, believing that the surest sign of truth is simplicity and clarity, and Lies are always complex, pretentious and verbose. These views of Tolstoy are most clearly seen in his work "The Teachings of Christ, set forth for children", in which he retells the Gospel, excluding from the narrative all mystical scenes that point to the divinity of Jesus.
Tolstoy preached the desire for moral perfection. He considered perfect love for one's neighbor to be the highest moral rule, the law of human life. Along the way, he cited some commandments, taken from the Gospel, as fundamental:
1) Don't be angry;
2) Do not leave your wife, i.e. do not commit adultery;
3) Never swear an oath to anyone and in anything;
4) Do not resist evil by force;
5) Do not consider people of other nations as your enemies.
According to Tolstoy, the main of the five commandments is the fourth: "Do not resist evil," which imposes a ban on violence. He believes that violence can never be a blessing, under any circumstances. In his understanding, violence coincides with evil and it is directly opposite to love. To love means to do as the other wants, to subordinate one's will to the will of the other. To rape means to subjugate another's will to one's own. Through non-resistance, a person recognizes that the issues of life and death are beyond his competence. Man has power only over himself. From these positions, Tolstoy criticized the state, which allows violence and practices the death penalty. “When we execute a criminal, then again we cannot be absolutely sure that the criminal will not change, will not repent, and that our execution will not turn out to be a useless cruelty,” he said.
Tolstoy's reflections on the meaning of life
Realizing that life simply cannot be meaningless, Tolstoy devoted much time and energy to the search for an answer to the question of the meaning of life. At the same time, he became more and more disappointed in the possibilities of reason and rational knowledge.
“It was impossible to look for an answer to my question in rational knowledge,” writes Tolstoy. I had to admit that "all living mankind has some other kind of knowledge, unreasonable - faith, which makes it possible to live."
Observations on the life experience of ordinary people, who are characterized by a meaningful attitude towards their own life with a clear understanding of its insignificance, and the correctly understood logic of the very question of the meaning of life, lead Tolstoy to the same conclusion that the question of the meaning of life is a question of faith, and not knowledge. In Tolstoy's philosophy, the concept of faith has a special content. "Faith is a person's consciousness of such a position in the world that obliges him to certain actions." “Faith is the knowledge of the meaning of human life, as a result of which a person does not destroy himself, but lives. Faith is the power of life." From these definitions it becomes clear that for Tolstoy a life that has meaning and a life based on faith are one and the same.
The following conclusion follows from the works written by Tolstoy: the meaning of life cannot lie in the fact that it dies with the death of a person. This means: it cannot consist in life for oneself, as well as in life for other people, for they also die, as well as in life for humanity, for it is not eternal either. “Life for oneself cannot have any meaning ... To live intelligently, one must live in such a way that death cannot destroy life.” Tolstoy considered only service to the eternal God to be meaningful. This service consisted for him in the fulfillment of the commandments of love, non-resistance to violence and self-improvement.
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LOOKING AT THE REVOLUTION
Tolstoy did not understand that dogma, or, more precisely, the prejudice of non-resistance, is an expression of the weakness, impotence, and insufficient political maturity of the Russian peasantry. This prejudice dominated Tolstoy's thinking as an axiom of the moral and social outlook. At the same time, Tolstoy felt the connection between his doctrine of non-resistance and the centuries-old way of thinking and acting of the patriarchal Russian peasantry. “The Russian people,” Tolstoy wrote, “the majority of them, the peasants, need to continue to live as they have always lived, their agricultural, secular, communal life and, without a struggle, submit to any, both government and non-government violence ...” (vol. 36, p. 259).
Tolstoy simply ignores the numerous facts and phenomena of revolutionary ferment and revolutionary action (uprisings, destruction and burning of landowners' estates) in the history of the Russian serf-owning village. According to Tolstoy's generalization, which is true only relatively patriarchal peasantry, the Russian people, unlike other peoples of the West, seem to be guided in their lives precisely by Christian ethics non-resistance. “... In the Russian people,” Tolstoy wrote, “in all its vast majority, whether due to the fact that the Gospel became available to them in the 10th century, or due to the rudeness and stupidity of the Byzantine-Russian Church, which clumsily and therefore unsuccessfully tried to hide the Christian teaching in its in the true sense, whether due to the special character traits of the Russian people and their agricultural life, the Christian teaching in its application to life has not ceased and still continues to be the main guide of the life of the Russian people in its vast majority ”(vol. 36, p. 337).
To rely on violence as a means of combating evil, according to Tolstoy, only people who believe that the improvement of human life can be achieved by changing external social forms. Since this change is obviously possible and accessible, it is considered possible to improve life through violence.
Tolstoy rejects this view, as if it were fundamentally erroneous. According to Tolstoy, the liberation of humanity from violence can only be achieved internal change of each individual person, “clarification and approval in yourself rational, religious consciousness and his life corresponding to this consciousness” (vol. 36, p. 205). “Human life,” says Tolstoy, “changes not from a change in external forms, but only from the inner work of each person on himself. Any effort to influence external forms or other people, without changing the situation of other people, only corrupts, diminishes the life of the one who<…>surrenders to this destructive delusion” (vol. 36, p. 161).
In this Tolstoy ban on all political activity, under the pretext that this activity is a change only in the external forms of human life and does not affect the inner essence of human relations, the profound connection between the worldview of Tolstoy and the worldview of the patriarchal peasantry - with its apolitical nature, ignorance of the causes of social disasters, and lack of understanding of the conditions for overcoming them.
From this ignorance flowed a deep doubt about the availability for a person of any kind of knowledge about what will be, what should be the forms of the future life of human society. Indeed, the first argument by which Tolstoy substantiated the futility of any activity aimed at changing external social forms, consisted precisely in the assertion that a person was not given knowledge of what the future state of society should be.
Tolstoy is clearly aware that the opposite view is widespread among people. “... People,” says Tolstoy, “believing that they can know what the future society should be, not only decide abstractly, but act, fight, take away property, lock them up in prisons, kill people in order to establish such arrangement of society in which, in their opinion, people will be happy” (vol.
36, p. 353). People, - continues Tolstoy, - "knowing nothing about what is the good of an individual, imagine that they know, undoubtedly know what is necessary for the good of the whole society, so they undoubtedly know that in order to achieve this good, as they understand it, they commit cases of violence, murder, executions, which they themselves recognize as bad ”(vol. 36, pp. 353-354).
On the contrary, according to Tolstoy, the conditions in which people will become among themselves, and the forms in which society will take shape, depend “only on the internal properties of people, and in no way on the foresight by people of this or that form of life into which they wish to develop” ( 36, p. 353).
Another argument by which Tolstoy wants to prove the futility of any activity aimed at changing social forms is the assertion that even if people really knew what the best structure of society should be, this device could not be achieved through political activity. According to Tolstoy, it could not be achieved, since political activity always involves the violence of one part of society over another, and violence, so Tolstoy argues, does not eliminate slavery and evil, but only replaces one form of slavery and evil with another.
On this erroneous argument, Tolstoy built an equally erroneous denial of the beneficence of the revolution, in particular, a denial of the historical beneficence of the first Russian revolution.
Tolstoy does not in the least deny the truth principles which inspired the ideologists of the French bourgeois revolution. “The leaders of the revolution,” wrote Tolstoy, “clearly set forth those ideals of equality, freedom, fraternity, in the name of which they intended to rebuild society. From these principles, Tolstoy continues, practical measures followed: the abolition of estates, the equalization of property, the abolition of ranks, titles, the destruction of landed property, the dissolution of a standing army, income tax, workers' pensions, the separation of church and state, even the establishment of a common and rational religious doctrine. "(vol. 36, pp. 194-195). Tolstoy admits that all these were “reasonable and beneficent measures arising from the undoubted, true principles of equality, freedom, and fraternity put forward by the revolution” (vol. 36, p. 195). These principles, Tolstoy admits, as well as the measures arising from them, “as they were, so they remain and will remain true and will stand as ideals before humanity until they are achieved” (vol. 36, p. 195). But these ideals are achieved, says Tolstoy, "they could never be violence" (vol. 36, p. 195).
Misunderstanding of this - undoubted, as it seems to Tolstoy - truth, was shown not only by the leaders of the French Revolution of the XVIII century. According to Tolstoy, this misunderstanding also underlies the theoretical concepts and practical activities of the Russian revolutionaries of 1905. now. And now, says Tolstoy, this contradiction pervades all modern attempts to improve the social order. All social improvements are supposed to be carried out through government, that is, through violence” (vol. 36, p.
Abstract on the topic “Philosophy of Leo Tolstoy”
It is extremely interesting and significant that in his reflections on the future course of development of Russian society, Tolstoy did not doubt at all that in the struggle that began in 1905 between the revolution and the autocratic government, it was not the government, not the autocracy, but the revolution. “... You,” Tolstoy addressed the government with such words, “cannot resist the revolution with your banner of autocracy, even with constitutional amendments, and perverted Christianity, called Orthodoxy, even with patriarchy and all sorts of mystical interpretations. All this has become obsolete and cannot be restored” (vol. 36, p. 304).
not sympathizing methods revolutionary transformation of society, Tolstoy sympathized with the denial of the existing social and political order, which led the leaders of the revolutionary movement. Therefore, the well-known Danish historian of Russian literature, Stender-Petersen, is wrong when he writes: “In reality, everything tolstoyanism, as his teaching was called, Tolstoy's denial of the existing social order, his demand for non-resistance to evil, and his rationalized religion are nothing more than a powerful attempt to reinterpret the movement in his own way populists which gradually became more and more revolutionary and terroristic, and also to block the way for the new Marxist-socialist doctrine of the class struggle” 34 .
But, considering neither right nor simply reasonable the autocratic government in its struggle against the revolution, Tolstoy nevertheless resolutely condemns the activities of the revolutionaries.
The objections he raised against the revolutionary resolution of the crisis that has matured in the life of the Russian people are highly characteristic of Tolstoy's patriarchal-"peasant" way of thinking. His main objection comes from the idea that, unlike the revolutions that took place in the countries of the West, the Russian revolution will be carried out not by urban workers and not by the urban intelligentsia, but mainly by the multimillion-strong peasantry: professions and urban workers led by these people; the participants in the coming revolution must and will be predominantly the agricultural masses of the people. The places where earlier revolutions began and took place were cities; the place of the present revolution must be predominantly the countryside. The number of participants in previous revolutions is 10.20 percent of the entire people, the number of participants in the present revolution taking place in Russia should be 80.90 percent” (vol. 36, p. 258).
Tolstoy's understanding of the Russian revolution of 1905 as peasant revolution reflected one, a really important feature of this revolution. This meaning of Tolstoy's understanding of our first revolution was pointed out by Lenin. “Tolstoy,” wrote Lenin, “is great as an exponent of those ideas and those moods that had developed among millions of the Russian peasantry at the time of the onset of the bourgeois revolution in Russia. Tolstoy is original, because the totality of his views, taken as a whole, expresses exactly the features of our revolution, as peasant bourgeois revolution" 35 .
The peasant, according to Tolstoy, character of the Russian revolution not only excludes, as Tolstoy thinks, the possibility of directing the Russian revolution on the path along which revolutions were made in the West, but makes in Russia any imitation of Western revolutions harmful and dangerous. “Danger,” Tolstoy explained, “<…>in the fact that the Russian people, due to their special position, called to indicate a peaceful and true path of liberation, will instead be drawn by people who do not understand the full significance of the ongoing revolution, into slavish imitation of former revolutions” (vol. 36, p. 258).
Tolstoy's second objection to the activity of revolutionaries is the assertion that this activity, even in countries where the revolution is carried out by urban workers and urban intelligentsia, never leads to the achievement of the set goal. It does not lead to it, because revolutionary activity, being based on violence, inevitably leads, as Tolstoy asserts, to the establishment of new forms of violence, no less disastrous for humanity than the former ones.
A revolution can establish a new social order only by replacing the old form of the state with a new one. But since any state rests on violence, all violence, according to Tolstoy, is only evil and supposedly cannot be the source or condition of the good, then from this Tolstoy concludes that the state that will be created by the revolution cannot be such a source either. “Forms change,” Tolstoy wrote, “but the essence of people’s attitudes does not change, and therefore the ideals of equality, freedom, and fraternity do not come close to being realized” (vol. 36, p. 198).
In his views on the state and on the political paths of development of society, Tolstoy correctly reflected the point of view of the patriarchal peasantry of the post-reform period. But from the fact that he correctly reflected it, it certainly did not follow that this point of view itself was true in the essence of its content. What Tolstoy so correctly reflected in his doctrine of the impossibility of revolution was precisely misunderstanding the role of the political struggle and, in particular, the revolutionary struggle. And because this misunderstanding was typical at the beginning of the 20th century. still significant - patriarchal - part of the Russian peasants, it, of course, did not cease to be what it actually was, that is delusion, erroneous and in their conclusions harmful teaching.
In Tolstoy's political skepticism, in distrust of any authorities, to any form of government, everyone the use of violence in public life once again reflected the attitude of the patriarchal peasantry towards the new one, which formally “liberated” it, but in fact ruined and enslaved the social order of post-reform capitalist Russia even more.
Tolstoy's obvious and enormous mistake is that he dogmatically transferred the experience of the past and observation of the present to the whole future. From the fact that all the revolutions that took place before the beginning of the 20th century could not eliminate the inequality and oppression of the working people, Tolstoy concluded that and henceforth no form of government is possible that would meet the interests of the working and peasant masses.
Tolstoy denies the possibility of creating such a form of state, since he believes that, in accordance with the very essence of the state, one can never achieve power, seize power and retain power. the best(i.e., according to Tolstoy, good people), but always only the worst(i.e., according to Tolstoy, evil, cruel, violent people).
Taking this point of view, developed in detail in the book The Kingdom of God is Within You, Tolstoy consistently came to the complete and unconditional denial of the state, that is, to the teaching of anarchism.
According to Tolstoy, the disasters and contradictions that dominate today's humanity, and above all the Russian peasant people, will stop only when the state is abolished with all the apparatus of violence, coercion and intimidation necessary for it - the government, administration, army, police, courts. , officials, etc.
At the same time, Tolstoy's teaching on the abolition of the state differs in an important feature from many other anarchist teachings. Tolstoy's anarchism is not revolutionary. According to Tolstoy, a stateless form of social organization should not be established through violent coup or violent destruction of the existing state. The abolition of the state can and should take place, thought Tolstoy, only by non-resistance, i.e., by peaceful and passive abstinence or evasion, the renunciation of each member of society from all state duties - military, tax, judicial, - from all types of public positions, from the use of state institutions and institutions, and from any participation in any was - legal or revolutionary - political activity.
This teaching of Tolstoy about society and the political forms of its development, as Lenin showed, "is undoubtedly utopian and, in its content, reactionary in the most precise and deepest sense of the word" 36 . The reactionary nature of Tolstoy's doctrine lies in the fact that the critical and even socialist elements, which, according to Lenin's analysis, certainly were in Tolstoy's teaching, did not express the ideology of the class "going to replace the bourgeoisie", but corresponded to the "ideology of the classes that the bourgeoisie is going to replace" 37 .
If, therefore, back in the late 70s of the last century, “critical elements of Tolstoy’s teachings could in practice sometimes benefit certain segments of the population despite reactionary and utopian features of Tolstoyism” 38, then already in the first decade of the 20th century, as Lenin showed, “any attempt to idealize Tolstoy’s teaching, justify or mitigate his “non-resistance”, his appeals to the “Spirit”, his calls for “moral self-improvement” , his doctrines of "conscience" and universal "love", his preaching of asceticism and quietism, etc. bring the most immediate and most profound harm.
All this significance of Tolstoyism was first elucidated in Lenin's brilliant articles on Tolstoy. At the same time, these articles shed new light on the requirements that should be made for research into the spiritual heritage and the spiritual world of such complex artists and thinkers as Tolstoy.
Lenin's articles on Tolstoy refute the fundamental tenet of the vulgar sociological method in literary criticism, in the history of literature and philosophy. These articles showed with their own eyes how untenable and primitive is the point of view of historians who claim that the ideology of a great artist is direct reflection direct the social conditions of his origin, environment, social position, etc. The point of view that the writer takes in his depiction of life, and which does not necessarily have to coincide with the point of view characteristic of people of his social origin and position, turned out to be decisive for assessing the nature of the ideology of the writer. . “By birth and upbringing, Tolstoy,” Lenin wrote, “belonged to the highest landlord nobility in Russia, he broke with all the usual views of this environment and, in his last works, fell with passionate criticism on all modern state, church, social, economic orders based on the enslavement of the masses, on their poverty, on the ruin of the peasants and small proprietors in general, on violence and hypocrisy, which pervade all modern life from top to bottom.
It is precisely this discrepancy between the point of view from which Tolstoy examines, depicts and discusses the phenomena and relations of contemporary Russian life, with the point of view, which, it would seem, was naturally and even necessary prompted to him by all the circumstances of his origin and all the relations of his social circle, allowed Tolstoy , as Lenin showed, to see in the phenomena of Russian life what he had not seen in it before him none of writers who viewed Russian life from a different point of view.
Hence Lenin's profoundly true assertion, which struck Maxim Gorky when he said that "prior to this, there had been no real muzhik in literature" 41 .
But if the decisive factor for the results of the work of a great artist is not the immediate social position of the artist, but the point of view from which this artist will consider and depict the phenomena accessible to people of his circle or to him personally, then his work can become truly significant not under any conditions. . Actual social significance informs creativity not every point of view, which can be a given artist. This meaning is given to the work of only that writer or artist whose point of view is not so easy his personal point of view, but a position that expresses the views, moods, aspirations labor classes representing a significant part of the people.
Tolstoy's work acquired its significance not simply because Tolstoy broke with all the habitual views of his environment, but because, having broken with his environment, Tolstoy adopted a point of view that represented views and moods. multi-million dollar of the Russian peasantry, i.e., the views and sentiments, although "patriarchal", archaic, backward, but nevertheless containing a truly democratic part of the mass of the Russian peasantry.
“The contradictions in Tolstoy’s views,” wrote Lenin, “are not contradictions of his personal thought only, but a reflection of those highly complex, contradictory conditions, social influences, historical traditions that determined the psychology of various classes and various strata of Russian society in on reform, but before revolutionary epoch" 42 .
Tolstoy is not great because he expressed in his artistic and philosophical-journalistic works a doctrine that should become a guide to practical action and which in itself is true. true image and expression ideology is not yet the image and expression true ideology. Tolstoy, as Lenin showed, "could not absolutely understand either the labor movement and its role in the struggle for socialism, or the Russian revolution" 43 . Tolstoy is great because his art and his teaching reflected "the great people's sea, agitated to the very depths, with all its weaknesses and all its strengths" 44 . Tolstoy's greatness lies precisely in the relief, the force with which the long-prepared features of the first Russian revolution are captured in Tolstoy's works of art and in his teachings.
The very mistakes and delusions of Tolstoy, having given rise to the need for their refutation, gave - in this refutation - a positive result. Lenin explained that in order to move forward it is often necessary to understand what shortcomings and weaknesses have hitherto hindered forward movement. But it was precisely this role that Tolstoy's delusions played. “By studying the works of art by Leo Tolstoy,” Lenin explained, “the Russian working class gets to know its enemies better, and by understanding doctrine Tolstoy, the entire Russian people will have to understand what their own weakness was, which did not allow them to complete the cause of their liberation. This must be understood in order to move forward.
The entire history of Russia after the revolution of 1905 was a confirmation of Lenin's assessment of the worldview of Leo Tolstoy.
Notes
34 a. Stender-Petersen. Geschichte der Russischen Literatur, Bd. II. Munich, 1957, S. 368.
35 V.I. Lenin. Works, vol. 15, p. 183.
36 V.I. Lenin. Works, vol. 17, p. 32.
39 Ibid., p. 33.
40 V.I. Lenin. Works, vol. 16, p. 301.
41 M. Bitter. Collected works, vol. 17. M., 1952, p. 39.
42 V. I. Lenin. Works, vol. 16, p. 295.
43 V.I. Lenin. Works, vol. 15, p. 183.
44 V.I. Lenin. Works, vol. 16, p. 323.
45 Ibid., p. 324.
Philosophical doctrine founded by Leo Tolstoy
soil cultivation
Philosophy of unity
Populism
Ethics of non-violence
The main moral rule from the point of view of L.N. Tolstoy
Kill the sufferer
Know yourself
Don't Resist Evil
Serve the Fatherland Faithfully
The country where Vladimir Solovyov for the third time met with the vision of Sophia as an image of eternal femininity and the wisdom of God
Palestine
Pavel Florensky
Vladimir Solovyov
Alexey Losev
Nikolai Berdyaev
Concept…. characteristic of Vl. S. Solovyova.
unity
intuitionism
Imyaslaviya
Slavophilism
One of the main ideas of the philosophy of unity
Inadmissibility of any form of violence in public and state life
Philosophy should help a person solve the pressing problems of life
The impossibility of reliable knowledge of the Absolute
Resurrection of all people who lived on earth
The highest, most perfect form of love, according to V.S. Solovyov, is
Love between a man and a woman
Love for truth
Mother's love for a child
Love to motherland
Domestic thinker who first created a comprehensive philosophical system based on Christian humanism
V.S. Solovyov
ON THE. Berdyaev
A.N. Radishchev
F.M. Dostoevsky
Russian thinker, who in his work "Names" proved that there is a deep connection between the name and its bearer
S.N. Bulgakov
A.L. Chizhevsky
P.A. Florensky
L. Shestov
One of the main works of S.N. Bulgakov
"The Meaning of Creativity"
"Justification of Good"
"The Pillar and Ground of Truth"
"Light of the Night"
Representative of Russian Marxism
G.V. Plekhanov
N.K. Mikhailovsky
N.F. Fedorov
V.S. Solovyov
Philosophy of Tolstoy.
Lenin developed the doctrine of Russia as
Third Rome
Agrarian country with a communal way of life
Weak link in the chain of imperialism
great power
The founder of Russian cosmism is considered
Alexander Radishchev
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Fedorov
Fedor Dostoevsky
Representatives of "Russian cosmism" are:
N. Berdyaev, V. Solovyov
F. Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy
A. Losev, M. Bakhtin
K. Tsiolkovsky, V. Vernadsky
According to N.F. Fedorov, the highest moral duty of earthlings, the central task of all people is to
Unification of all religions
Resurrection of all ancestors
Turning humanity into radiant energy
Destroying suffering on earth
Synthesis of philosophical and scientific teachings, united by the idea of the relationship between man and nature, humanity and the universe
Philosophy of life
Philosophy of unity
Cosmism
Existentialism
One of the basic rules of "cosmic ethics" K.E. Tsiolkovsky
Treat others the way you would like them to treat you
Be merciful to all living things
Kill the sufferer
Love God more than yourself
The basic concept of epistemology V.I. Vernadsky
absolute truth
Empirical generalization
Thing in itself
A priori form of sensibility
The noosphere is
Realm of Mind
Sphere of life
divine sphere
transcendent realm
Founder of space ecology and heliobiology
P.A. Florensky
K.E. Tsiolkovsky
IN AND. Vernadsky
A.L. Chizhevsky
Russian philosopher, who wrote in the book “Self-Knowledge”: “The originality of my philosophical type is primarily in the fact that I put not being, but freedom, as the basis of philosophy”
Nikolai Berdyaev
Vladimir Solovyov
Alexander Herzen
Lev Shestov
The Russian thinker ... in his work "Self-Knowledge" stated that he put not being, but freedom, at the foundation of philosophy.
ON THE. Berdyaev
V.S. Solovyov
A.I. Herzen
N. Fedorov
The reason, the primary source of evil in the world according to N.A. Berdyaev
Uncreated freedom
Government
Elemental forces of nature
inert matter
The dualism of spirit and matter, God and nature is characteristic of philosophy
K.E. Tsiolkovsky
L. Shestova
ON THE. Berdyaev
L.N. Tolstoy
According to L. Shestov, a person can achieve the impossible only thanks to
Faith in God
scientific knowledge
Humility
Love for your neighbor
According to L. Shestov, the main enemies of man in the "struggle for the impossible" are
Loneliness and fear
Death and despair
Reason and morality
Faith and love
ONTOLOGY
The basis of being, existing in itself independently of anything else,
Substance
Consciousness
intention
The equality of the material and spiritual principles of being proclaims
Dualism
Skepticism
Relativism
The existence of many initial foundations and principles of being asserts
Pluralism
Empiricism
Relativism
Agnosticism
A statement corresponding to the metaphysical understanding of matter
Matter is eternal, uncreated and indestructible
Matter is identical to substance
Matter is created by God
Matter basically consists of ideal forms
The atomistic hypothesis of the structure of matter was first put forward by:
Augustine
Democritus
Matter is the primary source of being, says
Materialism
Idealism
Intuitionism
Irrationalism
Matter
Quality
In Marxism, matter is treated as
Unity of energy and consciousness
Substance
Objective reality
Which of the following is not an attribute of matter?
Structurality
Motion
Reflection
Stability
The ideal phenomena are
Light
gravity
Conscience
Time
An integral essential property of a thing, phenomenon, object is called
Accident
Attribute
quality
The mode of existence of matter
Motion
Mindflow
Immobility
Does not apply to the attributes of matter
Structurality
Motion
peace
Reflection
The highest form of motion of matter is
mechanical movement
biological movement
social movement
physical movement
The essence of the cosmogonic hypothesis of the "Big Bang" is the assumption that
The universe will die as a result of the explosion of the nucleus of the Galaxy
Regular explosions occur in the center of the Galaxy, changing the space-time characteristics of the Universe
The universe arose as a result of the explosion of a microscopic particle
In a few billion years, the Sun will explode and destroy the Earth.
The sequence of states reflects the category
time
spaces
Necessities
The form of existence of matter, expressing its extension, structure, coexistence and interaction of elements in all material systems
Motion
Space
Quality
The substantial concept of space and time was defended by
Lucretius Kar
Newton
Einstein
The essence of the relational concept of space and time is that
Time is eternal, space is infinite
Time and space are independent of each other
Space and time depend on material processes
Space and time are illusory, in reality there is only a motionless and unchanging substance
What concept of time does not allow the possibility of creating a "time machine"?
Substantial
relational
static
Dynamic
The most important specific property of biological time
reversibility
cyclicality
two-dimensionality
Anthropism
Economic ideas of L.N. Tolstoy
Despite the glorification of the name of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, his scientific views are still little known and understood by the general public. This applies in particular to the economic teachings of Tolstoy.
Philosophical ideas of L.N. Tolstoy
There is even an opinion that Tolstoy was great as an artist of the word, but weak as a thinker. At the same time, for some reason, it is not understood that it is Tolstoy's ideas that give the light of genius that comes from most of his works. So, in the words of Tolstoy himself, Anna Karenina is a plexus of a thousand thoughts.
Lev Nikolaevich throughout his long creative life paid considerable attention to economic doctrine, which he had very closely connected with religious ideas and reflections on the fate of Russia. His economic doctrine was supposed to be understandable to any person, therefore it is stated in the national language and concerns only economic issues that may be of interest to any person, no matter what business he is engaged in.
According to L.N. Tolstoy, the only task of economic science is to find a way to equitably distribute material wealth among all people, economists do not understand this task of theirs, and instead are occupied with various secondary issues: how to determine the value of a product, the function of money, what is meant by capital - only because of the lack of religious feeling, because only it helps to distinguish the important from the unimportant, good from evil - in any business.
For a religious person, the only problem of economics is solved very simply and easily: all people are brothers, then no one, if not sick, can use the labor of others, and no one has the right to receive more than others without labor - therefore, everyone must work, both by manual labor and by the mind, and everyone must receive the benefits they need for life.
Tolstoy's principle of equality does not mean egalitarianism. A slacker shouldn't get anything. The difference in talents will never disappear either - but you can equally respect every talented work, and create equal opportunities for the development of any ability people need. There is nothing fundamentally new in the economic principle of equality put forward by Tolstoy - the study of Russian folk legends and proverbs shows that the Russian people have been trying to establish this idea in their lives for centuries.
All of Tolstoy's economic teachings grow out of the age-old traditions of the Russian people.
The most important idea for the Russian thinker Tolstoy is the duty of industriousness. And he not only talks about it, but consistently applies it in his life, while achieving a highly efficient economy on his estates, and working on a par with his workers. In this, he follows the ancient tradition of Russian monasteries, where the abbot is obliged to work not only on an equal footing, but more than other monks - let us recall Sergius of Radonezh, Seraphim of Sarov, and finally, Patriarch Nikon, who, having engaged in stone construction in the Resurrection Monastery, dug ponds together with workers, planted fish, built mills, laid out gardens and cleared forests.
The principle of diligence according to Tolstoy is, first of all, to try to work for people as much as possible - and at the same time take as little work from them as possible. Whatever you can do yourself, do not force others to do it. Work until you are tired, but not through strength: from idleness people are both dissatisfied and angry; the same is true of working through force. Agricultural labor is an occupation peculiar to all people, and not only to the peasant class; this work gives most of all freedom and most of all happiness to any person. With this idea, Tolstoy continues the centuries-old tradition that we can still find in the "father of economics" - Xenophon, who said that agriculture is the noblest of all occupations, in the 20th century, despite the ever-decreasing number of villages, it was revived by the efforts of an outstanding Russian economist Chayanov, who was convinced that the time would come when cities would turn into large villages - so much their face would be covered with continuous gardens, vegetable gardens and parks.
People who do not work physically do not stop thinking, speaking, listening or reading without giving their mind a rest, which makes the mind irritated and confused, it is already difficult for it to understand things sensibly. Manual work, and especially agricultural work, occupies the whole person, and gives him rest from intellectual labors. This was always understood in Slavic monasteries, where every monk works both with his hands and with his head - and in this way an amazing flourishing of both the monastic economy, and monastic art and science was achieved.
Even the most unclean work is not shameful, only idleness is shameful. It is not worth working for the maximum reward for your work, because the highest wages are often received for the most immoral types of work, while the most important works - peasants - are usually valued very low.
Tolstoy embodied his economic teachings in vivid artistic stories, thereby bringing him as close as possible to any person. One can recall Levin from Anna Karenina, a great worker who works with the same enthusiasm both in the barnyard and at the table in his office, creating, by the way, an economic treatise. In the end, Levin's life turns out to be more successful than all the heroes of the novel - by this Tolstoy wants to show that only by following the duty of industriousness can one achieve both economic prosperity and spiritual happiness.
Leo Tolstoy had great respect for the ideas of the great American economist Henry George. He consecrated them in several articles, quoted in collections of thoughts of wise people, and repeatedly mentioned them in letters.
Tolstoy was close to the idea of Henry George that since a person can get wealth only in three ways: by labor, begging or theft, the working people receive so little in the modern social economy only because the majority are accounted for by beggars and thieves.
Following Henry George, Lev Nikolaevich argues that the exclusive right of some people over others to land is no different from serfdom or slavery. Take the invader away from people's house, money, his crime will end with him. But take the land away from the invader - and this injustice will continue for centuries. It is quite possible to imagine a situation when in any country of the world, subject to the free sale of land, it will pass into the hands of those who have the most money, that is, very few, and the whole people will turn out to be slaves of the rich, dictating any conditions to them.
All men have an equal right to the whole earth, and a full right to their labor and the products of their labor. And this right to complete economic freedom of each individual is violated by the recognition of private ownership of land and the levying of taxes on the products of people's labor.
How to restore this right with which each of us is born? Recognize the existence of a single tax on land in society. Under him, people who enjoy all the benefits of the land would pay society for it, while those who did not work on the land, such as workers in industry or scientists, would not pay anything.
The consequences of a single tax on land, according to Tolstoy, may be as follows. Large landowners who do not cultivate the land would soon abandon it. Tax spending by the working class would be reduced. So, Henry George proves in detail that one tax would be quite enough for the existence of society - after all, a large part of the people would be taxed with it, and an easy tax would be paid honestly. A single land tax, by abolishing export and import duties, would open up the world economic space, giving everyone the opportunity to use all the products of labor and nature of all countries. By significantly increasing the incomes of ordinary people, the single tax will make it impossible to overproduce goods.
In practice, according to Tolstoy, the only tax on land could be introduced in this way. By popular vote, the people proclaim the whole land as common property. Then gradually, over a more or less long time, part of the interest on the tax is paid, and only over time - the entire rate. This time will provide an opportunity, firstly, to accurately assess the quality of each plot of land, and secondly, to adapt everyone to the new economic conditions.
The idea of a single tax turned out to be quite viable, and a hundred years later, at the end of the 20th century, it was implemented in modern tax policy.
Since the task of any government is to promote justice between people, the duty of the rulers should be the destruction of the main injustice of the modern economy - private ownership of land. And the Russian rulers, who are accustomed to imitate Europe in everything, should not be afraid to go against it, because. the economic life of Russia is peculiar - finally, the Russian people must also come of age, when they will live by their own mind and act in accordance with their own conditions.
It must be said that L.N. Tolstoy always consistently rejected the very idea of property. In many ways, he implemented these views in the practice of his life, renouncing the right to intellectual property in his works and from all his land holdings. Even his dying departure from Yasnaya Polyana was essentially an act of renunciation of all property.
Consideration of economic issues is also devoted to the great work of Tolstoy "So what should we do?". In it, Leo Tolstoy sharply criticized the political economy theories, originating primarily from Adam Smith and Karl Marx. So, for example, Tolstoy disagrees both with the idea that the main factor of production is labor, and with the statement that the main factor of production is capital. Factors such as solar energy or worker morale are equally important for any production, and many of them we do not yet know at all.
The reason for the existence of money, according to Tolstoy, is not the facilitation of exchange, as economists say, but the exploitation of the poor by the rich. With the help of money, it is very convenient for a king or leader to collect, store and accumulate his wealth - money is easily divided and almost does not deteriorate. Whenever there was no need to pay tax to the treasury or tribute to the winner, people got along just fine with barter, immediately exchanging their goods for what they needed. With his refusal of royalties for his work, Leo Tolstoy actually renounced the monetary mechanism.
The division of labor, when some people are engaged only in physical labor, for example, peasants, and others only in mental labor, like scientists, teachers, writers, not only is not the progress of the economy, as Adam Smith and his followers thought, but there is its most undoubted regression. . The man of the future will easily combine manual and intellectual labor, developing both his body and his soul to the same extent - and only such a person will be able to achieve the maximum effect in his work.
The task of educating such a person, according to Tolstoy, lies with mothers. By her example, every real mother brings up such a perfect person - after all, she works, and very hard, both physically and mentally at the same time.
The most important economic principle for Lev Nikolayevich was also the rejection of all excesses, luxury, and wealth. As a young man, Tolstoy sewed for himself special clothes, a cross between a peasant shirt and a monastic cassock, and wore it all year round. The style of clothing he invented turned out to be very viable, and for more than a hundred years it has been known under the name "hoodies".
Modesty in eating resulted in vegetarianism, the denial of smoking and drunkenness. Largely thanks to this ascetic lifestyle, Tolstoy, who from childhood was distinguished by poor health and a tendency to tuberculosis, was able to live to an advanced age full of strength, and at 82 he rode a horse on complete impassability, overtaking his 20-year-old secretary.
Personal wealth, according to Leo Tolstoy, is completely inefficient economically.
It is always earned with great effort - and requires even more work for its preservation. And at the same time, it does not at all correspond to the real economic needs of its owner: one person does not need more than one room, more than the amount of food determined by the requests of his body - and, nevertheless, the accumulation of wealth leads to such unnatural situations when, for example, a family of two owns six bedrooms.
There is only one reason for striving for economic wealth: the wretchedness of spiritual life. For just as heavy clothing hinders the movement of the body, so wealth hinders the movement of the soul. Seeing all the immeasurable sea of poverty, any person, as a being endowed with conscience and shame, will give up his wealth. Tolstoy sees the source of wealth and poverty only in the moral savagery of the majority of people: after all, a tramp is always a necessary addition to a millionaire.
The effectiveness of Tolstoy's teachings was tested in practice by numerous Tolstoy communities that dispersed in the 20th century. all over the world.
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910) is one of the most significant Russian writers and thinkers. Leo Tolstoy was the founder of the Tolstoy movement, one of the fundamental theses of which is the Gospel “non-resistance to evil by force”.
This position of non-resistance is fixed, according to Tolstoy, in numerous places in the Gospel and is the core of the teachings of Christ, as, indeed, of Buddhism.
Criticizing the socio-political structure of contemporary Russia, Tolstoy relied on moral and religious progress in the consciousness of mankind. He associated the idea of historical progress with the solution of the question of the purpose of man and the meaning of his life, the answer to which was called upon to give the “true religion” he created. In it, Tolstoy recognized only the ethical side, denying the theological aspects of church teachings and, in connection with this, the role of the church in public life. He associated the ethics of religious self-improvement of a person with the refusal of any struggle, with the principle of non-resistance to evil by violence, with the preaching of universal love. According to Tolstoy, "the kingdom of God is within us" and therefore the ontological-cosmological and metaphysical-theological understanding of God is unacceptable to him. Considering all power to be evil, Tolstoy came up with the idea of negating the state. Since in public life he rejected violent methods of struggle, he believed that the abolition of the state should occur through the refusal of everyone to fulfill public and state duties. If the religious and moral self-improvement of a person was supposed to give him a certain spiritual and social order, then, obviously, the complete denial of any statehood could not guarantee such an order. This revealed the inconsistency of the initial principles and the conclusions drawn from them in Tolstoy's utopian philosophy.
Tolstoy saw the essence of knowledge in the understanding of the meaning of life - the main issue of any religion. It is it that is called upon to give an answer to the fundamental question of our being: why do we live and what is the attitude of man to the surrounding infinite world. “The shortest expression of the meaning of life is this: the world is moving, improving; the task of a person is to participate in this movement, obeying and contributing to it” . According to Tolstoy, God is love. In his artistic creations, Tolstoy appealed to the people as the bearer of true faith and morality, considering them the basis of the entire social building.
Tolstoy's worldview was greatly influenced by J.Zh. Rousseau, I. Kant and A. Schopenhauer. Philosophical searches of Tolstoy turned out to be consonant with a certain part of Russian and foreign society (the so-called Tolstoyism). Moreover, among his followers were not only members of various religious utopian sects, but also supporters of specific "non-violent" methods of struggle for socialism. Among them is, for example, M. Gandhi, an outstanding figure in the national liberation movement of India, who called Tolstoy his teacher.
The essence of Christianity, according to Tolstoy, can be expressed in a simple rule: Be kind and do not resist evil by force". "Be kind" is the positive, active content of morality, which includes all the commandments of the New Testament - love God, love your neighbor as yourself, etc. - all the active content of the teachings of Christ. But if we repay good with good, we don’t do anything special, “isn’t that what the Gentiles do?” In this case, we are within the framework of a cyclic, closed relationship of reciprocal gift: "you - to me, I - to you", in which there is no morality, since we, as it were, "pay" for the good done to us. Another thing is if we respond to evil with good. This is where the highest morality is manifested, since we stop the chain of evil on ourselves. After all, evil exists (spreads) in the causal chains of evil as a response to evil with evil, and good, on the contrary, in the causal chains of good as a response to good with good. Therefore, to respond with evil for evil, with violence for violence, means to allow evil to spread through us. It is impossible to recognize a forceful action in response to evil as remaining in the bosom of good. Therefore, the only answer to the evil done against us can only be a word, only a gesture addressed to conscience, but not counteraction by force! This is the negative, "inactive" content of morality. Thus, the general rule of morality can be reformulated as follows: create new chains of goodness (the positive, active part of morality) and stop the spread of evil chains (“do not resist evil by force” is the negative, inactive part of morality). This means giving the world good beyond measure - not only for all the good things done to us (which is natural), but also for all the evil. In this way, we do not close the good in discrete acts of mutual exchange, but make good our destiny - stopping the spread of endless chains of evil and generating endless chains of good.
The religious and philosophical searches of Leo Tolstoy were associated with the experience and comprehension of a wide variety of philosophical and religious teachings, on the basis of which a worldview system was formed, distinguished by a consistent desire for certainty and clarity (to a large extent - at the level of common sense) in explaining the fundamental philosophical and religious problems and, accordingly, a peculiar confessional and preaching style of expressing one's own "creed". The fact of the enormous influence of Tolstoy's literary work on Russian and world culture is absolutely indisputable. The ideas of the writer caused and cause much more ambiguous assessments. They were also perceived both in Russia (in philosophical terms, for example, by N.N. Strakhov, in religious terms, they became the basis of "Tolstoyism" as a religious trend), and in the world (in particular, Tolstoy's preaching found a very serious response from major figures Indian National Liberation Movement). At the same time, the critical attitude towards Tolstoy precisely as a thinker is widely represented in the Russian intellectual tradition. V. S. Solovyov, N. K. Mikhailovsky, G. V. Florovsky, G. V. Plekhanov, I. A. Ilyin and others wrote that Tolstoy was a brilliant artist, but a "bad thinker" in different years . However, no matter how serious the arguments of the critics of Tolstoy's teaching sometimes may be, it undoubtedly occupies its unique place in the history of Russian thought, reflecting the spiritual path of the great writer, his personal philosophical experience of answering the "last", metaphysical questions.
Deep and retained its significance in subsequent years was the influence on the young Tolstoy of the ideas of J. J. Rousseau. The critical attitude of the writer to civilization, the preaching of "naturalness", which in the late L. Tolstoy resulted in a direct denial of the significance of cultural creativity, including his own, in many respects go back precisely to the ideas of the French enlightener. Later influences include the moral philosophy of A. Schopenhauer ("the most brilliant of men," according to the Russian writer) and Eastern (primarily Buddhist) motifs in Schopenhauer's doctrine of "the world as will and representation." However, later, in the 1980s, Tolstoy's attitude to Schopenhauer's ideas became more critical, which was not least due to his high appreciation of I. Kant's "Critique of Practical Reason" (whom he characterized as "a great religious teacher"). However, it should be recognized that Kant's transcendentalism, the ethics of duty and, in particular, the understanding of history do not play any significant role in the religious and philosophical preaching of the late Tolstoy, with its specific anti-historicism, the rejection of state, social and cultural forms of life as exclusively "external", personifying a false historical choice of mankind, leading the latter away from solving its main and only task - the task of moral self-improvement. VV Zenkovsky quite rightly wrote about the "panmoralism" of the teachings of L. Tolstoy. The ethical doctrine of the writer was largely syncretic, incomplete in nature. He drew his moralizing inspiration from various sources: J. J. Rousseau, A. Schopenhauer, I. Kant, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism. But this thinker, far from any kind of orthodoxy, considered Christian, evangelical morality to be the foundation of his own religious and moral teaching. In fact, the main meaning of Tolstoy's religious philosophizing consisted in the experience of a kind of ethicization of Christianity, reducing this religion to the sum of certain ethical principles, moreover, principles that allow rational and accessible not only to the philosophical mind, but also to ordinary common sense justification. Actually, all the religious and philosophical writings of the late Tolstoy are devoted to this task: "Confession", "What is my faith?", "The Kingdom of God is within you", "On Life" and others. Having chosen a similar path, the writer went through it to the end. His conflict with the church was inevitable, and, of course, it was not only "external" in nature: he criticized the foundations of Christian dogma, mystical theology, and denied the "divinity" of Christ. The most serious philosophical criticism of the religious ethics of L. Tolstoy was once made by V. S. Solovyov (“Three Conversations”) and I. A. Ilyin (“On Resistance to Evil by Force”).
Essence of Tolstoyanism in the following:
- . many religious dogmas must be criticized and discarded, as well as magnificent ceremonial, cults, hierarchy;
- . religion must become simple and accessible to the people;
- . God, religion is goodness, love, reason and conscience;
- . the meaning of life is self-improvement;
- . the main evil on Earth is death and violence;
- . it is necessary to abandon violence as a way to solve any problems;
- . the basis of human behavior should be non-resistance to evil;
- . the state is a moribund institution and, since it is an apparatus of violence, has no right to exist;
- . everyone needs to undermine the state in all possible ways, to ignore it - not to go to work for officials, not to participate in political life, etc.
For his religious and philosophical views in 1901 L.N. Tolstoy was anathematized (cursed) and excommunicated from the Church.
Before 1880, and what he wrote after, lay a deep abyss. But all this was written by one person, and much of what struck and seemed completely new in the works of the late Tolstoy already existed in his early writings. Even in the very first we see the search for a rational meaning of life; faith in the power of common sense and in one's own mind; contempt for modern civilization with its "artificial" multiplication of needs; deep-rooted disrespect for the actions and institutions of the state and society; a splendid disregard for conventional wisdom, as well as for "good manners" in science and literature; a pronounced tendency to teach. But in the early things it was scattered and unconnected; after what happened in the late 1870s. "conversion" was all united in a coherent doctrine, in a doctrine with dogmatically worked out details - tolstoyanism . This doctrine surprised and frightened off many former followers of Tolstoy. Until 1880, if he belonged anywhere, then rather to the conservative camp, but now he joined the opposite camp.
Father Andrei Tkachev about Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy was always fundamentally a rationalist, a thinker who intelligence above all other properties of the human soul. But at the time when he wrote his great novels, his rationalism faded somewhat. Philosophy War and peace and Anna Karenina(“A man must live in such a way as to give himself and his family the best”) is the capitulation of his rationalism to the inherent irrationality of life. The search for the meaning of life was then abandoned. Life itself seemed to be the meaning of life. The greatest wisdom for Tolstoy of those years was to accept without further ado his place in life and courageously endure its hardships. But in the last part Anna Karenina growing anxiety. It was precisely at the time when Tolstoy wrote it (1876) that the crisis began, from which he emerged as a prophet of a new religious and ethical teaching.
This teaching, Tolstoyism, is rationalized Christianity, from which all traditions and all mysticism have been torn off. He rejected personal immortality and focused exclusively on the moral teaching of the gospel. From the moral teaching of Christ, the words "Resist not evil" are taken as the fundamental principle from which everything else follows. He rejected the authority of the Church, which supports the actions of the state, and condemned the state, which supports violence and coercion. Both Church and State are immoral, as are all other forms of organized coercion. Tolstoy's condemnation of all existing forms of coercion allows us to classify the political side of Tolstoyism as anarchism. This condemnation extends to all states without exception, and Tolstoy had no more respect for the democratic states of the West than for the Russian autocracy. But in practice, his anarchism was directed with its tip against the regime existing in Russia. He admitted that a constitution could be a lesser evil than autocracy (he recommended a constitution in an article young king written after the accession to the throne of Nicholas II) and often attacked the same institutions as the radicals and revolutionaries.
Portrait of Leo Tolstoy. Artist I. Repin, 1901
His attitude towards active revolutionaries was ambivalent. He was fundamentally against violence and, accordingly, against political assassinations. But there was a difference in his attitude towards revolutionary terror and government repression. The assassination of Alexander II by revolutionaries in 1881 did not leave him indifferent, but he wrote a letter protesting against the execution of the assassins. In essence, Tolstoy became a great force on the side of the revolution, and the revolutionaries recognized this, treating the “great old man” with all respect, although they did not accept the doctrine of “non-resistance to evil” and despised the Tolstoyans. Tolstoy's agreement with the socialists strengthened his own communism - the condemnation of private property, especially land. The methods that he proposed for the destruction of evil were different (in particular, the voluntary renunciation of all money and land), but in its negative part, his teaching on this issue coincided with socialism.
Tolstoy's conversion was largely a reaction of his profound rationalism to the irrationalism into which he fell in the sixties and seventies. His metaphysics can be formulated as the identification of the principle of life with Reason. He, like Socrates, boldly identifies the absolute good with absolute knowledge. His favorite phrase is "Reason, i.e., the Good," and in his teaching it occupies the same place as that of Spinoza. Deus sive Natura(God or [i.e.] nature - lat.). Knowledge is the necessary foundation of goodness; this knowledge is inherent in every person. But it is overshadowed and crushed by the evil fog of civilization and sophistication. You only need to listen to the inner voice of your conscience (which Tolstoy was inclined to identify with Kant's Practical Reason) and not allow the false fires of human sophistication (and here the whole civilization was meant - art, science, social traditions, laws and historical dogmas of the theological religion) - to knock you off way.
And yet, for all its rationalism, Tolstoy's religion remains in a certain sense mystical. True, he rejected the mysticism accepted by the Church, refused to accept God as a person and spoke with mockery of the Sacraments (which for every believer is the most terrible blasphemy). And yet, the highest, final authority (as in every case of metaphysical rationalism) for him is the irrational human "conscience". He did everything he could to identify it in theory with Reason. But mystical daimonion returned again and again, and in all of Tolstoy's most important later writings, his "conversion" is described as an experience mystical in its essence. Mystical - because personal and unique. This is the result of a secret revelation, perhaps prepared by preliminary mental development, but in its essence, like any mystical experience, incommunicable. Tolstoy, as described in confessions, it has been prepared by all previous mental life. But all purely rational solutions to the basic question have proved unsatisfactory, and the final solution is portrayed as a series of mystical experiences, as repeated flashes of inner light. Civilized man lives in a state of undeniable sin. Questions about meaning and justification arise in him against his will - because of the fear of death - and the answer comes like a ray of inner light; such is the process that Tolstoy described repeatedly - in confessions, in Death of Ivan Ilyich, in memories, in Notes of a madman, in Owner and employee.
It necessarily follows from this that truth cannot be preached, that everyone must discover it for himself. This is a teaching confessions, where the goal is not to demonstrate, but to tell and “infect”. However, later, when the initial impulse grew, Tolstoy began to preach in logical forms. He himself never believed in the efficacy of preaching. It was his disciples, people of a completely different type, who turned Tolstoyism into a teaching-sermon and pushed Tolstoy himself to this. In its final form, Tolstoyism almost lost its mystical element, and its religion turned into a eudemonistic doctrine - a doctrine based on the search for happiness. A person should be kind, because this is the only way for him to become happy. In the novel Sunday, written when Tolstoy's teaching had already crystallized and become dogmatic, there is no mystical motive and the revival of Nekhlyudov is a simple adaptation of life to the moral law, in order to free oneself from the unpleasant reactions of one's own conscience.
In the end, Tolstoy came to the conclusion that the moral law, acting through conscience, is a law in a strictly scientific sense, like the law of gravity or other laws of nature. This is strongly expressed in the idea of Karma borrowed from the Buddhists, whose profound difference from Christianity is that Karma acts mechanically, without any intervention of Divine grace, and is an indispensable consequence of sin. Morality, in finally crystallized Tolstoyanism, is the art of avoiding Karma or adapting to it. Tolstoy's morality is the morality of happiness, as well as purity, but not compassion. Love for God, that is, for the moral law in itself, is the first and only virtue, while mercy and love for one's neighbor are only consequences. For a saint from Tolstoyism, mercy, that is, the actual feeling of love, is not necessary. He must act as if he loved his neighbors, and this would mean that he loves God and will be happy. Thus, Tolstoyism is directly opposed to the teachings of Dostoevsky. For Dostoevsky mercy, love for people, pity is the highest virtue and God is revealed to people only through pity and mercy. Tolstoy's religion is absolutely selfish. There is no God in it, except for the moral law within man. The goal of good deeds is moral peace. This helps us understand why Tolstoy was accused of epicureanism, Luciferism and immense pride, for there is nothing outside Tolstoy, what would he worship.
Tolstoy was always a great rationalist, and his rationalism found satisfaction in the superbly constructed system of his religion. But the irrational Tolstoy was also alive under the hardened crust of crystallized dogma. Tolstoy's diaries reveal to us how difficult it was for him to live according to his ideal of moral happiness. Except for the early years, when he was carried away by the primary mystical impulse of his conversion, he was never happy in the way he wanted to be. This was partly because it was impossible for him to live up to his preaching, and because his family was constantly and stubbornly resisting his new ideas. But besides all this, the old Adam always lived in him. Carnal desires overwhelmed him to a ripe old age; and never left the desire to go beyond - the desire that gave rise to War and peace, the desire for the fullness of life with all its joys and beauty. We catch glimpses of this in all his writings, but these glimpses are few, because he subjected himself to the strictest discipline. However, we have a portrait of Tolstoy in old age, where an irrational, full-blooded person appears before us in all tangible vitality - Gorky Memories of Tolstoy, an ingenious portrait worthy of the original.
13. Tolstoy's teaching
We will focus only on the most significant points:
one). The basic idea of life is a religious idea.
“No matter how brave,” Tolstoy says, “privileged science with philosophy, assuring that it is a decisive and leader of minds, not a leader, but a servant. A worldview is always given to it ready-made by religion, and science only works on the path indicated to it by religion. the meaning of people's lives, and science applies this meaning to various aspects of life.
He keeps repeating the same thought. For example:
“Philosophy, science, public opinion say: the teaching of Christ is unfulfillable because a person’s life depends not on the light of reason alone, with which he can illuminate this very life, but on general laws, and therefore it is not necessary to illuminate this life with reason and live according to it, but we must live as we live, firmly believing that according to the laws of historical, sociological and other progress, after we have lived badly for a very long time, our life will become very good by itself ... "
Such attacks on science and contemptuous tone at the address of "historical", "sociological" and other laws should not surprise us. Science has never been able to give Tolstoy anything, because, as we have seen before, he asked her about something that is not at all what science can be asked about.
But if we leave aside Tolstoy's too harsh formulation, which he constantly sins when speaking of science or philosophy, and look only at the skeleton of the thought expressed in the previous words, then we will find an absolutely fair indication of one essential feature of scientific and philosophical thinking - namely, recognition of "necessity" in life. Science and philosophy cannot believe so boundlessly in the power of the human mind, as Count Tolstoy believes in it. Science and philosophy consider and study man not in himself, but in relation to the universe, to history, to what was done millions of years ago and will be done millions of years later, when we personally did not exist and will not exist. Hence the difference in assessment. Putting a man next to Kazbek or Mont Blanc, we find that he is a very nice-looking object; but, putting it next to the fly, we find that it is a creature of rather extensive dimensions. Speaking of personal life and even the life of an individual generation in comparison with the past and future fate of all mankind and the entire universe, we can hardly attach to them the importance that we must attach if we look at them as something independently existing. An astronomer studying the formation of the universe, a geologist studying the formation of the earth's crust, a physicist and a chemist studying the properties and activities of the elements, a historian studying the past of man, cannot in any way be imbued with unconditional respect for the human mind, because until now they have not seen its traces on anything, or these footprints are as insignificant as the footprints of a child on a granite rock. Even, I repeat, the historian can boldly ask himself, what did the human mind do? So far too little. The greatest facts of our new European history - the migration of peoples, the fall of serfdom, the development of the capitalist system of economy - do not bear the slightest trace of human reason. On what basis, then, can such high hopes be placed on this latter? Not to mention the fact that it is very difficult to understand something, given the undoubted mental inertia and mental downtroddenness of most people, it is directly impossible to translate this understanding into actions in 999 cases out of 1000. Count Tolstoy claims, however, that this is very easy. "If only," he says, "people would stop ruining themselves and expecting someone to come and help them"...
If only ... only ... yes, this "only" is the whole point.
But with this exaggerated faith of Tolstoy in the power of the human mind and will, with his noble, albeit utopian conviction that life will change immediately, if we want it and believe it, we will meet again. In the meantime, the second paragraph, which reads:
2) The religious idea is practical, that is, it leads a person not to contemplation, but to activity, deeds. It gives a person the rules of life and, above all, leads him out of the vicious circle of personal egoism.
Can you be satisfied with your personal life? Count Tolstoy emphatically denies this.
"All those countless deeds that we do for ourselves are not needed in the future; all this is a deception by which we ourselves deceive ourselves. With the parable of the vinedressers, Christ explains this source of people's delusion ... forcing them to take the ghost of life, their personal life, for living in the owner's cultivated garden, they imagined that they were the owners of this garden, and from this false idea a series of insane and cruel we have our personal property, that we have the right to it and can use it as we want, without having any obligations to anyone.According to the teachings of Christ, people should "understand and feel" that from the day of birth until death they are always in unrequited debt before someone, before those who lived before them and before those who live and have to live, and before what was and is and will be the beginning of everything.
A few lines later, Tolstoy says more clearly: "True life is only that which continues the life of the past, contributes to the good of the life of today and the good of the life to come."
Although this idea is expressed in a very general and therefore completely unconvincing form, I still think that neither science nor philosophy can object to it. Man, as a person, is in fact indebted to those who have lived, are living, and have to live, and it has long been not only said, but proven that alone, left to himself, he can only successfully grow hair. Tolstoy does not get tired of calling personal life a ghost - a ghostly one, from which the conclusion naturally follows that true life can be based only on renunciation of oneself in order to serve people.
3) The modern teaching of the world is contrary to the teaching of Christ. Tolstoy constantly returns to this idea, and, one must admit, this is the strength of his teaching.
Once he was walking through Moscow and saw a watchman rudely driving a beggar away from the gate, where it was forbidden for beggars to stand. "Gospel read?" Tolstoy asked the watchman. "Was reading". - "And he read:" And who will feed the hungry! driving the people from where it was ordered to drive, he suddenly turned out to be wrong. He was embarrassed and apparently looking for excuses. Suddenly a light flashed in his intelligent black eyes; he turned sideways to me, as if leaving. "Have you read our rules?" he asked. I said that I hadn't read it. "Don't say it like that," said the watchman, shaking his head triumphantly, and, wrapping his sheepskin coat, gallantly went to his place. He was the only person in my whole life who strictly logically resolved that eternal under our social system, he stood before me and stands before everyone who calls himself a Christian.
The teaching of Christ is built on love and brotherhood, our life is based on strength. The strong prevail over the weak, the scientist over the stupid, the rich over the poor, the talented over the untalented.
What to do? First of all, think again and ask yourself: does the very life that I spend all my strength bring me happiness? There can be no two answers to this question, according to Tolstoy. We live according to the teachings of the world, we think about the accumulation of wealth, about superiority over others, about the gallant upbringing of our children, we fuss, worry, suffer, and all this because of what? To live like people, or not to live worse than other people. Tolstoy came to his senses and came to the following conclusion: “in my exclusively in the worldly sense of a happy life, I will accumulate the suffering that I endured in the name of the teachings of the world, so much that they would be a good martyr in the name of Christ. All the most difficult moments of my life, starting from student drunkenness and debauchery to duels, war, and to that ill health and those unnatural and painful conditions of life in which I now live - all this is martyrdom in the name of the teachings of the world Yes, I'm talking about my own, still exceptionally happy in a worldly sense , life. We do not see all the difficulty and danger of fulfilling the teachings of the world only because we believe that everything that we endure for it is necessary. "
“Walk through a large crowd of people, especially urban ones, and peer into these weary, anxious faces, and then remember your life and the lives of people, the details of which you managed to find out; remember all those violent deaths, all those suicides that you happened to hear about, and ask: in the name of what all this suffering, despair and grief, leading to suicide?
Tolstoy's answer is simple: we are the martyrs of the teachings of the world. Contrary to the teachings of Christ, it leads us to fratricidal struggle, malice, hatred, bitter loneliness. It makes us wish for the death of our neighbor and lower the hand extended to help him. It sets unnecessary and empty goals for our activities, pursuing which we completely forget about the true meaning of life. And this oblivion is not in vain: we pay for it with crimes, suicides, a heavy and constant feeling of discontent and dissatisfaction. Chasing the ghosts of worldly ideals, we feel only emptiness and fatigue. There are no happy people in our life. “Look,” says Tolstoy, “between these people and find, from poor to rich, a person who would have enough of what he earns for what he considers necessary, necessary according to the teachings of the world, and you will see that you will not find even one Every one struggles with all his strength to acquire what is not necessary for him, but what is required of him by the teachings of the world, and the absence of which he considers to be a misfortune. and another, and so this Sisyphean work goes on endlessly, ruining people's lives.
So, the “teaching of the world” is to blame, and it is guilty primarily because it never, under any effort, provides a person with happiness. Crimes and suicides, explosive bombs and executions, plague and crop failures, riots and fights - this, apparently, is the material that fills our daily existence. From time to time, some “pleasant fact” appears on the stage, so microscopic that, compared with the evil surrounding it, it seems like a pebble rolling along the steepness of Kazbek, and a timid glare of a lantern over the darkness of the abyss, where even the rays of the sun do not reach. Where is there to talk about happiness?.. In order to have happiness, you must first of all stick to Tolstoy's famous rule:
4) Do not resist evil.
I am by no means an optimist and I live in the conviction that no matter how terrible the evil that we know, it does not constitute even a hundredth of the evil that we do not know. We do not know and cannot know how a mother suffers in whose arms a starving child dies; we do not and cannot know what a person experiences when the ax of the guillotine falls over him. For us, these are hieroglyphs. And yet, despite this view of things, I believe that Tolstoy exaggerates too much. He thickens them when he says that the suffering he personally endured in his exceptionally happy life would have been enough for a good Christian martyr; exaggerates even when he says that the teachings of the world are one sheer evil.
I'm not going to say a banal and vulgar phrase that along with evil there is good, along with misanthropy, compassion is manifested ... well, philanthropy, or something. God is with them, and with the good of our lives, and with philanthropy, since, obviously, they are not the point.
I ask myself: what is good? Good is pleasure, and the sum of these pleasures is happiness. Evil is suffering. As a result of happiness - the continuation of life, as a result of suffering - the cessation of life, that is, death. Death is inevitable if the sum of pleasures is less than the sum of pains; life is possible only on condition that the sum of pleasures outweighs the sum of pains. This is an elementary conclusion of biology, and it is clear what follows from it.
Let not Tolstoy, but someone else, even a second Schopenhauer or Hartmann, compile a list of all the manifestations of evil. Having written three reams of paper, they will see themselves only at the very beginning of the work ... And yet life goes on, and yet people live longer than before, and yet the work of mankind does not stop for a minute.
The sum of pleasures exceeds the sum of pains. But how? Where is that mysterious sign that turns a negative value into a positive one? Where is that which makes our life, full of evil, yet capable of continuing?
I know that the answer will be unpleasant to the followers of Count Tolstoy, and yet I see no reason to hide it. This mysterious sign, this is what we are looking for, is nothing but resistance to evil. In the constant, stubborn, persistent struggle with it, humanity finds an inexhaustible source of pleasure, and this struggle gives it the opportunity to endure what is unbearable from the point of view of reason.
I will not argue about the term: resistance with violence or without violence. Violence is different. A mother who gently and tenderly lays down her child, who does not want to sleep, commits violence against him; the soldier who rudely leads me by the scruff of the neck into captivity commits violence against me; the wife who does not give me, the sick, what is harmful to me, commits violence; Tolstoy, who takes me out of a state of blissful ignorance with a brilliant page full of denial, commits violence against me, and the best proof that this is really violence is that I argue with him. In one case I fight, in another I argue, in the fourth I flounder - and here and there I resist. Resistance, whatever it may be, gives a preponderance to pleasure over pain, and this has always been the case as long as mankind has lived. A troglodyte resisting a cave lion that attacked him; Russian people who resisted Napoleon's invasion; a publicist who opposes lies and superstition - they are all rapists in one form or another, and all of them in opposition found the pleasure that made it possible to endure suffering.
If we recognize that resistance to evil, giving a person an inexhaustible source of pleasure, determines the very possibility of a life immersed in evil, then we will understand not only how we are still alive, but also how we will continue to live, at least evil has increased.
But, it will be said, Tolstoy does not deny resistance in general. He only denies resisting evil with evil, violence with violence, and demands that a person follow the path of goodness, no matter what. This, however, is not the case. The text is clear: do not resist evil, no more and no less.
It seems to me that although Tolstoy made the text on non-resistance to evil the cornerstone of his teaching, yet in interpreting this text he often contradicts himself. In one place he writes: "These words: do not resist evil and evil, understood in their direct meaning, were for me truly the key that opened everything for me." What can these words mean in their direct meaning? Do not resist evil in any way: neither by evil, nor by good, nor by violence, nor by persuasion, by anything that is at your disposal. What is this "everything"? What could reveal to Tolstoy their direct meaning? If he reasoned not like a living and great man, but like a logical machine, he would say: all this is complete nothingness, all this is the transition aus individueller Nichtigkeit ins Urnichts [from individual nothingness to primordial nothingness (German)], i.e. nirvana. However, Tolstoy demands kindness, truth, love. Obviously, he gave the text too broad a meaning, making it the cornerstone of his morality, and at the same time too narrow, believing that it was compatible with the preaching of active love. Non-resistance to evil is a negative requirement and, as such, can only lead to complete elimination from life. There is an obvious confusion here.
Besides, I never understood, and now I don't understand, why instead of a negative text, Tolstoy did not make a positive text about active love as the cornerstone, for example: "Faith without deeds is dead"? He would have avoided much confusion in that case. But he insists that the commandment of active love follows entirely from the commandment of non-resistance to evil. How, how? Having reached this question, Tolstoy always puts an end to it and starts talking about something else.
For his favorite theory of non-resistance to evil, Count Tolstoy absolutely does not recognize any restrictions, even those that would result from the purely reflective side of human nature. In his famous letter to Engelhardt, he says that if the ulus broke into his house and began to cut his own child before his eyes, he would not resist.
There is such a page in "The Tale of Ivan the Fool and His Two Brothers".
"The cockroach tsar crossed the border with an army, sent forwards to search for Ivan's army. They searched, searched - there were no troops. Wait, wait, will it be anywhere? And there is no rumor about the army, there is no one to fight with. The cockroach king sent to seize the villages. one village, fools, fools jumped out, look at the soldiers - they marvel. The soldiers began to take bread and cattle from the fools, the fools give it away, and no one defends. The soldiers went to another village - everything is the same. Soldiers looked like a day, looked like another - everywhere everything the same; everyone gives, no one defends himself and invites you to live: if you, dear ones, are told that life is bad on your side, come to live with us completely. feeds, and does not defend, but calls to live. The soldiers became bored, they came to their cockroach king. - We can’t, they say, fight; take us to another place; it would be good if there was a war, but this is like cutting jelly. We can no longer fight here.- The cockroach got angry nsky king, ordered the soldiers to go through the whole kingdom, destroy villages, houses, burn bread, kill cattle. - Do not listen, he says, my order, everyone, he says, I will execute you. - The soldiers were frightened, they began to do it according to the royal decree. They began at home, burned bread, beat cattle. All fools do not defend themselves, they only cry: old men cry, old women cry, little guys cry. - Why do they say you offend us? Why, they say, you ruin good badly; if you need it, you better take it. - It became vile to the soldiers. They did not go further, and the whole army fled."
According to the meaning of the story "Godson", it turns out that a person who killed a robber in vehemence, who had already raised an ax over his mother, committed a "great sin".
It seems to me that it is completely superfluous to consider such rules from their philosophical side: you just need to put yourself in the situation that Count Tolstoy describes, and ask yourself: what will I do in this case?
Will I, like the fool from the tale of Ivan Tsarevich, be indifferent, seeing that my wife is being raped before my eyes, will I humbly beg the rapist: "Yes, my dear, stay with us completely"? Will I be calm and humble when my children or mother are killed? I cannot remain calm, and in this I cannot - the best answer to the sermon of Count Tolstoy. Against the indignation of my mind, I still have the strength to fight and have the strength to subdue it, but against the indignation of instinct, reflex, I am just as powerless as powerless not to flinch when a needle is suddenly stuck in my back, powerless not to sneeze when the mucous membrane of the nose is irritated , do not squeeze the pupil when a candle is moved to it. But instinct, reflex is the basis of our human life, nine-tenths of which, by the way, pass in completely unconscious processes, and, "having destroyed this basis, I will destroy the very possibility of life", which, however, was brilliantly expressed by Count Tolstoy himself in "War and the world."
Let's move on to the fifth point:
5) Help your neighbor and love him. In establishing this rule, Count Tolstoy especially hesitated, especially sought and suffered. How can you help your neighbor?
His living human heart demanded feats of self-denial and self-sacrifice, his analytical resonating mind never for a moment ceased to philosophize slyly and in this sly philosophizing every now and then encountered the living call of a living human heart. Already from childhood, Tolstoy was most attracted by the practical side of Christianity - the teaching was supposed to form the basis of his entire moral philosophy, but the resonant mind does not allow one to look at the matter so simply and, having come, in essence, to nothing, delivers to its owner only long agony of fruitless searching. Everyone, I think, remembers how Tolstoy, having once found himself in the Rzhanov House in Moscow - this den of terrible poverty, and, moreover, hopeless poverty, did not know what to do with the thirty-seven rubles left with him. This episode forced Mikhailovsky to write bitter and brilliant lines:
“We,” says N. K. Mikhailovsky, “are in the Rzhanov House, in the very center of poverty; she, although drunk and ugly, is genuine and undoubted, swarming around. Count Tolstoy needs to get rid of 37 rubles, that is, distribute them "And look how difficult it turns out. The Count himself thinks about it, and calls the innkeeper Ivan Fedotovich for advice, and this Ivan Fedotovich, this leech, sucking and drinking poverty, turns out to be both "good-natured" and "conscientious". and the tavern parlor, and now reflections begin: what to do with 37 rubles? The footman offers to give Paramonovna, who "sometimes does not eat," but Ivan Fedotovich rejects Paramonovna, therefore he "goes on a spree." Spiridon Ivanovich could be helped, but even here the innkeeper finds an obstacle It would be possible for Akulina, but she "receives. "To the "blind", so the count himself does not want him: he saw him and heard him swear with what bad words, etc. You must admit that this scene is striking and characteristic: among the teeming circle of poverty, the graph does not know how "get rid" of 37 rubles, and everything resonates and resonates, to which occupation even the innkeeper and the sexual are attracted. Is it a real feeling? Let every really simple-hearted person go with 37 rubles in his pocket and, with the determination to get rid of them, go to Rzhanov’s house and even look at Paramonovna, who “sometimes doesn’t eat” ... And here, for mercy, “telling about a thousand miles around their good disposition" and having resolved the most important issues in the most humane way, they are so worried about 37 rubles and try so hard that they get, perhaps, even one that does not eat, but does not "go on a spree", but shines with virtue. For thirty-seven rubles, give them virtue as well ... No, as you like, but a living, direct feeling is not enough here.
In the end, Count Tolstoy came to the conclusion that it was impossible to help your neighbor with money, because money is evil; one cannot help him with knowledge, for we are all ignoramuses and science is illusory; one cannot help by intercession either, for this leads to opposition. How to help? - Love...
When the famine of 1891-1892 began in Russia, Tolstoy published an article in which monetary donations to the starving were recognized as unnecessary and any active interference in the life, or rather, death, of millions of people was generally denied. Thus spoke the resonating mind. A few days have passed, and we see Tolstoy in the very center of poverty, distributing bread and money, setting up free canteens.
It was the deeply loving human heart that forced him to do so.
What to do in the end, how to remain pure in the midst of life's filth, how to be moral among the immoral, truthful in the midst of lies, a Christian in the midst of the triumphant teachings of the world? All these questions can be combined into one: how to achieve happiness and peace of mind, harmony between word and deed, beliefs and life? In response to this, Count Tolstoy sets before us the ideal of a peasant's working life.
“To the question of what needs to be done?” writes Tolstoy, “the most undoubted answer came: first of all, what I myself need is my samovar, my stove, my water, my clothes, everything that I myself can do ... To the question whether it is necessary to organize this physical labor, to build a community in a village on earth - it turned out that all this is unnecessary, because a person who works by himself naturally adjoins the existing community of working people. time and will not deprive me of the possibility of that mental activity that I love, to which I am accustomed and which in moments of conceit I consider not useful to others, the answer turned out to be the most unexpected. It turned out that, having given eight hours to physical labor - that half of the day that I had previously spent in the hard efforts of combating boredom, I still had eight hours left.
Count Tolstoy suggests the following distribution of the day:
"Every person's day is divided by food itself into four parts, or four teams, as the peasants call it: 1) before breakfast; 2) from breakfast to dinner; 3) from lunch to afternoon tea and 4) from afternoon tea to evening. Human activity, in which he, in his very essence, feels the need for, is also divided into four types: 1) the activity of muscular strength, the work of the arms, legs, shoulders, back - hard work, from which you sweat; 2) the activity of the fingers and hands - the activity of dexterity, skill; 3) the activity of the mind and imagination, 4) the activity of communication with other people The benefits that a person uses are also divided into four types: every person uses, firstly, the products of hard labor: bread, cattle, buildings, wells, ponds, etc. secondly, by the activity of handicraft labor: clothes, boots, utensils, etc., thirdly, by works of mental activity: sciences, art, and, fourthly, by established communication with people. I thought it was better why would one alternate the activities of the day in such a way as to exercise all four human abilities and to produce all the four kinds of goods that people use, so that one part of the day - the first team - was devoted to hard work, the other to mental work, the third to handicraft and the fourth - communication with people. It seemed to me that then only the false division of labor that exists in our society will be destroyed, and that just division of labor will be established that does not violate the happiness of man.
General remarks on the teachings of Count Tolstoy. Taking this teaching as a whole, you see that it has several different sources, of which the first is: hatred of the teachings of the world in the name of the teachings of Christ.
It seems to me that this source is the most essential, and the contradiction contained in it is the most concrete and understandable. In the chapter on the writer's drama, we saw what made Tolstoy recognize his works as useless and even harmful. He confronted them with the needs and demands of the people, and at this painful face-to-face confrontation, brilliant works of art clearly expressed their guilt. But the recognition of uselessness and even harmfulness reached its extreme tension when Count Tolstoy asked himself: what does he serve, what does he preach? It turned out that both his life itself and all his works serve the teaching of the world and preach strength. He wanted to be healthier, smarter, more glorious than others, he preached the charm of a secure family life that must be won. To be healthier, smarter, more glorious than others means to be stronger than them. You can win a family prosperous life only by the power of beauty, intelligence, talent, wealth. His best heroes stand out either as masters, or as talents, that is, they stand out for their strength.
He believed in Christ, and serving power, preaching power seemed to him both criminal and sinful.
The teaching of Christ is the teaching of love. Christ forbade his disciples to call anyone lost and perishing. For him there were no Hellenes, no Jews, no slaves, no free - he knew only people. In life, he embodied only one law - the law of love.
Tolstoy, as a Christian, follows the same path. His folk stories are all written on the same theme, that humility, as the law of love, is superior to any other law, by which man serves himself.
This mood of Tolstoy turned into a philosophical system; He says:
Religion is a certain relationship established by man between himself and the eternal and infinite world, or between the beginning and the root cause of it.
From this answer to the first question follows of itself the answer to the second.
If religion is the established relation of a person to the world, which determines the meaning of his life, then morality is an indication and explanation of that activity of a person, which itself follows from this or that relation of a person to the world. And since we know only two basic relations to the world or its beginning, if we consider the pagan public relation as the spread of the personal, or three, if we consider the public pagan relation as a separate one, then there are only three moral teachings: the moral teaching is the primitive wild, personal moral teaching pagan or social and moral Christian teaching, that is, service to God, or Divine.
From the first relation of a person to the world follow moral teachings common to all pagan religions, which are based on the desire for the good of an individual and therefore determine all states, give the greatest good to the individual and indicate the means of acquiring this good.
Moral teachings flow from this attitude to the world: Epicurean in its lowest manifestation, the Mohammedan teaching of morality, which promises the gross good of the individual in this and the next world, and the teaching of secular utilitarian morality, which aims at the good of the individual only in this world.
The moral teaching of Buddhism in its crude form and the pessimistic secular teaching follow from the same teaching, which sets the goal of life for the benefit of the individual, and therefore deliverance from the suffering of the individual.
From the second, pagan, relationship of man to the world, which sets the goal of life for the benefit of a certain set of personalities, moral teachings follow that require a person to serve that set, the benefit of which is recognized as the goal of life. According to this doctrine, the use of personal wealth is allowed only to the extent that it is acquired by the entire totality that constitutes the religious basis of life. From this attitude to the world flow the moral teachings of the ancient Roman and Greek world known to us, where the individual always sacrificed himself to society, as well as Chinese morality; Jewish morality follows from this attitude - the subordination of one's own good to the good of the chosen people, and the morality of our time, which requires the sacrifice of the individual for the conditional good of the majority. From the same attitude to the world follows the morality of the majority of women who sacrifice their entire personality for the good of the family and, most importantly, children.
From the third, Christian, attitude to the world, which consists in the recognition by man of himself as an instrument of the higher will for the fulfillment of its goals, moral teachings corresponding to this understanding of life also follow, clarifying the dependence of man on the higher will and defining the requirements of this will. All the highest moral teachings known to mankind flow from this relationship of man to the world: Pythagorean, Stoic, Buddhist, Brahmin, Taoist [Taoist.] in their highest manifestation and Christian in its true sense, requiring the renunciation of personal will and of the good, not only personal, but also family and social in the name of fulfilling the will of the one who sent us into life, revealed to us in our minds. From this other or third relation to the infinite world or its beginning follows the real, non-hypocritical morality of each person, despite the fact that he nominally professes or preaches as morality, or what he wants to appear to be.
So a person who recognizes the essence of his attitude to the world in acquiring the greatest good for himself, no matter how much he says that he considers it moral to live for the family, for society, for the state, for humanity or for the fulfillment of the will of God, can skillfully pretend before people, deceiving them, but the real motive of his activity will always be only the good of his personality, so that when the need for choice presents itself, he will sacrifice not his personality for the family, for the state, for the fulfillment of the will of God, but everything for himself, because, seeing the meaning of his life only in the good of his personality, he cannot act otherwise until he changes his attitude to the world" (Severny Vestnik, January 1895).
Tolstoy does not and does not want to take into account either the history of our life or the structure of our organism. He now unequivocally believes in the power of human reason and will, as before, in the era of "War and Peace", unconditionally denied it. He urges us to love and believe, and thinks that we will begin to love and believe if we understand how criminal and vicious our life is, based on the pursuit of power, on the worship of power, on the service of power.
It seemed to Hamlet at times that one blow of a knife could end all his torments, hesitations, and doubts. It seems to Tolstoy that one effort of will and understanding will regenerate us and our life. That's why he says: "Think about it!"
Thinking is always good. It would be criminal to object to the need to change their minds. But is it so saving? First, who can change their minds? I admit that Tolstoy has a million readers. Of this million, let a hundred thousand, that is, a tenth, follow in his footsteps. But what can these one hundred thousand do with fifty centuries of history, thousands of millions of mankind, the structure of the body and heredity? Tolstoy does not recognize heredity, as does Rousseau; he thinks that a person will be born free, pure and good - well, but how does heredity exist, well, how can a person be born not free, not clean, not good? After all, this last assumption is more correct. Tolstoy believes that the mind can just as easily deal with instincts as a man with an ant. History does not say anything about such a power of reason, but says just the opposite. There was no era when people did not understand that their life was terribly far from perfect, and there was no era when this understanding would completely regenerate them.
Once upon a time, Tolstoy equated an individual person to an infinitesimal quantity - a differential, that is, a geometric unextended center. It was an extreme, but an extreme much closer to the truth than the one into which he now fell. The "differential" of history has turned into a titan, freely moving mountains... Once upon a time Tolstoy defended the theory of historical necessity with all his being. Now, instead of necessity, we have before us the all-reviving power of love, faith, and understanding. A man, having reached a bottomless abyss, in fright turns in the opposite direction, and thinks that he has now found the true path? And suddenly, even there, the abyss is even deeper, even darker ...
Stand, I repeat, on the point of view of possibility and impossibility, because, no, no, Tolstoy himself takes it. Love is higher, purer, more powerful than money. It is certain. But could seventeen million starving people be helped by love? Celibacy, Tolstoy teaches in The Kreutzer Sonata, is superior to marriage. Why, then, in the "Afterword" does he say: "He who is able to contain, let him contain," and nothing more? If the whole point is to be able to contain, then the teaching turns into an ordinary preaching of morality, the salvation of which is relative.
There is one side to Tolstoy's preaching that cannot be ignored with full respect and love. No one has ever exposed the contradictions of our life as sharply as he did. But how to get rid of these contradictions? Should I cut the Gordian knot or untie it? To cut it is better, more pleasant, more honest, but it is impossible. And if it's impossible, then...
Live, how do you live? the reader will ask.
Such a conclusion is made by L. Tolstoy himself. But this conclusion is completely unfair.
To say that it is necessary to recognize the past and reckon with the conditions of history, its traditions, habits and structure of the body, the evil and good of our life, our passions and instincts, does not mean preaching quietism. In addition to many sins, a person has another, inexpensable sin - the sin of arrogance.
This is the sin of all unconditional moral teaching.
I will not dwell on the numerous contradictions in the teachings of Count Tolstoy and will only mention some of the most important and conspicuous. Take his teaching on women. In 1884, for example, he wrote: “The ideal woman, for me, will be the one who, having mastered the highest worldview of her time, will give herself to her feminine, irresistibly invested in her vocation - give birth, feed and educate the largest number of children capable of working for people, according to assimilated by her worldview ... "So, give birth, give birth as much as possible. Read the Kreutzer Sonata now. Its meaning is quite clear; it turns out that the best thing is not to give birth at all, and the ideal woman is no longer the one who gives herself to her irresistibly invested vocation in her, but the one who destroys or destroys this very vocation in herself.
This contradiction is the most curious precisely because it is about life and death. What, in fact, does Tolstoy want - life for humanity or death? Hand on heart - I do not know this and I doubt that anyone knew this and could answer the question without hesitation. Preaching hard working life, physical work, love, Tolstoy, apparently, preaches life and believes that the happy existence of man on earth is not only possible, but necessary; he sets a clear and definite goal for everyone: moral improvement; he writes impassioned pages in defense of the fact that the good Christian life is easier than the one we lead. After that, the Kreutzer Sonata appears, and dozens and hundreds of questions fly to Yasnaya Polyana: "Which is better: to live or die?" The "Kreutzer Sonata" was recognized by everyone without hesitation as a preaching of death. In the Afterword, Tolstoy compromises and says that celibacy is an ideal, completely unrealizable, like all ideals. Previously, Tolstoy had never expressed anything like this and always looked at his teaching as one that could be fully and even immediately implemented.
Such contradictions do not surprise me in the least; surprising if they weren't. In the early 1960s, Tolstoy was perplexed about who should learn from whom - whether we should learn from the people or the people from us, and defended both opinions; in "War and Peace" he, having reduced the personality of a person to the differential of history, at the same time preaches personal and family happiness as the best of everything and, in essence, as an artist, falls into an even sharper contradiction with himself as a thinker; devoting so many brilliant pages to the joys and sufferings of his "differentials", he manages to interest the reader in them so much that this latter is very sad when one "differential" dies, or rejoices when another "differential" gets married. On the basis of the philosophy of "War and Peace" only Swift's satire or comedie de la vie humaine [comedy of human life (fr.)] can be created. But Count Tolstoy delves so seriously into the souls of his "differentials" that these souls acquire incommensurable importance.
It was once claimed that Count Tolstoy was a great artist and a bad thinker. This is completely unfair: as a thinker, Count Tolstoy is a large figure. He is a brilliant dialectician, his thoughts are always original, and his deep and vast education is beyond doubt. His contradictions are not those that are continually encountered in a person who thinks badly; but the contradictions of a living human heart, guided, however, by a painfully skeptical mind.
There are formulas in chemistry, in morality, in social life. There are people for whom all life is a formula, at least something like: blessed is he who was young from his youth. For these people the formula is as necessary as food, drink and clothing. She tells them what to say, how to step, when to sit, when to smile, and even how to love; and most importantly, it shows how to live without being tormented by moral or other contradictions. The formula is saving: guided by it, a person can be calm and cheerful. He knows that one must love one's parents, fear God, obey one's superiors unquestioningly, and behave cheerfully in society; knows that the world did not begin with us and this world will not end with us. The formula plays for him the same role that the rails for the locomotive: it is easy to go, and it is never possible to turn anywhere to the side. With the formula, it is warm, like in a fur coat or by the stove, cheerfully, like with a glass of wine, you feel light and pleasant, like in a friendly company.
But never a single formula could subdue Tolstoy. He rejected the formula of personal and family happiness, the formula of accepted teaching; he seeks the truth, just as Lear sought rest on that terrible mad night, which, it seemed, was supposed to make everyone mad. It is hard, painful to live without a formula. You, having a million money and worldwide fame, know what to do according to the formula; but without her, without this saving nurse, lulling and soothing in a dream - what should you do? Is my happiness legal? Is my life a crime? Are my deeds harmful? Neither comfort, nor love, nor respect give rest to the searching soul. The fate of Tolstoy is the fate of Ahasuerus. Every minute a mysterious voice is heard to him and says: go... search... go... search... He goes and searches. He goes to splendid salons and finds there Boris Drubetsky, Vronsky, Karenin; goes to the estates and finds there the Rostovs, the Nekhlyudovs, the Bolkonskys; goes "to them", to the people, to the Polikushki, the heroes of Sevastopol... But the voice does not stop for a minute, and the former mysterious words - "go... look... go... look..." - are heard constantly. The traveler is tired; he sees that the road is endless, that its black ribbon, like the epic snake of the Normans, wraps around the whole world, that in its huge ring it is impossible to find a beginning, a starting point, that life itself is a stream rushing into the abyss - he wants to rest, to forget wants to kill himself. But we must go... Dusty, exhausted, he rises again, peering with horror at the same fatal mystery of being...
Before us is a grandiose picture of the eternal restless quest... According to legend, Ahasuerus finally gets to Jerusalem at that fateful moment when the Force betrayed Love to crucifixion and death... Ahasuerus, together with a jubilant crowd of slaves, walks along a dusty hot street, climbs Golgotha and suddenly feels that a meek, suffering look fell on him, full of mercy, compassion, pity. This is something new, this is no longer the former imperious voice: go-seek... This look promises joy and hope... "And Christ," the legend concludes, "laid his cross on Ahasuerus..." At Golgotha, Ahasuerus stopped and for the first time I felt peace in my soul, this tormented, broken soul...
Such is the story of Tolstoy. Some formulas are demanded of him, he is reproached for contradictions. He cannot give a formula: he is an eternal search, a part of the same stream that we call life. Can this thread stop?
The teachings of L.N. Tolstoy
1. Historical and philosophical foundations of the worldview of L. Tolstoy (Rousseau, Kant, Scholengauer)
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828-1910) is not only an outstanding artist-writer of world significance, but also a deep thinker-philosopher of the second half of the 19th - early 20th century.
The point of view that has developed under the influence of articles by V.I. Lenin and became dominant in the Soviet era, according to which L.N. Tolstoy is great as an artist, but "weak" as a thinker, is wrong. Recognition of the greatness of L.N. Tolstoy as a thinker does not mean, however, the assertion that all the philosophical ideas of the thinker retain their relevance in modern conditions, that they are entirely justified from the standpoint of modern philosophy. The greatness of Tolstoy as a philosopher is, first of all, in the depth of the formulation of problems, the remarkable ability to explore this or that idea in its entirety, the totality of all possible consequences. It can be said without exaggeration that L.N. Tolstoy spent his entire life in tireless philosophical searches. Like many other Russian thinkers, he was driven by a powerful desire for truth, goodness and justice. He was inspired by the search for an ideal - an image of a perfect life and a perfect social order. With tremendous force, sincerity and depth, he raised a number of questions concerning the main features of the political and social development of his contemporary era.
L.N. himself Tolstoy considered himself to have no "professional attitude to philosophy". At the same time, in his Confession, he wrote that philosophy had always interested him, and he liked to follow the tense and harmonious train of thought, in which all the complex phenomena of the world were reduced to something single.
During the life of L.N. Tolstoy was influenced by the ideas of various philosophers. Especially strong was the influence of I. Kant, A. Schopenhauer, the Eastern sages Confucius and Lao Tzu, and Buddhism.
His teacher in the field of philosophy L.N. Tolstoy considered Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He was passionately carried away by his ideas, which had a decisive influence on the formation of the spiritual image and worldview of L.N. Tolstoy, for all his subsequent work. On the meaning of J.-J. Rousseau for L.N. Tolstoy is evidenced by the words written in the mature period of his life: “I read the whole of Rousseau, all twenty volumes, including the Dictionary of Music. I more than admired him, I idolized him. At the age of fifteen, I wore a medallion with his portrait around my neck instead of a pectoral cross. Many of its pages are so close to me that it seems to me that I wrote them myself. Many researchers talk not just about the influence of J.-J. Russo on L.N. Tolstoy, but about the congeniality of two thinkers - the striking coincidence of the spiritual mood of the great Genevan and the Russian writer-philosopher, who lived in different countries and in completely different eras. From Russo L.N. Tolstoy embraced the cult of naturalness, a distrustful and suspicious attitude towards modernity, which in him turned into a criticism of any culture in general.
Sharing Rousseau's conviction about the "natural man", who comes out beautiful from the hands of nature and then becomes corrupted in society, L.N. Tolstoy reflects on how a morally demanding person can overcome the harmful effects of the surrounding social environment.
Close to the philosophy of Rousseau and the view of L.N. Tolstoy on nature and man's attitude to it. Nature appears in his view as a moral leader, showing a person a natural and simple way of personal and social behavior. In this regard, he sharply contrasts the "natural" laws of nature and the "artificial" laws of society. A strong, direct and sincere protest against public lies and falsehood is transformed into a denial of progress and the assertion of the thesis that the recognition of civilization as a blessing destroys the instinctive, primitive desire for the good of human nature.
Not without the influence of J.-J. Russo L.N. Tolstoy, already in his early works, makes critical remarks about capitalist civilization, the contradictions of which he could not fail to notice during two long trips abroad. Philosophical treatise L.N. Tolstoy's "On the Purpose of Philosophy" is entirely in line with these ideas. How a person can achieve happiness and prosperity - that, according to L.N. Tolstoy, the main question of philosophy. What is the meaning of life and what is its purpose - these are the problems on the solution of which philosophical thought must work.
In one of his philosophical reflections, the great Russian writer and thinker acts as a resolute opponent of the rationalism of R. Descartes with his thesis “I think, therefore I am”. Instead of Cartesian "cogito" L.N. Tolstoy considers it necessary to put "volo", i.e. wish, feel.
It must be said that Tolstoy highly valued the philosophy of Schopenhauer, understood the finest nuances of the thought of the German philosopher, and this trace can be traced in all the writings of Leo Nikolayevich relating to the late period of his work.
In all cases, L.N. Tolstoy was primarily interested in the ethical aspects of philosophical systems.
It is also necessary to note the influence on the formation of philosophical views of L.N. Tolstoy's ideas of L. Feuerbach about a person and the role of love in his life.
In general, the philosophy of L. Tolstoy can be characterized by the term "panmoralism". This means that he considered and evaluated all phenomena exclusively from the standpoint of morality. Not a single phenomenon could be positively assessed by him if it did not meet a moral need, if it did not serve in the most direct way the moral education of man and mankind. Everything that is torn away from good does not directly serve morality, L.N. Tolstoy is strongly condemned and rejected.
In the field of philosophical anthropology, L.N. Tolstoy departs from the condemnation of egoism. However, in his condemnation of egoism, he goes so far as to come close to impersonalism, i.e. to the denial of any positive meaning of the individual and the personal principle. Separateness of personality, separateness of individual human existence, according to Tolstoy, is just an illusion generated by human corporeality. Therefore, the thinker connects the personal principle in man primarily with corporality, with the animal manifestations of human nature. It is animal manifestations and passions that underlie the egoistic inclinations of man. Man, as a spiritual, moral being, is not only connected by thousands of threads with other people and the whole world, but forms with them a single whole, indecomposable into parts. The task of a person is to find a way to unity with the world, to overcome the desire for individual existence. The individual will is fundamentally vicious, because it is rooted in the animal, and therefore, the egoistic nature of man.
In turn, the teachings of L. Tolstoy had a significant impact on the formation of the ethics of non-violence. In particular, the ideas of renunciation of violence as a means of combating oppression were in tune with M. Gandhi, who considered L.N. Tolstoy was his associate and teacher, was in correspondence with him and highly appreciated his literary and philosophical works.
2. The teachings of L. Tolstoy and his religious-utopian essence
Faith as the moral basis of human life.
From the point of view of L. Tolstoy, that infinite, immortal principle, in conjunction with which life only acquires meaning, is called God. Nothing else can be said with certainty about God. The mind may know that there is a God, but it cannot comprehend God himself. Therefore, Tolstoy resolutely rejected church judgments about God, the trinity, the creation of the world in six days, legends about angels and devils, the fall of man, the virgin birth, etc., considering all this to be gross prejudice. Any meaningful statement about God, even such that he is one, contradicts itself, for the concept of God, by definition, means that which cannot be defined. For Tolstoy, the concept of God was a human concept that expresses what we humans can feel and know about God, but not what God thinks about people and the world. In it, in this concept, as Tolstoy understands it, there was nothing mysterious, except that it denotes the mysterious foundation of life and knowledge. God is the cause of knowledge, but not its object. “Since the concept of God cannot be other than the concept of the beginning of everything that the mind cognizes, it is obvious that God, as the beginning of everything, cannot be comprehensible to the mind. Only by following the path of rational thinking, at the extreme limit of the mind, one can find God, but, having reached this concept, the mind ceases to comprehend. Knowledge about God Tolstoy compares with the knowledge of the infinity of number. Both are certainly assumed, but cannot be defined. “I am brought to the certainty of the knowledge of an infinite number by addition, to the certainty of the knowledge of God I am brought by the question: where do I come from?”
The idea of God as the limit of reason, the incomprehensible fullness of truth sets a certain way of being in the world when a person is consciously oriented towards this limit and fullness. This is what freedom is. Freedom is a purely human property, an expression of the middle of his being. “A person would not be free if he did not know any truth, and in the same way would not be free and would not even have the concept of freedom, if all the truth that should guide him in life, once for all, in all its purity, without the admixture of error would have been revealed to him. Freedom consists in this movement from darkness to light, from lower to higher, "from truth, more mixed with errors, to truth, more freed from them." It can be defined as the desire to be guided by the truth.
Freedom is not identical with arbitrariness, a simple ability to act on a whim. It is always associated with truth. According to Tolstoy's classification, there are three kinds of truths. First, the truths that have already become a habit, the second nature of a person. Secondly, the truths are vague, insufficiently clarified. The first is no longer with all the truth. The second is not entirely true. Along with them, there is a third series of truths, which, on the one hand, were revealed to a person with such clarity that he cannot get around them and must determine his attitude towards them, and on the other hand, did not become a habit for him. In relation to the truths of this third kind, the freedom of man is revealed. It is important here that we are talking about a clear truth, and that we are talking about a higher truth in comparison with that which has already been mastered in life practice. Freedom is the power that allows a person to follow the path to God.
But what does this work and this path consist of, what duties follow for a person from his belonging to God? The recognition of God as the beginning, the source of life and reason puts a person in a completely definite relationship to him, which Tolstoy likens to the relationship of a son to his father, a worker to a master. The son cannot judge the father and is not able to fully understand the meaning of his instructions, he must follow the will of the father, and only as he obeys the father's will he realizes that it has a beneficial meaning for him, a good son is a loving son, he does not act as he wants , but in the way the father wants, and in this, in the fulfillment of the will of the father, he sees his destiny and good. In the same way, a worker is a worker because he is obedient to the master, carries out his orders - for only the master knows what his work is for, the master not only gives meaning to the efforts of the worker, he also feeds him; a good worker is a worker who understands that his life and well-being depend on the owner, and treats the owner with a sense of selflessness, love. Man's attitude to God should be the same: man does not live for himself, but for God. Only such an understanding of the meaning of one's own life corresponds to the actual position of a person in the world, follows from the nature of his connection with God. The normal, human relation of man to God is the relation of love. “The essence of human life and the highest law that should guide it is love.”
But how to love God and what does it mean to love God if we know nothing about God and cannot know, except that he exists? Yes, it is not known what God is, his plans, his commandments are not known. However, it is known that, firstly, in every person there is a divine principle - the soul, and secondly, there are other people who are in the same relationship to God. And if a person does not have the opportunity to communicate directly with God, then he can do it indirectly, through the right attitude towards other people and the right attitude towards himself.
The correct attitude towards other people is determined by the fact that one must love people as brothers, love everyone, without any exceptions, regardless of any worldly differences between them. Before God, all human distances between wealth and poverty, beauty and ugliness, youth and decrepitude, strength and squalor, etc. lose any meaning whatsoever. It is necessary to appreciate in every person the dignity of divine origin. “The kingdom of God on earth is the peace of all people among themselves”, and a peaceful, reasonable and harmonious life is possible only when people are connected by the same understanding of the meaning of life, by the same faith.
The right attitude towards oneself can be briefly defined as concern for the salvation of the soul. “In the soul of man there are not moderate rules of justice, but the ideal of complete, infinite divine perfection. Only the striving for this perfection deviates the direction of human life from the animal state to the divine as far as it is possible in this life. From this point of view, the real state of the individual does not matter, because no matter what height of spiritual development he reaches, it, this height, is vanishingly insignificant in comparison with the unattainable perfection of the divine ideal. Whatever end point we take, the distance from it to infinity will be infinite. Therefore, an indicator of the correct attitude of a person towards himself is the striving for perfection, this very movement from oneself to God. Moreover, “a person who stands on a lower level, moving towards perfection, lives more morally, better, fulfills the teaching more than a person standing on a much higher level of morality, but not advancing towards perfection.” Consciousness of the degree of discrepancy with ideal perfection is the criterion of a correct attitude towards oneself. Since in reality this degree of discrepancy is always infinite, then a person is the more moral, the more fully he realizes his imperfection.
If we take these two attitudes towards God - the attitude towards others and the attitude towards oneself - then the initial and fundamental, from the point of view of Tolstoy, is the attitude towards oneself. A moral attitude towards oneself, as it were, automatically guarantees a moral attitude towards others. A person who realizes how infinitely far from the ideal he is is a person free from superstition that he can arrange the life of other people. A person's concern for the purity of his own soul is the source of a person's moral obligations in relation to other people, the state, etc.
The concepts of God, freedom, goodness connect the finite human existence with the infinity of the world. “All these concepts, in which the finite is equated with the infinite and the meaning of life is obtained, the concepts of God, freedom, goodness, we subject to logical research. And these concepts do not withstand the scrutiny of reason. They go away in content to such a distance, which is only indicated by the mind, but is not comprehended by it. They are given to man directly, and the mind not so much substantiates these concepts as clarifies them. Only a kind person can understand what goodness is. In order to comprehend the meaning of life with the mind, it is necessary that the very life of the one who owns the mind should be meaningful. If this is not so, if life is meaningless, then the mind has no object to consider, and at best it can point to this non-objectivity.
However, the question arises: “If it is impossible to know what the infinite is and, accordingly, God, freedom, goodness, then how can one be infinite, divine, free, good?” The problem of connecting the finite with the infinite has no solution. The infinite is infinite because it can neither be defined nor reproduced. L.N. Tolstoy, in the afterword to the Kreutzer Sonata, speaks of two ways of orienting along the way: in one case, specific objects that must sequentially meet on the way can be landmarks of the right direction, in the second case, the correctness of the path is controlled by a compass. In the same way, there are two different ways of moral guidance: the first is that the exact description of the actions that a person should do or that he should avoid is given, the second way is that the guidance for a person is the unattainable perfection of the ideal. Just as the compass can only determine the degree of deviation from the path, in the same way the ideal can become only a starting point for human imperfection. The concepts of God, freedom, goodness, revealing the infinite meaning of our finite life, are the very ideal, the practical purpose of which is to be a reproach to a person, to point him to what he is not.
Moral and religious progress in the mind of man is the engine of history.
L.N. Tolstoy was concerned with the question of what is the course of history and whether a person can make any plans for the reorganization of society. According to L.N. Tolstoy, a certain goal independent of man is realized in history. This position is called providentialism. Tolstoy is convinced that "no one can know either the laws by which the life of peoples changes, or the best form of life into which modern society should develop." He called a different position "the superstition of the organization." It is one step away from the recognition of violence as a necessary measure in history. “Some people, having drawn up a plan for themselves about how, in their opinion, it is desirable and should be arranged in society, have the right and opportunity to arrange the life of other people according to this plan.” The presence of such a layer of administrators who, through violence, will arrange a new system, will lead to despotism worse than capitalist, because there are a hundred ways to distort the scheme. The revolution and civil war of 17-21 in Russia showed how right L.N. Tolstoy.
Man can and must contribute to the realization of the divine plan in history. As an answer to the traditional Russian question "What to do?" Tolstoy proposed the idea of non-violence and the theory of non-resistance to evil by violence. The question "What to do?" You have to decide for yourself, not for others. Any violence is unacceptable. The meaning of human life lies not in remaking other people, but in cultivating the good, human in oneself. Do not do what is contrary to God, love, wish good to others. Each of us who does good gives the world a new look. Tolstoy is sure that "as soon as love for one's neighbor becomes natural for every person, new conditions of Christian life will form by themselves."
According to L.N. Tolstoy, the essence of the moral ideal is most fully expressed in the teachings of Jesus Christ. At the same time, for Tolstoy, Jesus Christ is not God or the son of God, he considers him a reformer, destroying the old and giving new foundations of life. Tolstoy, further, sees a fundamental difference between the true views of Jesus, set forth in the Gospels, and their perversion in the dogmas of Orthodoxy and other Christian churches.
“The fact that love is a necessary and good condition for human life was recognized by all the religious teachings of antiquity. In all the teachings: the Egyptian sages, Brahmins, Stoics, Buddhists, Taoists, etc., friendliness, pity, mercy, charity and love in general were recognized as one of the main virtues. However, only Christ elevated love to the level of the fundamental, highest law of life.
As the highest, fundamental law of life, love is the only moral law. The law of love is not a commandment, but an expression of the very essence of Christianity. This is an eternal ideal towards which people will endlessly strive. Jesus Christ is not limited to the proclamation of an ideal. Along with this, he gives commandments.
In Tolstoy's interpretation, there are five such commandments:
Don't be angry; 2. Don't leave your wife; 3. Do not swear ever to anyone and in anything; 4. Do not resist evil by force; 5. Do not consider people of other nations as your enemies.
The commandments of Christ are “all negative and show only what, at a certain stage in the development of mankind, people can no longer do. These commandments are, as it were, notes on the endless path of perfection…”. They cannot but be negative, since we are talking about the awareness of the degree of imperfection. They are nothing more than a step, a step on the path to perfection. Together they constitute such truths that are not in doubt, but have not yet been mastered in practice. For a modern person, they are already truths, but have not yet become a daily habit. A person already dares to think so, but is not yet able to act so. Therefore, these truths proclaimed by Jesus Christ are a test of human freedom.
According to Tolstoy, the main of the five commandments is the fourth: "Do not resist evil," which imposes a ban on violence. The ancient law, which condemned evil and violence in general, allowed that in certain cases they can be used for good - as a fair retribution according to the "eye for an eye" formula. Jesus Christ abolishes this law. He believes that violence can never be a blessing, under any circumstances. The prohibition of violence is absolute. Not only kindness must be reciprocated with kindness. And evil must be repaid with good.
The denial of power
Tolstoy was an extreme anarchist, an enemy of all statehood on moral and idealistic grounds. He rejected the state as based on sacrifice and suffering, and saw in it the source of evil, which for him amounted to violence. Tolstoy's anarchism, Tolstoy's enmity towards the state also won a victory among the Russian people. Tolstoy turned out to be the spokesman for the anti-state, anarchist instincts of the Russian people. He gave these instincts a moral-religious sanction. And he is one of the culprits of the destruction of the Russian state. Tolstoy is also hostile to any culture. Culture for him is based on untruth and violence, in it is the source of all the evils of our life. Man by nature is naturally kind and benevolent and inclined to live according to the law of the Master of life. The emergence of culture, like the state, was a fall, a falling away from the natural divine order, the beginning of evil, violence. Tolstoy was completely alien to the feeling of original sin, the radical evil of human nature, and therefore he did not need the religion of redemption and did not understand it. He was deprived of a sense of evil, because he was deprived of a sense of freedom and originality of human nature, he did not feel a person. He was immersed in impersonal, inhuman nature, and in it he sought sources of divine truth. And in this Tolstoy proved to be the source of the entire philosophy of the Russian revolution. The Russian revolution is hostile to culture, it wants to return to the natural state of people's life, in which it sees immediate truth and goodness. The Russian revolution would like to destroy our entire cultural stratum. drown him in the natural darkness of the people. And Tolstoy is one of the culprits of the destruction of Russian culture. It morally undermined the possibility of cultural creativity, poisoned the sources of creativity. He poisoned the Russian man with moral reflection, which made him powerless and incapable of historical and cultural action. Tolstoy is a real poisoner of the wells of life. Tolstoy's moral reflection is a real poison, a poison that decomposes all creative energy and undermines life. This moral reflection has nothing to do with the Christian sense of sin and the Christian need for repentance. For Tolstoy there is no sin, no repentance, reviving human nature. For him, there is only a weakening, graceless reflection, which is the reverse side of the rebellion against the divine world order. Tolstoy idealized the common people, in them he saw the source of truth and idolized the physical heap in which he sought salvation from the meaninglessness of life. But he had a dismissive and contemptuous attitude towards any spiritual work and creativity. The entire edge of Tolstoy's criticism has always been directed against the cultural system. These Tolstoyan assessments also triumphed in the Russian revolution, which elevates the representatives of physical labor to the heights and overthrows the representatives of spiritual labor. Tolstoy's populism, Tolstoy's denial of the division of labor are the basis of the moral judgments of the revolution, if only one can speak of its moral judgments. Truly, Tolstoy is no less important for the Russian revolution than Rousseau was for the French revolution. True, violence and bloodshed would have horrified Tolstoy; he imagined the realization of his ideas in other ways. But even Rousseau would have been horrified by the deeds of Robespierre and the revolutionary terror. But Rousseau is just as responsible for the French revolution as Tolstoy is for the Russian revolution. I even think that Tolstoy's teaching was more destructive than Rousseau's. It was Tolstoy who made the existence of Great Russia morally impossible. He did a lot to destroy Russia. But in this suicidal affair he was Russian, fatal and unfortunate Russian traits showed in him. Tolstoy was one of the Russian temptations.
Considering all power to be evil, Tolstoy denied the need for a state and rejected violent methods of transforming society. He proposed to abolish the state by refusing to perform public and state duties.
Power as an institution is an ineradicable evil, and Tolstoy in his theory rejects the state, proposing to replace it with a kind of anarchist system, namely, the organization of agricultural communities consisting of morally improving people. In the system of ideological coordinates, the main feature or, to put it better, the dominant feature of behavior should be a complete rejection of violence no matter what. So the writer came to his famous thesis "about non-resistance to evil by violence." The theory of non-resistance to evil by violence is very often interpreted in a simplified way: if you hit on the left cheek, turn the right one. Such a position is unlikely to satisfy any reasonable person. But this is not what Tolstoy calls for. His theory is not a theory of doing nothing, but of doing with oneself, an effort towards oneself to cultivate goodness in oneself. The calling of a person in this world is to fulfill his human duties, and not to rebuild the world. A person bears responsibility before God and his conscience, and not before history or subsequent generations, as Lenin thought.
The revolutionary Bolshevik tradition is in clear opposition to Tolstoy's thinking. The absolute truth discovered by the most advanced members of society must be put into practice. And the trouble is with those people who cannot accept this truth. But their happiness lies in the fact that other, most responsible members of society will lead them to a happy life. Victims are inevitable, but the forest is cut down - chips fly. The Bolsheviks were guided by the ideal of the transformation of society, Tolstoy called for the discovery of the "kingdom of God within us."
Literature
thick religious worldview power
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