Tolstoy as philosopher

https://greenash.net.au/thoughts/2020/10/tolstoy-the-forgotten-philosopher/

by jaza • 6 years ago

62 55 6 years ago

greenash.net.au

One of my friends had an interesting observation about novels. Themes aren't created so much as discovered. If you start from a theme a priori, you're at risk of being preachy. However, the amount of effort involved in constructing a long story, drafting it over and over, and then editing it to sufficient quality, is so substantial that no writer can keep it up for the amount of time a serious work takes unless he has a strong philosophical reason.

minkzilla2• 6 years ago

I think some truly excellent authors can start novels with themes in mind and still have a great book at the end. I am thinking C.S. Lewis specifically. Many of his works he knew the philosophical themes that would be present before writing them, but none of the come off as preachy (though some of his children books are basic) because they are such good stories.

On the whole though I do think a lot of discovery and learning takes place well writing. Though I have never written a novel so I do not really know.

pmoriarty2• 6 years ago

"I am thinking C.S. Lewis specifically. Many of his works he knew the philosophical themes that would be present before writing them, but none of the come off as preachy"

I don't know about that.. they come off as incredibly preachy to me.

C. S. Lewis was basically a Christian apologist, and that's very obvious in his work.

It's pretty hard to stomach for those of us who don't share his views.

A much better example is Dostoyevsky, who was probably at least as devout a Christian as Lewis, and also had an agenda, but he didn't make even the most repulsive of his characters in to two-dimensional caricatures as Lewis tended to do.

Instead, Dostoyevsky could get the reader to understand and even sympathize with the worst characters in his books, and see the world through their eyes... something Lewis could not aspire to as he always had to make his antagonists in to whipping boys for his faith.

kinghtown• 6 years ago

Not quite my favourite novel overall but I adore the way Joyce plays with circulation in Ulysses. Water imagery, reincarnation, myth becoming reality which becomes myth, and of course the return of Odysseus to Ithaca. It’s just so masterful and was obviously premeditated to a huge degree. It’s got to be, Joyce mines the same symbolism in Finnegans Wake (even the titles are saturated with it, more so with FW.)

asimovfan• 6 years ago

Related: A Letter to A Hindu

The Subjection of India-Its Cause and Cure.

With an Introduction by M. K. Gandhi.

by Leo Tolstoy

http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/2733/

lcd123-tols-12• 6 years ago

Gospel in brief is in words of tolstoi himself his most important work , anyone wanting to understand tolstoi as philosopher should read it since it has the tolstoi beliefs in it

Basically tolstoi resume the teachings of Jesus from the original greek works, and remove any sobrenatural aspect of it, miracles etc

I recommend it to anyone how wants to learn about jesus teachings and real christianity a not the current ones Versions we have

sudosysgen4• 6 years ago

Tolstoy was definitely very interesting in that aspect. I'm not a christian myself, but his "anarchist" interpretation is certainly interesting.

0823498723498728• 6 years ago

If you lack crimestop reflex for heresy and are interested in gospel reboots, I recommend the J'lem chapters of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita.

jojobas7• 6 years ago

Can one really separate Tolstoy's ideology from his philosophy?

I'd say the former defined the latter.

ericmcer• 6 years ago

That is something I struggle with in politics today. Philosophy is boring and tedious, it has no hard answers, but how can it be so thoroughly divorced from politics? Two people with differing social philosophies will never agree on something like immigration. It is also hard to pin down what the underpinning philosophies of our political parties are.

jojobas7• 6 years ago

Modern politicians don't encumber themselves with philosophy; resolve is way more important than wisdom.

Modern philosophers don't encumber themselves with applicable policy either.

smogcutter• 6 years ago

Worth noting that that’s a fairly recent development. Whether for good or ill though I really can’t say.

nathias• 6 years ago

It's really hard to distinguish between ideology and philosophy, if you're just excluding philosophy and calling ideology philosophy. Most people don't have a philosophy, they barely have a worldview.

jaza• 6 years ago

He wrote War and Peace several decades before he came out with his ideology, and before he accordingly altered his lifestyle.

But then again, his philosophy later evolved to significantly encompass his ideology. So can one separate Tolstoy's ideology from his early philosophy? Sure. But his later philosophy? Perhaps not. They're two distinct beasts.

drummer• 6 years ago

Highly recommend his writings on money and government. The man was brilliant.

"The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens… Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere." — Leo Tolstoy

"The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of another’s labor by force. It is immaterial whether this force be founded upon ownership of the slave or ownership of the money that he must get to live. ('Taxation')" - Leo Tolstoy

lcd123-tols-12• 6 years ago

Yes tolstoi influence was key to the liberation of russian peasants under the tsar rule , before bolchevike revolution, most of the land was already distributed from landlords and nobles

cookieswumchorr• 6 years ago

no way, he became known after his great novels in the 60s, he had no influence on the liberation which was officially pronounced 1861. Maybe as part of the overall public opinion in the upper class (he was a count, after all)

sudosysgen4• 6 years ago

money that he must get to live

That refered to taxation as a secondary measure, but much less so as it refered to the wage system.

From "What shall we do?", Tolstoy :

-"So it was in ancient times, in the Middle Ages, and so it occurs now. In the ancient world, where the subjugation of one people by another was frequent, personal slavery was the most widespread method of subjugation, and the centre of gravity in this compulsion, owing to the non-recognition of the equality of men. In the Middle Ages, feudalism—land-ownership and the servitude connected with it—partly takes the place of personal slavery, and the centre of compulsion is transferred from persons to land. In modern times, since the discovery of America, the development of commerce, and the influx of gold (which is accepted as a universal medium of exchange), the money tribute has become, with the increase of state power, the chief instrument for enslaving men, and upon this all economic relations are now based." (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38690)

Tolstoy here refers also to the centrality of the state in the institution of wage labour, that he sees as akin to slavery. Indeed, Tolstoy was an anarchist, and thus violently anti-capitalist.

catawbasam2• 6 years ago

Not 'violently. He was a Christian anarchist.

jojobas7• 6 years ago

Are these notions applicable in practice? Could a society without a state hold against its neighbors who have governments and armies?

0823498723498728• 6 years ago

Kipling's 1894 view: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24527260

To what extent did the turn of that century agree? Among the afghanistani? Among the boers? What about later decades?

    If any question why we died
    Tell them, because our fathers lied.

darkerside6• 6 years ago

The War on Terror could be construed as an attempt to prove that it cannot

amoitnga• 6 years ago

in this regard with can take it further and call ourselves slaves of our instincts and desires. (eating, breading etc) in which case word slave loses meaning.

I disagree. slavery is real absolutely immoral thing, while working for money is more about law of energy conservation, something transforms in something else, hence very reasonable and natural.

marttt• 6 years ago

A lenghty, notable non-fiction work by Tolstoy where he discusses nonviolent resistance and the core of Christianity, is "The Kingdom of God is Within You" [1].

Apparently Mahatma Gandhi listed this one among the three books that have most influenced his views.

A short (ca 80 pages in my language) interpretation on these topics was also "A Confession" [2]. I sometimes wonder if I would have made a few different choices if I had read this book in my early 20s. Probably not, but it is a nice dream.

Also, a short fiction masterpiece by Tolstoy on life and death is "The Death of Ivan Ilych" [3]. It has some excellent plot twists. I remember feeling like a ping-pong ball in the hands of the author; whatever he wanted me to think, I did.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kingdom_of_God_Is_Within_Y...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confession

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Ivan_Ilyich

0823498723498728• 6 years ago

Parker on one facet of A Confession: "Razors pain you / Rivers are damp."

catawbasam2• 6 years ago

Similarly, Tolstoy's thought influenced Martin Luther King Jr. Arguably among the most influential thinkers of the 20th century in terms of social and political impact.

0823498723498728• 6 years ago

In one of MLKJ's speeches, he laid out his calculations for a boycott strategy:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23414101

He was cancelled the very next day, suggesting that economic sanctions might be a kind of nonviolence on which state level actors prefer to retain their monopoly.

xlm17172• 6 years ago

Interesting that this isn't more widely known. At the peak of his popularity Tolstoy was an international celebrity, not only for his novels (which are among the greatest works of literature of all time), but for his social teachings.

The article mentions that if anything outside of his novels is discussed, he is more often than not called a cult-inspirer. He was aware of this, and asked people not to follow "Toltoyism", but their own conscience. Nevertheless, people still started what they called Tolstoy Farms. Almost all of these farms quickly collapsed.

So people forgot about Tolstoy's social teachings, even while his novels remain timeless, and people inspired by him, like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., are still celebrated today. I think the problem was Tolstoy's social teachings removed the timeless aspects of Christ's teachings (what other people would call the religious/supernatural aspects), and like other rationalist movements, such as the French Revolution and eventually the Bolshevik Revolution, Tolstoy's social teachings gradually faded away (though thankfully his teachings were explicitly based on nonviolence).

What MLK and Gandhi did was take what Tolstoy saw as the best parts of Christianity, and recontextualize them in religion, MLK in Christianity and Gandhi in Hinduism. Gandhi was very familiar with many religious traditions, and remained a Hindu his whole life, approaching nonviolence, boycotts, and hunger strikes with a Hindu perspective. MLK regularly delivered sermons at churches, and one of his most remembered speeches, I've Been to the Mountaintop, was one such sermon. MLK's speeches, teachings and actions wholeheartedly embraced Christianity. I think religion will let MLK's and Gandhi's teachings endure, while today most people aren't even aware of the influence Tolstoy had on them.

prennert• 6 years ago

Even before reading the article I was about to comment on "War and Peace". Its size is initmitating and I only started to read it because it is a classic and I had some time on a lenghy train ride. I braced myself for a torturous read ala Dostoevsky (no offence, but I really dont enjoy his tangents). But to my complete surprise "War and Peace" is not only an enjoyable read, it is also extremely educating and still relevant today.

Of course it is set in its time, but what is brilliant about it is that it covers a vast amount of people in different positions, locations and upbringings and puts them into a vast amount of different situations. And the outcome feels realistic. Some people fare well, others dont. Most have to make sacrefices in some way or another. Some survive, some dont. Some become better of and some dont. Some deserve what happens to them, some dont. In that sense it is different than most other books.

Due to the war setting and its allegedly realistic description of the campaign on the ground, it feels like a massive companion to Sun Tzus "Art of War". Without referring to "Art of War" at all (I dont know if Tolstoy knew it), "War and Peace" puts it into the context of politics and society, and expanding on the impact decisions have on individuals. It also show-cases the impact of "Art of War" principles in the strategies of Napoleon and Kutuzov and how human nature can get into the way of the best plans. In that way I recommend "War and Peace" as an essential read for entrepreneurs who find the "Art of War" useful.

m0zg• 6 years ago

FYI to folks who consider War and Peace intimidating: at least the Russian audio version on Audible is excellent, and fairly easy to enjoy. More so than the book itself, in my opinion, because narration is excellent.

I was forced to read War and Peace when I was 15 (it's required reading in Russian schools), and didn't like it then because I wasn't yet equipped to understand it. Nor did I understand any Dostoevsky we were required to read either. A 16 year old just can't understand any of what's going on in such works - it's easy for me to see that now when I have a son that age.

After I listened to it some 25 years later, it became my favorite work of literature by quite a margin. I strongly suspect that as I get older, I might be due for another pass through it, and I will enjoy it even more then.

So there's no shame in listening to an audiobook on your commute, once we have commutes again. I just don't know if there are English language productions of it that are any good. Perhaps someone could chime in and recommend. But if you speak Russian, get the version from Audible and spend some quality time with it, you won't regret it.

0823498723498728• 6 years ago

I think the wide variety of characters and entourages is something that novels can pull off way better than film, as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24746574 observed. Screenplays are not as dense as novel pages, and even so they're unlikely to run over 120 pages.

====

"War and Peace" has also spun off an entire genre of jokes:

Natasha Rostova is at ball. First Prince Bolkonsky asks to dance. Natasha says, "Why, Andrey Nikolayevich, there is some cake on your moustache." Bolkonsky begs leave to go clean up.

Then Pierre Bezukohov asks to dance. Natasha says, "Why, mon cher, someone has spilled wine on your sleeve." Bezukhov begs leave to go clean up.

Finally Lt. Rzhevsky asks to dance. Natasha says, "Why, Poruchik, there is some mud on your boots." Rzhevsky quickly answers, "Don't worry your pretty little head, Mam'zelle, that's not mud, it's shit. Anyway, after it dries it'll fall off all by itself."

====

Bonus clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFPIGNua5WM&t=78

darkerside6• 6 years ago

Love the novel, don't get the joke at all

shvedchenko• 6 years ago

I'd strongly recommend his best non fiction book "What is my faith?". Unfortunately, I cant find out wheather its tranlsated to english or not

xlm17172• 6 years ago

I think in English it is most often given the title "My Religion"

Tolstoy as philosopher

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