Having understood the stupidity of the joke that has been played on them, and having understood that it is better to be dead than to be alive, and that it is best of all not to exist, they act accordingly and promptly end this stupid joke, since there are means: a rope round one’s neck, water, a knife to stick into one’s heart, or the trains on the railways; and the number of those of our circle who act in this way becomes greater and greater, and for the most part they act so at the best time of their life, when the strength of their mind is in full bloom and few habits degrading to the mind have as yet been acquired…. To kill themselves they consider the greatest evil. The Russian novelist and moral philosopher Leo Tolstoy (18281910) ranks as one of the world’s great writers, and his “War and Peace” has been called the greatest novel ever written. A few exceptionally strong and consistent people act so. Your support makes all the difference. https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/06/03/tolstoy-confession/ Like Flannery O’Connor, who so beautifully differentiated between religion and faith, Tolstoy writes: I understood that faith is not merely “the evidence of things not seen”, etc., and is not a revelation (that defines only one of the indications of faith, is not the relation of man to God (one has first to define faith and then God, and not define faith through God); it is not only agreement with what has been told one (as faith is most usually supposed to be), but faith is a knowledge of the meaning of human life in consequence of which man does not destroy himself but lives. Jimmy Carter, a Democrat raised in rural Georgia, was a peanut farmer who served two terms as a Georgia State Senator, from 1963 to 1967, and one as the Governor of Georgia, from 1971 to 1975. Literary Productivity, Visualized, 7 Life-Learnings from 7 Years of Brain Pickings, Illustrated, Anaïs Nin on Love, Hand-Lettered by Debbie Millman, Anaïs Nin on Real Love, Illustrated by Debbie Millman, Susan Sontag on Love: Illustrated Diary Excerpts, Susan Sontag on Art: Illustrated Diary Excerpts, Albert Camus on Happiness and Love, Illustrated by Wendy MacNaughton, The Silent Music of the Mind: Remembering Oliver Sacks, money, fame, and writing for the wrong reasons, Alan Lightman tussled, elegantly, with the same paradox, so beautifully differentiated between religion and faith, rare recording of him reading from the latter. The fourth way out is that of weakness. What will come of my whole life?” Differently expressed, the question is: “Why should I live, why wish for anything, or do anything?” It can also be expressed thus: “Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?”. He writes: These are all words with no meaning, for in the infinite there is neither complex nor simple, neither forward nor backward, nor better or worse. Faith still remained to me as irrational as it was before, but I could not but admit that it alone gives mankind a reply to the questions of life, and that consequently it makes life possible. Databases for Academic Institutions. The solution of all the possible questions of life could evidently not satisfy me, for my question, simple as it at first appeared, included a demand for an explanation of the finite in terms of the infinite, and vice versa. The third escape is that of strength and energy. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book on Amazon from a link on here, I receive a small percentage of its price. “Written with passion and clarity, The Idol of Our Age identifies the false moralism that threatens to shipwreck the West. Cummings on Art, Life, and Being Unafraid to Feel, The Writing of “Silent Spring”: Rachel Carson and the Culture-Shifting Courage to Speak Inconvenient Truth to Power, Timeless Advice on Writing: The Collected Wisdom of Great Writers, A Rap on Race: Margaret Mead and James Baldwin’s Rare Conversation on Forgiveness and the Difference Between Guilt and Responsibility, The Science of Stress and How Our Emotions Affect Our Susceptibility to Burnout and Disease, Mary Oliver on What Attention Really Means and Her Moving Elegy for Her Soul Mate, Rebecca Solnit on Hope in Dark Times, Resisting the Defeatism of Easy Despair, and What Victory Really Means for Movements of Social Change, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, Tolstoy’s Reading List: Essential Books for Each Stage of Life, Leo Tolstoy, Shortly Before His Death, on Love, Reason, Human Nature, and What Gives Meaning to Our Lives, Tolstoy Reads from His ‘Calendar of Wisdom’ in a Rare Recording Shortly Before His Death, Famous Writers' Sleep Habits vs. School St. Mary's College of Baliuag- Bulacan; Course Title STEM 101; Uploaded By SargentClover11124. With his greatest works behind him, he found his sense of purpose dwindling as his celebrity and public acclaim billowed, sinking into a state of deep depression and melancholia despite having a large estate, good health for his age, a wife who had born him fourteen … In 1844, he began studying law and oriental languages at Kazan University. Indeed, it appears that there is a whole humanity that lived and lives as if it understood the meaning of its life, for without understanding it could not live; but I say that all this life is senseless and that I cannot live. Finding himself in the fourth category, Tolstoy begins to question why he hadn’t killed himself. CHAPTER I “Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. Answered October 18, 2015. My knowledge, confirmed by the wisdom of the sages, has shown me that everything on earth — organic and inorganic — is all most cleverly arranged — only my own position is stupid. Research databases are key resources for every college or university library. The story is important, but in typical Tolstoy fashion the “moral” is too obvious. Tolstoy’s suffering was immense. Use MindTools.com resources to learn more than 3,200 management, leadership and personal effectiveness skills, helping you to be happy and successful at work. For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite. Seeking to answer this seemingly simple yet paralyzingly profound question, Tolstoy first turned to science, but found that rather than recognizing and answering the question, science circumvented it and instead asked its own questions, then answered those. ( Log Out /  I felt that there was something wrong here. Pages 72. Tolstoy writes: Then occurred what happens to everyone sickening with a mortal internal disease. Tolstoy’s Crisis. He then turned to philosophy, but found himself equally disillusioned: Philosophy not merely does not reply, but is itself only asking that question. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. It consists in seeing the truth of the situation and yet clinging to life, knowing in advance that nothing can come of it. It consists in not knowing, not understanding, that life is an evil and an absurdity. Amazon synopsis: "Considered by some to be the greatest novel ever written, 'Anna Karenina' is Tolstoy's classic tale of love and adultery set against the backdrop of … One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! Just here.”) and George Lucas would also echo (“There is no why. The dullness of these people’s imagination enables them to forget the things that gave Buddha no peace — the inevitability of sickness, old age, and death, which today or tomorrow will destroy all these pleasures. I understood that if I wish to understand life and its meaning, I must not live the life of a parasite, but must live a real life, and — taking the meaning given to live by real humanity and merging myself in that life — verify it. No matter how many times he tried to think his way out of his existential crisis, there was no resolution in this ephemeral world. Having understood this, I understood that it was not possible to seek in rational knowledge for a reply to my question, and that the reply given by rational knowledge is a mere indication that a reply can only be obtained by a different statement of the question and only when the relation of the finite to the infinite is included in the question. I asked: “What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause, and space?” And I replied to quite another question: “What is the meaning of my life within time, cause, and space?” With the result that, after long efforts of thought, the answer I reached was: “None.”. Author and economist Branko Milanovic of CUNY talks about the big questions in economics with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. — Without faith he cannot live…. Although imparted in the context of a story rather than in a logical argument, Tolstoy's beliefs come across no less clearly. That is what is surprising! Like? Alex Christofi, novelist and publisher, channels this tumult into a brief, fierce account of Dostoevsky’s inner and outer life. And I considered the enormous masses of those simple, unlearned, and poor people who have lived and are living and I saw something quite different. The Tolstoys were a well-known family of old Russian nobility. Experimental science only then gives positive knowledge and displays the greatness of the human mind when it does not introduce into its investigations the question of an ultimate cause. Suddenly, he realizes that a part of him was questioning the very validity of his depressive thoughts, presenting “a vague doubt” as to the certainty of his conclusions about the senselessness of life. Go here. And therein he finds the error in all of his prior reasoning, the root of his melancholia about life’s meaninglessness: Verifying the line of argument of rational knowledge I found it quite correct. Humbled by the awareness that the mind is both puppet and puppet-master, he writes: It was like this: I, my reason, have acknowledged that life is senseless. In this way, I find Dostoevsky a better writer with his subtle use of character development to create larger statements about our human-ness. Their circumstances furnish them with more of welfare than of hardship, and their moral dullness makes it possible for them to forget that the advantage of their position is accidental … and that the accident that has today made me a Solomon may tomorrow make me a Solomon’s slave. The first was that of ignorance. He said that he contemplated suicide and could no longer live unless he could find the meaning of his life. It is not part of the Great Books list, and in all likely it should not be. ... My poor opinion is, ... both in the natural and the moral world. Privacy policy. It consists, while knowing the hopelessness of life, in making use meanwhile of the advantages one has, disregarding the dragon and the mice, and licking the honey in the best way, especially if there is much of it within reach… That is the way in which the majority of people of our circle make life possible for themselves. The most controversial aspect of Tolstoy’s philosophy is represented by his belief in the futility of the government and the efficacy of the ordinary, contrary to the beliefs of the great thinkers of his era. He knows that each step he takes confuses him more and more, but still he cannot help rushing about. The question was: “Why should I live, that is to say, what real, permanent result will come out of my illusory transitory life — what meaning has my finite existence in this infinite world?” And to reply to that question I had studied life. It was now flat sober, more than sober, dead.” (1902, p. 152) And speaking more generally he comments that: 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos is a 2018 bestselling self-help book by Canadian clinical psychologist and psychology professor Jordan Peterson. My position was terrible. Though he didn’t acknowledge a “someone” in the sense of a creator, he came to feel that his life was a joke that someone had played on him — a joke all the grimmer for the awareness of our inescapable impermanence, and all the more despairing: Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. It appeared that reasonable knowledge does not give the meaning of life, but excludes life: while the meaning attributed to life by milliards of people, by all humanity, rests on some despised pseudo-knowledge. There can be no question, however, that shortly after finishing 'Anna Karenina' in 1877, Tolstoy experienced a shattering moral and spiritual crisis which brought him to the verge of suicide. I knew I could find nothing along the path of reasonable knowledge except a denial of life; and there — in faith — was nothing but a denial of reason, which was yet more impossible for me than a denial of life. —. Tolstoy was one of the first thinkers to pose the problem of life’s meaning in a modern way. In The … He likens the progression of his depression to a serious physical illness — a parallel modern science is rendering increasingly appropriate. This purported quote bears a resemblance to the narrated theme of Sergei Bondarchuk's Soviet film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, produced in 1966. After the moral crisis when he was in his 40s, he started seeking God through logic or reason and truth in order to come to a complete understanding of life. Just a few chapters in, you will be pulled in and find yourself racing through it like a thriller bought for light reading at the airport. Brain Pickings has a free Sunday digest of the week's most interesting and inspiring articles across art, science, philosophy, creativity, children's books, and other strands of our search for truth, beauty, and meaning. With any classic book, but especially a book the length of Tolstoy’s epic War and Peace, it’s easy to be intimidated and avoid reading it.There’s no need to avoid War and Peace for that reason. It is God, One in Three; the creation in six days; the devils and angels, and all the rest that I cannot accept as long as I retain my reason. And, indeed, Tolstoy turns to spirituality in one final and desperate attempt at an answer — first by surveying how those in his social circle lived with this all-consuming inquiry. — He considers the necessary irrationality of faith and contemplates its unfair ask of forsaking reason: Rational knowledge presented by the learned and wise, denies the meaning of life, but the enormous masses of men, the whole of mankind receive that meaning in irrational knowledge. There is no doubt that a definite moral agenda drives Tolstoy's narrative. The “warning” the dead man makes to the living is one that we all must engage, even as we attempt to avoid it. That is precisely what it is: there is nothing either amusing or witty about it, it is simply cruel and stupid. The problem of abstract science is the recognition of the primordial essence of life. , for their life consists more of privations and sufferings than of enjoyments can come of what I am today. 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