' Here is Tolstoy's religion; and non-violence is at its heart. Simon Parke, author of The Beautiful Life.

Maude's excellent translation of Tolstoy's treatise on the emotionalist theory of art was the first unexpurgated version of the work to appear in any language. More than ninety years later this work remains, as Vincent Tomas observed, "one of the most rigorous attacks on formalism and on the doctrine of art for art's sake ever written". Tomas' Introduction makes this the edition of choice for students of aesthetics and anyone with philosophical interests.

In the summer of 1886, shortly before his fifty-eighth birthday, Leo Tolstoy was seriously injured while working in the fields of his estate. Bedridden for over two months, Tolstoy began writing a meditation on death and dying that soon developed into a philosophical treatise on life, death, love, and the overcoming of pessimism. Although begun as an account of how one man encounters and laments his death and makes this death his own, the final work, On Life, describes (...) the optimal life in which we can all be happy despite our mortality. After its completion, On Life was suppressed by the tsars, attacked by the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church, and then censored by the Stalinist regime. This critical edition is the first accurate translation of this unsung classic of Russian thought into English, based on a study of manuscript pages of Tolstoy's drafts, and the first scholarly edition of this work in any language. It includes a detailed introduction and annotations, as well as historical material, such as early drafts, documents related to the presentation of an early version at the Moscow Psychological Society, and responses to the work by philosophers, religious leaders, journalists, and ordinary readers of Tolstoy's day. (shrink)

Maude's excellent translation of Tolstoy's treatise on the emotionalist theory of art was the first unexpurgated version of the work to appear in any language. More than ninety years later this work remains, as Vincent Tomas observed, "one of the most rigorous attacks on formalism and on the doctrine of art for art's sake ever written". Tomas' Introduction makes this the edition of choice for students of aesthetics and anyone with philosophical interests.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Early in the fourth century Constantine made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire, and at once had reason to regret his having done so; for now not only the Church but the state was convulsed by controversies about the Holy Trinity. These controversies raged for over two hundred years, after which the bishops found new intellectual outlets, if not more rational ones, for their animosities. But Trinitarian trouble was not dead, only sleeping. The Great Schism of the eleventh and (...) twelfth centuries, which split the Western from the Eastern Church, took place, on its theological side, over a question concerning the Trinity. This was, of course, that most famous of all theological questions, the question of the procession of the Holy Ghost, or of the filioque. The Orthodox theory was that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father alone. The Western bishops, however, were equally adamant that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father filioque - 'and the Son'. (shrink)

The tragic death in Tolstoy's writings has helped both Max Weber and György Lukács in characterizing the modern pathos as a tragic contemplation of the emptiness of life. Through Tolstoy's readings, Weber and Lukács found an interesting source of denying arts and modern sciences autonomy, considering, from the aesthetics sphere, the meaningless of this new immanent reality. Both has assumed Tolstoy main theme from the same perspective, contrasting ancient and modern worldviews. Max Weber presented this theme in (...) his disenchantment of world theory and Lukács, in a very similar way, following the paradox of religious needing as a mainline. -/- O tema da morte trágica, presente nos escritos de Liev Tolstói, auxiliou tanto a Max Weber como a György Lukács a caracterizarem o pathos moderno de pressentimento da morte como uma contemplação do vazio. Weber e Lukács encontraram, através das leituras de Tolstói, uma interessante maneira de questionar a autonomia da arte e da ciência moderna, considerando pela esfera estética, como se mostra sem sentido a recente realidade imanente. Ambos assumiram o tema central das obras de Tolstói segundo uma mesma imagem, derivada do contraste entre o mundo antigo e o moderno. Max Weber adequou esse tema a sua teoria do desencantamento do mundo e Lukács, de modo muito semelhante, seguindo seu conceito do paradoxo da necessidade religiosa. (shrink)

Questions about the meaning of life have traditionally been regarded as being of particular concern to philosophers. It is sometimes complained that contemporary analytic philosophy fails to address such questions, but there do exist illuminating recent discussions of these questions by analytic philosophers.1Perhaps what lurks behind the complaint is a feeling that these discussions are insufficiently close to actual living situations and hence often seem rather thin and bland compared with the vivid portrayals of such situations in autobiography or fiction. (...) I therefore want to focus on two works by Tolstoy—one autobiographical, one fictional—and try to see what philosophical lessons can be learned from them, particularly with regard to questions about the relation of death to the meaning of life. (shrink)

: Tolstoy critiques the assumption one can live a meaningful life merely by following social conventions. Though they may give a semblance of control, they do not prepare one to face mortality. Compassion for others enables one to transmute a preoccupation with filling one's preferences and desires to an appreciation of others and one's individuality. In telling of Ivan's death, Tolstoy shows the ineffectiveness of the practice of medicine and marriage when they are treated only as conventions.

The reasonable human nature appears in the Enlightenment’s philosophy as a reduction of the human being and its manifestations to a complex of natural impulses when all former norms of perception, reflections, inclinations, actions and the moral principles, which lie in their basis, are canceled in the free human self-experimenting. The monarchy idea depreciates when its citizens turn in the public good’s proponents on the basis of a blind republican consent about the egoism’s limitation (Robespierre) and a prosopo-peia of freedom (...) that gives to a nation the self-government illusion. The reconsideration of the revolutionary moment as a self-affirmation of romantic spirit is connected for Tolstoy with the “world will” novel poetics opening evolutionary moment in the affective and reflexive dynamics of the hero’s consciousness, the limiting witness of the narrator and the author’s horizon of progressive movement to the historical process’s purpose that creates the belief in the need of coexistence with other participating consciousnesses. The revolutionary and evolutionary reflection of Tolstoy is related to the monoteis-tic prosopopoeia of divine kenosis. From an artistic representation of signifying articulations of the evolutionary world the teacher’s reflection of Tolstoy is born. For Tolstoy revolution is the moment of the senseless violence aiming to eliminate the common evil of the world. The conceptual basis of literary culture as an art and ideological formatting of reactive consciousnesses for Tolstoy is an infinite aspiration to the human self-limitation. (shrink)

In recent years, critics sensitive to animal issues have begun to theorize a new direction in literary criticism, an animal-centric or animal-standpoint criticism. Such a criticism seeks to examine works of literature from the point of view of how animals are treated therein, often looking to reconstruct the standpoint of the animals in question. This article examines a selection of short stories by Leo Tolstoy considering them exemplary from the point of view of animal-standpoint criticism.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Wittgenstein, Tolstoy, and ShakespearePeter B. LewisNear the middle of the first of his 1938 Lectures on Aesthetics, Wittgenstein talks about what he calls "the tremendous things in art"(LC, I 23 8, italics in original).1 Apart from a brief indication of the way in which our response to the tremendous differs from the non-tremendous, he does not refer again in this way to the tremendous things in art, though (...) he does refer elsewhere to what he calls "supreme art." But he does provide a couple of examples of the tremendous in art, the symphonies of Beethoven and Gothic Cathedrals. Suppose, now, like the student in the Investigations §185, we are asked to continue the series. I take it that, even given the lack of information, we could safely propose, say, Homer—the Iliad and the Odyssey—and Michelangelo—the Sistine Chapel—as further examples of the tremendous things in art. The idea is that the tremendous things in art are not works that are just very good or very fine, but rather they are great, supremely great; works of stature; special cases; instances of the highest kind of artistic achievement, occupying a distinctive place in the history of (Western) civilization.Another obvious candidate for the list of the tremendous things in art would be Shakespeare, where the name is shorthand for the great plays, the tragedies in particular, Lear, Hamlet, Othello,and so on. So it comes as something of a surprise to discover on reading that miscellaneous compendium of remarks known as Culture and Value that Wittgenstein himself had serious doubts about including Shakespeare in the pantheon of the tremendous things in art. There are seven passages in Culture and Value in which Wittgenstein reflects on Shakespeare.2 The earliest is dated 1939–40, though this passage does not appear to be critical of Shakespeare. The next two passages are [End Page 241] dated August 1946, the remainder coming in 1949 and 1950. The remarks critical of Shakespeare are, then, all very much late Wittgenstein.It is well-known that lots of people dislike Shakespeare's plays. Generations of school children have developed indifference or boredom or hatred that persists throughout their lives. And yet that does not count against Shakespeare's greatness; for, to borrow Hume's remark on those who would prefer Ogilby to Milton, "no one pays attention to such a taste; and we pronounce without scruple the sentiment of these [people] to be absurd and ridiculous."3 That rhetoric is, however, not available, at least not immediately, when the "pretended critic" (Hume's phrase) has the intellectual clout and aesthetic sensibility of a Wittgenstein; nor, for that matter, the artistic achievement of a Tolstoy.I have particular grounds for bringing Tolstoy into this discussion. In the first place, there is the importance of Tolstoy in the development of Wittgenstein's thinking about religious, moral and aesthetic issues. Secondly, it is by contrast with Tolstoy's criticism of Shakespeare that we can gain further understanding of Wittgenstein's remarks on Shakespeare. These two points are related. For it seems to me that it is partly through his reflections on Tolstoy's theories about art that Wittgenstein is led into commenting upon Shakespeare.Tolstoy famously attacks Shakespeare in his pamphlet, "Shakespeare and the Drama,"4 published in 1903 when Tolstoy was seventy-five years of age. Some have taken this essay as evidence that Tolstoy was in his dotage, his mind warped by religious-moralistic fervor. Not only does this fail to do justice to Tolstoy's reasons for criticizing Shakespeare—reasons that Howard Mounce has recently argued are by no means ridiculous5 —it also neglects the fact that the essay is the culmination of Tolstoy's life-long antagonism to Shakespeare. Nevertheless, that very slur on Tolstoy's sanity attests to Shakespeare's status in our culture as something tremendous. His achievement is a standard against which others are measured. And this, I think, is at least partly what Wittgenstein is hinting at in his remarks about the contrast between the tremendous and the non-tremendous in art when he says of the tremendous that "it plays an entirely different role... (shrink)

In his intervention to the ‘bankruptcy of science debate’, which raged in Paris in the turn of the twentieth century, Leo Tolstoy was one of the first to use the past record of science as a weapon against current science. It is not inductive. It does not conclude that all current scientific theories will be abandoned; nor that most of them will be abandoned; not even that it is more likely than not that all or most of them will (...) be abandoned. Its conclusion is modest: some of presently accepted theories will have the fate of those past theories that once dominated the scene but subsequently were abandoned. (shrink)

I sketch an interpretation of Tolstoy’s implicit moral theory on the basis of his masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina. I suggest that Tolstoy is a theistic moral realist who believes that God’s will identifies the mind-independent truths of morality. He also thinks that, roughly, it suffices to heed natural moral emotions (like love and compassion) to know the right thing to do, that is, God’s will. In appraisal of Tolstoy’s interesting and original theory that I (...) dub ‘theistic populist sentimentalism’, I argue that it prima facie runs into a string of fallacies and undertakes dubious assumptions that render it open to question. (shrink)

Questions about the meaning of life have traditionally been regarded as being of particular concern to philosophers. It is sometimes complained that contemporary analytic philosophy fails to address such questions, but there do exist illuminating recent discussions of these questions by analytic philosophers.1Perhaps what lurks behind the complaint is a feeling that these discussions are insufficiently close to actual living situations and hence often seem rather thin and bland compared with the vivid portrayals of such situations in autobiography or fiction. (...) I therefore want to focus on two works by Tolstoy—one autobiographical, one fictional—and try to see what philosophical lessons can be learned from them, particularly with regard to questions about the relation of death to the meaning of life. (shrink)

In this paper I will analyze Lev (Leo) Tolstoy’s arguments for Christian Anarchism which is found in his book Царство Божие Внутри Вас (tr. The Kingdom of God is Within You). By analyzing his arguments, I will present why Tolstoy believes that Christianity inevitably leads to a belief and practice of pacifism and anarchism. In other words, Tolstoy is attempting to prove that capitalism and governments of any kind are incompatible with Christian ethics. Thus, what this paper (...) attempts to achieve is to analyze whether Tolstoy is correct in his claims: does capitalism, as an economic system, and governmental authority conflict with Christian morality. I am not interested in proving that capitalism and governments are, in general, morally bad, or wrong systems but rather or not they contradict Christian doctrine. Many commentators have mentioned that Tolstoy’s philosophical works and arguments are ‘naïve’ and or ‘lacking.’ However, in this paper, I will prove that this is not entirely the case. That in fact, Tolstoy’s philosophical arguments are highly focused and more complex than what people present them to be. He is also no lesser of a philosopher for having no formal or academic philosophical education. For we should not restrict the title of ‘philosopher’ for only those who belong in academia or the institutions. (shrink)

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) was one of the greatest artists of all time, but also one of the harshest critics of the contemporary art. In the conclusion of his controversial book, What is Art?, Tolstoy claimed: “The purpose of art in our time consists in transferring from the realm of reason to the realm of feeling the truth that people’s well-being lies in being united among themselves and in establishing, in place of the violence that now reins, that Kingdom (...) of God – that is, of love – which we all regard as the highest aim of human nature.” In my paper I want to examine what Tolstoy means by that, and also how his understating of the purpose of art applies to his own works of art, as well as how it applies to some other contemporary works of art. (shrink)

Tolstoy’s literary works, as well as a number of events in his life, leave no doubt about the writer’s deep familiarity with law in both the theoretical and practical spheres. In his later years, t...

In this paper I will analyze Lev (Leo) Tolstoy’s arguments for Christian Anarchism which is found in his book Царство Божие Внутри Вас (tr. The Kingdom of God is Within You). By analyzing his arguments, I will present why Tolstoy believes that Christianity inevitably leads to a belief and practice of pacifism and anarchism. In other words, Tolstoy is attempting to prove that capitalism and governments of any kind are incompatible with Christian ethics. Thus, what this paper (...) attempts to achieve is to analyze whether Tolstoy is correct in his claims: does capitalism, as an economic system, and governmental authority conflict with Christian morality. I am not interested in proving that capitalism and governments are, in general, morally bad, or wrong systems but rather or not they contradict Christian doctrine. Many commentators have mentioned that Tolstoy’s philosophical works and arguments are ‘naïve’ and or ‘lacking.’ However, in this paper, I will prove that this is not entirely the case. That in fact, Tolstoy’s philosophical arguments are highly focused and more complex than what people present them to be. He is also no lesser of a philosopher for having no formal or academic philosophical education. For we should not restrict the title of ‘philosopher’ for only those who belong in academia or the institutions. (shrink)

In this paper I will analyze Lev (Leo) Tolstoy’s arguments for Christian Anarchism which is found in his book Царство Божие Внутри Вас (tr. The Kingdom of God is Within You). By analyzing his arguments, I will present why Tolstoy believes that Christianity inevitably leads to a belief and practice of pacifism and anarchism. In other words, Tolstoy is attempting to prove that capitalism and governments of any kind are incompatible with Christian ethics. Thus, what this paper (...) attempts to achieve is to analyze whether Tolstoy is correct in his claims: does capitalism, as an economic system, and governmental authority conflict with Christian morality. I am not interested in proving that capitalism and governments are, in general, morally bad, or wrong systems but rather or not they contradict Christian doctrine. Many commentators have mentioned that Tolstoy’s philosophical works and arguments are ‘naïve’ and or ‘lacking.’ However, in this paper, I will prove that this is not entirely the case. That in fact, Tolstoy’s philosophical arguments are highly focused and more complex than what people present them to be. He is also no lesser of a philosopher for having no formal or academic philosophical education. For we should not restrict the title of ‘philosopher’ for only those who belong in academia or the institutions. (shrink)

In this paper I will analyze Lev (Leo) Tolstoy’s arguments for Christian Anarchism which is found in his book Царство Божие Внутри Вас (tr. The Kingdom of God is Within You). By analyzing his arguments, I will present why Tolstoy believes that Christianity inevitably leads to a belief and practice of pacifism and anarchism. In other words, Tolstoy is attempting to prove that capitalism and governments of any kind are incompatible with Christian ethics. Thus, what this paper (...) attempts to achieve is to analyze whether Tolstoy is correct in his claims: does capitalism, as an economic system, and governmental authority conflict with Christian morality. I am not interested in proving that capitalism and governments are, in general, morally bad, or wrong systems but rather or not they contradict Christian doctrine. Many commentators have mentioned that Tolstoy’s philosophical works and arguments are ‘naïve’ and or ‘lacking.’ However, in this paper, I will prove that this is not entirely the case. That in fact, Tolstoy’s philosophical arguments are highly focused and more complex than what people present them to be. He is also no lesser of a philosopher for having no formal or academic philosophical education. For we should not restrict the title of ‘philosopher’ for only those who belong in academia or the institutions. (shrink)

In this paper I will analyze Lev (Leo) Tolstoy’s arguments for Christian Anarchism which is found in his book Царство Божие Внутри Вас (tr. The Kingdom of God is Within You). By analyzing his arguments, I will present why Tolstoy believes that Christianity inevitably leads to a belief and practice of pacifism and anarchism. In other words, Tolstoy is attempting to prove that capitalism and governments of any kind are incompatible with Christian ethics. Thus, what this paper (...) attempts to achieve is to analyze whether Tolstoy is correct in his claims: does capitalism, as an economic system, and governmental authority conflict with Christian morality. I am not interested in proving that capitalism and governments are, in general, morally bad, or wrong systems but rather or not they contradict Christian doctrine. Many commentators have mentioned that Tolstoy’s philosophical works and arguments are ‘naïve’ and or ‘lacking.’ However, in this paper, I will prove that this is not entirely the case. That in fact, Tolstoy’s philosophical arguments are highly focused and more complex than what people present them to be. He is also no lesser of a philosopher for having no formal or academic philosophical education. For we should not restrict the title of ‘philosopher’ for only those who belong in academia or the institutions. (shrink)

In this paper I will analyze Lev (Leo) Tolstoy’s arguments for Christian Anarchism which is found in his book Царство Божие Внутри Вас (tr. The Kingdom of God is Within You). By analyzing his arguments, I will present why Tolstoy believes that Christianity inevitably leads to a belief and practice of pacifism and anarchism. In other words, Tolstoy is attempting to prove that capitalism and governments of any kind are incompatible with Christian ethics. Thus, what this paper (...) attempts to achieve is to analyze whether Tolstoy is correct in his claims: does capitalism, as an economic system, and governmental authority conflict with Christian morality. I am not interested in proving that capitalism and governments are, in general, morally bad, or wrong systems but rather or not they contradict Christian doctrine. Many commentators have mentioned that Tolstoy’s philosophical works and arguments are ‘naïve’ and or ‘lacking.’ However, in this paper, I will prove that this is not entirely the case. That in fact, Tolstoy’s philosophical arguments are highly focused and more complex than what people present them to be. He is also no lesser of a philosopher for having no formal or academic philosophical education. For we should not restrict the title of ‘philosopher’ for only those who belong in academia or the institutions. (shrink)

In this paper I will analyze Lev (Leo) Tolstoy’s arguments for Christian Anarchism which is found in his book Царство Божие Внутри Вас (tr. The Kingdom of God is Within You). By analyzing his arguments, I will present why Tolstoy believes that Christianity inevitably leads to a belief and practice of pacifism and anarchism. In other words, Tolstoy is attempting to prove that capitalism and governments of any kind are incompatible with Christian ethics. Thus, what this paper (...) attempts to achieve is to analyze whether Tolstoy is correct in his claims: does capitalism, as an economic system, and governmental authority conflict with Christian morality. I am not interested in proving that capitalism and governments are, in general, morally bad, or wrong systems but rather or not they contradict Christian doctrine. Many commentators have mentioned that Tolstoy’s philosophical works and arguments are ‘naïve’ and or ‘lacking.’ However, in this paper, I will prove that this is not entirely the case. That in fact, Tolstoy’s philosophical arguments are highly focused and more complex than what people present them to be. He is also no lesser of a philosopher for having no formal or academic philosophical education. For we should not restrict the title of ‘philosopher’ for only those who belong in academia or the institutions. (shrink)

Tolstoy's remarkably economical novella The Kreutzer Sonata manages to create one of the most intense, vivid, and thought-provoking portraits of jealousy in the canon, and is as disturbing to read today as it no doubt was in 1889. The rather unhinged protagonist, Pozdnyshev, explains to his traveling companion and narrator: “Of all the passions, it is sexual, carnal love that is the strongest, the most malignant and the most unyielding” (48). This article identifies not only the “bestial” element of (...) human sexuality in Tolstoy's story but also the array of animals which the author offers to ventriloquize a certain complex (and times confused) polemic about gender relations. In other words, this analysis offers an interpretation of The Kreutzer Sonata as bestiary; one which offers a moral taxonomy of creaturely life and creaturely love. From the green-eyed monster of jealousy itself, through the Venus fly-trap and porcine couple, right up to the wild murderous beast, Pozdnyshev's confession is read via this zoological trope in order to emphasize, and question, that mobile border which separates the human from the inhuman, the civilized from the uncivilized. And it does so in order to highlight the incoherencies of the anthropocentric discursive regulation of this very same borderline. Animality and animosity are thus presented as the twin avatars of Tolstoy's intense and challenging vision. (shrink)

This article compares the works of Lev Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky as interpreted by the philosopher Lev Shestov. The author shows how Shestov analyzes Anna Karenina and War and Peace in light of...

Tolstoy had a lifelong interest in education and philosophy. However, he was suspicious of using philosophy as a foundation for educational practice or applying philosophy to the educational problems of his day, most importantly, the development of an education system in Russia around the time of the emancipation of the serfs. Tolstoy’s rejection of the philosophy of education arose from his concerns about what would be identified in contemporary terminology as ‘epistemic injustice’ or ‘epistemicide’. How could European philosophy (...) inform a curriculum and pedagogy for the Russian peasantry when the peasants’ own forms of knowledge were more valuable to their ways of life? Tolstoy sought to answer this question by engaging with children in peasant schools. This experience informed the development of his own worldview, articulated in the latter years of his life—a vision of uniting the insights of indigenous peoples from various times and places to inform what he considered to be the pursuit of authentic knowledge. This article considers Tolstoy’s apparent rejection of the philosophy of education, exploring how this seemingly bombastic position led to the evolution of an innovative meta-philosophy that offers some contribution to thinking about contemporary educational problems. (shrink)

Among Tolstoy's absolute statements are those that exhibit characteristics of both biblical commands and proverbs—and of other types of absolute statements as well. He also draws, for example, on logical propositions, mathematical deductions, laws of nature and human nature, dictionary definitions, and metaphysical assertions. The language of all these forms is timeless, anonymous, and above all categorical. Their stylistic features imply that they are not falsifiable and that they are not open to qualification: they characteristically include words like "all," (...) "each," "every," "only," and "certainly" and phrases like "there neither is nor can be," "the human mind cannot grasp," and "it is impossible that." Even in sentences that omit such phrases, the very refusal to use a qualifier of any kind can assert unqualifiability. When Tolstoy's absolute statements take the form of syllogisms, the use of the word "therefore" or some explicit or implicit equivalent carries the force of logical inevitability. It carries the same force with Tolstoy's enthymemes, which omit the major premise for the reader to reconstruct. [An example] from The Death of Ivan Ilysch,1 cited above, for instance, contains a minor premise and a conclusion of a syllogism; the reader himself must supply the major premise, which would be: "The simpler and more ordinary a life is, the more terrible it is."· 1. "Ivan Ilysch's life was the most simple and the most ordinary, and therefore the most terrible."Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilysch, ed. John Bayley, trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude , p.225.Gary Saul Morson is an associate professor of Russian literature at the University of Pennsylvania, and the author of The Boundaries of Genre: Dostoevsky's Diary of a Writer and the Traditions of Literary Utopia, and The Broken Frame: The Anti-tradition of Russian Literature. The present article is from a theoretical study of literary creativity and the biography of authors. (shrink)

Once upon a time, a scholar, ascetic and relig-ious man named Abu Hamid Ibn Muhammad Ibn Muhammad al-Tusi al-Shafi'i al-Ghazali (AI-Ghazali, 1058-11 II) wrote a worl, called The Incoherence qf the Philosophers, 1\ clever philosopher, Abu AI-\Valid Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Hushd (Averroes, 112li-1 ID8), responded to this by writing The IlIcolurence (!l the Inroherence. In IVhat is Art;;, Tolstoy refers to the importance of art in order to ridicule itl He notes the attention paid to art, music, theatre, (...) filrn, and books in the press. IIe notes the in\'(~stment of gm'ernments in the support of museums, theatres and the like. He notes the time spent by artists and perlilrmers in learning- their craft. He presents the most sardonic description of an opera rehearsal you will ever read. He describes the eHilrt and money poured into art as "stupefying", "repulsive", "a gigantic absurdity", and "utterly incomprehensible".~ I-Imv can art be so important that a peasant should have to sell his only cow to pay the taxes that maintain the artist-producer in grand luxury~. (shrink)

Some aspects of Wittgenstein’s thought are considered in the light of a remark he makes about the “apocalyptic” view of the world. The influence of Tolstoy on Wittgenstein is discussed and elaborated with reference to the idea of a “form of life” as a locus of order, and also to that of “exceptionality” in an unfolding course of events—the latter setting up a connection with the “apocalyptic” theme. This imaginative backdrop remains discernible in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, which draws upon (...) it to perhaps unexpected effect in achieving a dialectical balance between the motifs of order and breakdown. (shrink)

In no other age, however distinguished it may have been by brilliant discoveries, has the question of the meaning of life faced humanity as acutely and urgently as in recent times. Considerable interest in this realm of philosophical thought has been aroused chiefly by the fact that now more than ever, the most urgent and dramatic crises of being have emerged and grown more threatening, taking the form of "eternal questions" for mankind as a whole: will humanity, its culture, science, (...) and art, exist or not exist? How can we ward off the threat that hangs over the entire world, and how with the aid of reason can we defend the humanistic principles of the human community? and what is reason itself in the contemporary person—the ethically "neutral" intellect of the bourgeois scholar, or a special capability, characteristic only of those who can understand life's phenomena through an inner spiritual-valuative relation to themselves and others as human beings? It is precisely the problem of the ethical orientation of human reason, its conversion from an "instrument of knowledge' ' into a means for the humanization of human existence that has become one of the most critical problems of the last quarter of the twentieth century. Despite the advancing progress of science and technology, and to some extent even because of it, again the person is turned towards self-knowledge, to the definition of his essence in new concrete historical conditions. In this article, we have attempted to approach the idea of the humanization of human reason, turning to the problems of the ethical-philosophical legacy of L. N. Tolstoy. We will try to demonstrate the expediency, and necessity, of such an approach. (shrink)