Nothing was more important to Tolstoy than character development. For him, the purpose of life is to grow morally. The purpose of literature — as all art — is to aid that growth. Abstract philosophy and pedantic scholarship are therefore redundant. Indeed, even the psychological novel is a distraction. Moral truths are self-evident. They are always simple. They are expressed by the humble. They are known by the meek. To become good, all we need to do is peel back the (...) layers of hypocrisy and deceit that have overwrought us. Moral truths are known all over the world, but they are forgotten or covered up. There is nothing like a folktale, a pithy aphorism, or the words of a farm laborer or child to point this out. We may be surprised by what we already know and how deceived we were. All Tolstoy's varied endeavors, his literature, pedagogic theory and philosophy, center on moral conversion and its only legitimate motivation: love. Tolstoy's affront on modern civilization, documented vehemently in his later works sought to teach this lesson. This was a view of character development that had wide ranging impact all over the world, influencing many of the most famous thinkers, educators, and activists of the twentieth century. Tolstoy's stories continue to enthrall and inspire moral transformation. In this article Daniel Moulin explains why. (shrink)

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)