Pedagogical activities and views of L. Teachings of L.N.

Teachings of L.N. Tolstoy

1. Historical and philosophical foundations of L. Tolstoy’s worldview (Rousseau, Kant, Scholengauer)

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828-1910) is not only an outstanding artist and writer of world significance, but also a profound thinker and philosopher of the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries.

The point of view formed under the influence of articles by V.I. Lenin and became dominant in Soviet times, according to which L.N. Tolstoy is great as an artist, but “weak” as a thinker and is unfaithful. Recognition of the greatness of L.N. Tolstoy as a thinker does not mean, however, the statement 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 the philosopher lies primarily in the depth of his formulation of problems, his remarkable ability to explore this or that idea in its entirety, the totality of all possible consequences. Without exaggeration we can say that L.N. Tolstoy spent his entire life in tireless philosophical quest. 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 enormous strength, 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 relationship with philosophy.” At the same time, in “Confession” he wrote that philosophy had always interested him, and he liked to follow the intense 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. The influence of I. Kant, A. Schopenhauer, the eastern sages Confucius and Lao Tzu, and Buddhism was especially strong.

His teacher in the field of philosophy L.N. Tolstoy considered Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He was passionate about his ideas, which had a decisive influence on the formation of the spiritual appearance and worldview of L.N. Tolstoy, for all his subsequent work. About the significance of J.-J. Rousseau for L.N. Tolstoy is evidenced by the words written in his mature period of life: “I read all 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 amazing 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 adopted the cult of naturalness, a distrustful and suspicious attitude towards modernity, which in his case turned into criticism of any culture in general.

Sharing Rousseau's belief about the “natural man” who emerges 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.

The view of L.N. is also close to Rousseau’s philosophy. Tolstoy on nature and man’s relationship to it. In his view, nature acts as a moral leader, showing man the natural and simple path of personal and social behavior. In this regard, he sharply contrasts the “natural” laws of nature and the “artificial” laws of society. A strong, immediate and sincere protest against social lies and falsehood is transformed into a denial of progress and the affirmation of the thesis that the recognition of civilization as a good destroys the instinctive, primitive desire for the good of human nature.

Not without the influence of J.-J. Russo L.N. Already in his early works, Tolstoy expressed critical remarks regarding capitalist civilization, the contradictions of which he could not help but notice during two long trips abroad. Philosophical treatise by L.N. Tolstoy’s “On the Purpose of Philosophy” is entirely in line with these ideas. How a person can achieve happiness and prosperity - this, 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 that philosophical thought should work on resolving.

In one of his philosophical reflections, the great Russian writer and thinker appears as a decisive opponent of the rationalism of R. Descartes with his thesis “I think, therefore I exist.” Instead of Cartesian “cogito” L.N. Tolstoy considers it necessary to put “volo”, i.e. I wish, I feel.

It must be said that Tolstoy highly valued the philosophy of Schopenhauer, understood the subtlest nuances of the German philosopher’s thought, and this trace can be traced in all the works of Lev Nikolaevich dating back 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 about man 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 assessed all phenomena exclusively from a moral standpoint. Not a single phenomenon could be assessed positively by him if it did not meet a moral need and did not most directly serve the moral education of man and humanity. Everything that is divorced from good does not directly serve morality, L.N. Tolstoy is decisively 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 that he comes close to impersonalism, i.e. to the denial of any positive meaning of personality and personal origin. The separateness of personality, the separateness of individual human existence, according to Tolstoy, is just an illusion generated by human corporeality. Therefore, the personal principle in a person is associated primarily with physicality, with 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 influence on the formation of the ethics of non-violence. In particular, the ideas of non-violence as a means of fighting oppression were consonant with M. Gandhi, who considered L.N. Tolstoy as his like-minded person and teacher, was in correspondence with him and highly valued 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. And nothing else can be said with certainty about God. The mind can know that God exists, 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 prejudices. Any meaningful statement about God, even one that he is one, contradicts itself, for the concept of God by definition means something that 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 subject. “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, can one find God, but, having reached this concept, the mind ceases to comprehend.” Tolstoy compares the knowledge of God with the knowledge of the infinity of numbers. Both are certainly assumed, but cannot be defined. “I am brought to the certainty of knowledge of an infinite number by addition; to the certainty of knowledge of God I am brought by the question: where am I 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 completeness. This is freedom. Freedom is a purely human property, an expression of the middle of his being. “Man would not be free if he did not know any truth, and in the same way he 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 any admixture of errors would be open 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 the same as arbitrariness, the mere ability to act on a whim. It is always connected with truth. According to Tolstoy's classification, there are three kinds of truths. Firstly, truths that have already become a habit, second nature of a person. Secondly, the truths are vague and not sufficiently clarified. The first ones are no longer true with everything. The second ones are not quite true yet. 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 bypass them and must determine his attitude towards them, and on the other hand, have not become a habit for him. It is in relation to truths of this third kind that human freedom is revealed. What is important here is that we are talking about a clear truth, and that we are talking about a truth that is higher than 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 is this matter and this path, what duties follow for a person from his belonging to God? 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 his owner. The son cannot judge his father and is not able to fully understand the meaning of his instructions, he must follow the will of his father and only as he obeys his father’s will he understands that it has a beneficial meaning for him, a good son is a loving son, he does not act as he himself wants , but as the father wants, and in this, in fulfilling the will of the father, he sees his purpose and good. In the same way, a worker is a worker because he is obedient to the owner, carries out his orders - for only the owner knows what his work is for, the owner not only gives meaning to the worker’s efforts, 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 dedication and love. A person’s attitude towards God should be the same: a person lives not for himself, but for God. Only such an understanding of the meaning of one’s own life corresponds to a person’s actual position in the world and follows from the nature of his connection with God. The normal, human relationship of a person to God is an attitude 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 anything 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, every person has a divine principle - a 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 directly communicate with God, then he can do this indirectly, through the correct attitude towards other people and the correct 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. 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 bound by the same understanding of the meaning of life, by a single 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 whatever 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 a person’s correct attitude towards himself is the desire for perfection, this very movement from oneself to God. Moreover, “a person standing at a lower level, moving towards perfection, lives more morally, better, and fulfills the teaching more than a person standing at a much higher level of morality, but not moving towards perfection.” Awareness 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, the more moral a person is, the more fully he realizes his imperfection.

If we take these two relationships to God - the relationship to others and the relationship to oneself - then the initial and fundamental, from Tolstoy’s point of view, is the relationship to oneself. A moral attitude towards oneself automatically guarantees a moral attitude towards others. A person who realizes how infinitely far from the ideal he is is a person free from the superstition that he can arrange the lives of other people. A person’s concern for the purity of his own soul is the source of a person’s moral responsibilities towards other people, the state, etc.

The concepts of God, freedom, goodness connect finite human existence with the infinity of the world. “We subject all these concepts, in which the finite is equated with the infinite and the meaning of life, the concepts of God, freedom, goodness, to logical investigation. And these concepts do not stand up to the criticism of reason.” Their content goes into such a distance, which is only indicated by the mind, but is not comprehended by it. They are given to man directly and reason does not so much substantiate these concepts as clarify 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 be meaningful. If this is not so, if life is meaningless, then reason has no subject to consider, and at best it can point out this pointlessness.

However, the question arises: “If you cannot know what the infinite is and, accordingly, God, freedom, good, then how can you 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 orientation on the road: in one case, specific objects that should be encountered in sequence on the path 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 a precise description of the actions that a person should do or which he should avoid is given, the second way is that the guide for a person is the unattainable perfection of an ideal. Just as a compass can only determine the degree of deviation from the path, in the same way an ideal can only become a starting point for human imperfection. The concepts of God, freedom, goodness, revealing the infinite meaning of our finite life, are that very ideal, the practical purpose of which is to be a reproach to a person, to point out to him what he is not.

Moral and religious progress in human consciousness is the engine of history.

L.N. Tolstoy was concerned with the question of what the course of history is and whether a person can make any plans for the reconstruction of society. According to L.N. Tolstoy, in history, a certain goal is realized, independent of man. 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 “superstition of arrangement.” It is one step away from recognizing 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 managers who, through violence, will establish a new system will lead to despotism worse than capitalist, for there are a hundred ways to pervert the scheme. The revolution and civil war of 17-21 in Russia showed how right L.N. was. Tolstoy.

Man can and should contribute to the implementation 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 through violence. The question “What to do?” you need to decide for yourself, not 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 disgusting to God, love, wish others well. Each of us who does good gives the world a new look. Tolstoy is confident that “as soon as love for one’s neighbor becomes natural for every person, new conditions for 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 authentic views of Jesus as set out in the Gospels, and their distortion in the dogmas of Orthodoxy and other Christian churches.

“The fact that love is a necessary and good condition of human life was recognized by all religious teachings of antiquity. In all the teachings: 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 to 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. Never swear to anyone or anything; 4. Do not resist evil with 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 of human development, people can no longer do. These commandments are like notes on the endless path of perfection...” They cannot but be negative, since we are talking about awareness of the degree of imperfection. They are nothing more than a step, a step on the path to perfection. Together they constitute truths that are beyond doubt, but have not yet been practically mastered. For modern man they are already truths, but have not yet become a daily habit. A person already dares to think like that, but is not yet able to act like that. Therefore, these truths proclaimed by Jesus Christ are a test of human freedom.

According to Tolstoy, the most important of the five commandments is the fourth: “Do not resist evil,” which prohibits violence. The ancient law, which condemned evil and violence in general, allowed that in certain cases they could be used for good - as fair retribution according to the formula “an eye for an eye.” Jesus Christ abolishes this law. He believes that violence can never be good, under any circumstances. The prohibition against violence is absolute. It is not only good that must be answered with good. And we must respond to evil with good.

Denial of power

Tolstoy was an extreme anarchist, an enemy of any 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 hostility to the state also won victory among the Russian people. Tolstoy turned out to be an exponent of the anti-state, anarchic instincts of the Russian people. He gave these instincts moral and religious sanction. And he is one of the culprits of the destruction of the Russian state. Tolstoy is also hostile to all culture. For him, culture is based on untruth and violence, it is the source of all the evils of our lives. 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, non-human nature and in it he sought the sources of divine truth. And in this Tolstoy turned out 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 layer. drown him in the natural darkness of the people. And Tolstoy is one of the culprits of the destruction of Russian culture. He morally undermined the possibility of cultural creativity and poisoned the sources of creativity. He poisoned the Russian people 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 neither sin nor repentance that revives human nature. For him there is only an enervating, graceless reflection, which is the other side of rebellion against the divine world order. Tolstoy idealized the common people, saw in them the source of truth and idolized the physical heap in which he sought salvation from the meaninglessness of life. But he had a disdainful and contemptuous attitude towards all spiritual work and creativity. The entire edge of Tolstoy's criticism was always directed against the cultural system. These Tolstoyan assessments also won in the Russian revolution, which elevates representatives of physical labor to the heights and overthrows 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 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 implementing his ideas in other ways. But even Rousseau would have been horrified by the actions 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 business he was Russian, fatal and unfortunate Russian traits were reflected 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 everyone to fulfill public and state duties.

Power as an institution is an ineradicable evil, and Tolstoy in his theory abandons the state, proposing to replace it with a kind of anarchic system, namely, the organization of agricultural communities consisting of morally improving people. In the system of ideological coordinates, the main feature or, better to say, the dominant behavior should be a complete renunciation of violence no matter what. This is how the writer came to his famous thesis “about non-resistance to evil through violence.” The theory of non-resistance to evil through violence is very often interpreted in a simplified way: if you hit it on the left cheek, turn it to 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 reorganize the world. Man 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 thoughts. 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. Casualties are inevitable, but when the forest is cut down, the chips fly. The Bolsheviks were guided by the ideal of transforming society; Tolstoy called for the opening of “the kingdom of God within us.”

Literature

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Philosophy

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Breathing sweet hope as an infant,

Whenever I believed that there was once a soul,

Having escaped from decay, he carries away eternal thoughts,

Both memory and love in the abyss are endless, -

I swear! long ago I would have left this world:

I would crush life, ugly idol,

And flew away to the land of freedom, pleasures,

To a country where there is no death, where there are no prejudices.

Where thought alone floats in heavenly purity.

A.S. Pushkin

The 19th century is the century of the extraordinary dawn of Russian culture, including literature. Russian literature of the 19th century is deeply philosophical. Its characteristic feature is a conviction in the vital significance of ideals and human values. This was especially evident in the work of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, a writer and thinker who created a religious and ethical teaching about the world, about man, about the meaning of life.

Count Tolstoy by birth received a good education at home. In 1851-1854. served in the Caucasus, participated in the battle for Sevastopol. Many predicted a military career for him, but Lev Nikolaevich preferred writing. Although later in writing he became disappointed. A fighter for freedom, justice, morality, he encounters the self-interest of writers who, to a greater extent, want to please themselves, their interests, rather than help other people in understanding the meaning of life.

Tolstoy believed that the drama of humanity lies in the constant contradiction between the inevitability of death and the thirst for immortality inherent in man. The embodiment of this struggle is expressed by the question: “Is there such a meaning in my life that would not be humiliated by the death that awaits me?”

Tolstoy also saw man as an “arena” in which two principles fight - the carnal and the spiritual. The body is transitory and finite; only by renouncing it does a person approach true life. Its essence is a special, non-egoistic love for the world, characteristic specifically of the spiritual “I” of a person. Such love helps to realize the futility of the desires of the animal self: worldly goods, the enjoyment of wealth, honors, power - the ultimate benefits, they are immediately taken away by death.

Meeting face to face with the death of loved ones filled Leo Tolstoy’s inner world with a feeling of hopelessness, tragedy, causing bitterness and fear. Lev Nikolaevich, having lost his mother, father, and beloved older brother, begins to look at things in a new way and thinks about death. He realizes that all this time he did not pay much attention to his family, he lived aimlessly, for himself. “Life for oneself cannot have any meaning... To live intelligently, one must live in such a way that death cannot destroy life.”

The writer understands that neither his life nor his values will stand the test of death. “I could not attach any reasonable meaning to any action or to my entire life. I was only surprised at how I could not understand this from the very beginning. All this has been known to everyone for so long. If not today, then tomorrow illnesses and death will come (and have already come) to my loved ones, to me, and there will be nothing left but stench and worms. My deeds, no matter what they were, will all be forgotten - sooner, later, and I won’t be there either. So why bother?

In general, Tolstoy’s religious views were formed long and painfully. In his “Confession” he wrote: “I was baptized and raised in the Orthodox Christian faith. I was taught it from childhood, and during my adolescence and youth. But when I left my second year at university at the age of eighteen, I no longer believed in anything that I was taught.” But thoughts about religion did not leave the writer. In a letter to his aunt Alexandra Andreevna, Tolstoy spoke about his early quests: “As a child, I believed ardently, sentimentally, thoughtlessly, then, at the age of 14, I began to think about life in general, and came across a religion that did not fit my theories, and , of course, considered it a favor to destroy it. It was very peaceful for me to live without her for ten years. Everything was revealed to me clearly, logically, subdivided, and there was no place for religion. Then the time came when everything became open, there were no more secrets in life, but life itself began to lose its meaning. At the same time, I was lonely and unhappy, living in the Caucasus. I began to think in a way that only once in a lifetime people have the power to think. I have my notes from that time, and now, re-reading them, I could not understand that a person could reach such a degree of mental exaltation to which I reached then. It was both a painful and a good time. Never, neither before nor later, have I reached such a height of thought, never looked into it, as during this time, which lasted two years. And everything that I found then will forever remain my conviction. I can't do otherwise. From two years of mental work, I found a simple, old thing, but which I know as no one knows - I found that there is immortality, that there is love, and one must live for another, in order to be happy forever. These discoveries surprised me by their similarity to the Christian religion, and instead of discovering them myself, I began to look for them in the Gospel, but found little. I found neither God, nor the Redeemer, nor the sacraments, nor anything, but I searched with all, seven, with all the powers of my soul, and cried, and suffered, and desired nothing but the truth.”

Lev Nikolaevich could not find an answer to his question about the meaning of life. This dissatisfaction led to frequent stoppages in life, a few minutes of stupor. He admits: “...I began to experience moments of first bewilderment, life stopping, as if I didn’t know how I should continue to live, what I should do, and I got lost and fell into despondency. But it passed, and I continued to live as before. Then these moments of bewilderment began to repeat more and more often and all in the same form. These stops in life were always expressed by the same questions: Why? Well, me later?

He found a way out of the impasse in the teachings of Jesus Christ. But this does not mean that Tolstoy became a deeply religious person. On the contrary, he denies the modern church, believing that it prescribes supernatural abilities to the preacher of moral truths; they convince believers that it is impossible to communicate with God without intermediaries, thereby improving their own situation. The program of Christ, which states that one hundred people should serve only their creator, turned out to be close to the worldview of the writer.

People at all times hoped for the best, believed that a good life would come with progress, and were always deceived, while still not forgetting to believe. But Tolstoy’s opinions about faith differed from traditional ones. He did not hope for something meaningless, invisible. “Faith is a person’s consciousness of his position in the world, which obliges him to certain actions.” “Faith is knowledge of the meaning of human life, as a result of which a person does not humiliate himself, but lives. Faith is the power of life." From this it becomes clear that a life that has meaning and a life based on faith are one and the same.

True faith, Tolstoy believed, is never unreasonable, inconsistent with reliable scientific knowledge, and its basis cannot be anything supernatural. While in words recognizing the teachings of Christ, in reality the church denies his teaching when it illuminates social inequality, idolizes state power, which was initially based on violence, and participates in the sanctification of executions and wars. According to Tolstoy, the modern church has distorted the teachings of Christ, changing its essence - the moral commandments of the Christian faith.

Lev Nikolaevich until the end of his life did not agree with the church, believing that it distorts the teachings of Christ, that this distortion leads to an incorrect way of life for people. The Church, according to Tolstoy, comes up with allegories that would make it appear that people, living against the laws of Christ, live in accordance with him. “Lies support the cruelty of life, the cruelty of life requires more and more lies, and, like a lump of snow, both grow uncontrollably.”

As Tolstoy believed, only in the teachings of Christ are the moral ideals of humanity most fully expressed, and changing them seemed wrong to him, even in some ways a crime.

Lev Nikolaevich studied the teachings of Christ, the Ancient and New Testaments for a very long time. In them he did not find what the modern church was now enlightening. All the commandments of Christ did not remain in it or they were greatly changed. Rethinking his teachings, Tolstoy identified five main commandments:

1. Don't be angry.

2. Don't leave your wife.

3. Never swear to anyone or anything.

4. Do not resist evil with force.

5. Do not consider people of other nations as your enemies.

These commandments are still relevant today in times of immorality and lawlessness. At a time when interethnic clashes and protests are occurring every hour, turning into genocide. At a time when meanness, anger, envy triumph; when people mercilessly kill each other; when all the powerful and rich believe that everyone should worship them, and when the majority is ready to grovel before them. At a time when Russia ranks first in the number of divorces. If everyone lived according to the commandments of Christ, or simply according to human laws and traditions, life on earth would be much easier and safer.

But let’s move on to the philosophy of Leo Tolstoy.

The commandments were not created to be followed blindly: they are like steps on the path to perfection. Tolstoy especially emphasized the fourth commandment: “Do not resist evil with force.” “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” is not appropriate here because violence is contrary to love. It was love that Tolstoy considered to be fundamental to the world, an eternal ideal to which people will strive endlessly. “The essence of human life and the highest law that should guide it is love.” Evil must always be responded to with good.

But violence is undoubtedly present in our daily lives, and it cannot be resisted. Because even supposedly nonviolent movements often involve violence. This is especially true of public policy, which is so organized that “people, committing the most terrible things, do not see their responsibility for them... Some demanded, others decided, others confirmed, fourth proposed, fifth reported, sixth ordered, seventh carried out.” And no one is to blame. The blurring of guilt in such situations is not simply the result of a deliberate attempt to hide ends. It reflects the very existence of the matter: violence is objectively an area of unfree behavior. People would never commit such crimes if they acted alone. Tolstoy had long noticed the decline in the authority of state power in his contemporary Russia. This, coupled with a decline in morality, leads to the fact that Tolstoy, who previously loved his fatherland, now feels disgusted by it. “In Russia it’s bad, bad, bad. In St. Petersburg, in Moscow, everyone is shouting something, being indignant, expecting something, but in the wilderness, patriarchal barbarity, theft and lawlessness are also happening.”

The commandment of non-resistance will be united as a whole with the teachings of Christ only if it is accepted as a law from which one cannot deviate. For example, to deviate from the law of Love means to allow violence. Tolstoy believed that murder could not be justified. He said that no one person has the right to take the life of another, no matter what his motives. “The death penalty, as it was and remains for me, is one of those human acts, information about which does not actually destroy in me the consciousness of the impossibility of committing them.”

Equally condemning violence and government, Tolstoy makes the following recommendations for practical ethics:

1. Stop doing direct violence yourself, as well as preparing for it;

2. Do not take part in any violence done by other people;

3. Do not condone any violence.

Lev Nikolaevich is often reproached for being an abstract thinker. That it was only because of purely moral considerations that he denied violence, and that the teachings of Christ had nothing to do with this. The law of non-resistance does not mean complete inaction in response to evil. No, we absolutely must fight evil. Moreover, only then can you resist violence when you refuse to respond in kind. “Defenders of the social understanding of life are objectively trying to confuse the concept of power, that is, violence, with the concept of spiritual influence, but this confusion is completely impossible.”

Tolstoy lives in the movement of time, and each of us is in it. Sooner or later it will put everyone in their places; time will show how and to what extent humanity will take advantage of his teaching and the rules of morality that he proclaimed throughout his life. The writer himself considered these rules to be quite feasible. And we can only follow them, for he is the same living person as we are, with only one significant difference: he is immortal, which is not given to us.

Literature

1. “L.N. Tolstoy and his loved ones" M., 1986

2. A.I. Solzhenitsyn “Collected Works” T.4. Paris, 1979

3. A.A. Huseynov “Great Moralists” M., Republic, 1995

4. “Introduction to Philosophy” In 2 volumes, 1990

5. L.N. Tolstoy “Collected Works” in 12 volumes, M., ed. "Pravda", 1984

6. P.S. Turgenev “Man” Bustard, 1995

7. Yu.V. Lebedev “Literature. Grade 10 "M., Enlightenment, 1992

8. K. Ryzhov "100 great Russians" M., Veche, 2001

Philosophical ideas

The search for the meaning of life is perhaps the most expressive and unsurpassed heroic quest, presented in a passionate struggle with age-old traditions. He resisted the “spirit of this age,” which takes him beyond the boundaries of exclusively Russian philosophy and puts him in line with other outstanding thinkers and philosophers of the era. Tolstoy is a global phenomenon, but he completely positions himself as typically Russian, not thinking of himself outside of Russian life.

In the 1970s, Tolstoy was experiencing a deep spiritual crisis, which he expressed in his work “ Confession».

Confession is a genre of religious literature. God's help is an act of prayer. This is meditation before the face of God. Prayer attunes a person to sincerity. The prayer at the end is like gratitude.

The meaning of confession is to realize your sins. The person confessing is a sinner. But Tolstoy had a different meaning for confession. He confesses to himself. Through denying God we will come to God. And if God is denied, then he is not the truth. Doubt everything. Doubt in faith. This is a descent into nonsense. Denial of meaning, lack of meaning in life.

Search for the meaning of life. It is impossible to live without the meaning of life. The problem of death arises, which Tolstoy is painfully experiencing at this moment; it is the tragedy of the inevitability of death, which leads him to the idea of suicide. This crisis leads Tolstov to break relations with the secular world. He draws close to “believers from poor, simple, unlearned people,” as he writes in “Confession.” It is in ordinary people that Tolstoy finds faith for himself, which gave them meaning in life. With his characteristic passion, Tolstoy longs to be filled with this faith, to enter the world of faith. At this moment, he fully realizes his break with the church, with the church’s interpretation of Christ, Christianity, and takes the path of “self-humiliation and humility.” In its simplified form, theological rationalism occupies his thinking. This leads to Tolstoy formulating his own metaphysics based on certain provisions of Christianity. His understanding of Christianity includes the denial of the divinity of Christ and his Resurrection, a modified text of the Gospel with an emphasis on those moments that, in his opinion, Christ announced to the world.

Tolstov's works during this period include 4 volumes

"Critique of Dogmatic Theology",
"What is my faith"
"About life".

This is his most significant mental and philosophical stage.

Mystical immanentism

Tolstoy creates his own system of mystical immanentism, which was close to the ideas of modern rationalism, that is, the denial of everything transcendent. However, this is a mystical teaching about life and man, which extremely significantly separated it from modern philosophy. Tolstoy, thus, broke off his relations with both the church and the world. The key themes of Tolstoy's philosophy were always the focus of his ethical quests. This can be described as "panmoralism". This is the desire to subjugate

Tolstoy is a great master of artistic expression and a great thinker. His whole life, his heart and mind were occupied with one burning question, which to one degree or another left its painful imprint on all his writings. We feel its darkening presence in "The Story of My Childhood", in "War and Peace", in "Anna Karenina", until it finally consumed him in the last years of his life, when such works as "My Faith" were created. What is my faith?", "What to do?", "About Life" and "The Kreutzer Sonata". The same question burns in the hearts of many people, especially among Theosophists; it is truly a matter of life itself. “What is the meaning, the purpose of human life? What is the final outcome of the unnatural, perverted and deceitful life of our civilization, such as is imposed on each of us individually? What must we do to be happy, constantly happy? How can we avoid the nightmare of inevitable death? " Tolstoy did not give an answer to these eternal questions in his early works, because he himself did not find it. But he could not stop struggling, as millions of other weaker or cowardly natures had done, without giving an answer that would at least satisfy his own heart and mind; and the five works mentioned above contain such an answer. This is an answer with which the theosophist cannot really be satisfied in the form in which Tolstoy gives it, but in his main, fundamental, vital thought we can find new light, fresh hope and strong consolation.

Basic ideas and specifics of the philosophical system

From the point of view of the Russian writer and thinker L.N. Tolstoy, the drama of human existence lies in the contradiction between the inevitability of death and the thirst for immortality inherent in man. The embodiment of this contradiction is the question about the meaning of life - a question that can be expressed as follows: “Is there a meaning in my life that would not be destroyed by the death that inevitably awaits me?” Tolstoy believes that a person’s life is filled with meaning to the extent that he subordinates it to fulfilling the will of God, and the will of God is given to us as the law of love, opposing the law of violence. The law of love is most fully and precisely unfolded in the commandments of Christ. In order to save himself, his soul, in order to give meaning to life, a person must stop doing evil, committing violence, stop once and for all and, above all, when he himself becomes the object of evil and violence. Do not return evil for evil, do not resist evil with violence - this is the basis of the life teaching of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy.

According to Tolstoy, a person is in disagreement, discord with himself. It is as if two people live in it - internal and external, of which the first is dissatisfied with what the second does, and the second does not do what the first wants. This inconsistency, self-destruction is found in different people with varying degrees of severity, but it is inherent in all of them. Self-contradictory, torn apart by mutually denying aspirations, a person is doomed to suffer, to be dissatisfied with himself. A person constantly strives to overcome himself, to become different.

However, it is not enough to say that it is natural for a person to suffer and be dissatisfied. Moreover, a person also knows that he is suffering and is dissatisfied with himself; he does not accept his suffering situation. His discontent and suffering are doubled: to the suffering and discontent itself is added the consciousness that this is bad. A person not only strives to become different, to eliminate everything that gives rise to suffering and a feeling of discontent; he strives to become free from suffering. A person not only lives, he also wants his life to have meaning.

People associate the fulfillment of their desires with civilization, changes in external forms of life, the natural and social environment. It is assumed that a person can free himself from a painful situation with the help of science, the arts, economic growth, technological development, the creation of a comfortable life, etc. This line of thinking, mainly characteristic of the privileged and educated layers of society, was borrowed by L. N. Tolstoy and was guided by them during the first half of their adult life. However, it was precisely personal experience and observations of people in his circle that convinced him that this path was false. The higher a person rises in his worldly pursuits and hobbies, the more innumerable his wealth, the deeper his knowledge, the stronger the mental restlessness, dissatisfaction and suffering from which he wanted to free himself in these pursuits. One might think that if activity and progress increase suffering, then inactivity will help to reduce it. This assumption is incorrect. The cause of suffering is not progress itself, but the expectations that are associated with it, that completely unjustified hope that by increasing the speed of trains, increasing the yield of fields, something else can be achieved beyond the fact that a person will move faster and eat better. From this point of view, it makes little difference whether the emphasis is on activity and progress or inactivity. The very attitude of giving human life meaning by changing its external forms is erroneous. This attitude comes from the conviction that the inner man depends on the outer, that the state of the soul and consciousness of a person is a consequence of his position in the world and among people. But if this were so, then there would be no conflict between them from the very beginning.

In a word, material and cultural progress mean what they mean: material and cultural progress. They do not affect the suffering of the soul. Tolstoy sees the unconditional proof of this in the fact that progress is meaningless if we consider it in the perspective of a person's death. Why money, power, etc., why try at all, achieve something, if everything inevitably ends in death and oblivion. “One can only live while drunk on life; and when you sober up, you can’t help but see that all this is just a deception, and a stupid deception!

The conclusion about the meaninglessness of life, to which experience seems to lead and which is confirmed by philosophical wisdom, is, from Tolstoy’s point of view, clearly contradictory logically, so that one can agree with it. How can reason justify the meaninglessness of life if it itself is a creation of life? He has no basis for such justification. Therefore, the very statement about the meaninglessness of life contains its own refutation: a person who came to such a conclusion had to, first of all, settle his own scores with life, and then he could not talk about its meaninglessness, if he talks about the meaninglessness of life and thereby continues to live a life that is worse than death, which means that in reality it is not as meaningless and bad as it is said. Further, the conclusion that life is meaningless means that a person is capable of setting goals that he cannot achieve and formulating questions that he cannot answer. But aren't these goals and questions posed by the same person? And if he does not have the strength to implement them, then where did he get the strength to deliver them? Tolstoy’s objection is no less convincing: if life is meaningless, then how did millions and millions of people, all of humanity, live and live? And since they live, enjoy life and continue to live, does that mean they find some important meaning in it? Which?

Not satisfied with the negative solution to the question of the meaning of life, L. N. Tolstoy turned to the spiritual experience of ordinary people living by their own labor, the experience of the people.

Ordinary people are well acquainted with the question of the meaning of life, in which for them there is no difficulty, no mystery. They know that they must live according to God's law and live in such a way as not to destroy their soul.

They know about their material insignificance, but it does not frighten them, because the soul remains connected with God. The lack of education of these people, their lack of philosophical and scientific knowledge does not prevent them from understanding the truth of life, rather, on the contrary, it helps. In a strange way, it turned out that ignorant, prejudiced peasants are aware of the depth of the question about the meaning of life, they understand that they are being asked about the eternal, undying meaning of their life and about whether they are afraid of impending death.

Listening to the words of ordinary people, peering into their lives, Tolstoy came to the conclusion that the truth speaks through their lips. They understood the question of the meaning of life deeper, more precisely than all the greatest thinkers and philosophers.

The question about the meaning of life is a question about the relationship between the finite and the infinite in it, that is, whether finite life has an eternal, indestructible meaning and, if so, what does it consist of? Is there anything immortal about her? If the final life of a person contained its meaning within itself, then this very question would not exist. “To solve this question, it is equally not enough to equate the finite with the finite and the infinite with the infinite,” it is necessary to identify the relationship of one to the other. Consequently, the question of the meaning of life is broader than the scope of logical knowledge; it requires going beyond the scope of the area that is subject to reason. “It was impossible to look for an answer to my question in rational knowledge,” writes Tolstoy. We 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 that does not coincide with the traditional one.

This is not the realization of what is expected and the assurance of what is not seen. “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 concept of faith in Tolstoy's understanding is completely unrelated to incomprehensible mysteries, incredibly miraculous transformations and other prejudices. Moreover, it does not mean at all that human knowledge has any other instrumentation than reason, based on experience and subject to strict laws of logic. Describing the peculiarity of the knowledge of faith, Tolstoy writes: “I will not seek an explanation of everything. I know that the explanation of everything must be hidden, as the beginning of everything, in infinity. But I want to understand in such a way that I can be led to the inevitable-inexplicable, I want everything that is inexplicable to be such, not because the demands of my mind are wrong (they are correct, and outside of them I cannot understand anything), but because that I see the limits of my mind. I want to understand in such a way that every inexplicable situation appears to me as a necessity of reason, and not as an obligation to believe. Tolstoy did not recognize unsubstantiated knowledge. He took nothing for granted except faith itself. Faith as a force of life goes beyond the competence of reason. In this sense, the concept of faith is a manifestation of the honesty of the mind, which does not want to take on more than it can. From this understanding of faith it follows that behind the question about the meaning of life there is hidden doubt and confusion. The meaning of life becomes a question when life is deprived of meaning. “I understood,” writes Tolstoy, “that in order to understand the meaning of life, it is necessary, first of all, that life should not be meaningless and evil, and then – reason in order to understand it.” Confused questioning about what to live for is a sure sign that life is wrong. From the works written by Tolstoy, one single conclusion follows: the meaning of life cannot lie in what 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, just as in life for humanity, for it is not eternal. “Life for oneself cannot have any meaning... To live intelligently, one must live in such a way that death cannot destroy life.”