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On Life: A Critical Edition
264Overview
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.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780810138032 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Northwestern University Press |
| Publication date: | 11/15/2018 |
| Edition description: | Critical |
| Pages: | 264 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
LEO TOLSTOY (1828 –1910) is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of all time. He wrote novels, short stories, plays, and philosophical essays and is perhaps best known for War and Peace and Anna Karenina. INESSA MEDZHIBOVSKAYA is an associate professor of liberal studies and literature at Eugene Lang College and at The New School for Social Research in New York City.MICHAEL DENNER is a professor of Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies at Stetson University and the editor of the Tolstoy Studies Journal.
Date of Birth:
September 9, 1828Date of Death:
November 20, 1910Place of Birth:
Tula Province, RussiaPlace of Death:
Astapovo, RussiaEducation:
Privately educated by French and German tutors; attended the University of Kazan, 1844-47Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Main Contradiction of Human Life
Every person lives only to feel good, for his own happiness. Were a person not to wish for his own happiness, he would not feel alive. Man cannot imagine life without wishing happiness for himself. Being alive for every person is precisely the same thing as wanting to acquire this happiness; wishing for and acquiring this happiness is the same thing as being alive.
A person senses life only in himself, in his own individuality. A person, therefore, initially imagines that this happiness that he desires is only individual happiness. Initially, it seems to him that he, alone, truly lives. The life of other creatures seems to him not at all like his own — it seems to him to be a mere semblance of life; he only observes the life of other creatures and only from these observations does he learn that they live. A person knows about the life of others when he wants to think about them; but about himself he knows that he is alive and cannot stop knowing this even for a second. He therefore perceives his own life alone to be authentic. The life of other creatures around him appears to be merely one of the conditions of his own existence. The only reason he does not wish evil on others is that the sight of their suffering disturbs his happiness. When he wishes others well, he does so for reasons entirely different from the reasons that he wishes it for himself — not because he wants those that he wishes well to feel good but only so that the happiness of other creatures increases his own happiness. The only happiness that is important and necessary to a person is the one he feels as his own — that is, his own happiness.
And so, as he pursues the attainment of this happiness of his, he notices that this happiness depends on other creatures. By observing and watching these other creatures, a person sees that they — people and even animals — have the same view of life as he does. Each of these creatures senses — just as he does — only its own life and happiness, considers only its own life to be important and authentic. It views the life of all other creatures merely as a means for achieving its own happiness. A person sees that, just like him, every living creature should, for the sake of its own small happiness, be ready to deprive all other creatures of a greater happiness, even to deprive them of their life — including even the life of the person who is contemplating the matter. And having understood this, the person involuntarily reflects that if this is so — and he knows that this is so — then not just one creature, nor a dozen creatures, but all the innumerable creatures of the world, each seeking to achieve their own aim, are ready to destroy him, that one person for whom life exists. Having realized this, a person sees that his individual happiness, which is the only way that he understands life, not only cannot be easily obtained by him but also likely will be taken away from him.
The longer a person lives, the more this theorizing gets substantiated by experience. Man sees that the life of the world in which he participates — a life composed of interconnected individuals who are ready to destroy and eat one another — not only cannot offer him happiness but also will surely be a great evil.
What is worse, even when a person finds himself in a situation so advantageous that he can successfully fight against others without fearing for himself, very soon his reason and experience demonstrate that these mere semblances of happiness that he snatches away from life in the form of individual pleasures are not happiness. They are somehow merely patterns of happiness, given to him only so that he feels ever-more acutely the sufferings that always accompany pleasures. The longer a person lives, the more distinctly he sees that the pleasures are fewer and fewer, while boredom, satiety, toil, and suffering are greater and greater. What is even worse, when he begins to experience illnesses and the atrophying of his strength, and looks at the illnesses, senility, and deaths of others, he also notices that his own existence, in which alone he senses authentic and full life, with every hour and with every move, gets closer to atrophy, senility, and death. He sees that his life is subject to thousands of chances of destruction by those other creatures that are fighting against him and that it is subject to ever-increasing suffering; and he sees that his life, in essence, is only an incessant approach to death, an approach to that state in which not only is his individual life destroyed but also the very possibility of happiness is in all likelihood destroyed. Man sees that he, his individuality — that thing where alone he senses life — does nothing save struggle against what it is impossible to struggle against, the whole world. He sees that he seeks pleasures that yield the mere semblance of happiness and always end in suffering. And he sees that he wishes to hold fast to something beyond his reach: life. Man sees that he himself, his very own individuality — the thing for which alone he wishes happiness and life — can possess neither happiness nor life. What he wishes to possess — happiness and life — are possessed only by those creatures that are alien to him, those creatures that he does not and cannot sense, cannot and does not want to know.
His individuality — that which for him is the most important thing, that which alone is necessary, that which alone seems to truly live — that thing will first die, then there will be bones and worms. It is not he, not what is necessary, not what is important, not what he senses is alive, but rather this whole world of the struggling creatures, one replacing the next — it is this thing that is the real life, the thing that will last and will live eternally. Thus the only life that man senses, the one he directs all activities toward, turns out to be something deceptive and impossible, while the life outside him — the life that is unloved, that he does not feel, that is unknown to him — is the only true life.
The thing that he does not sense — that alone possesses the qualities that he wishes to possess. This perception is not one that occurs only in black moments of bleak moods, nor a perception that can be avoided; it is instead such an obvious and indubitable truth that if it ever occurs to a person, or if others ever explain it to him, he will never be rid of it. Nothing burns this truth out of his consciousness.
CHAPTER 2Humanity Has Been Aware of the Contradiction of Life since the Remotest Antiquity. Enlighteners of Humanity Have Revealed the Definitions of Life to People. These Definitions Have Solved This Inner Contradiction, but the Pharisees and Scribes Have Kept Them Concealed from People
The only aim for life that initially occurs to someone is his individual happiness, but there is no such thing as individual happiness; were there something in life like happiness, then life, in which alone happiness is possible — individual life, that is — with its every movement, every breath, is drawn inexorably toward suffering, evil, death, and destruction.
This is so obvious and so clear that every thinking person — young and old, educated and uneducated, everyone — sees it. This theorizing is so simple and natural that it appears to every reasonable person and has been known to humanity from remotest antiquity.
"The life of a person, as an individual merely pursuing his own happiness among an innumerable multitude of other such individuals, each destroying the other and destroying itself, is evil and nonsense. True life cannot be thus." Man has said this to himself since remotest antiquity. This inner contradiction of human life has been expressed with unusual force and clarity by Hindu, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, and Hebrew sages. Human reason has been directed, since remotest antiquity, at comprehending a human happiness that cannot be destroyed by strife among creatures, by suffering or by death. Ever since we have been aware of life, all forward movement of humanity has consisted of an ever-greater illumination of this happiness, free from doubt and impervious to strife, suffering, and death.
Since remotest antiquity, and in the most diverse of nations, the teachers of humanity have revealed to people ever-clearer definitions of life that try to resolve life's inner contradiction. They have directed people toward the true happiness and true life that are natural for people. The human condition in the world is everywhere the same, and therefore the contradiction of a man's pursuit of individual happiness, and the realization of its impossibility, is also the same for everyone. All definitions of true happiness — and therefore all definitions of true life — that have been revealed to people by the greatest minds of humanity are thus essentially the same.
"Life is the proliferation of the light that has descended from heaven for the benefit of people," said Confucius, six hundred years B.C.
"Life is the journey and perfection of souls that are achieving ever-greater happiness," said the Brahmins around the same time. "Life is self-renunciation for the sake of the blessed nirvana," said Buddha, a contemporary of Confucius's. "Life is a path of humility and humiliation for the attainment of happiness," said Laozi, also a contemporary of Confucius's. "Life is what God breathed into man's nostrils in order that man, in fulfilling His law, should receive happiness," Hebraic wisdom says. "Life is submission to reason, which gives happiness to man," said the Stoics. "Life is love for God and neighbor, bringing happiness to man," Christ said, encompassing in his definition all the above.
Such are the definitions of life that, thousands of years before our time, by directing people away from a false and impossible individual happiness toward a real, indestructible happiness, have resolved the contradiction of human life and imposed a reasonable meaning upon it. One can disagree with these definitions of life, one can claim that they could be expressed more precisely and clearly, but one cannot help seeing that these definitions, once accepted, will annihilate the contradiction of life. By replacing the pursuit of an unattainable individual happiness with a different kind of pursuit, one that seeks a happiness that cannot be destroyed by suffering or by death, these definitions give life a reasonable meaning. One cannot help seeing that, being theoretically correct, these definitions are confirmed by life's experience and that the millions and millions of people who have accepted and still accept these definitions have proved, and still prove, that it is possible to substitute, in place of pursuit of individual happiness, a pursuit of a happiness that is impervious to suffering and death.
But besides those people who have understood and still understand, and live by, the definitions of life revealed by its great enlighteners, there has been and still are a vast majority of people who, at a certain period of their life, and sometimes during their entire life, have lived and continue to live solely for the satisfaction of their animal life. They not only do not understand the definitions that resolve the contradictions of human life but also do not even see these contradictions. There have always been among people those who, because of their exclusive standing, consider themselves elected to lead humanity. Without understanding the meaning of human life, they have taught and still teach other people about life, a life they do not understand. They teach about a life that is nothing more than individual existence.
These false teachers have always existed, and they exist in our own age. Some of them verbally profess the teachings of the enlighteners of humanity in whose traditions these teachers were educated. However, not understanding the teachings' reasonable meaning, they turn them into supernatural revelation about people's past and future life and demand only the observation of rites. This is Pharisaic teaching in its broadest sense — that is, these are the people who teach that our life, unreasonable in itself, can be corrected by faith in another life, a life attainable through the fulfillment of external rites.
Others reject the existence of any life save the perceptible one. They deny all miracles and everything supernatural and boldly declare that a person's life is nothing but his animal existence from birth to death. This is the teaching of the Scribes, people who teach that in human life, as in animal life, there can be nothing unreasonable.
No matter that the teachings of both groups of false teachers are based on the same crude misunderstanding of the main contradiction of human life, they have always quarreled and still quarrel with one another. Both teachings hold sway over our world, and, as they quarrel with one other, they fill the world with their disputes. These disputes conceal from people the definitions of life that reveal to them the path toward their true happiness, definitions that were given to humanity thousands of years ago.
The Pharisees, misunderstanding the definition of life that was handed down to people by the very teachers in whose traditions the Pharisees were raised, replace the true definition of life with their own false interpretations of a future life. At the same time, the Pharisees try to conceal from people the definitions of life by other enlighteners of humanity, exhibiting them in most crude and cruel distortions. They hope thereby to maintain the exclusive authority of that teaching on which they base their own interpretations.
The Scribes, not even suspecting that there might be reasonable foundations to the Pharisaic teaching, bluntly refute all teachings about future life, boldly declaring that all such teachings are baseless and merely boorish customs left over from barbarity and that the forward march of humanity depends upon not asking oneself any questions about life exceeding the bounds of animal existence.
CHAPTER 3The Errors of the Scribes
What an amazing thing! All the teachings of the great minds of humanity have always so struck people with their greatness that coarse people have often attributed to them a supernatural character and made demigods of their founders. The very thing that has served as the chief sign of the significance of these teachings serves, for the Scribes at least, as the best proof of their falsity and backwardness. The insignificant teachings of Aristotle, Bacon, Comte, and others have always been, and still are, the legacy of a small number of their readers and admirers; these teachings, because of their wrongness, could never influence the masses and have therefore never become subjects of any superstitious distortion or accretion. The very sign of their insignificance is recognized as proof of their being genuine. The teachings of the Brahmins, Buddha, Zoroaster, Laozi, Confucius, Isaiah, and Christ, on the contrary, are considered to be prejudice and errors precisely because these teachings have upended the lives of millions.
That billions of people have lived by these superstitions because, even in their distorted form, they provide people with answers about life's true happiness; that these teachings are not only widely held but also have served as the basis of thought for the best people of all ages, while the theories acknowledged by the Scribes are held true only among them, are always disputed, and at times do not even last a decade before being forgotten almost as quickly as they come into being — none of this bothers them in the least.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction
Tolstoy's On Life and Its Times Inessa Medzhibovskaya 3
A Note on the Text 42
On Life Leo Tolstoy Michael Denner Inessa Medzhibovskaya 43
Editor's Notes 187
Historical Supplement Inessa Medzhibovskaya
Tolstoy's Diary (May 1886-February 1887) 215
Tolstoy's Letter to A. K. Diterikhs (September-October 1886) 221
"The Concept of Life": Tolstoy's Talk at the Moscow Psychological Society (March 14, 1887) 224
Letters concerning On Life, Aleksandra Andreevna Tolstaya and Lev Tolstoy 228
Letter to Nikolai Grot, against Tolstoy and On Life, Archbishop Nikanor of Kherson and Odessa 231
"A Little Chronicle": A Reader's Response to Critics of On Life (1889) 235
Vladimir Soloviev's Unsent Letter to Tolstoy (circa 1889-91; last known edited copy 1894) 238
Nikolai Grot's Comparison of On Life with Nietzsche's Writings (1893) 241
Letter to the Editor from R K. Novitskaya (1895) 244