Schopenhauer After reading
Arthur Schopenhauer's
The World as Will and Representation, Tolstoy gradually became converted to the ascetic morality upheld in that work as the proper spiritual path for the upper classes. In 1869 he writes: "Do you know what this summer has meant for me? Constant raptures over Schopenhauer and a whole series of spiritual delights which I've never experienced before....no student has ever studied so much on his course, and learned so much, as I have this summer." In Chapter VI of
Confession, Tolstoy quoted the final paragraph of Schopenhauer's work. It explains how a complete
denial of self causes only a relative nothingness which is not to be feared. Tolstoy was struck by the description of Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu ascetic renunciation as being the path to holiness. After reading passages such as the following, which abound in Schopenhauer's ethical chapters, the Russian nobleman chose poverty and formal denial of the will: But this very necessity of involuntary suffering (by poor people) for
eternal salvation is also expressed by that utterance of the Savior (
Matthew 19:24): "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." Therefore, those who were greatly in earnest about their eternal salvation, chose
voluntary poverty when fate had denied this to them and they had been born in wealth. Thus Buddha
Sakyamuni was born a prince, but voluntarily took to the mendicant's staff; and
Francis of Assisi, the founder of the
mendicant orders who, as a youngster at a ball, where the daughters of all the notabilities were sitting together, was asked: "Now Francis, will you not soon make your choice from these beauties?" and who replied: "I have made a far more beautiful choice!" "Whom?" "
La povertà (poverty)": whereupon he abandoned every thing shortly afterwards and wandered through the land as a mendicant.
Christianity In 1884, Tolstoy wrote a book called
What I Believe, in which he openly confessed his Christian beliefs. He affirmed his belief in Jesus Christ's teachings and was particularly influenced by the
Sermon on the Mount, and the injunction to
turn the other cheek, which he understood as a "commandment of non-resistance to evil by force" and a doctrine of
pacifism and
nonviolence. In his work
The Kingdom of God Is Within You, he explains that he considered mistaken the Church's doctrine because they had made a "perversion" of Christ's teachings. Tolstoy also received letters from American
Quakers who introduced him to the non-violence writings of Quaker Christians such as
George Fox,
William Penn, and
Jonathan Dymond. Later, various versions of "Tolstoy's Bible" were published, indicating the passages Tolstoy most relied on, specifically, the reported words of Jesus himself. and other residents of
Tolstoy Farm, South Africa, 1910 Tolstoy believed that a true Christian could find lasting happiness by striving for inner perfection through following the
Great Commandment of loving one's neighbor and God, rather than guidance from the Church or state. Another distinct attribute of his philosophy based on Christ's teachings is
nonresistance during conflict. This idea, communicated in Tolstoy's book
The Kingdom of God Is Within You, directly influenced
Mahatma Gandhi and by extension nonviolent resistance movements as a whole. Tolstoy believed that the aristocracy was a burden on the poor. He opposed
private land ownership and the institution of marriage, and valued chastity and sexual abstinence (discussed in
Father Sergius and his preface to
The Kreutzer Sonata), ideals also held by the young Gandhi. Tolstoy's passion from the depth of his austere moral views is reflected in his later work. One example is the sequence of the temptation of Sergius in
Father Sergius.
Maxim Gorky relates how Tolstoy once read this passage before him and Chekhov, and Tolstoy was moved to tears by the end of the reading. Later passages of rare power include the personal crises faced by the protagonists of
The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and of
Master and Man, where the main character in the former and the reader in the latter are made aware of the foolishness of the protagonists' lives. In 1886, Tolstoy wrote to the Russian
explorer and anthropologist
Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay, who was one of the first anthropologists to refute
polygenism, the view that the different
races of mankind belonged to different species: "You were the first to demonstrate beyond question by your experience that man is man everywhere, that is, a kind, sociable being with whom communication can and should be established through kindness and truth, not guns and spirits."
Christian anarchism Tolstoy had a profound influence on the development of
Christian anarchist thought. Tolstoy believed being a Christian required him to be a pacifist; the apparently inevitable waging of war by governments is why he is considered a philosophical anarchist. The
Tolstoyans were a small Christian anarchist group formed by Tolstoy's companion,
Vladimir Chertkov (1854–1936), to spread Tolstoy's religious teachings. From 1892, he regularly met with the student-activist
Vasily Maklakov who would defend several Tolstoyans; they discussed the fate of the
Doukhobors. Philosopher
Peter Kropotkin wrote of Tolstoy in the article on anarchism in the
1911 Encyclopædia Britannica: Without naming himself an anarchist, Leo Tolstoy, like his predecessors in the popular religious movements of the 15th and 16th centuries,
Chojecki,
Denk and many others, took the anarchist position as regards the
state and
property rights, deducing his conclusions from the general spirit of the teachings of Jesus and from the necessary dictates of reason. With all the might of his talent, Tolstoy made (especially in
The Kingdom of God Is Within You) a powerful criticism of the church, the state and law altogether, and especially of the present
property laws. He describes the state as the domination of the wicked ones, supported by brutal force. Robbers, he says, are far less dangerous than a well-organized government. He makes a searching criticism of the prejudices which are current now concerning the benefits conferred upon men by the church, the state, and the existing distribution of property, and from the teachings of Jesus he deduces the rule of nonresistance and the absolute condemnation of all wars. His religious arguments are, however, so well combined with arguments borrowed from a dispassionate observation of the present evils, that the anarchist portions of his works appeal to the religious and the non-religious reader alike. in Samara, 1891 of Tolstoy's 80th birthday (1908) at Yasnaya Polyana, showing his wife Sofya (picking flowers in the garden) daughter Aleksandra (sitting in the carriage in the white blouse); his aide and confidante V. Chertkov (bald man with the beard and mustache); and students. In hundreds of essays over the last 20 years of his life, Tolstoy reiterated the anarchist critique of the state and recommended books by
Kropotkin and
Proudhon to his readers, while rejecting anarchism's espousal of
violent revolutionary means. In the 1900 essay, "On Anarchy," he wrote: "The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without Authority, there could not be worse violence than that of Authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require the protection of governmental power ... There can be only one permanent revolutiona moral one: the regeneration of the inner man." Despite his misgivings about
anarchist violence, Tolstoy took risks to circulate the prohibited publications of
anarchist thinkers in Russia, and corrected the proofs of Kropotkin's "Words of a Rebel", illegally published in St Petersburg in 1906.
Pacificism In 1908, Tolstoy wrote
A Letter to a Hindu, outlining his belief in non-violence as a means for India to gain
independence from
colonial rule. In 1909, Gandhi read a copy of the letter when he was becoming an activist in South Africa. He wrote to Tolstoy seeking proof that he was the author, which led to further correspondence. Both men also believed in the merits of
vegetarianism, the subject of several of Tolstoy's essays. The
Boxer Rebellion stirred Tolstoy's interest in Chinese philosophy. He was a famous
sinophile, and read the works of
Confucius and
Laozi. Tolstoy wrote
Chinese Wisdom and other texts about China. Tolstoy corresponded with the Chinese intellectual
Gu Hongming and recommended that China remain an agrarian nation, and not reform as Japan had done. Tolstoy and Gu opposed the
Hundred Days' Reform by
Kang Youwei and believed that the reform movement was perilous. Tolstoy's ideology of non-violence shaped the thought of the Chinese anarchist group Society for the Study of Socialism. Tolstoy denounced the intervention by the
Eight-Nation Alliance (which included Russia) in the Boxer Rebellion in
China, the
Filipino-American War, and the
Second Boer War. Tolstoy praised the Boxer Rebellion and harshly criticized the atrocities of the Russian, German, American, Japanese, and other troops of the Eight-Nation alliance. He heard about the looting, rapes, and murders, and accused the troops of slaughter and "Christian brutality." He named the monarchs most responsible for the atrocities as
Tsar Nicholas II and
Kaiser Wilhelm II, describing their intervention as "terrible for its injustice and cruelty". The war was also criticized by other intellectuals such as
Leonid Andreyev and Gorky. As part of the criticism, Tolstoy wrote an epistle called
To the Chinese people. In 1902, he wrote an open letter describing and denouncing Nicholas II's activities in China. Tolstoy also became a major supporter of the
Esperanto movement. He was impressed by the pacifist beliefs of the
Doukhobors and brought their persecution to the attention of the international community, after they burned their weapons in peaceful protest in 1895. He aided the Doukhobors to migrate to Canada. He also provided inspiration to the
Mennonites, another religious group with anti-government and anti-war sentiments. In 1904, Tolstoy condemned the ensuing
Russo-Japanese War and wrote to the Japanese Buddhist priest
Soyen Shaku in a failed attempt to make a joint pacifist statement.
Georgism Towards the end of his life, Tolstoy became occupied with the economic theory and social philosophy of
Georgism. He incorporated it approvingly into works such as
Resurrection (1899), the book that was a major cause for his excommunication. He spoke with great admiration of
Henry George, stating once that "People do not argue with the teaching of George; they simply do not know it. And it is impossible to do otherwise with his teaching, for he who becomes acquainted with it cannot but agree." He also wrote a preface to George's journal
Social Problems. Tolstoy and George both rejected private property in land (the most important source of income for Russian aristocracy that Tolstoy heavily criticized). They also rejected a
centrally planned economy. Because Georgism requires an administration to collect
land rent and spend it on infrastructure, some assume that this embrace moved Tolstoy away from his
anarchist views; however, anarchist versions of Georgism have been proposed since then.
Resurrection, in which the nobleman Dmitri Ivanovich Nekhlyudov realizes that the earth cannot really be owned and that everyone should have equal access to its resources and advantages, hints that Tolstoy had such a view. Other works, such as Tolstoy's unfinished play
The Light that Shines in the Darkness and the short story "How Much Land Does a Man Need?”, suggest Tolstoy's approval of small communities with local governance to manage the collective land rents for common goods, and heavily criticize
state institutions such as the
justice system.
Hunting Tolstoy was introduced to
hunting by his father, who was an avid huntsman. He was trained to hunt from a young age and became a passionate huntsman himself. He was known to shoot
duck,
quail, snipe,
woodcock and otters. For example, Tolstoy wrote in his diary on 23 March 1852, "the weather was marvellous; went out hunting, rode up and down the undulating country till one. Killed two ducks." His novel
War and Peace includes hunting scenes. In 1890 Tolstoy wrote a preface for
Vladimir Chertkov's anti-hunting pamphlet
Zlaia zabava: Mysli ob okhote (An Evil Pastime: Thoughts about Hunting). Although Tolstoy in his later life opposed hunting, he never abandoned his love for
horse-riding. In his introductory essay, he described a cruel experience he had witnessed at a visit to a
slaughterhouse in Tula. The cruelty he had witnessed confirmed his belief that meat should be removed from the diet. Whilst on his vegetarian diet, Tolstoy was eating
eggs daily but was questioned by one of his friends if eating eggs amounts to taking life. He commented that "Yes, I ought to have stopped taking eggs. At least from now I shall stop it". By 1903, Tolstoy had removed eggs from his diet.
Vasily Rozanov who had visited Tolstoy noted that vegetarianism was a way of living for Tolstoy and at the dinner table surrounded by family and guests who were eating meat and scrambled eggs, Tolstoy was eating
kasha. In a letter to A. D. Zutphen (a Dutch medical student), Tolstoy wrote that "My health not only has not suffered; it has in fact improved significantly since I have given up milk, butter and eggs, as well as sugar, tea, and coffee." == Death ==