Abstract

This chapter focuses on Tolstoy’s contribution to one of the most topical European debates of the second half of the nineteenth century: the debate on the meaning and value of life. The pioneer of the emergent idealistic current in Russian philosophy was a renowned physician and public educator Nikolai Pirogov, whose essay “Questions of Life,” meditated the problem of modern education, whose utilitarian bent encourages young people to adopt a purely pragmatic attitude to life. Pirogov’s experience as a military surgeon in Sevastopol lent authority to his pronouncements about the meaning of life and death, raising public awareness of the contemporary value crisis. Tolstoy, who served as an artillery officer in Sevastopol, was certainly familiar with Pirogov’s ideas. His turn to pedagogy was inspired both by Pirogov and by Pirogov’s teacher, Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose ideal of liberal personality Pirogov and then Tolstoy tried to adapt to Russian reality. Tolstoy’s search for the meaning of life and wisdom eventually brought him closer to professional philosophers. In 1887 at Nikolai Grot’s invitation, Tolstoy gave a lecture at the Moscow Psychological Society. This lecture, “On the Concept of Life,” became the basis for his only purely philosophical treatise On Life, which this chapter analyzes in detail.