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3.95 AVERAGE
3.95 AVERAGE
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
dark
medium-paced
At times an interesting look into Tolstoy’s life, but also rather bleak, and as someone who also grew up religious and has since left it behind, I’m not convinced of his philosophical reasoning.
“I want to understand in such a way that everything inexplicable presents itself to me as being necessarily inexplicable and not as being something that I am under an obligation to believe.”
This sentence moved me one step closer towards Christianity, something I’ve struggled to fully embrace since miracles clash with the rational part of my thinking. Leo Tolstoy has convinced me that the inexplicable-ness is a necessary part of faith.
This sentence moved me one step closer towards Christianity, something I’ve struggled to fully embrace since miracles clash with the rational part of my thinking. Leo Tolstoy has convinced me that the inexplicable-ness is a necessary part of faith.
It is a fascinating look into the mind of a man looking for answers where there are none. His use of arithmetic shows his willingness to reduce the world to simple terms, in a quest to uncover what it means to live (or be good, or any number of things he's looking for). There is something uncomfortably nihilistic here, and I find myself wondering how Tolstoy would have contended with the world if he could have been confronted with more existential ideas (Beavoir/Sarte). While I don't agree with his conclusions, I enjoyed the insight into his development and shift in worldview.
Explica la importancia de tener un sentido de la vida y describe increiblemente la sensacion de no tener uno
Reading this after War and Peace and Anna Karenina feels somewhat like finding out Father Christmas is naughty or even a recovering kleptomaniac.
No literary masterpiece, but a beautifully honest series of breadcrumbs left behind by a man reasoning himself into faith. The rises and falls, the momentary joys and desperations and the mental circles many of us go through... are all presented here by that great author we thought surely would be steadfast in his own mind. But no! It seems we are all of us scared in the dark, shouting courage to each other, only sometimes at peace.
No literary masterpiece, but a beautifully honest series of breadcrumbs left behind by a man reasoning himself into faith. The rises and falls, the momentary joys and desperations and the mental circles many of us go through... are all presented here by that great author we thought surely would be steadfast in his own mind. But no! It seems we are all of us scared in the dark, shouting courage to each other, only sometimes at peace.
challenging
reflective
He's a great writer but not a trained philosopher, his critique of all human wisdom comes off as arrogant.
Speaking on escaping the "terrible situation in which we all find ourselves":
"The first means of escape is that of ignorance. It consists of failing to realize and to understand that life is evil and meaningless. For the most part, people in this category are women, or they are very young or very stupid men; they still have not understood the problem of life.."
He seems to be begging the question here that life is evil and meaningless, and anyone who doesn't realize this is stupid, or ignorant. This attitude pervades the first quarter of the book and disparages women and the working class while doing it.
As far as a critique of pure reason, this is not one I found any value reading, and actually found very prideful, condescending, and at times unbearable to read.
Speaking on escaping the "terrible situation in which we all find ourselves":
"The first means of escape is that of ignorance. It consists of failing to realize and to understand that life is evil and meaningless. For the most part, people in this category are women, or they are very young or very stupid men; they still have not understood the problem of life.."
He seems to be begging the question here that life is evil and meaningless, and anyone who doesn't realize this is stupid, or ignorant. This attitude pervades the first quarter of the book and disparages women and the working class while doing it.
As far as a critique of pure reason, this is not one I found any value reading, and actually found very prideful, condescending, and at times unbearable to read.
"What am I with my desires?”
"The religious doctrine taught to me from childhood disappeared in me as in others, but with this difference, that as from the age of fifteen I began to read philosophical works, my rejection of the doctrine became a conscious one at a very early age. From the time I was sixteen I ceased to say my prayers and ceased to go to church or to fast of my own volition. I did not believe what had been taught me in childhood but I believed in something. What it was I believed in I could not at all have said. I believed in a God, or rather I did not deny God—but I could not have said what sort of God. Neither did I deny Christ and his teaching, but what his teaching consisted in I again could not have said."
"With all my soul I wished to be good, but I was young, passionate and alone, completely alone when I sought goodness. Every time I tried to express my most sincere desire, which was to be morally good, I met with contempt and ridicule, but as soon as I yielded to low passions I was praised and encouraged."
"This faith in the meaning of poetry and in the development of life was a religion, and I was one of its priests."
" I saw that people all taught differently, and by quarrelling among themselves only succeeded in hiding their ignorance from one another."
"And I ceased to doubt, and became fully convinced that not all was true in the religion I had joined."
"And though I saw that among the peasants there was a smaller admixture of the lies that repelled me than among the representatives of the Church, I still saw that in the people’s belief also falsehood was mingled with the truth."
" I shall not seek the explanation of everything. I know that the explanation of everything, like the commencement of everything, must be concealed in infinity. But I wish to understand in a way which will bring me to what is inevitably inexplicable. I wish to recognize anything that is inexplicable as being so not because the demands of my reason are wrong (they are right, and apart from them I can understand nothing), but because I recognize the limits of my intellect. I wish to understand in such a way that everything that is inexplicable shall present itself to me as being necessarily inexplicable, and not as being something I am under an arbitrary obligation to believe.
That there is truth in the teaching is to me indubitable, but it is also certain that there is falsehood in it, and I must find what is true and what is false, and must disentangle the one from the other. I am setting to work upon this task. What of falsehood I have found in the teaching and what I have found of truth, and to what conclusions I came, will form the following parts of this work, which if it be worth it and if anyone wants it, will probably some day be printed somewhere."
"The religious doctrine taught to me from childhood disappeared in me as in others, but with this difference, that as from the age of fifteen I began to read philosophical works, my rejection of the doctrine became a conscious one at a very early age. From the time I was sixteen I ceased to say my prayers and ceased to go to church or to fast of my own volition. I did not believe what had been taught me in childhood but I believed in something. What it was I believed in I could not at all have said. I believed in a God, or rather I did not deny God—but I could not have said what sort of God. Neither did I deny Christ and his teaching, but what his teaching consisted in I again could not have said."
"With all my soul I wished to be good, but I was young, passionate and alone, completely alone when I sought goodness. Every time I tried to express my most sincere desire, which was to be morally good, I met with contempt and ridicule, but as soon as I yielded to low passions I was praised and encouraged."
"This faith in the meaning of poetry and in the development of life was a religion, and I was one of its priests."
" I saw that people all taught differently, and by quarrelling among themselves only succeeded in hiding their ignorance from one another."
"And I ceased to doubt, and became fully convinced that not all was true in the religion I had joined."
"And though I saw that among the peasants there was a smaller admixture of the lies that repelled me than among the representatives of the Church, I still saw that in the people’s belief also falsehood was mingled with the truth."
" I shall not seek the explanation of everything. I know that the explanation of everything, like the commencement of everything, must be concealed in infinity. But I wish to understand in a way which will bring me to what is inevitably inexplicable. I wish to recognize anything that is inexplicable as being so not because the demands of my reason are wrong (they are right, and apart from them I can understand nothing), but because I recognize the limits of my intellect. I wish to understand in such a way that everything that is inexplicable shall present itself to me as being necessarily inexplicable, and not as being something I am under an arbitrary obligation to believe.
That there is truth in the teaching is to me indubitable, but it is also certain that there is falsehood in it, and I must find what is true and what is false, and must disentangle the one from the other. I am setting to work upon this task. What of falsehood I have found in the teaching and what I have found of truth, and to what conclusions I came, will form the following parts of this work, which if it be worth it and if anyone wants it, will probably some day be printed somewhere."