We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
from Part III - Literature, the Arts, and Intellectual Life
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2023
Many scholars and critics have maintained that Tolstoy, while a great writer, is a poor thinker, a mere amateur in philosophy. My chapter suggests that this venerable cliché of Tolstoy reception is untenable. The chapter has two parts. In the first, I discuss several philosophers with whose thinking Tolstoy engaged extensively and give a brief account of his relation to them. The main names here are well known: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Immanuel Kant. In the second part, I examine a somewhat unexpected but significant affinity Tolstoy’s fiction has with the thought of Baruch Spinoza. This affinity emerges most clearly in War and Peace. Although this section covers what is merely an affinity, it aims to show that Tolstoy’s greatest fictional work is one of the supreme artistic instantiations of an essentially Spinozist account of the world.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
