Suicide and Sacrifice in Tolstoy's Ethics

T OLSTOY'S ideals of non-resistance and of complete celibacy are both derived from the same two beliefs, one of which is positive-that God exists; and the other negative-that we need to renounce the welfare of the personality.' He himself had already renounced the welfare of his personality before he came to believe in God (he was going to kill himself), and this fact is fundamental to his understanding of Christianity and his formulation of an ethical code. For this code, when expressed in a concrete form applicable to life, is negative. The five commandments of the Sermon on the Mount, which for him constitute the essence of Christ's teaching, he interprets negatively: Do not be angry, do not lust, do not take oaths, do not go to law, do not fight. According to him, only a man anxious for his own personal welfare or for that of those he loved would seek to justify himself in breaking any of these rules. For a man who recognizes the impossibility of individual happiness, and who knows that the pursuit of it merely causes further suffering to oneself and others, it is illogical to break them. Tolstoy's choice, at the time of his conversion, was between suicide and a life of self-sacrifice. Nothing else was possible; he could not go on living as before. Either there is no God, and life is a cheat; or there is a God, and life takes its meaning from its divine origin. Now if the latter is true, it is inconceivable

Criminology · Medical emergency · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Sacrifice · Theology · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Law in Society and Culture · Medicine · Philosophy · Psychology · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought

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