This book examines Leo Tolstoy’s struggle to understand the relationship of God and man, in connection with his attempt to answer questions regarding the meaning of life. Tolstoy addressed such issues in a systematic way and with great concerns for the future of humanity. Predrag Cicovacki approaches Tolstoy both as a thinker and as an artist, and examines various sides of his intellectual and artistic engagement: his social criticism, his ambiguous relationship to nature, his understanding of art, and his attempted reconstruction of the true religion. By combining philosophical, religious, and literary analysis, Cicovacki undertakes an interdisciplinary study, showing much can be learned from Tolstoy's insights, as well as from his mistakes.
Author(s): Predrag Cicovacki
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 310
City: Cham
Contents
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction: Tolstoy’s Quest for God and Meaning
Chapter 2: Society
2.1 Why Society Exists?
2.1.1 Facts and Fictions
2.1.2 Either God or Man?
2.1.3 Mutilations by Means of Fictions
2.2 Mutilations of the Soul
2.2.1 The Perennial Philosophy and Its Modern Reversal
2.2.2 Putting the Soul to Sleep
2.3 Social Hypnotism, Hierarchy, and Hypocrisy
2.3.1 War and Moral Conflicts
2.3.2 Evil Truths and Social Lies
2.3.3 Prisoners and Prisons
2.4 Religious Anarchism
2.4.1 Rejecting Institutional Authority
2.4.2 Society Based on Brotherly Love
2.4.3 Nonviolence and Moral Sublimity
2.5 What Is Truth?
Chapter 3: Nature
3.1 The Nature of Nature
3.1.1 A Symbol of Nature
3.1.2 Nature, Society, and Spirituality
3.2 Mutilations of the Body
3.2.1 The Hunter and the Hunted
3.2.2 Circumcision and Torture
3.3 Woman—Nature’s Temptation
3.3.1 Adam and Eve
3.3.2 A Love Triangle
3.3.3 Desiring More, Choosing Less
3.3.4 Castration, Celibacy, or Personal Love?
3.4 Fruit—Nature’s Art
3.4.1 Tolstoy’s Struggle with Music
3.4.2 The Nature and Purpose of Art
3.4.3 Music as the Mute Prayer of the Soul
3.5 Serpent—Nature’s Wisdom
3.5.1 Creativity in Nature
3.5.2 Daoism: A Flow of Nature
3.5.3 Tolstoy’s Daoism
3.6 Nature’s Meaning?
Chapter 4: Spirituality
4.1 Faith and the Meaning of Life
4.1.1 The Quest for Meaning
4.1.2 Tolstoy’s “Eastern Fable”
4.1.3 Wrestling with God
4.2 Mutilations of the Spirit
4.2.1 Tolstoy’s Troika: Truth, Goodness, Love
4.2.2 Morality Versus Spirituality
4.2.3 Searching for the Third Way
4.3 The Sermon on the Mount
4.3.1 The Puzzling History of the Sermon
4.3.2 The Content of the Sermon
4.3.3 Tolstoy’s Interpretation of the Sermon
4.3.4 The Spirit of the Sermon
4.4 The Kingdom of God
4.4.1 The Kingdom as a Fact and as a Fiction
4.4.2 A Promise of the Kingdom
4.4.3 Our Identity with God?
4.4.4 The Presence of God
4.5 Spirit Over Spirit?
Chapter 5: God and Man
5.1 The Puzzling Nature of God
5.1.1 God and Good
5.1.2 The Nameless God?
5.2 Mutilations of the Divine
5.2.1 Mutilations by Language and Thought
5.2.2 Disambiguating the Inherently Ambiguous?
5.2.3 Devotion Without Mutilation
5.2.4 Experiencing the Sublime
5.3 Man’s Wrestling with God
5.3.1 The Dialectic of Slavery and Freedom
5.3.2 God’s Servant Job
5.3.3 God as a Real and as an Ideal Being
5.3.4 Recovering the Joy of Being Alive
5.4 Redefining the Bond Between God and Man
5.4.1 Finding God Without Seeking
5.4.2 The Power of Belief
5.4.3 The Mutual Dependence of God and Man
5.5 Reclaiming Our Humanity
5.5.1 Personality
5.5.2 Reaching God Through Faith and Trust
5.5.3 Bestowing Meaning Through Freedom and Creativity
5.6 Shall We Be as Gods?
Chapter 6: Epilogue: Our Longing for God and Meaning
Index
