Leo Tolstoy and the Meaning of Life

            Few questions have tormented humanity like the question of life. Why do we exist, what is our purpose, and if we are ultimately to be destroyed what is the point? There is not another question that is so poignant, dense, and more impossible to answer, yet it is a question every single human being asks sometime in his or her life. Countless books have been devoted to finding the meaning, and countless religions have sprung up in attempt to answer the question. Some individuals casually look into the question, others dive into the question with everything they have, forgoing all else in the search for why. Leo Tolstoy is one of those individuals. He is unique from all the others in the way we have a detailed account of his life, and his search for why. We can learn a lot from Tolstoy, but the final answer still remains for each individual to decide.

            Throughout Tolstoy’s life, his definition of the meaning of life drastically changes as he moves through levels of understanding. Raised Christian, Tolstoy renounced his faith and became a hedonist, living off of others and partying all the time. Later in his life, Tolstoy refers to this life style as parasitical. Tolstoy then took up writing, and gained great fame in the sphere of writing. He and his companions convinced themselves that they were the best of men, for “all develops by means of Culture. And Culture is measured by the circulation of books and newspapers. And we are paid money and are respected because we write books and newspapers, and therefore we are the most useful and the best of men.” (Tolstoy, p 15) After Tolstoy realized this blaring logical fallacy, he began to think about the meaning of life, and become depressed by his life’s seeming meaninglessness. He came to the conclusion that life was evil and meaningless, even a “cruel trick.”(Tolsoty, p 19)

            Tolstoy married soon after, and this distracted him from his fervent search for a time. During this time he thought that the meaning of life was thus: “that one should live so as to have the best for oneself and one’s family.” (Tolstoy, p 20) He lived this way for a long time, but he began to have moments where he felt “lost and dejected.” (Tolstoy, p 21) Over time, these moments increased in frequency, until they became an unignorable urge that had to be answered to. The question was simply “why.”