I would like to recommend a book to you, Leo Tolstoy's Confessions.
Someone should ask, make no mistake, the Confessions are Rousseau's.
Indeed, the other day I posted a quotation from the Confessions, and even if the cover of the book is evidenced, someone still corrects me: I am sorry, but the Confessions were written by Rousseau.
Rousseau did write it, it was famous, but Tolstoy also wrote it.
Tolstoy's Confessions, together with Augustine's Confessions and Rousseau's Confessions, are called the "Three Confessions of the World".
This is a book worth reading, and it is a very honest book compared to the insincerity of others. In the book, Tolstoy dares to tell his own various wrongs, constantly self-reflecting and self-denying, and trying step by step to find a way and meaning to live.
Religion cannot give answers
In the book, Tolstoy mainly asks about the meaning of life.
First of all, he could not find the answer to life in religious belief, which not only could not guide real life, but also did not fit in with it.
"I was educated and baptized by the Orthodox Church since I was a child, and since then it has accompanied me through my youth and youth. However, when I dropped out of college at the age of eighteen and from my sophomore year of college, I stopped believing anything they taught me. ”
In 1838, a boy who was studying in middle school went to Tolstoy's house and declared that there was no God at all, and that everything we had learned about God was a lie.
Obviously, it was a time when God was dead, as Nietzsche said.
"I think that most of the time it is like this: everyone's way of living is actually the same, they are living according to the basic principles of human existence. Not only do such basic principles have little in common with doctrine, but are largely contrary to them. Doctrine does not participate in life, doctrine is never involved in the process of human interaction, and it is not possible to act in accordance with doctrine in personal life. This doctrine, which is embraced away from life and independent of life, should, if it is involved, be regarded as a superficial phenomenon and has nothing to do with life. ”
Oyken said: "As religion says, our lives are full of worry, trouble and pain. The laws of the universe cannot be changed, and people's lives are troubled by all of the above, and there is no room for happiness and comfort in the usual sense. In fact, in the initial sense, religion, far from reducing people's misfortunes and sins, has increased them. (The Meaning and Value of Life)
Unable to endure the deviation between ideals and reality for a long time, and suddenly suffering from a spiritual crisis, Tolstoy wrote the Confessions. The main part of the Confession was created between 1879 and 1880, and was completed in 1882, and was first planned for publication. However, because of the opposition to the Orthodox content, it was strongly opposed by the procuratorial organs of the church's books and periodicals. In 1884, the manuscript was smuggled to Geneva, Switzerland, for publication.
Everything in the past is wrong
Breaking free from the ideological shackles of religion, Tolstoy tried to find meaning in life in real life.
He summarized and reviewed his past experiences, deeply analyzed what he had done and what he had gained.
He was very honest with his analysis, for example, he wrote: "Absurdity, lies, stealing chickens and dogs, gossiping, fornicating with bystanders, indulging in excessive drinking, and being cruel and violent. Killing people... There is not a crime that I have not committed, and people praise me for it.
This also reflects how unbearable success and achievement are in the eyes of the world. ”
From the narrative, it can be seen that Toon is also an ordinary person, with all kinds of evil deeds and bad qualities.
Of course, dissecting his own evil is not the goal, the purpose is that he wants to say that in all past practice, he has not found the meaning of survival.
Even being a writer is not a noble act, and he has not found the value and meaning of existence in it, but is engaged in the business of making money and deceiving people.
At that time, the literary scholars in Petersburg called themselves "human teachers", regarded their mission as "educating the people", and liked to talk loudly.
"The way my fellow writers behaves is that life gets better and better, and in the process, we thoughtful people are the main players. Of these thoughtful people, we, the artists and poets, are the most influential. Our purpose is to educate humanity. In order not to ask myself some common questions, such as 'what do I know, what should I teach', say that there is a theory that can explain, and there is no need to understand these things at all, because the indoctrination of artists and poets is subtle. ”
So writers write as many books and columns as possible for fame and fortune ("getting as much money and praise as possible is the starting point we hide in the depths of our hearts" as much as possible, like "madhouses." They try to teach others, but what will they teach? "We don't realize, in fact, we don't know anything, even the simplest question about life——— what is good and what is evil, we don't know how to answer." 」
Tolstoy even thought that writers were bad people: "While doubting the authenticity of the writer's faith itself, I began to observe the creators carefully, and was convinced that almost all the believers who devoted themselves to it, that is, the writers, were a bunch of unscrupulous people." Most of them are bad people, of no character, who are much worse than the people I've seen in the past when I was having fun or being in the military. But they are confident and feel good about themselves, which is only possible with those who are truly noble or who simply don't know what is noble. I began to hate this kind of person, and I hated myself, but I understood that this belief is used to deceive people. ”
Life is a void
No matter what you do, no matter how busy you are, in the end, it is nothing.
Schopenhauer said: "Life is sin, it is nothing, and the transformation into nothingness is the only happiness of life." ”
Influenced by the thoughts of Schopenhauer and others, Tovon also insisted that life is nothing. "I live in a vacuum, going round and round, inadvertently entering an abyss, and seeing clearly that there is nothing but death before. You can't stop, you can't turn back, you can't close your eyes and don't look at the doom ahead. Apart from the illusion of life and happiness, apart from real suffering and death, there is nothing ahead. ”
Does my life have an eternal meaning beyond death? To this question, Toon gave a negative answer. He believes that nothing in life is eternal, "My careers, whether they succeed or not, will be forgotten in the future, sooner or later, when I am long gone." ”
He traveled abroad and searched for answers to his life in many intellectual disciplines, but he failed to do so.
Those disciplines can give the chemical composition of the stars, the movement of the sun towards the constellation, the origin of human and natural things, the shape of infinitesimal atoms, the fluctuations of weightless and extremely small aether particles, etc., but there is no answer to the "meaning of life".
As Wittgenstein put it, "When all the scientific questions of significance have been answered, the questions of life remain untouched." (Philosophical Treatise on Logic)
A way out of life's predicament
Toon summed up four ways to get out of life's predicament: the first solution is ignorance, the second solution is pleasure, the third method is to use strength and energy, and the fourth method is cowardice.
The first method is not to be aware of the meaninglessness, emptiness, and sin of life, and it is better not to realize that it is better to die. The second approach is to live according to the current situation and not think about the future. Only when you are trapped in the worldly life can you live secretly, where there is wine, where there is drunkenness. The third way is to stop living and commit suicide after knowing the sins and absurdities of life. The fourth way is to live like Solomon and Schopenhauer. Even if I knew that life was a stupid joke on me, I was still alive.
Thousands of people are busy making a living without ever doubting the meaning of life.
Toon also admits that perhaps he is limited by the limitations of knowledge, or perhaps life is not nothing, but only because his knowledge is limited.
Find the meaning of survival in labor
Tolstoy was an aristocrat, a lord of a manor with no worries about food and clothing, and it can be said that he had no pain of material lack, only spiritual pain.
His pain was not possessed by the people at the bottom, nor was it urgent, with some disease-free groaning. For the poor, the struggling and the suffering, it is a luxury to talk about the meaning of life.
He was tired of the hypocritical and decadent upper circle to which he belonged, and finally, went to the bottom of life.
He began to make contact with poor, ordinary, unlearned believers, with pilgrims, monks, separatists, and croppers. Although these ordinary people also believe in Christianity, they are also mixed with many superstitious things in Christian truth. But what distinguishes it from the believers in Tolstoy's circle of life is that for the believers of the upper class, superstitious things are unnecessary and have nothing to do with life, but only find some way to find pleasures for themselves; for the working people, superstitious things have influenced their lives and are necessary conditions for their lives. The working people of the religious faith affirmed, with their actions, the positive meaning that faith gives to life. Thus, Tolstoy firmly believed that they had true faith. Faith is necessary for them, gives meaning to life, and provides the possibility of living.
He believed that the act of working people in creating a life was the real cause.
"I finally got out of the maverick, saw the real life of ordinary working people, and understood that this is the real life - this saved me. I understood that if I wanted to recognize life, to understand the meaning of life, I should not live like a parasite, but should live a life in the true sense, a meaning given to life by real human beings, and merge with life to expound and verify life. ”
From then on, Tolstoy was far from aristocratic life, with simple food and clothing, and engaged in manual labor with peasants.
That is to say, Tolstoy begins in the book from anti-religious belief to the end of still believing in religion. He concludes the book by writing: "I am convinced that there is truth in doctrine, but there is also a lie in it, and there is no doubt about it. I should find truth and lies and distinguish between them. ”
People always have to believe something, this is the support of the spirit, people who have no faith at all, probably rare.
Duras said, "God dwells in our hearts only when we are surrounded by emptiness, but to no avail." Not believing in God is just another belief. I doubt that it is really possible to believe nothing? To believe in nothing is to remove all meaning, all eternity, from the love of our lives. Everything becomes an end in itself, and loses its result. (Duras on Duras)
So, at this point, has he solved the dilemma of life?
Probably, it has not been completely resolved, otherwise there would not have been an end to the end of running away from home and dying of illness.
In response to Stetson's words: "What people believe to be true is actually just a myth; when people see through it, they will no longer believe in what they believe to be true; but when you live, you have to believe that something is true, and you have to know that it is just a myth." (Original Sin and Fate)