The Genesis of L. N. Tolstoy’s Ideas About Individual Immortality in the Context of His Perception of the Philosophical Ideas of I. G. Herder and A. Schopenhauer

Abstract

The article shows that during the era of the creation of the epic “War and Peace” L. N. Tolstoy shared the idea of individual immortality and interpreted it by I. G. Herder’s concept of palingenesis, i. e., as the rebirth of a person into a more perfect being in the next life. The hypothesis is substantiated by the perception of the philosophy of A. Schopenhauer in the 1869–1870s led to a change in Tolstoy’s ideas about the significance of human individuality, and this was reflected in the artistic solution of the image of Platon Karataev and the description of the religious faith acquired by Pierre Bezukhov. The influence of Schopenhauer is most clear in Tolstoy’s notes from February – July 1870, where the model of immortality as palingenesis appeared in Schopenhauer’s version, i. e., without the idea of the improvement of individuals in a chain of rebirths. The ideological revolution of the late 1870s led Tolstoy to completely abandon the concept of individual immortality in favor of “collective immortality,” immortality in a single humanity (in the treatise “What I Believe”). However, in subsequent treatises and especially in his diary, Tolstoy completely overcomes the influence of Schopenhauer and returns to the idea of individual immortality according to Herder’s model of palingenesis.

Keywords

• l. n. tolstoy
• individual immortality
• palingenesis
• i. g. herder
• a. schopenhauer
• personality improvement.