A Confession
A short autobiographical work by Leo Tolstoy, written in the late 1870s and early 1880s, recounting his spiritual crisis and search for meaning.
Leo Tolstoy: A Russian novelist and thinker whose works include War and Peace and Anna Karenina. The work recounts Tolstoy’s own crisis of faith and search for a way to live.
Existential crisis: A period of intense doubt about identity, purpose, or the value of life. Tolstoy’s crisis turns abstract questions into an immediate threat to his will to live.
Anna Karenina: Leo Tolstoy’s novel about love, marriage, social life, and moral conflict in nineteenth-century Russia. Tolstoy’s spiritual crisis intensified after completing this novel.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You: Leo Tolstoy’s 1894 book arguing for Christian nonviolence and resistance to state authority. It develops the religious convictions that emerge from the crisis narrated here.
Existentialism: A philosophical tradition concerned with existence, freedom, responsibility, and meaning. Tolstoy confronts the problem of how to live when life seems meaningless.
Suicidal ideation: Thoughts about ending one’s own life, which can range from fleeting to persistent. Tolstoy recounts thoughts of suicide as a consequence of his despair.
War and Peace: Leo Tolstoy’s novel depicting Russian society during the Napoleonic Wars. The success of his major novels did not settle Tolstoy’s questions about life’s purpose.
Tolstoyan movement: A movement inspired by Tolstoy’s teachings on Christian nonviolence, simplicity, and communal life. Tolstoy’s search for faith later informed a movement built around his ethical teachings.
Nihilism: A family of views that reject or doubt objective meaning, value, or knowledge. Tolstoy describes the despair that followed his inability to find a rational basis for life.
Rationalism: The view that reason is the primary source or test of knowledge. Tolstoy finds that rational explanation does not answer why life should be lived.