Zdravyi smysl and the Perception of Tolstoy’s Moral Philosophy as a Morbid Worldview

• In Event: Tolstoy: Art, Mind, and Morbidity

Abstract

Lev L’vovich Tolstoy was a follower of his father’s ideas as a young man, but after dealing with prolonged nervous illness he came to believe that the Tolstoyan worldview had a morbid effect. His great breakthrough, he writes, occurred when he finally rejected much of his father’s way of thinking under the healing influence of a Swedish doctor. Beginning with a reading of Lev L’vovich’s recovery narrative, in this paper I will consider his perspective as part of a larger critique of Tolstoyan moral philosophy and its influence on young women and men, including in the discussion Tolstoy’s own engagement with this question in moments of self-analysis.

Author

• William Scott Nickell, U of Chicago