Leo Tolstoy and Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

This article, for the first time in Russian philosophical literature, examines the connection between the literary and philosophical heritage of Leo Tolstoy and Anglo-American Analytic Philosophy 20th – early 21st centuries. Tolstoy himself would hardly been happy either by Analytic Philosophy itself or by comparison with thinkers belonging to this philosophical tradition. Surely, he would consider Analytic Philosophy to be too specialized, focused on narrow technical theoretical problems, ignoring the question of the meaning of life which is common to all people, etc. At the same time, the obvious methodological and stylistic similarity of Tolstoy with analytic philosophers, provided by the general empiricist and positivistic orientation of the Russian count’s thinking, allows us to reformulate his ideas in the methodological framework of Analytic Philosophy. The article is divided into two parts. The first is dedicated to the influence of Tolstoy on Ludwig Wittgenstein and the reception of Tolstoy’s Philosophy of History in Isaiah Berlin’s work “The Hedgehog and Fox”. The sources include published works, as well as surviving correspondence, diaries, memoirs, etc. This is the historical and philosophical part of the study. Of course, at the current stage and in the format of a scientific article it is no way claims to be completed and, rather, prepares the ground for further work in the intended direction. The second part attempts to formulate Tolstoy’s philosophical and theological conceptions in the methodological framework of Analytic Philosophy. This is in turn the experimental part of the study, and here the reader is invited to think about the relevance of the Russian count’s ideas for current philosophical discussions