Tolstoy and Wittgenstein's Tractatus

Jeff Love's insight into the "axiomatic" nature of Tolstoy's "intrinsically unstable, synthesis or reconciliation of reason and revelation" is not only important for understanding Tolstoy's thought but also for understanding Wittgenstein's attraction to Tolstoy's attempted solution to vexing philosophical problems [see Love, Tolstoy: A Guide for the Perplexed, London: Continuum (2008), 125].


As is well known, Wittgenstein himself admitted to friends and colleagues the strong impression that Tolstoy's Gospel in Brief made upon him while he was writing the Tractatus.

And Caleb Thompson makes a persuasive case for regarding Tolstoy's Confession as yet another work to read in pari materia with Wittgenstein's philosophy [see Thompson, Philosophical Investigations 20:2 April 1997, 97-116].

Many years ago, after noting that Wittgenstein had been "deeply impressed by Augustine, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy," Walter Kaufmann opined: "Of such a philosopher one might expect that his greatest influence would be on the lives of other men. Yet it is his impact on academic philosophy that is almost unequaled" [Kaufmann, Critique of Religion and Philosophy, Princeton: Princeton University Press (1958), 53]--an accident of history that one can only imagine would have disappointed Wittgenstein to no end.