Tolstoyan Fideism?

In his approach to religious belief, Tolstoy would appear to teeter on the edge of fideism. Like Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. 1111 C.E.), Tolstoy engaged in a systematic and rational critique of religious dogma. Also like al-Ghazali, he continued further, turning the guns of reason upon reason itself.

As a true fideist, al-Ghazali then returned to belief, adopting what was essentially the position of traditional Sunni kalam on the problem of faith versus reason, i.e., he claimed to accept the "consensus of the community" (a fictional construction, of course, but one that provides Sunni Muslims with some degree of "orthodox" opinion) on questions of dogma bi-la kayf--literally, "without asking how."

At this stage in the argument over reason and faith, al-Ghazali and Tolstoy part ways--and Tolstoy's fideism is rendered suspect. For Tolstoy never stops asking questions. At the same time, however, neither does he lack something that might be construed as religious belief, e.g., he is a theist. The content of his theism, however, bears a strong affinity to J. G. Fichte's--where "God" appears to be shorthand for "the moral order of the world"--a position that Fichte's contemporaries equated with atheism (see, e.g., Gunter Zollar's article "Fichte" in the 2nd edition of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2005), 613-620).

Jeff Love rightly describes Tolstoy's "solution" to the faith/reason problem as "an intriguing, if intrinsically unstable, synthesis or reconciliation of reason and revelation that owes more to axiomatic thought, thus, to modern mathematics, than it does to Christian dogmatics" (Love, Tolstoy: A Guide for the Perplexed, London: Continuum (2008), 125).

Love then elaborates:

Tolstoy's manner of thinking is something like this: reason has limits, it cannot ground itself. Therefore reason, if it is to retain any legitimacy, must proceed from a given, a ground accepted as such, a pure postulate or axiom. Faith can provide the given, the axiomatic foundation, if purified of absurdities, of contradictions (ibid).

Love rightly points out that Tolstoy's "solution" is really no solution at all because it is "fraught with difficulties no less severe than those that arise from a faith purged of reason. For the threshold question--which of faith or reason retains the primary authority?--receives no definitive answer" (ibid).

While this conclusion may trouble many, it is regarded as quite elegant by genuine Tolstoyans. For example: that most acute reader of Tolstoy, Ludwig Wittgenstein, posited in the Tractatus that "doubt can only exist where there is a question; a question only where there is an answer, and this only where something can be said" [prop. 6.51].

For Wittgenstein, at the limits of reason, i.e., the place where all questions are exhausted or where the chain of justifications slams into bedrock, one's spade is turned. The inclination then is to say, "This is simply what I do" (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, paragraph 217).

Such a response satisfies no one--nor should it. For both God and the devil can offer this same response when asked to justify their actions.

Tolstoy, Wittgenstein, and all genuine Tolstoyans make no attempt to improve upon this answer, however, because they are all convinced ironists: they recognize that the truth in such matters is inherently unsatisfactory. Consequently, the "intrinsic instability" of Tolstoy's "solution" is viewed as an indication that the great Russian thinker had indeed placed his finger upon something vital: the unmitigated contingency of human being-in-the-world.

Wittgenstein's Tractarian assertion that "We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course, there is then no question left, and just this is the answer" [prop.6.52] may be read as an interpretation of the dream that Tolstoy recounted in his 1882 post-script to his Confession.

The "answer" at which Tolstoy had arrived (and of which his dream was emblematic) is that there is no answer; that all of us balance precariously on a single cord over an unfathomable abyss. For the Tolstoyan, this answer raises not frustration or despair but a further question: "What of it?" Tolstoy's conclusion--missed by most who read him but understood by Wittgenstein and all genuine Tolstoyans--is this: if we must balance on a single cord, then balance we must. Let us at least have enough class to balance well. It must be remembered that Tolstoy, for all of his proletarian sympathies, was never anything less than an aristocrat.

His post-Confession writings were dedicated to articulating exactly what "balancing well" over the abyss entails for those who take to heart the Near Eastern "prophetic tradition" as it was revised (re-visioned) in the Sermon on the Mount.

Tolstoy had discovered that the true aristocracy of the world is not obtained by privileged birth, but by action taken in response to the call of conscience: a summons contained in the faith traditions that emerged among humankind during the Axial Age.