Tolstoyan Noblesse Oblige: Ethics and Aesthetics Are One

"So valor drove/ Sarpedon to the wall to make a breakthrough..." The Iliad, Book XII.

Let Nietzsche scoff: Tolstoyan ethics are indeed of the "mixed" sort--an attempt at "mediation" between the "master morality" of the privileged class to which Tolstoy himself belonged and the "slave morality" that he imbibed from close study of the Sermon on the Mount [see F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 260].

For all of his brilliance--nay, genius--Nietzsche could be remarkably obtuse at times. Having little or no faith in the common herd of humankind, he did not perceive--as did Tolstoy--that the true challenge presented by the utopian ethical imagination lies precisely in transforming both master and slave by means of their mutual interpenetration. Granted, there are a variety of ways in which such mutual interpenetration may be accomplished, and not all of them are desirable. Moral mediocrities are sure to abound, but is that any reason to scuttle the entire project? If I have no hope of ever becoming a virtuoso, ought I never to pick up the violin?

For those Nietzscheans who think the analogy inapt, I can only quote Wittgenstein's parenthetical dictum from the Tractatus: "(Ethics and aesthetics are one.)" [Prop. 6.421]--a peculiarly Nietzschean and Tolstoyan insight.

Yes, ethics and aesthetics are one: hence, in the Islamic tradition, adab means both literary accomplishment and admirable behavior. The roots of this notion extend deep into the desert sands of Arabia, before the rise of Muhammad's movement, to the aristocratic poetic tradition and the figure of the karim (or "generous one") whose nobility is acquired through acts of selfless devotion to his guest--typically one wandering bedouin who has chanced upon the campsite of another.

The occasion of this chance encounter becomes an opportunity for the host to display his mettle--not in combat but in hospitality. The Qur'an appropriates this pre-Islamic value and assigns its perfect expression to God (al-Karim) but then obligates the 'abd-al-Karim (the slave of the Generous One) to extend the divine-aristocratic prerogative to the "neighbor." Who is the 'abd-al-Karim? Why, we all are.

Later Islamic tradition elaborates upon this theme in the famous hadith of the Prophet's colloquy with the angel Gabriel. In this story, the Prophet is engaged by a stranger who questions him in such a way as to draw out from him three key concepts of the tradition: "islam," "iman," and "ihsan." The third of these three concepts is formed from the triliteral root h-s-n, meaning "beauty." In the hadith, al-ihsan is the perfection of the religious way of being in the world: it is the ideal of conducting oneself as if one's eyes are always fixed upon the divine--which, we learn from another oft-quoted hadith, is beauty itself.

The point of these reflections is to acknowledge the degree to which Tolstoyan ethics not only mix Nietzschean "master" and "slave" moralities but do so in a way that democratizes the aristocratic sense of noblesse oblige. In creating this heady mixture, Tolstoy was working within a well-worn groove of the Near Eastern prophetic tradition--a tradition to which Nietzsche was, oddly, tone-deaf.

Although both Tolstoy and Nietzsche were students of Schopenhauer and Montaigne, it was the Russian aristocrat who, for my money, was able to climb up the ladder of his strong philosophical precursors to see the world aright. Nietzsche challenges us to think and re-think our understanding of ethics and aesthetics and the relation between the two but, in the end, we must leave him, regrettably, to try to escape from the pit he dug for others but fell into himself.