Some Excerpts from Walter Kaufmann's "Religion from Tolstoy to Camus"

From Walter Kaufmann, Religion From Tolstoy to Camus, New York: Harper Torchbooks (1964):

Page 1: "It is widely recognized that one can discuss religious ideas in connection with works of literature, but exceedingly few poets and novelists have been movers and shakers of religion. Leo Tolstoy, who was just that, has not been given the attention he deserves from students of religion ... To say that Tolstoy was a very great writer, or even that his stature surpassed that of any twentieth-century theologian, may be very safe and trite. But a much bolder claim is worth considering: perhaps he is more important for the history of religion during the [20th century] than any theologian; perhaps he has contributed more of real importance and originality and issues a greater challenge to us."

Pages 2-3: "Tolstoy's [post-Anna Karenina] work [i.e., his writings on religion] ... is ... patently designed to shock us, to dislodge our way of looking at the world, and to make us see ourselves and others in a new, glaring and uncomfortable light. Even if we confine ourselves to Anna Karenina, I know of no other great writer in the whole nineteenth century, perhaps even in the whole of world literature, to whom I respond with less happiness and with a more profound sens that I am on trial and found wanting, unless it were Soren Kierkegaard ... Tolstoy generally starts with characters toward whom we are inclined to be well disposed, and then, with ruthless honesty, brings out their hidden failings and their self-deceptions and often makes them look ridiculous. 'Why is it a great novel?' Not on account of this detail or that, but because Tolstoy's penetration and perception have never been excelled; because love and affection never blunt his honesty; and because in inviting us to sit in judgment, Tolstoy calls on us to judge ourselves."

Page 7: "The world has been exceedingly kind to the author of War and Peace, but it has not taken kindly to the later Tolstoy ... What is true of most reader [however] is not true of all. The exceptions include, above all Mahatma Gandhi, whose gospel of nonviolence was flatly opposed to the most sacred traditions of his own religion. The Bhagavadgita, often called the New Testament of India, consists of Krishna's admonition to Aryuna, who wants to forswear war when his army is ready for battle; and Krishna, a god incarnate, insists that Aryuna should join the battle, and that every man should do his duty, with his mind on Krishna and the transitoriness of all the things of the world and not on the consequences of his actions. The soldier should soldier, realizing that, ultimately, this world is illusory and he who thinks he slays does not really slay. It would be a gross understatement to say that Gandhi owed more to Tolstoy than he did to Hinduism."

Page 8: Anna Karenina is sometimes referred to as a "Christian tragedy." This is misleading, to say the least. " ... it is rather odd to hold up as an example of what is possible within Christianity a man [i.e., Tolstoy himself] formally excommunicated, a writer whose views have not been accepted by any Christian denomination--a heretic ... Tolstoy drew his inspiration in large measure from the Gospels. His intelligence and sensitivity were of the highest order. And whether we classify him as a Christian or a heretic, his late writings remain to challenge every reader who is honestly concerned with the New Testament or, generally, with religion ... Other writers one can take or leave, read and forget. To ignore Tolstoy means impoverishing one's own mind; and to read and forget him is hardly possible."

Page 39: "What is so remarkable about Camus is, as much as anything, that he had the courage to accept the heritage of Tolstoy, when no one else dared to stand before the world as Tolstoy's heir."

Page 40: "Camus lacked Tolstoy's almost superhuman gifts: that makes it doubly appropriate to speak of courage. He was not one of the world's great writers, nor even one of the most talented of the past hundred years. But he attempted great things and was motivated by a sense of obligation to humanity. His inspiration was moral, not the wish to entertain or to achieve fame. Camus' The Plague is the posthumous child of The Death of Ivan Ilyitch. The theme is the same: the confrontation with death. Camus, like Tolstoy, attempts a parable about the human condition, an attack on the unthinking inauthenticity of most men's lives, and an appeal to conscience."

This is an insightful reading, in my opinion, and I would add only that Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus is, likewise, the "posthumous child" of Tolstoy's Confession.

Page 40: "Camus' debt to Tolstoy is great. In Tarrou's long narration (The Plague, 222-228), there are important echoes of Tolstoy's Resurrection: 'The great change of heart about which I want to tell you' came about when 'my father asked me to come to hear him speak in court,' and Tarrou discovered that the criminal 'was a living human being.' His father's mouth, however, 'spewed out long, turgid phrases like an endless stream of snakes. I realized he was clamoring for the prisoner's death'; indeed, he demanded 'that the man should have his head cut off.'"

Pages 40-41: Camus and Tolstoy share an obsession with the theme of "man's attitude toward the death of his fellow men. If there is one phrase in The Plague that crystallizes this common concern pre-eminently, it is probably the suggestion that 'the most incorrigible vice' is 'that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill.' (120 f.). The way Camus leads up to this thought is profoundly Tolstoyan: 'The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill.'"

Kaufmann also remarks Camus' atheistic-humanist critique of Christianity ("He finds humanism more humane than theism"), a critique that bears interesting similarities to Tolstoy's theistic-humanist criticisms of Christianity. Indeed, it is the common humanism of the two writers that grounds their approach to religious questions in general and to the disappointments of Christianity in particular.