Disillusioned Piety: A Murid Lineage

Montaigne was Tolstoy's true master, though it is possible that Tolstoy himself did not know it. He certainly read Montaigne and was impressed with his views on education. But he also imbibed Montaigne indirectly through close readings of other authors. As a consequence, he may have been unaware that, when he took Rousseau as his first intellectual hero, he was drinking at the well of Montaigne. When he read and was radicalized by de la Boetie's Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, he could hardly have escaped knowing about Montaigne's deep friendship with the author of that work, though he may not have been acquainted with scholarly speculation about Montaigne's potential role in its production. And when he read Pascal, did he appreciate the degree to which the Jansenist was indebted to Montaigne, even at the level of the sentence?

In Emerson, Thoreau, and Voltaire, Tolstoy likewise "read" Montaigne. Montaigne was as inescapable for Tolstoy as he was virtually invisible. For the way of Montaigne into the heart is rarely the front door. He prefers a side entrance and the possibility of loitering about a vestibule. He can wait there indefinitely, for he disdains hurry. His method is to gain your trust through familiarity. And, before you know it, you are a Montaignean.

Montaigne's skeptical religiosity runs in the veins of the Tolstoyan murid, whether she knows it or not, and those veins run parallel to the arteries of al-Ghazalian skeptical religiosity. Either way (or both ways) disillusioned piety is the result (see post of July 30, 2013 below).