Man’s moral life is made up of commands issued to oneself and duties derived from moral considerations. As autonomous moral agents, in recognising the existence of a moral duty we express the conviction that we can fulfil it — otherwise this would make no sense to us. The moral reality, however, is quite complex. When left to the mercy of circumstances, we often act contrary to the promises made to ourselves. We embrace our internal lenient moralist, who believes that the circumstances justify our conduct. The thundering voice of a strict moralist within us, by contrast, accuses us of having betrayed our very selves and concludes that in having chosen a worse version of life we are deserving of contempt. We then search for reasons as to why we have failed to achieve the purpose previously decided for ourselves. This is a problem of quite some consequence, touching on our ability on the one hand to live up to our commitments and on the other hand to remain true to ourselves. We often look back to our old promises and, as a matter of honour, strive to fulfil them throughout the rest of our lives. We become puzzled by the discovery that we have failed ourselves and others in times of crisis. This was already a resounding conundrum in Ovid’s presentation of Medea resisting her love for Jason: ‘Discretion this, affection that perswades./I see the right, and I approve it too,/Condemn the wrong and yet the wrong pursue’ (Ovid, 2016).

Socrates and Aristotle already asked themselves how it was that man, knowing what was good, could go on to choose evil; so pondered Saint Augustine. Leo Tolstoy himself, too, visited this dilemma in probably the most philosophical of all his works, On Life, describing man’s grave conundrum thus: ‘Man perceives that he himself, his individuality, that which to him means life, is in continual contest with the whole world, with this world against which all struggle is impossible; he perceives that he is seeking pleasures which are but phantoms of happiness and which are doomed to always end in suffering, and that he is attempting to preserve a life which cannot be preserved.’ (Tolstoy, 1902: 30). Man cannot escape himself. He desires his own welfare but cannot achieve it because in seeking it he is guided by concupiscence to pursue pleasures that are incapable of making him truly happy. Is it not, therefore, that man errs in guiding his own will when he chooses not that which brings him happiness but that which leads to suffering? Perhaps the problem of happiness and unhappiness is the problem of human will directed towards either the true or the illusory good, and perhaps it is for this very reason that Tolstoy attached so much importance to self-perfection in life, which also involved perfection of the will?Footnote 1

In this text I intend to explore the problem of weak will, or, in other words, lack of restraint — acrasy, akrasia — as I believe this to be a prism through which one could read Leo Tolstoy’s lesser-known short story titled Father Sergius (1898; published posthumously in 1911). The titular character is a special case. Father Sergius has devoted almost his entire life to the perfection of his character, initially as a cloister monk and subsequently as an anchorite. In a critical moment, he fails to follow that which has consistently been his life plan up to that point — he betrays himself and God. Thus, his example is not as simple as the histories of people who do evil in the erroneous belief that what they do is not such. Father Sergius has a keen awareness of good and evil, and yet, for all the assiduous labour invested in the perfection of his character, at some point ruins his moral integrity. Despite the knowledge of good, he goes against the prior resolve having thus far defined his life as a monk and priest. He transgresses against God by contravening His commandments, even though it could have seemed that the ground of his morality in religion should protect him from precisely this kind of failure. Contrastingly, the thinkers of Antiquity, such as Socrates, held that no one who knew the good course of conduct in a given situation could possibly do evil. This sounds rather stern. Could one not look at Father Sergius’s life through the eyes of a less rigorous moralist?

The interpretation of Tolstoy’s story is also influenced by other aspects that need to be considered. Father Sergius was written shortly after Tolstoy’s spiritual conversion, as an illustration of ‘the dogmas of Tolstoy’s new faith’ (Simmons, 1968: 158). One can surmise that he sought to demonstrate his independence from the Russian Orthodox Church, which he charged with xenophobia and intolerance. To Tolstoy, true religiosity is of humanist and ethical nature and divorced from denominational and ritualistic religiosity.Footnote 2 Moreover, rejecting religious orthodoxy need not be tantamount with the rejection of God, without whom — as Tolstoy professes in A Confession — one cannot live, because God is life.Footnote 3 The implications of these new tenets of Tolstoy’s faith can also be read from his story. Father Sergius, as I believe, having ceased to function in an ecclesiastical institution subservient to the state, becomes a fully autonomous individual capable of uniting his life to God’s freely and of comprehending its sense.Footnote 4 These are the conclusions at which I have arrived in my interpretation of Father Sergius’s character. I do so first through the prism of the Gidean concept of l’acte gratuit, which represents a desire for individual autonomy and escape from a non-authentic life, and subsequently through that of the Jamesian concept of being twice-born, according to which man must die to this world in order to be born again for God. To Father Sergius (as well as Tolstoy himself), this means the choice not of the monk’s path but that of the ‘holy fool’ (yurodivy), who accepts himself in his own frailty and fragility.Footnote 5 I believe, therefore, that Father Sergius’s awareness of his own frailty found in the situation with the merchant’s daughter leads him not astray but toward the eventual complete discovery of his own self.Footnote 6 Despite this, I am equally of the belief that one cannot simply consign to silence the frailty of Father Sergius that Tolstoy himself clearly brings to attention. This ought not to be downplayed because, although the discovery, comprehension and acceptance of his own frailty become a moment of true conversion to Father Sergius in the end, the sense of guilt that proceeds from the apprehension of this frailty still initially brings him suffering so great as to provoke attempted suicide. So what is the proper meaning of that frailty with which Tolstoy depicts his hero?

Numerous Tolstoy scholars, such as Predrag Cicovacki, note that in pinpointing the root cause of human frailty ‘Tolstoy recognizes a double enemy: the deceitful life of society, and the dark impulses of the body’, leading man to ‘irrationality: loss of control over our lives’ (Cicovacki, 2022: 128). In human nature Tolstoy sees many problems that he perceives in himself, analysing them both in his autobiographic prose (Tolstoy, 1984: 18ff) and in his works of fiction. For this reason, it will be expedient to recall the broader context of Tolstoy’s work. Father Sergius is part of a trilogy that also includes two other stories — The Kreutzer Sonata and The Devil. As Hugh McLean would have it, these stories touch upon ‘the sexual guilt and revulsion that had been tormenting him [Tolstoy] all his life, but were especially acute just at this time, the late 1880s and early 1890s. (…) All these stories rehire instances of sexual crimes committed by men against women - seduction, betrayal, sexually motivated murder’ (McLean, 2002: 97). According to Richard Freeborn, in turn, in reference to the connection between the stories and Tolstoy’s own life, ‘Father Sergius chimes in with Tolstoy’s major struggle at this period. He aspired to lead a spiritual life in conformity with his ideals while facing the physical temptations posed by his sexuality. He illustrated the issue in a barely disguised autobiographical long short story The Devil (1889). Although based on the case of a certain “Fridrikhs” who murdered a peasant girl, this work also reflects Tolstoy’s own infatuation with the peasant girl Aksinia in the late 1850s. It also harks back — through the use of the hero’s name, Irtenev — to the era of Tolstoy’s earliest work, his autobiographical trilogy. As a study in sexual infatuation and its soul-destroying effect, it is a remarkably forceful description of Irtenev’s attempts to overcome the temptation offered by the peasant girl Stepanida. Despite the solace of a loving wife and the promise of family happiness, he ends by committing suicide — or, in a variant ending, by killing Stepanida — and is thought in both cases to have acted inexplicably while the balance of his mind was disturbed. Father Sergius explores the same issue but much more fully and at a much deeper psychological level’ (Freeborn, 2002: 136).

Accordingly, it is a justified conclusion that the life stories of Tolstoy’s characters, including that of Kasatsky, show similarities with the life of Tolstoy himself, who — as noted by Vladimir Nabokov — ‘was a robust man with a restless soul, who all his life was torn between his sensual temperament and his supersensitive conscience. His appetites constantly led him astray from the quiet country road that the ascetic in him craved to follow as passionately as the rake in him craved for the city pleasures of the flesh’ (Nabokov, 2017: 138). In the view of Freeborn, Tolstoy himself, ‘like his Father Sergius, (…) could not resist the temptation’ (Freeborn, 2002: 137). The above-cited voices focus on the interpretation of Tolstoy’s stories through the prism of sexuality and its resulting natural forces of carnal concupiscence (see also: Weir 2010: 191, Simmons 1968: 160). Instead, I want to redirect attention onto something different — the problem being in man’s character and especially the operation of man’s will. For near the end of the story Tolstoy seems to me to imply that the links between nature and personality ought to be severed, even though Father Sergius’s character can be read as reaffirming them (cf. Bayley, 1967: 283). In my opinion, the link is ultimately broken — which Tolstoy himself appears to wish — because by questioning the necessity that stems from nature and from life in the institution (by yielding to pleasure not as much for its own sake as for the desire to break with his former life) Father Sergius escapes inauthenticity and falsehood and asserts his own autonomy, as the category of l’acte gratuit successfully explains.

I intend to begin with a look into Father Sergius’s life, so as to pinpoint the parameters highlighting his commitment to self-perfection and to the perfection of his will. Next, I will proceed with detailed analyses. First, I will consider whether the life of a moral agent, such as Tolstoy’s protagonist, can be understood through the lens of deterministic categories. After that, I will move on to the positions of ethical rationalism and show how one could explain Father Sergius’s behaviour in the context of how Socrates, with Aristotle in tow, understood the problem of free will. Ultimately, I will consider whether Saint Augustine is perhaps not the one who offers the most pertinent answer to the question of why Father Sergius breaks the promise he has made to himself and to God. Eventually, I will arrive at the conclusion that Father Sergius’s character ought to be interpreted as an individual who ceases to be slave to the automated choices to which the institution of the Orthodox Church has consigned him — he gains his state of autonomy and peaceful happiness in the humble comprehension of his own weaknesses, wherein lies the foundation for his experience of God. Of course, my analyses (especially those referencing the problem of akrasia in Socrates and Aristotle) could be interpreted as transcending the contents of Tolstoy’s story in a way explained rather by literature’s frequently espoused role as an excellent illustrator of philosophical problems.

1 Between Lust and Ascesis

In his younger days, Prince Kasatski was the handsome squadron leader in a regiment of cuirassiers, with a promising future as aide-de-camp to the Emperor Nicholas I himself awaiting him. He exuded a special type of confidence grounded in the Emperor’s preferment. Ever since childhood, he excelled above and beyond everyone else, be it at academic studies, at horse riding or at military drills. A top student at school, he also desired to rise to the very top in life. From the outside, this could appear like the ordinary pursuit of a career, but Kasatski’s motivation was elsewise; ‘intense and complex strivings went on within him. … He tried in everything he took up to attain such success and perfection as would evoke praise and surprise’ (Tolstoy, 2018: 3). At school, he would select the most difficult subject and then work hard on it until he achieved the perfect results and became the top student. Kasatski could not have achieved all that but for his character building and training of will. As a youth, however, he came to be reputed as a hothead. He was prone to outbursts of anger in which he ‘lost control of himself and became like a wild animal’ (Tolstoy, 2018: 2).

His predilection for prestige and for the ability to act out his will makes itself known when Kasatski decides to marry. In his search for a bride he looks to the higher circles, which through her mediation he aspires to join. He falls for Countess Korotkova and begins to court her not only out of concern for the advancement of his career but also because she is a beautiful woman. What he does not know is that she was the Emperor’s mistress one year prior. When the countess shares her secret with him, Kasatski is shocked by the confession, as he expects nothing short of angelic purity from a woman. His wounded pride causes him to recoil from Maria and reject her, even though he has just been convinced that in her he has found himself and the greatest happiness man could know.

Proud and ambitious, he flees to a monastery to become a monk. To his mother he writes that he has ‘felt God’s call’ (Tolstoy, 2018: 6), but it is not a calling from above that has made him seek the monastic life. The narrator proclaims: ‘By becoming a monk he showed contempt for all that seemed most important to others and had seemed so to him while he was in the service, and he now ascended a height from which he could look down on those he had formerly envied’ (Tolstoy, 2018: 6). Religious feelings, albeit real, mingle with a sense of pride and a desire for being first. The insult he has suffered on his fiancée’s account has driven him to despair, and this despair has led him to God. He has found ‘satisfaction in attaining the greatest possible perfection outwardly as well as inwardly’ (Tolstoy, 2018: 7). Obedience, a sign of that perfection, allows him to shed from his shoulders the burden associated primarily with temptation. Obedience provides him with an escape route and an explanation. In this manner he gains new traits — humility, continence, docility, and chastity in thought and action. He increasingly becomes calmer and more joyful. Control of his own concupiscence now comes easy to him. He has found a new sense in life — to tread the path of Christian virtues and progressive mortification of his will. As years pass, already as Father Sergius, he finds salvation in obedience, but the feelings with which he would earlier have given over to religious devotions have now waned considerably. Focused solely on himself, he has reached the pinnacle of his potential, and there seems to be nothing left for him to do. He is still exposed to temptation, however. He still has those bouts of anger. When opportunity presents itself, he becomes an eremite.

From this point onward, he lives as a hermit and wins fame for his ascesis. ‘His life in solitude was hard—not on account of the fasts and prayers (they were no hardship to him) but on account of an inner conflict (…). The sources of that conflict were two: doubt, and the lust of the flesh’ (Tolstoy, 2018: 27). In his sixth year, the following events unfold.Footnote 7 On the door of his hermitage knocks a woman, Makovkina (identified with lust — see: Weir 2011: 210), who has made a pact with her friends that she would tempt the already famous hermit to sin. She claims to have lost her way in the neighbourhood. Father Sergius lets her in but quickly hides away in his cell and will not come out even when she cries out to him. Before he does eventually come out, he takes an axe and chops off a finger of his left hand — such is the temptation and the lust he feels. This act of self-mutilation can be viewed in a metaphorical light as castration (see: Weir 2011: 211). A year later, Makovkina enters the convent. With her far-acclaimed spiritual transformation Father Sergius’s own notoriety increases. He is proven to be a man who is not easy to break.

A short while later, Father Sergius falls victim to his own vanity. People begin to crowd around his place of recluse, some bringing their sick with them in the hope of healing, after a boy of fourteen miraculously comes back to health. Initially, Father Sergius does not want to lay hands on the sick, seeing in that the sin of pride, but after witnessing the miracles himself he grows more eager. That in itself, however, gives him a reason to worry. He starts questioning ‘whether he was right in accepting the position in which he had not so much placed himself as been placed (…). That position had begun after the recovery of the fourteen-year-old boy. From that time, with each month, week, and day that passed, Sergius felt his own inner life wasting away and being replaced by external life. It was as if he had been turned inside out’ (Tolstoy, 2018: 39–40). He was aware that ‘what he did now was done more and more for men and less and less for God’ (Tolstoy, 2018, 40). He finds joy in what he does for them, but at the same time he feels his life essence dwindling in him.

One day a merchant travels to his hermitage with a daughter suffering from neurasthenia. At the time, Father Sergius is at the height of his success in life but also at the height of being bored with it; hence, he agrees to receive her, because ‘[s]he interested him in that she presented a distraction, and because both she and her father considered him a saint whose prayers were efficacious. Outwardly he disavowed that idea, but in the depths of his soul he considered it to be true. He was often amazed that this had happened, that he, Stepan Kasatsky, had come to be such an extraordinary saint and even a worker of miracles, but of the fact that he was such there could not be the least doubt’ (Tolstoy, 2018, 27). Kasatski is struck by his own vanity and ashamed by it and yet he cannot rid himself of it. His spiritual quandaries are compounded by doubting in his capacity for love: ‘And he asked himself whether he loved anyone, (…) whether he had any feeling of love for all who had come to him that day—for that learned young man with whom he had had that instructive discussion in which he was concerned only to show off his own intelligence and that he had not lagged behind the times in knowledge. He wanted and needed their love, but felt none towards them. He now had neither love nor humility nor purity’ (Tolstoy, 2018: 26–27). Father Sergius desires for God to rebuild him, and yet he is torn with doubt. It is then that the merchant’s daughter is brought to him. Father Sergius ends up unable to control his lust, and he spends the night with her. The next day he abandons the hermitage, intent on killing himself, for he realises the moral shallowness of his life (see: Freeborn 2002: 137). He decides there is no God. Suddenly, he recalls Pashenka, a friend from childhood. He decides to drop everything and go find her, his new model of sainthood.

Pashenka is now the old woman, Praskovya Mikhaylovna. She lives with her daughter, the daughter’s neurasthenic husband and the couple’s five children. In the recent past, her little son has died, followed by her husband, but not before the latter’s squandering of all her fortune. She feeds them all with the income she can make by teaching piano classes. In working for them, she does not realise her own sacrifice and does not demand their recognition or appreciation. She is not happy with her life, she finds it odious, she rarely goes to church, she prays mechanically, and yet she does what she can to ‘avoid recrimination and anger’ (Tolstoy, 2018: 31). Seeing the nameless old man at her doorstep, she decides to give him one kopek and some bread. Rather than pride in giving so much, she only feels embarrassment in giving so little. After a while, she recognises Stiva, that is Father Sergius. Infused with humility, he desires for her to listen to his confession. First, however, he listens to her own life story. In doing so, Father Sergius realises she is the person that he, himself, had wanted to be and ought to have been: ‘I lived for men on the pretext of living for God, while she lives for God imagining that she lives for men. Yes, one good deed—a cup of water given without thought of reward—is worth more than any benefit I imagined I was bestowing on people’ (Tolstoy, 2018: 36).

Upon parting with her, Father Sergius goes on to live the life of a wandering pilgrim. He lives miserably, begging for a place to spend the night and a piece of bread. He reads the Gospel to those who give it to him. ‘When he succeeded in helping people, either by advice, or by his knowledge of reading and writing, or by settling some quarrel, he did not wait to see their gratitude but went away directly afterwards. And little by little God began to reveal Himself within him’ (Tolstoy, 2018: 36). When a group of French-speaking people see him, they want to know who he is. In response, he professes only to be ‘a servant of God’ (Tolstoy, 2018: 36–37). He does not answer in French, though he used to have perfect command of the language. The meeting brings joy to him, as he has now ‘disregarded the opinion of men and had done the simplest, easiest thing—humbly accepted twenty kopeks and given them to his comrade, a blind beggar. The less importance he attached to the opinion of men, the more did he feel the presence of God within him’ (Tolstoy, 2018: 37). In Russia, however, vagrancy is a crime, and Father Sergius is convicted and deported to Siberia. There he settles with a well-to-do farmer, helps him in the garden, teaches the children and tends to the sick.Footnote 8 ‘Mendicancy and total commitment to others’ needs in Siberian exile are his final purpose in life and they evidently project the unfulfilled spiritual ideal to which post-Confession Tolstoy might ultimately have aspired’ (Freeborn, 2002: 137).

2 In the Iron Pincers of Determinism

The simplest explanation for what transpired in Father Sergius is provided by determinism, which sees the activity of a human person — who is a part of the material world — as the consequence of prior causes, acting with the force of necessity and immutability. All events are determined by the laws of nature; accordingly, there is no place in the world or in human life for either accident or free will. This explanation appears to suffer from error, as Tolstoy demonstrates that Kasatski’s life has always been based on choices motivated by the desire for change in life in response to the various circumstances. I propose, however, to examine that life through the lens of the deterministic hypothesis.

Let us distinguish two such hypotheses — the stronger and the weaker, as well as the indeterministic proposition (see: Hołówka 2000: 54). Strong determinism (1) would have us believe that Kasatski is only a strictly programmed machine, incapable of learning and shaping its own personality (every event in his life has a cause, a strict and final determinant). Weak determinism (2) proposes instead that Kasatski is a machine which, although acting in a predictable way, has the capacity for learning and unpredictable behaviour; events in his life arise from succumbing to external causes, but the causes do not determine the events with finality, for what his next choice is going to be depends on the decision-making source, akin to a computer master program that is self-modifying and contains random mechanisms that are difficult to identify. (3) Indeterminism suggests that in some configurations it is possible for events to happen outside of a causation chain. Kasatski, therefore, reacts in different ways to the same information arriving from an external source (now he resists the temptation, now he succumbs to it). As a result, the changes in his behaviour are not predictable, not even to the master program itself. Furthermore, the indeterministic hypothesis reveals itself in a religious context, in which the lack of determination means that human actions are partially accidental and that human fate can be determined by the higher power (i.e. by God).

Without doubt, in the telling of his story Tolstoy is not a determinist in the strong sense. He emphasises Kasatski’s modelling of his life on choices — first advancing in his studies, then selecting his bride-to-be, then breaking up with her, later joining the religious order, secluding himself from the cloistered community to live as a hermit, at first not succumbing to temptation, then succumbing to it, thereafter developing and subsequently abandoning the idea of suicide, seeking a reunion with Pashenka, and eventually choosing the life of a religious vagabond. Tolstoy equips him with freedom; thus it is possible to speak of weak will. It would be difficult under the first of the three hypotheses to explain the possibility of the existence of weak will, given how it altogether precludes the existence of free will. One could wonder whether the third, indeterministic hypothesis does not perhaps offer the most adequate summation of Father Sergius’s life, which could be understood — by him also — in terms of submission to God’s will. If that were the case, however, the impossibility of free will would logically follow due to human life being determined either by fate or by God. Neither in the case of strong determination, nor of determination by God could one speak of accountability for one’s own actions — both hypotheses preclude any possibility of that. Only the second hypothesis (weak determinism) is compatible with the possibility of the existence of both free will and weak will. The latter means that man directs his own conduct partially — at one time he manages to conduct himself according to his own resolve, but at some other time he ends up acting differently to his previous intention. He is susceptible to external influence but often capable of consciously amending his responses. This does not imply, however, that he acts under coercion or under the influence of any non-subjective force.

As determinism is a hypothesis neither scientifically proved nor disproved, we cannot know whether it is at all true. Thus, we cannot derive ethical conclusions from premises relating to causation. Consequently, we can opt for some form of weak determinism (compatibilism) and an assertion that weak will exists, as well as belief in the efficacy of ethical practices. With the acceptance of weak determinism, moral accountability is not an illusion (see: Hołówka 2000: 56). Let us, therefore, embrace the conviction that Father Sergius has free will and his free will turns out to be weak. He is accountable for his actions, autonomous as he is in the making of his choices. In a pivotal moment of his life he acts one way and not the other, but this does not imply that it was impossible for him to act differently. How could his weak will be explained in an ethical context?

3 I Know, Therefore I Want?

Ethical rationalists claim that evil actions stem from ignorance. One who does not know good cannot do evil. This necessarily implies the nonexistence of weak will. If one knows what is right, one will never act contrary to this knowledge. In this light, any lack of restraint, or any weakness of will, is a mere appearance — people do not do what they believe to be evil, and one who is unable to follow through on one’s resolve does not truly have it but only pretends that he does. What are the logical consequences of this for Father Sergius?

Father Sergius — an eremite, healer and spiritual authority to his numerous followers — knows good and evil and should never have acted contrary to this knowledge. Knowing what was good, he ought to have always done it, in all circumstances of life. That, however, was not what really happened. Although conscious of his purpose, he acted contrary to it, thus violating his own principle of staying true to God and himself. Could it, therefore, be said that, in having the knowledge of good and yet acting contrary to it, he deceived himself and others? Or did he merely pretend to believe in his need for a life of complete ascesis without truly giving credence to it? Did he outwardly manifest the pursuit of a certain ideal and simultaneously — by choosing evil — admit his inability to achieve it? If he had really made his resolve and desired its object with exceptional strength, should he not have done everything in his power to achieve that object?

3.1 Socrates

In his Memorabilia (3.9.4), Xenophon writes that Socrates believed those who knew what was good but did evil lacked restraint. That was the opposite of the wise, who both had the knowledge and acted on the basis of it. Thus, in his opinion, those lacking in restraint could not be wise (even though they might have the knowledge of good), because one who was wise should follow the most advantageous course to oneself (Galewicz, 2002: 49). At this point, one can already ask whether Father Sergius’s conduct was beneficial to him. It appears that it was not, although for a moment it brought him pleasure. It was not beneficial, because spending the night with the girl led to the necessity of his leaving the monastery upon realising his betrayal of God and himself, undoing all of his life thus far and prompting the desire to cut it short by suicide. Father Sergius did not act in the manner that was of the greatest advantage to him, which suggests that he acted stupidly.

The knowledge of good and of proper conduct ought therefore to have determined all of the choices in Father Sergius’s life, but, at some point, it eventually failed him. Should one, therefore, accept the validity of Ovid’s explanation, for it appears only natural that man is not perfect, errs often and follows the path of his own frailty. What would Socrates respond to that? ‘Then surely (…) no one willingly goes after evil or what he thinks to be evil; it is not in human nature, apparently, to do so—to wish to go after what one thinks to be evil in preference to the good; and when compelled to choose one of two evils, nobody will choose the greater when he may the lesser’ (Plato, 1967, 358b–d). Socrates does not deny the existence in human life of factors affecting the decision-making (he says: ‘yielding to oneself [being overcome by pleasure] is nothing but ignorance’ (Plato, 1967, 358c) as though he believed that there existed in man irrational factors one ought to control (see: Budzowska, 2010: 47), but he does not judge them to hold the reins on the decision-making reason. The proposition of Socrates’s rationalism (#1) is as follows: no one does evil knowingly, i.e., on the basis of knowledge. Proposition #2 claims that a man overtaken with weak will does not act knowingly (lacks the knowledge). Galewicz observes that Socrates’s ethical views are grounded in the intellectualism of choices and the intellectualism of judgements. The former assumes that the moral subject makes a choice in conformity with currently actualised judgement, which awakens in that subject a desire so strong as to overcome the resistance of all rational factors. According to the latter proposition, the knowledge of good is sufficient to enable one to judge what is better in a given situation (Galewicz, 2001: 41–48). In Plato’s Protagoras, however, Socrates attests to the impotence of knowledge:

‘The opinion generally held of knowledge is something of this sort—that it is no strong or guiding or governing thing; it is not regarded as anything of that kind, but people think that, while a man often has knowledge in him, he is not governed by it, but by something else—now by passion, now by pleasure, now by pain, at times by love, and often by fear; their feeling about knowledge is just what they have about a slave, that it may be dragged about by any other force,’ (Plato, 1967, 352b–c).

Here, Socrates expounds the majority belief that the knowledge of good is in itself powerless and is not something that guides or governs conduct. What sort of powerlessness would he have in mind here? According to Galewicz, this is primarily about the motivational inadequacy of knowledge. Knowledge, he claims, lacks the strength to motivate a decision going against the tide of the emotions to which one yields. Knowledge is ineffectual in opposing strong emotion. Opposing the emotivist theory of akrasia, Socrates professes belief in the insurmountable primacy of knowledge in decision-making and in its ability to defeat other motivations, such as the destructive influence of emotion.

In the light of this explanation, Father Sergius’s knowledge of good proved to be powerless against strong emotion. Rather than being wise, Father Sergius’s conduct was found lacking in restraint. The motivational primacy of knowledge was not strong enough in him to give it the power to guide his life. Had he been wise (and therefore rational, as Socrates would have it, namely in possession of the correct judgment of what was good), he would necessarily have opted for honest conduct, because the dishonesty (wrongfulness) of specific conduct should have given him sufficient reason not to engage in it. He, however, chose evil over good — he spent the night with the girl knowingly and willingly, without, as I beg to emphasise, having any additional reason for it. His conduct eluded the criteria of rationality. The rational human person, after all, chooses that which is the most conducive to one’s benefit.

Later in that discussion, Socrates asserts that weak will is a mere appearance (Protagoras 357c–d). As Hołówka observes, Socrates recognises that weak will is an appearance that forms when one ceases to be rational. From the fact that one has done evil follows that one has lacked knowledge and therewith the will to do good. One who resolves a conflict of values by choosing pleasure acts contrary to knowledge and cannot claim justification. Father Sergius, in choosing pleasure, acts despite having the knowledge that his conduct is evil. For a time, he stops being rational; he stops being himself. He has taken the decision that pleasure, rather than honesty, is the more compelling reason for an act. He concedes less importance to the honesty of conduct than to pleasure. Here, weak will would translate into a momentary loss of the use of reason with the resulting inability to direct one’s conduct; in a word, stupidity.

3.2 Aristotle

Initially, Aristotle appears to disagree with Socrates. He believes Socrates’s position to be in error, though he also sees some truth in it.Footnote 9 Aristotle makes an attempt to discern Socrates’s intention. Socrates believes that if man has wisdom, he will not fall slavishly to temptation; one who acts like a fool has no wisdom. Aristotle understands Socrates’s intention but looks for a different solution. Pondering how it is that one who has knowledge can still manage to be dragged into the game of emotion and become corrupted by it, the Stagirite distinguishes two types of knowledge:

But the word ‘know’ is used in two senses. A man who has knowledge but is not exercising it is said to know, and so is a man who is actually exercising his knowledge. It will make a difference whether a man does wrong having the knowledge that it is wrong but not consciously thinking of his knowledge, or with the knowledge consciously present to his mind. The latter would be felt to be surprising; but it is not surprising that a man should do what he knows to be wrong if he is not conscious of the knowledge at the time. (Aristotle, 2009: 1146b, 31–35)

According to Aristotle, one can speak of knowledge in a weaker and a stronger sense. In the weaker sense, we say that one who knows has the knowledge but does not put it to use. In the stronger sense, one who knows also acts on the knowledge (Galewicz, 2002: 57). As Galewicz observes, this understanding of knowledge by Aristotle is not entirely correct. It appears that what Aristotle has in mind when proposing this distinction is actual knowledge (knowledge that is realised at the critical moment) and dispositive knowledge (this includes the knowledge of which we can become consciously aware whenever we want to). In the weaker sense, one can have knowledge without being aware of having it; in the stronger sense, one can have the knowledge actualised in oneself. This distinction, however, fails to explain the situation in which someone who knowingly acts improperly does not consciously realise the knowledge of acting improperly. This is why the Philosopher avails himself of one more distinction:

Again, it is possible for men to ‘have knowledge’ in yet another way besides those just discussed; for even in the state of having knowledge without exercising it we can observe a distinction: a man may in a sense both have it and not have it; for instance, when he is asleep, or mad, or drunk. But persons under the influence of passion are in the same condition; for it is evident that anger, sexual desire, and certain other passions, actually alter the state of the body, and in some cases even cause madness. It is clear therefore that we must pronounce the unrestrained to ‘have knowledge’ only in the same way as men who are asleep or mad or drunk. Their using the language of knowledge is no proof that they possess it. Persons in the states mentioned repeat propositions of geometry and verses of Empedocles; students who have just begun a subject reel off its formulae, though they do not yet know their meaning, for knowledge has to become part of the tissue of the mind, and this takes time. Hence we must conceive that men who fail in self-restraint talk in the same way as actors speaking a part. (Aristotle, 2009: 1147a)

From this it follows that Aristotle distinguishes three classes of people: (1) those who have knowledge and put it to use, i.e. realise it consciously; (2) those who have knowledge but do not put it to use, i.e. do not realise it consciously; (3) those who neither put knowledge to use nor even have it, except in a manner similar to those who are asleep, of unsound mind or lacking in restraint. However, what should one make of the fact that those lacking restraint usually speak of themselves in a way that Father Sergius also could, i.e. that they know they are doing evil, but… That, too, is what the Stagirite discusses here. Those who lack restraint sometimes speak as though they had knowledge, but that does not make them truly have it in the sense of having conscious and actualised ethical knowledge. Such people could simply repeat the ethical maxims of Empedocles or, as in Father Sergius’s case, the words of Jesus. Thus, their words are as though spoken by actors on a stage. The actors understand the words they say but do not apply them to the external world that exists outside the stage. In this way, they say the words without recognising the truth in them and without realising their importance, without feeling their truth in their hearts, thus lacking the emotional acknowledgement and respect (Galewicz, 2002: 62). In other words, the lack of acknowledgement of the truth on the part of those lacking restraint evokes association with the lack of complete understanding of an academic discipline for its adepts. The unrestrained person knows the meaning of the relevant words or assertions and understands their sense but cannot understand their origin or reason. There is the knowledge that, but there is no knowledge how. Man knows he is doing evil, without knowing why. This explanation, however, does not appear to be correct in the case of Father Sergius, who not only knows the words of Jesus but also understands them and knows how to apply them in his life. Had this not been the case, Father Sergius would have succumbed to the very first temptation he had encountered. However, he knew and understood the nature of temptation, and yet eventually succumbed to it — knowingly and willingly.

Does this mean that Aristotle regards weak will as clouded consciousness? Father Sergius, unable to keep the promise made to himself and to God, behaves as though he had forgotten his purpose, rejected the determination accompanying his earlier life and consented to be guided by a different motivation. According to Hołówka, ‘the weak will turns out to be a momentary negligence easy to correct with the exertion of memory, concentrated attention, greater presence of mind’ (Hołówka, 2000: 60). Aristotle — Hołówka continues — believes that man, in losing his capacity to pursue goals, simply loses sight of general concepts. ‘[T]he weak will, in essence, is forgetting the general rules of conduct’ (Hołówka, 2000: 60). In a moment of weakness, Father Sergius does not consciously realise the moral principle that one must live up to one’s resolve. He lacks the general knowledge of moral rules, or he is unable to apply that knowledge in the specific circumstances. His weak will thus appears to arise from his inability to act on the basis of general concepts or rules. This means that in such a case one does not engage in reasoning but perceives facts and wraps them in conclusions that have nothing to do with existing knowledge. One’s train of thought is not one of reasoning but one of a loose sequence of observations. Father Sergius ought to have reasoned as follows:

  1. 1.

    1. I know I should conduct myself honestly, and for this reason I ought not to act as I desire.

  2. 2.

    2. I see a beautiful girl and see myself in my desires (am conscious of my weakness).

  3. 3.

    3. I cannot, therefore, act as I desire in seeing a beautiful girl.

Instead, he assigned importance to a different conclusion, disregarding the major (general) premise of the above-outlined reasoning:

3. Therefore, in seeing a beautiful girl, I offer no resistance to my frailty.

Aristotle, however, notes that practical wisdom (prudence) in respect of conduct has as its subject-matter theoretical (dispositive) knowledge but also the knowledge of that which is particular (singular), which is currently actualised knowledge. Prudent conduct requires one to be guided by both kinds of knowledge, but the knowledge of particular facts assumes the guiding role, because even if one lacks theoretical knowledge, one can still act rightly due to experience (Aristotle, 2009: 1141b, 8–23). Hence, weakness of human will can be influenced by the inability to apply particular knowledge:

But inasmuch as the last premise, which originates action, is an opinion as to some object of sense, and it is this opinion which the unrestrained man when under the influence of passion either does not possess, or only possesses in a way which as we saw does not amount to knowing it but only makes him repeat it as the drunken man repeats the maxims of Empedocles, and since the ultimate term is not a universal, and is not deemed to be an object of Scientific Knowledge in the same way as a universal term is, we do seem to be led to the conclusion which Socrates sought to establish. For the knowledge which is present when failure of self-restraint occurs is not what is held to be Knowledge in the true sense, nor is it true Knowledge which is dragged about by passion, but knowledge derived from sense-perception. (Aristotle, 2009: 1147b)

According to Galewicz, Aristotle is convinced that not only whether we have knowledge but also what knowledge we have is relevant to proper conduct. The basis for one’s conduct is the conclusion of the practical syllogism that contains the major premise, thus a certain general rule (‘in such and such situations one should act in such and such way’), and a minor premise constituting a particular judgement (‘I find myself in this and no other situation’). The particular judgement is subsumed under the general rule, with the logical result being a conclusion describing how one must act in a given situation. It can be so, however, that one of the premises of the syllogism fails to actualise in one’s mind and thus prevents the conclusion from being reached. Had Father Sergius had both of the premises in his then-currently actualised consciousness — the general and the particular — he would have been capable of realising the conclusion arising from them, and therefore he would have realised (would have had the currently actualised knowledge of) how he had to act. It would appear that one of the two premises of the syllogism, though known to him, had not been actualised in his mind, remaining on the unconscious level and probably preventing the conscious conclusion from forming. Hence, Father Sergius acted contrary to his knowledge in the sense that he acted inconsistently with his currently actualised (consciously realised) general knowledge (albeit conscious of the impropriety of the conduct involving the girl, he was not conscious of acting the way he did). In a different sense, his conduct was inconsistent with the dispositive particular knowledge available to him (he opted for an act which he dispositively, though not actually, knew to be improper — see: Galewicz 2002: 63–64). His desires blocked the intellectual motivation of conduct in his mind. Can he be said, however, to have acted inconsistently with his then-currently actualised particular knowledge, i.e. to have known that the deed was evil and yet (despite that knowledge) opted to do it?

According to Aristotle, the general rule of conduct that constitutes the major premise of the practical syllogism can contain two general terms — one relating to the object, the other to the subject. May the rule provided by Galewicz serve as our example here: ‘no person who is inclined to gain weight should eat any food that tends to add to it’ (Galewicz, 2002: 65). In order to apply this rule to the individual case one needs to make two inferences. First, it is necessary to realise that I too can be a person who is inclined to gain weight, hence I should refrain from eating unnecessarily calorific food. I must also know that the thing I desire to eat is conducive to gaining weight. The application of the general rule could be frustrated at either of these two stages, if the latter particular judgment — which I need in order to be able to infer the correct conduct from it — is blocked. I then have the knowledge of how I should act, but this is incomplete knowledge. By acting on it, I do not act as one ought to act (see: Galewicz 2002: 65). In Father Sergius’s case a rule in this form could be that ‘no person inclined to manifest a weakness of will ought to take actions that lead to such manifestations.’ Father Sergius ought to have acknowledged that he was such a person (as his prior life had attested) and recognised the presence in himself of desires of which the fruition would be tantamount to manifesting weak will. If any of these two premises failed, as they certainly did, then Sergius was not acting on complete knowledge, for which reason he was unable to act properly.

Aristotle, therefore, believes that an unrestrained man can be in possession of the premise (or of its conclusion) in a manner that is not the true possession of knowledge but only a certain way of speaking, ‘as the drunken man repeats the maxims of Empedocles’ (Aristotle, 2009: 1147b12). Of that he also says the following:

But there are two forms of Unrestraint, Impetuousness and Weakness. The weak deliberate, but then are prevented by passion from keeping to their resolution; the impetuous are led by passion because they do not stop to deliberate: since some people withstand the attacks of passion, whether pleasant or painful, by feeling or seeing them coming, and rousing themselves, that is, their reasoning faculty, in advance, just as one is proof against tickling if one has just been tickled already. (Aristotle, 2009: 1150b19–24)

The cause underlying the lack of restraint, therefore, would be weakness or impetuousness. The weak, according to Aristotle, are those who under the influence of passion do not stand by their deliberation — and accordingly moral judgement — or by whatever they may have resolved. Instead, they act differently to what they have resolved. The impetuous, on the other hand, act without deliberation (Galewicz, 2002: 73). The weak, therefore, have the knowledge of how to conduct themselves, but in their case the possession of knowledge is only a certain manner of speaking. The impetuous do not at all have particular knowledge concerning the ethical qualification of their actions. People of weak character are people of weak mind. They are those who allow knowledge to elude them, remaining merely verbal. So which one is the case with Father Sergius? It seems that neither definition fits him perfectly. Had Father Sergius been an impetuous person the way Aristotle understands impetuousness, we would need to conclude that he lacked the knowledge (whether general or particular) needed to evaluate his conduct; however, he did have the knowledge (both general and particular), because he judged his own act to have been reproachable (he had to do so in the light of knowledge). Was Father Sergius, therefore, a weak man by Aristotle’s definition? Did he, as a weak man, possess knowledge but only one that was a mere manner of speaking? Or did he have knowledge only in the verbal sense? Though this answer seems to be closer to the truth, it must be said that Father Sergius’s knowledge was not merely verbal. He was consciously aware of it both before the act and after it. He does not seem to suffer from ‘moral incontinence (akrasia) in which desire neutralizes his otherwise clear knowledge of what is good.’Footnote 10 As Tolstoy emphasises, Father Sergius was overcome. This necessarily implies that the strength of knowledge was present in him but ceased to govern him, giving the reins to lust. He knew that his conduct could be evil in the light of the general and particular knowledge he had. Therefore, a different explanation must be sought for why he turned out to be a man of weak will.

3.3 L’acte gratuit

Arguably, judgement of Father Sergius cannot ignore the religious context in which his life was grounded. Tolstoy suggests he succumbed to temptation — he was overcome by the devil. However, it would be an erroneous reading of the story to conclude that Sergius’s fall happened abruptly and without warning. In spite of everything, Father Sergius’s ruin comes not as a surprise but as a logical continuation of his rather vain life and the doubts he had struggled with. Did he experience a conversion of heart when he joined the monastery and later on, when he became a hermit? He did, after all, abandon a vain life of self-gratification for a life of monasticism, but the latter life could hardly be regarded as a holy life in his case. There is much to suggest that he merely moved on from one life of vanity to another, albeit monastic (Wasiolek, 1986: 201). His life could even be said to have been filled with self-deception and with the deception of others, his vanity and ambition leading him astray, as well as the Augustinian ‘longing for a perverse kind of exaltation’ manifested through ‘a compulsion for control that grows to a disordered desire for power over others’ (Pope, 1999: 119). In Father Sergius’s case, this would involve a desire for power over others, as exemplified by his motivation for becoming a monk, which is to rise above those who have previously tried to assert their own dominance over him.

In his situation one could hardly speak only of defects of character without embarking on the subject of sin, which — as Stephen J. Pope argues, citing Augustine — ‘does not destroy creatures (…) but it does make them “less real” and nearer to “nothingness”. (…) Sin as falsehood masks its own disordered desire and corrupted vision by self-deception, a reality of which Augustine was intimately aware in his own life’ (Pope, 1999: 119–120).

In this sense Tolstoy’s conception of akrasia falls more in line with Augustine than Aristotle. It consists not in the inability to know good from evil but in the falsification of life. For Father Sergius knows that what he does is evil but, in spite of this conscious awareness, he persists in sin. Augustine explains the problem of sinking in evil more specifically in his Confessions.

‘Our hearts are restless until they rest in You’ (Augustine, 1887) — writes Augustine about his life preceding conversion. This phrase from the Confessions could also be applied to Father Sergius’s life. His heart had not been won over for God once and for all — until, therefore, it rested in Him, it could not know peace and tranquillity. Father Sergius perceived himself as being God’s elect whose prayers were being heard and who had the power of healing. Witnessing his own power, however, he also saw that it brought him no joy. He also knew that he was not working miracles for God’s glory but rather for his own. He ceased to pray, and he became spiritually weak. Recalling the scene of his temptation by Makovkina, he believed that at the time, resisting the temptation, he was drawing straight from the source of the water of life. Now, he believed, ‘nothing was left but mud’ (Tolstoy, 2018: 24). His life became boring, idle, false and inauthentic; hence the need to receive the merchant’s daughter, whose visit was to provide him with entertainment, as well as confirmation of his miracle-working power, as though the new faces — indifferent to him, as they were — could break him out of the debilitating apathy of a life of sinking more and more into the impersonal ‘man’ (e.g. man sagt) that Martin Heidegger offers in his Being and Time as the synonym of inauthenticity. At the very time Father Sergius’s heart was being torn apart with doubt: ‘But does He exist? What if I am knocking at a door fastened from outside?’ (Tolstoy, 2018: 28). That is precisely when Father Sergius’s will enters on the path to his eventual downfall. Should we not recognise this fall as a sort of rebellion, a challenge thrown to a hidden God?

Augustine describes the experience of struggling with one’s will. In his view, man’s will can be torn by conflicting inclinations toward different, often contradictory possibilities, especially when one has to choose between the delusion (falsehood) of life on the one hand and the life offered by God, whom one does not see, on the other hand. ‘Eternity delights us, and the pleasure of temporal good holds us down below, it is the same soul which wills not that or this with an entire will, and is therefore torn asunder with grievous perplexities, while out of truth it prefers that, but out of custom forbears not this’ (Augustine, Book VIII, 10). Augustine writes that, before his conversion, he had already been conscious of evil having cast a stronger root in himself than good. Because of that consciousness, he was tossed about and tussled in the bonds of his habits as though in chains restraining his mobility. He calls his will ‘infirm’ (Augustine, Book VIII, 9), for it pulled him now one way, now the other:

Finally, in the very fever of my irresolution, I made many of those motions with my body which men sometimes desire to do, but cannot, if either they have not the limbs, or if their limbs be bound with fetters, weakened by disease, or hindered in any other way. Thus, if I tore my hair, struck my forehead, or if, entwining my fingers, I clasped my knee, this I did because I willed it. But I might have willed and not done it, if the power of motion in my limbs had not responded. So many things, then, I did, when to have the will was not to have the power, and I did not that which both with an unequalled desire I longed more to do, and which shortly when I should will I should have the power to do; because shortly when I should will, I should will thoroughly. For in such things the power was one with the will, and to will was to do … (Augustine, Book VIII, 8).

In his search for an explanation, Augustine points to original sin, which dwells in human nature akin to a virus, ready to evolve into a malady. I believe that Augustine succeeds perfectly at the task of demonstrating the difference between his own concept of weak will and that of Socrates’s. In Augustine’s opinion, it is possible to have the knowledge without having the will — as opposed to Socrates’s ethical rationalism, whereby to know is to have the power and ability. Augustine problematises Socrates’s rationalism, being unable to grasp how it is that the mind can command itself and yet also resist itself: ‘The mind commands the mind to will, and yet, though it be itself, it obeys not. Whence this monstrous thing? And why is it? I repeat, it commands itself to will, and would not give the command unless it willed; yet is not that done which it commands’ (Augustine, Book VIII, 9). This stage, at which Socrates concluded that the weak will was a mere appearance, leads Augustine to a different explanation: ‘It is, therefore, no monstrous thing partly to will, partly to be unwilling, but an infirmity of the mind, that it does not wholly rise, sustained by truth, pressed down by custom. And so, there are two wills, because one of them is not entire; and the one is supplied with what the other needs’ (Augustine, Book VIII, 9). Augustine’s concept of weak will explains what was happening with Father Sergius especially when he was torn with doubts and desires prior to his encounter with the merchant’s daughter. On the one hand, he wanted to stay true to God and to his own resolve; on the other hand, he was driven to act against God, which meant succumbing to his own desires. After the fashion of Augustine’s self-diagnosis, it could be said Father Sergius’s soul was afflicted with a malady consisting in the splintering of his will. What does the splintering mean, though?

Already at the beginning of his Confessions Augustine recalls an experience the description of which also fits what was happening with Father Sergius in his time of temptation. He recalls the innocently looking theft of pears from an orchard:

Yet had I a desire to commit robbery, and did so, compelled neither by hunger, nor poverty through a distaste for well-doing, and a lustiness of iniquity. For I pilfered that of which I had already sufficient, and much better. Nor did I desire to enjoy what I pilfered, but the theft and sin itself. There was a pear-tree close to our vineyard, heavily laden with fruit, which was tempting neither for its colour nor its flavour. To shake and rob this some of us wanton young fellows went, late one night (having, according to our disgraceful habit, prolonged our games in the streets until then), and carried away great loads, not to eat ourselves, but to fling to the very swine, having only eaten some of them; and to do this pleased us all the more because it was not permitted.

… Behold, now, let my heart tell You what it was seeking there, that I should be gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved to perish. I loved my own error— not that for which I erred, but the error itself. Base soul, falling from Your firmament to utter destruction — not seeking anything through the shame but the shame itself! (Augustine, Book II, 4).

Augustine emphasises that his heart had been in the bottomless pit at the time and his act was gratuitous, i.e., void of any justification, purpose or rationale. As Wystan H. Auden notes, Saint Augustine desires here to highlight what constitutes the centre of ethics. That is the absolute demand for a right to personal autonomy. The motive (and explanation) for one’s conduct is not pleasure or pain but action for action’s sake — in this case sin for the sake of sin itself, that is doing what is prohibited simply because it is prohibited. This transpires from how man hates his own nature, and the fact than man’s life is determined by natural desires such as hunger, thirst, the need for logical consistency or desire; hence, the only action that is satisfying and which breaks with the constraints of nature is the acte gratuit.Footnote 11 As Auden maintains, the human self constantly looks for opportunities to assert autonomy by executing uncompelled behaviours, pure acts of choice, which can include evil and even criminal acts (see: Auden 2015: 260–261). Thus, the transgression of Father Sergius cannot be reduced to succumbing to pleasure. His desire was to escape the life he was living — a life that had the outward appearance of perfection but which deep down was inauthentic. Through his act of freedom — and with it the negation of necessity — he wanted to destroy the model of life he had been living and to challenge the very idea of a God whom he could not feel or sense and whose existence he doubted. That was transgression for transgression’s sake, the consequences of which he could not foresee. Father Sergius consciously willed his fall (which was the consequence of the fall of Adam and Eve) but did not expect the acte gratuit to lead to an existential shake-up, putting him, in turn, on the path to liberation — liberation from that vain life which he had disdained, so that he could begin to live his life with God by living it in God. This type of life is what William James calls ‘rebirth’.Footnote 12 As opposed to the ‘once-born’, who see only joy in life and fail to see pain, loss, suffering and evil, Father Sergius dies to his life of delusion, so that he could be born into true life.Footnote 13 Having diagnosed his own condition, he took a risk in order to change his life. The experience of salvation coming from that change bore the fruit of certainty, sense, a triumph of good, and a will to live. That was what his salvation was about.

***.

It is difficult to capture the essence of Father Sergius’s moral conduct in abstraction from the religious context. Although perspicacious, Socrates’s and Aristotle’s explanations predicated on pure reason would have us see Sergius as an irrational, stupid, uncontrollable or weak man who acts contrary to his knowledge. Ramming Father Sergius into the categories of ethical intellectualism simplifies his act, providing a clear and legible solution but without answering the question of why, although he had knowledge, he acted contrary to it. The claim that he experienced a momentary loss of reason or that he automatically lost his rationality as a result of making the wrong choice does not adequately explain his situation, because all it refers to is a lack of knowledge or the possession of only verbal knowledge. However, Father Sergius cannot have been evaluating his conduct in an epistemological void. If he was capable of judging himself as critically as he did, he must necessarily have been conscious of the evil.

Why is it, therefore, that Aristotle’s approach is not sufficient to solve the problem of akrasia as presented in Tolstoy’s story? I believe that Aristotle’s approach differs from Augustine’s in two ways. Firstly, Aristotle grounds his analyses in an ethical perspective, studying human nature through the lens of virtue. Therein he seeks the answer to the problem of human frailty. Augustine’s inquiries, on the other hand, stem from the positions of philosophical anthropology and religious ethics. Augustine explores the more profound reasons for human weakness, finding them first and foremost in the aimless wandering of human nature on the backroads of sin — vanity, ambition, self-deception and living a life of falsehood. Neither Socrates’s nor Aristotle’s approach can suffice, as Tolstoy demonstrates their insufficiency for a human person to attempt to control one’s character and follow ethical guidelines. The human person needs to have a relationship with God that will restore order in one’s (often false) understanding of oneself, bring one’s weakness into light and indicate the path to overcoming it. Tolstoy demonstrates that only through contract with God, grounded in the rejection of falsehood and in the emulation of God, can Father Sergius find the opportunity to enter on the path to salvation. In this context, my reference to Augustine — himself the follower of a particularly convoluted path leading to God, amid struggle not only with his character but also his very nature — is not incidental. It is connected with Tolstoy’s understanding of Christianity. Metaphorically, it could be said that he does not understand Christianity as a type of equestrian contest in which the winner is the one who can cover the distance without colliding with the obstacles. Christianity is not a tabula rasa but an emulation of Christ in the particularities of life, the joy of being saved, where weakness is the meeting place with God.

Secondly, the difference between Aristotle and Augustine lies in their individual concepts of akrasia. The akrasia of which Aristotle writes involves epistemic ignorance and inability to discern good from evil. Father Sergius does not suffer from this problem — he very clearly realises that what he is doing is wrong. Akrasia in his case entails a false way of living, consisting in how he does have the conscious awareness of evil but still persists in it against everything, including against his own consciousness. Prompted by vanity and ambition, which lead him to sin, he defies God, destroying his integrity as a monastic. Only the humble acknowledgement of his own self-deceit — entailing a rejection of his existing way of life — brings him closer to God.

A deeper explanation seems to come from Saint Augustine, who, himself an impulsive man struggling with his passions, certainly must be credited with a better understanding of such cases than that of Tolstoy’s protagonist. Augustine emphasises that the error consists in the operation of will and not in the operation of reason — man acts improperly because he makes the wrong choices, not because he fails to recognise the values. Father Sergius is torn between the conflicting desires for personal autonomy (liberation from necessity) and for fidelity to his own principles. He falls into the trap of his own autonomy, because the desire for the acte gratuit undercuts his ability to remain true to himself, which had been the guarantee of that autonomy and the basis for his self-respect. He can act differently and choose good, as he did when resisting the temptation that came from Makovkina. The choice he does make, however, is one of evil will, which shakes his sense of axiological hierarchy, leaving him with psychological discomfort and the sense of having lost his life. Despair drives him to suicide, but he resists the temptation. He chooses life — a wholly different one from the one he has lived; a life leading to his salvation. He is influenced by the example of the life of Pashenka, one that is grounded in humble service and exposes how ‘because of his pride he had desired to look down on all those who considered themselves his superiors, and now at this devastating moment of failure in his career he thought that as a monk he could show contempt for everything that had formerly seemed important to him’ (Simmons, 1968: 160). At last, Father Sergius casts aside his pride and, putting no stake in the opinions of others, sets out on the path of a wayfarer who gives his life in the service of his neighbour. In doing so, he ‘feels more the presence of God within him’ (Simmons, 1968: 162). This ending seems to coincide with Tolstoy’s own life choice, because — as Vladimir M. Paperni observes — ‘for the late Tolstoy, this is the only means by which a person who has not yet crossed the threshold of “fleshly death” can attain unity with God’ (Paperni, 2019: 79).Footnote 14

Was that life, however, not founded upon the weakening or even breaking of his will, which could potentially be interpreted as a consequence of the earlier defeat of his prior weak will? On the one hand, Father Sergius could not have achieved his newfound state of serene happiness, had it not been for the decision of his will to accept the new life. On the other hand, in living the vagabond’s life, he finds the freedom of his own self from trying to guide his conduct with calculation and conformism. In his emancipation from being a slave to his own choices, which had previously turned him into a coldly calculating person or an automaton programmed to flatter his own pride and vanity, he becomes truly free. He also stops being the slave of the mechanical choices to which the institution of the Orthodox Church had confined him. With expectation of neither reward nor punishment, he begins to live the life of Pashenka, who judged herself in the light of her own conscience. He becomes — as he now has termed himself — a ‘servant’ (‘servitor’ even) of God, subordinate only to himself and God. In this manner he matures and ripens for an encounter with his God. And so does God begin to reveal Himself within him a helpless child and a starving pilgrim. The humility that begins to show in him in refraining from self-analysis gives him a focus on the soul and a way to fulfil the destiny of a religious man — unity with God.