Abstract
We shall analyze the subject just mentioned in the three paragraphs of our dissertation, considering asceticism as a passion towards the superior that takes for granted the negative condition of existence: in accordance to that, in the first paragraph we shall see how the ascetic approach that is the starting point of some Tolstoy’s works agrees perfectly with the tenet of flesh that sparks off a ceaseless torment for man, which explains why existence sinks more often than not into the utmost despair; in the second paragraph we shall show how that reflects on the sharp condemnation of worldly coexistence through the sexual and socio-economical differences that change everyone into the worst enemy of his fellow creatures; in the third paragraph we shall clarify why existence has to be experienced between “fear and trembling” before the presence of a relentless wickedness unless one is ready to give it up once and for all and live in the utter abnegation, which must be understood verbatim and not with that shallow sense wherewith most people interpret the term so as to make up for their insurmountable selfishness. Finally, we shall in a colophon recapitulate all this so as to show that beneath the unyielding asceticism that Tolstoy sets out there is simultaneously a miscomprehension of the real part of desire in existence and also of Christianity itself, and that although according to the latter everyone must find the final vital sense in the sheer inwardness and in the total abnegation of himself, that does not implicate perforce either the rejection of existence on behalf of an inhuman ideal of pureness.
Non rogo ut tollas eos de mundo sed ut serves eos ex malo.
Jn XVII, 15.
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Notes
- 1.
The three former works make up the following book: Leon Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories, ed. and trans. David McDuff (London: Penguin, 2004). Whatever reference to these works will indicate the corresponding number of page. The two last works are quoted according to the translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude that appears in The Literature Network (http://www.online-literature.com/Tolstoy), accessed during February–March of 2011.
- 2.
This conception of body is obviously inspired by the phenomenological comprehension thereof that has been set out with brilliance above all by Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, whose analysis will be retaken here.
- 3.
Kant, by the by, criticizes this reduction of the bodily (or, as he calls it, the “natural”) constitution of existence to a diabolical sensuality, considering that blaming evil on body is misunderstand the real condition of human existence. Vide his remarks on the subject on Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, ed. and Spanish trans. Felipe Martínez Marzoa, LB 163 (2nd edn, Madrid: Alianza, 1981), 44 and ff.
- 4.
The Devil, p. 126.
- 5.
Ibid., p. 152.
- 6.
Ibid., p. 161 (italics are mine).
- 7.
Ibid., p. 166.
- 8.
Ibid., p. 172.
- 9.
Ibid., p. 131.
- 10.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la Perception (Paris: Gallimard), 99.
- 11.
On this axial subject, vide Martin Heidegger, Letter on Humanism in Basic Writings, ed. and trans. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper Collins, 1993), 225 and ff.
- 12.
Hobbes is the natural reference in this case, however much the metaphysical ground of his thought makes what he says very questionable. Vide the introduction of Crawford Brough MacPherson to his edition of Leviathan (London: Penguin, 1985), 30–39.
- 13.
Unity whose exposition is the main aim of the whole ancient tragic thought. Vide on this Peter Burian, “Myth into Muthos: The Shaping of Tragic Plot” in The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, ed. P.E. Easterling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 198 and ff.
- 14.
Vide the preface of the own philosopher to the third book of the Ethics, ed. Stuart Hampshire and trans. Edwin Curley (London: Penguin, 1996), 68 and ff.
- 15.
A very similar critical standpoint regarding the truisms at issue is adopted by Freud in his celebrated Civilization and Its Discontents (London: Penguin, 2002), ed. and trans. David McLintock. Vide above all p. 54 and ff.
- 16.
The Kreutzer Sonata, p. 37.
- 17.
Ibid., p. 45.
- 18.
Ibid., p. 56.
- 19.
Ibid., p. 60.
- 20.
Ibid.,p. 88.
- 21.
Ibid.,p. 117.
- 22.
Ibid., p. 276.
- 23.
Ibid., p. 234.
- 24.
Which are denounced by Kant is his Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics, ed. and Spanish trans. Pedro Chacón and Isidoro Reguera, LB 1271 (Madrid: Alianza, 1987), above all p. 61 and ff.
- 25.
For an explanation and exposition of this “mistake”, vide the “General Introduction” by Emilio Lledó Íñigo to the Spanish translation of Plato’s Dialogues, 11 vv., BC 37 (Madrid: Gredos, 1997), vol. I, 102 and ff.
- 26.
Which is the very ground of the whole becoming of metaphysical tradition and, more concretely, of the most interesting trend of Platonism that nurtured it through the theory of love. Vide on this subject my book Voluntad de Ser. El “Puro Amor” y Sor Juana (Mexico City: NAUM, 1995), 107 and ff.
- 27.
Which is the basic assumption of one of the most influential works in Western tradition regarding the hard issue of the vital function of understanding, namely Baltasar Gracián’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom, trans. Joseph Jacobs (Boston: Shambala Publication, 1993).
- 28.
Vide on this The Gay Science, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974), paragraph 103–107.
- 29.
The Kreutzer Sonata, 54.
- 30.
Which is, needless to say, the stance that Schopenhauer has canonized in The World as Will and Representation, 2 vv., ed. and trans. E.F.J. Payne (New York: Dover, 1966), above all in the vol. II, paragraph XLVIII.
- 31.
Chapter III (vide note 1).
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
Ibid., chapter IV.
- 34.
Heidegger, Martin, Time and Being, paragraph 50, passim. It is needless to say that, bar from the phrase that expresses very happily what we have in mind, our approach has nothing to do with Heidegger’s.
- 35.
The Death of Ivan Ilych, chapter X.
- 36.
Ibid., chapter VII.
- 37.
On this subject, vide my dissertation “Los Dos Paradigmas de la Identidad entre Filosofía y Muerte a la Luz de la Interpretación Platónica de la Muerte de Sócrates”, in Miradas sobre la Muerte. Aproximaciones desde la Literatura, la Filosofía y el Psicoanálisis,ed. Alberto Constante and Leticia Flores Farfán (Mexico City: NAUM/Ítaca, 2008), 237–257.
- 38.
Master and Man, chapter 9. Italics are ours.
- 39.
The Death of Ivan Ilych, chapter XII.
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López, V.G.R. (2012). Flesh, World and Devil: Towards a Phenomenological Exposition of the Ascetic Interpretation of Christianity in the Light of Some Tolstoy’s Short Works. In: Tymieniecka, A. (eds) Art, Literature, and Passions of the Skies. Analecta Husserliana, vol 112. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4261-1_13
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