Tolstoy S Political Thought

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), besides writing famous novels such as War and Peace, also wrote on political issues, especially later in his life, putting forward a political philosophy which might be termed 'Christian anarchism'. This book provides a comprehensive overview of Tolstoy’s political thought. It outlines in a systematic way Tolstoy’s thought, which was originally articulated unsystematically in diverse, often informal writing, such as pamphlets, letters, and speeches, as well as books, and in his novels, where Tolstoy’s thinking is put forward implicitly through the novels’ characters. The book sets out the basic themes of Tolstoy’s political thought: his acceptance of the teachings of Jesus, his criticism of the way in which Jesus’ teachings have been relayed by the church through traditional creeds and dogma, his passionate rejection of political violence by both the state and those working for reform, his plea for a nonviolent response to violence and injustice, and his call for society to forego its institutional shackles and enact a community of peace, love, and justice. The book also includes background information on the Russia of Tolstoy’s time, including the religious context, and a discussion of how Tolstoy’s political thought has been received by his admirers, who included Gandhi, and his critics.

"The Meaning of the Russian Revolution" is a novel by Nobel Prize winning and highly-acclaimed Russian author Leo Tolstoy. In describing the 1905 Russian Revolution Tolstoy traces back the history of Europe as a whole and Russia in particular. He suggests that the nation has come full circle and that the people who had earlier submitted themselves to monarchical rule now find themselves burdened with its excesses and corruption. He however advocates for non-violent revolution as the means to bring about a new Russian society.

Isaiah Berlin's classic essay on Tolstoy - an exciting new edition with new criticism and a foreword. 'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.' This fragment of Archilochus, which gives this book its title, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's masterly essay on Tolstoy. There have been various interpretations of Archilochus' fragment; Isaiah Berlin has simply used it, without implying anything about the true meaning of the words, to outline a fundamental distinction that exists in mankind, between those who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things (foxes) and those who relate everything to a central all-embracing system (hedgehogs). When applied to Tolstoy, the image illuminates a paradox of his philosophy of history, and shows why he was frequently misunderstood by his contemporaries and critics. Tolstoy was by nature a fox, but he believed in being a hedgehog.

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was the most influential, challenging, and provocative pacifist of his generation. The most famous person alive at the dawn of the twentieth century, his international stature came not only from his great novels but from his rejection of violence and the state. Tolstoy was a strict pacifist in the last three decades of his life, and wrote at length on a central issue of politics, namely, the use of violence to maintain order, to promote justice, and to ensure the survival of society, civilization, and the human species. He unreservedly rejected the use of physical force to these or any ends. Tolstoy was a religious pacifist rather than an ethical or political one. His pacifism was rooted not in a moral doctrine or political theory but in his straightforward reading of the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels. Despite his fame, Tolstoy's pacifism remains insufficiently studied. A hundred years after his death, Tolstoy is a figure unfamiliar in political science, encountered, if at all, as the author of hortatory quotations on the wrongness of political violence or of allegiance to the state. This work of political science offers an account of Leo Tolstoy as a Christian thinker on political violence. It presents Tolstoy's pacifism as a striking case of the impact of religious idealism on political attitudes. The Russian novelist offers an instructive case study in Christian pacifism and in the attractions and failings of strict, literalist, and simplistic religious approaches to the many and complex issues of politics. Today, the political implications of religious fundamentalism, scriptural literalism, and Christian faith are very much live issues and the contemporary discussion of them should not omit pacifism. In this first study of Tolstoy's pacifism by a political scientist, Colm McKeogh unravels the complexities of Tolstoy's writings on Christianity and political violence. This work serves scholars of political science by bringing together relevant extracts from Tolstoy's writings and providing a succinct treatment of the core political issues. It establishes that Tolstoy's stance is primarily one of non-violence rather than non-resistance. McKeogh's work then assesses the internal consistency of Tolstoy's pacifism, its grounding in the Gospels and Christian tradition, its political and anti-political implications, and the meaning in life that it offers. It finds that Tolstoy does great service to the pacifist cause (with his defense of peace as close to the centre of Christ's message) and yet harm to it too (by divorcing peace from the love that is even more central to Christ's message). Tolstoy's political and religious legacy is not that of a prophet, a social activist, a moral reformer, a political idealist or pacifist theorist but that of a dissident. Tolstoy stands as one of the great dissidents of twentieth-century Russia, a man who condemned the system utterly and who refused to perform any act that could be construed as compromising with it. He left behind a powerful statement of the urgent human need to connect our daily living to a deep and fulfilling conception of the meaning of life. Tolstoy's Pacifism is important for political science, Christian ethics, literature, and Russian collections.

This carefully crafted ebook: "The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Memoirs, Letters & Essays on Art, Religion and Politics" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Introduction Leo Tolstoy: Short Biography Novels Anna Karenina War and Peace The Death of Ivan Ilyich Childhood Boyhood Youth The Cossacks Resurrection Family Happiness The Kreutzer Sonata The Forged Coupon Hadji Murad The Snow-Storm The Dekabrists A Morning of a Landed Proprietor Short Stories After the Dance Alyosha the Pot My Dream There Are No Guilty People The Young Tsar A Lost Opportunity "Polikushka" The Candle Twenty-Three Tales Sevastopol Sketches Master and Man Father Sergius A Russian Proprietor and Other Stories An Old Acquaintance Fables and Stories for Children Stories from Physics Stories from Zoology Stories from Botany Texts for Chapbook Illustrations Stories from the New Speller Diary of a Lunatic The Devil Recollections of a Billiard-Marker Three Parables The Cutting of a Forest Yermak, the Conqueror of Siberia Two Hussars Albert Nikolai Palkin and Other Stories Scenes from Common Life Meeting a Moscow Acquaintance at the Front Memoirs of a Marker From the Memoirs of Prince D. Nekhlyudov Domestic Happiness My Husband and I Who Should Learn Writing of Whom? Plays The Power of Darkness The First Distiller Fruits of Culture The Live Corpse The Cause of it All The Light Shines in Darkness Letters and Memoirs Correspondences with Gandhi A Letter to a Hindu Letter to Ernest Howard Crosby Letters to His Son Ilia Letters to Acquaintances The First Step Early Days The Beginning of the End Three Days in the Village The Demands of Love Last Will and Testament Last Message to Mankind... On Religion What I Believe The Gospel in Brief A Confession The Kingdom of God Is within You Christianity and Patriotism Reason and Religion 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' Two Wars Church and State Reply to Critics... On Art and Literature ...

This groundbreaking new work explores modern and contemporary political thought since 1750, looking at the thinkers, concepts, debates, issues, and national traditions that have shaped political thought from the Enlightenment to post-modernism and post-structuralism. Encyclopedia of Modern Political Thought is two-volume A to Z reference that provides historical context to the philosophical issues and debates that have shaped attitudes toward democracy, citizenship, rights, property, duties, justice, equality, community, law, power, gender, race, and legitimacy over the last three centuries. It profiles major and minor political thinkers, and the national traditions, both Western and non-Western, which continue to shape and divide political thought. More than 200 scholars from leading international research institutions and organizations have provided signed entries that offer comprehensive coverage of: Thought of regions and countries, including African political thought, American political thought , Australasian political thought (Australian and New Zealand), Chinese political thought, Indian political thought, Islamic political Thought, Japanese political thought, and more Thought regarding contemporary issues such as abortion, affirmative action, animal rights, European integration, feminism, humanitarian intervention, international law, race and racism, and more The ideological spectrum from Marxism to neoconservatism, including anarchism, conservatism, Darwinism and Social Darwinism, Engels, fascism, the Frankfurt School, Lenin and Leninism, socialism, and more Connections of political thought to key areas of politics and other disciplines such as economics, psychology, law, and religion Notable time periods of political thought since 1750 Concepts including class, democratic theory, liberalism, nationalism, natural and human rights, and theories of the state Theorists and political intellectuals, both Western and non-Western including John Adams, Edmund Burke, Mohandas Gandhi, Immanuel Kant, Ayatollah Khomeini, Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, George Washington, and Mary Wollstonecraft

Develops a coherent theory of nonviolent political action in the context of Western political theory. Ian Atack identifies the contribution of nonviolence to political theory through connecting central characteristics of nonviolent action to fundamental debates about the role of power and violence in politics. This in turn provides a platform for going beyond historical and strategic accounts of nonviolence to a deeper understanding of its transformative potential.From Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King to toppled communist regimes in Eastern Europe and pro-democracy movements in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine, nonviolent action has played a significant role in achieving social and political change in the last century. The Arab Spring revolutions, particularly those in Tunisia and Egypt, and the Occupy movement in the US and UK demonstrate that nonviolence continues to be a vital feature of many campaigns for democracy, human rights and social justice.

Tolstoy incorporated extensive historical research. He was also influenced by many other novels. A veteran of the Crimean War, Tolstoy was quite critical of standard history, especially the standards of military history, in War and Peace. Tolstoy read all the standard histories available in Russian and French about the Napoleonic Wars and combined more traditional historical writing with the novel form. He explains at the start of the novel's third volume his own views on how history ought to be written. His aim was to blur the line between fiction and history, in order to get closer to the truth, as he states in Volume II. The novel is set 60 years earlier than the time at which Tolstoy wrote it, "in the days of our grandfathers", as he puts it. He had spoken with people who had lived through war during the French invasion of Russia in 1812, so the book is also, in part, accurate ethnography fictionalized. He read letters, journals, autobiographical and biographical materials pertaining to Napoleon and the dozens of other historical characters in the novel. There are approximately 160 real persons named or referred to in War and Peace. Plot summary: War and Peace has a large cast of characters, the majority of whom are introduced in the first book. Some are actual historical figures, such as Napoleon and Alexander I. While the scope of the novel is vast, it is centered around five aristocratic families. The plot and the interactions of the characters take place in the era surrounding the 1812 French invasion of Russia during the Napoleonic wars. Book/Volume One The novel begins in July 1805 in Saint Petersburg, at a soiree given by Anna Pavlovna Scherer—the maid of honour and confidante to the queen mother Maria Feodorovna. Many of the main characters and aristocratic families in the novel are introduced as they enter Anna Pavlovna's salon. Pierre (Pyotr Kirilovich) Bezukhov is the illegitimate son of a wealthy count, an elderly man who is dying after a series of strokes. Pierre is about to become embroiled in a struggle for his inheritance. Educated abroad at his father's expense following his mother's death, Pierre is essentially kindhearted, but socially awkward, and owing in part to his open, finds it difficult to integrate into Petersburg society. It is known to everyone at soiree that Pierre is his father's favorite of all the old count's illegitimate children. Also attending the soireé is Pierre's friend, the intelligent and sardonic Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky, husband of Lise, the charming society favourite. Finding Petersburg society unctuous and disillusioned with married life after discovering his wife is empty and superficial, Prince Andrei makes the fateful choice to be an aide-de-camp to Prince Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov in the coming war against Napoleon. The plot moves to Moscow, Russia's ancient city and former capital, contrasting its provincial, more Russian ways to the highly mannered society of Petersburg. The Rostov family are introduced. Count Ilya Andreyevich Rostov has four adolescent children. Thirteen-year-old Natasha (Natalia Ilyinichna) believes herself in love with Boris Drubetskoy, a disciplined young man who is about to join the army as an officer. Twenty-year-old Nikolai Ilyich pledges his love to Sonya (Sofia Alexandrovna), The eldest child of the Rostov family, Vera Ilyinichna, is cold and somewhat haughty but has a good prospective marriage in a Russian-German officer, Adolf Karlovich Berg. Petya (Pyotr Ilyich) is nine and the youngest of the Rostov family; like his brother, he is impetuous and eager to join the army when of age. The heads of the family, are an affectionate couple but forever worried about their disordered finances.