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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Death and religion: from the old Tolstoy to the young Wittgenstein

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Mi propósito es doble. Mostrar cómo la pregunta por el sentido de la vida y la matriz del sentimiento religioso del Tolstoi maduro, que él considera cristianismo verdadero, se funda en la experiencia subjetiva del miedo ante la muerte y la angustia ante la soledad que la misma comporta. Este aspecto es el núcleo de su religiosidad por cuanto de él se deriva el valor de la fraternidad, centro de una moral humanista y altruista paradójica que sacraliza el vínculo amoroso entre los hombres a la par que se fundamenta en el sometimiento a la voluntad de Dios. Por otra parte, las concepciones de Tolstoi tal como se expresan no sólo en El Evangelio Abreviado, sino también en sus relatos literarios ayudaron al joven Wittgenstein de los años de guerra a darle forma a un sentimiento religioso acorde con el sentido que la presencia interiorizada de la muerte tenía para el literato ruso. Ahora bien, lo que respectivamente entienden por voluntad divina, a la que ambos dicen someterse, varía significativamente de uno a otro. Al cabo, mientras que Tolstoi sacraliza el amor fraterno, Wittgenstein enfatiza el dominio de sí y la salvación espiritual interior, cobrando una mayor importancia la dimensión privada del punto de vista religioso. My purpose is twofold. Firstly, I mean to show how the question of the meaning of life and the kernel of mature Tolstoy’s religious feelings –which he conceives of as true Christianity– spring from his subjective experience of fear before death and anguish due to loneliness. These experiences lie at the core of his religiosity insofar as he derives from them the value of fraternity, which is essential to his altruistic and paradoxical humanist moral, which regards love among men as sacred and also as based on obedience to the will of God. Secondly, I will argue that Tolstoy’s religiosity as is expressed not only in The Gospel in Brief, but also in some of his literary stories which young Wittgenstein read, helped him to shape, during the years of war, a religious feeling inspired in the significance that an internalized presence of death had for the Russian writer. Now, what they may respectively understand by God’s will, to which both claim to be subject to, varies substantially. After all, Tolstoy focuses on brotherly love, while Wittgenstein emphasizes control over oneself as well as inner spiritual redemption, so that the private dimension of the religious perspective is enhanced.