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This book includes some of Tolstoy's essays written during his time of deep internal spiritual struggle. Upon his renunciation of a life of aristocratic wealth and worldly pleasure, Tolstoy longed for the sense of true peace that he saw in the peasant class. Thus he embarked upon a search for meaning and happiness through a life of simple faith, manual labor, and poverty. He formulated his own Christian philosophy based on Christ's Sermon on the Mount stressing the existence of the Kingdom of God within the human heart, civil disobedience, and total pacifism. This "law of love" is explored deeply in confessional form throughout the works in this collection. Although this particular approach to living the life in Christ ultimately did not cultivate in Tolstoy the deep inner peace that he yearned for, I feel that many of his ideas can be beneficial to people both within the Church as well as not. Regardless of the validity of his doctrine, it cannot be denied that this is an authentic, genuine, and very human confession of a man searching for God and the meaning of life on earth. Although I personally disagree with many of Tolstoy's points, I still hold his Confession to be a universal work that deserves a fair exploration by all who have ever felt a similar need for inner peace and true reconciliation with God.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
This is a very interesting book. Penned by one of the greatest writers in history, "A Confession..." by Leo Tolstoy provided me with great insight into his life, work, and relationships. I read this for a religion class in college and ended up keeping it. It is rather short and easy to read. Of interest to those who are seeking truth and those who have found it. It is fascinating to follow him thru his early religious experience, falling away from the church, and coming back to a unique faith in the end. Recommended.
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Tolstoy's "Confession" is a description of my own religious journey. As with all of the other religious writings of his, the entire book represents a clear explanation of a moral life based on Jesus' teachings, with a thorough rejection of the mysticism and magic that was added to it by men.
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28 of 37 people found the following review helpful
Tolstoy was a tremondous writer and intense human being. I approached this work expecting a great deal, and while it was certainly very much worth the effort, it was not as good as I hoped it would be. After acheiving fame, fortune, artistic achievement, family and everything else that most people long for, Tolstoy had a philosophical crisis in which he searched for the meaning of life. This is his chronicle of his despair and search, which ultimately ended in his acceptance of a unique brand of Christian socialism (not to mention ascetisim, vegetarianism, pacifism, etc.,). However, I thought much of the book, especially its sections on philosophy, to be rather poor in quality: either too simplisitc or complex but very poorly worded and expressed. While this book is ok, if anyone wanted to know Tolstoy's later philosophy of life I would recommend his later short works of fiction such as The Devil, the Kreutzer Sonata, and the Forged Coupon. They are masterpeices, while this work is simply interesting.
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In these existential confessions, Tolstoy, at the pinnacle of his career and life, explains how his life "came to a stop" as he came to believe he had accomplished nothing in life and existence was meaningless. Why should I live? Is there any meaning in my life that will not be destroyed by my inevitably approaching death? "I searched for an answer to my questions in every area of knowledge acquired by man. For a long time I carried on my painstaking search; I did not search casually, out of mere curiosity, but painfully, persistently, day and night, like a dying man seeking salvation. I found nothing." He also took to observing other people to see how they responded to this absurdity and found his peers escaping this problem in either ignorance, epicurianism, suicide, or weak survival. Tolstoy feebly chose the latter, holding on to an obscure doubt, a hope of something more. As Carruth writes, "The mind of man, which he did not ask to be given, demands a reason and a meaning." Confession personifies our search for more than just vague answers to questions of meaning which are so vital to man's existence.
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Next to the Bible, this is the MOST IMPORTANT Book on Earth
Tolstoy provides revelations about existence, meaning of life, purpose, the root of social horror and only path to peace in a way uncontemplated and unexpressed by this generation. Most of the world, as he says, is caught up in a sheep-think herd mentality, taken captive by a collusion of Scientism and Priest in a horrific flanking and fleecing of a people whose downfall is thinking they are clever, and so easily brainwashed into believing knowledge about materials is intelligence & brings morality, little realizing these are of NO VALUE AT ALL in transforming man's character flaws and lusts, which drive the ruination of earth, man and child in his time and today.
Tolstoy gives a singularly unrivaled and stunning analysis of: 1.) How the 1% Ruling Class Maintains Power 2.) How Scientists Hypnotically Coerce the herd 3.) How Scientists and Priests work together to keep people from what Jesus actually taught 4.) How it's impossible to be human and not be religious 5.) How there is no rival to Jesus' teachings 6.) How Jesus' teachings are THE ONLY SOLUTION to the present crisis 7.) How before Jesus men were barbarians and how it was Jesus who changed that in cultures practicing his teachings. 8.) How absurd is the notion that material scientific discovery can create a moral code. He blows this rubbish away.
I couldn't believe this was written around the turn of the 19th century. Nothing has changed. Tolstoy was right - Christianity did play the largest role in the Enlightenment of man's consciousness. The book below bears this out: How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization
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This item: A Confession and Other Religious Writings (Penguin Classics)
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