My Religion

Raised in the Russian Orthodox Church Tolstoy lost his religion at 18. After a life of debauchery in his early 50s he wanted religion — or some source of intellectual security — back. Tolstoy notes that whatever the faith may be it “gives to the finite existence of man an infinite meaning a meaning not destroyed by sufferings deprivations or death” and yet he is careful not to conflate faith with a specific religion. Tolstoy believed being a Christian required him to be a pacifist; the apparently inevitable waging of war by governments is why he is considered a philosophical anarchist.