Ethics

On Life

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Leo Tolstoy

1888

Also published clandestinely in Russia after the censors suppressed it, On Life is Tolstoy's most sustained philosophical work — a systematic attempt to distinguish the true life of rational consciousness and love from the false life of animal individuality. Tolstoy argues that human beings contain two natures: an animal personality that fears death and seeks pleasure, and a rational consciousness that perceives its own identity with all that lives. The confusion between these two produces all human suffering. The true self is not the body or the particular ego but the rational principle that can step back from personal desire and live for others — and this rational self cannot die, because it was never born in the ordinary sense. On Life is Tolstoy's philosophical defence of his ethical and religious transformation.