Resurrection

“One of the commonest and most generally accepted delusions is that every man can be qualified in some particular way – said to be kind, wicked, stupid, energetic, apathetic, and so on. People are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, more often wise than stupid, more often energetic than apathetic or vice versa; but it could never be true to say of one man that he is kind or wise, and of another that he is wicked or stupid. Yet we are always classifying mankind in this way. And it is wrong. Human beings are like rivers; the water is one and the same in all of them but every river is narrow in some places, flows swifter in others; here it is broad, there still, or clear, or cold, or muddy or warm. It is the same with men. Every man bears within him the germs of every human quality, and now manifests one, now another, and frequently is quite unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.”

The description of the excesses of the statal machine which distinguishes itself through the cruelty and injustice of its punishments clearly foresees the advent of communism. The anatomy of Nekhlyudov's enlightenment reminds me on The Death of Ivan Ilych . Heidegger should have used it extensively to shed more light on the condition of the “they-self”. An important part of Tolstoy's book deals with the distinction between the animal and spiritual aspect of the human nature. Although that since 1899 the cultural code has changed and in today's world the animal and the spirit peacefully coexist (Mr. Hyde is no longer our enemy, he became a marketing tool that helps us sell ourselves more efficiently), no longer being disociated (the animal is spiritual, the spirit - animalic), I apreciate Tolstoy's quest for authenticity and his taste for existential drama; apparently a century ago people still believed in something.