Did Leo Tolstoy Discover the Meaning of Life?

Tuesday, May 13, 2025.

Leo Tolstoy—aristocrat, soldier, novelist, peasant-fantasist, proto-vegan, devout Christian anarchist, self-appointed prophet—lived so many philosophical lives in one that the question “Did he discover the meaning of life?” feels almost quaint.

The more urgent question might be: Which Tolstoy are we asking?

Because by the end of his life, he was no longer the Count who wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, nor the moralizing bearded hermit who gave away his copyrights.

He had become, in his own words, “a man lost in midlife, staring into the abyss with a Bible in one hand and a suicide note in the other.”

And from that abyss, he returned with a meaning—one that still haunts therapists, theologians, and Tumblr reblogs alike.

Midlife Crisis in a Russian Key

In his 50s, at the height of his fame, Tolstoy experienced what today we’d call a major depressive episode with spiritual features. He couldn’t write. He couldn’t sleep. He was terrified of death, bored by success, and secretly eyeing the rope in his barn.

In A Confession (1882), he asked:

“Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?”

This wasn’t cocktail-party nihilism. This was a man who stopped going hunting because he didn’t trust himself not to pull the trigger—on himself.

The Four Responses to Life’s Meaninglessness

Tolstoy outlines four typical responses to the meaninglessness of life. He’s a novelist, so of course he gives them narrative flair:

• Ignorance: Just keep dancing. Stay busy. Don’t ask questions.

• Epicureanism: Get pleasure while you can. Bring wine. Lots of wine.

• Strength and Suicide: Face the void and leap into it.

• Weakness: Recognize the abyss, but cling to life anyway, out of cowardice or habit.

He found all of them wanting. Especially the last one—his own.

What He Did Discover

Tolstoy eventually embraced a version of Christian existentialism before the term even existed.

But his Christianity was stripped of miracles, sacraments, and priestly authority.

It was closer to DIY spirituality than institutional religion.

He latched onto the ethics of Jesus—particularly the Sermon on the Mount—and declared that universal love, humility, and nonresistance to evil were the only sane responses to mortality.

“Faith is the force of life,” he wrote. “If a man lives he must believe in something.”

The “meaning of life,” according to late-stage Tolstoy, is to serve others through love.

Not metaphorically. Literally.

Milk the cow. Feed the hungry. Forgive the unforgivable. Opt out of empire, war, and materialism. And stop writing novels about cheating socialites.

A Therapist’s Footnote: Was It Enough?

From the modern mental health vantage point, we might call Tolstoy’s transformation a spiritual bypass with a side of righteousness.

He abandoned his wife, shamed his own children for inheriting his wealth, and left home on a final pilgrimage that ended in pneumonia at a train station.

So yes, he found a meaning.

But it may not have been the meaning—not for everyone, and perhaps not even for himself.

Tolstoy’s genius was in turning personal despair into literary clarity. But his quest for universal truth often came with collateral damage, especially for the people who lived in his house.

For the Rest of Us

In therapy rooms today, clients still wrestle with the very same questions:

• Does anything matter if I’m going to die?

• Is love real, or just oxytocin?

• Why do I feel empty after every success?

Tolstoy’s contribution wasn’t so much an answer as a re-framing: Stop asking what life can give you. Ask what you can give back.

It’s noble. It’s beautiful. JFK probably shoplifted it.

And depending on your childhood trauma, it might be unbearably pressure-filled.

Final Thought: Meaning as Movement

If Tolstoy taught us anything, it’s this: meaning isn’t static.

It’s not found in an epiphany. It’s cultivated through daily, sweaty acts of conscience.

It’s not what you feel. It’s what you do. Even when you’re in despair. Especially then.

And if you can do it with some nice pasta and a good Merlot,—well, so much the better.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Frank, J. D. (1961). Persuasion and healing: A comparative study of psychotherapy. Johns Hopkins Press.

Kołakowski, L. (1982). Religion: If there is no God. Oxford University Press.

Rowe, W. L. (1982). The problem of evil and some varieties of atheism. American Philosophical Quarterly, 16(4), 335–341.

Tolstoy, L. (1882/2006). A Confession (D. Patterson, Trans.). W. W. Norton.

Urmson, J. O. (1973). Tolstoy and the meaning of life. Philosophy, 48(183), 123–133. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031819100058604

Yalom, I. D. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. Basic Books.