![]() McKeogh’s work then assesses the internal consistency of Tolstoy’s pacifism, its grounding in the Gospels and Christian tradition, its political and anti-political implications, and the meaning in life that it offers. It establishes that Tolstoy’s stance is primarily one of non-violence rather than non-resistance. This work serves scholars of political science by bringing together relevant extracts from Tolstoy’s writings and providing a succinct treatment of the core political issues. In this first study of Tolstoy’s pacifism by a political scientist, Colm McKeogh unravels the complexities of Tolstoy’s writings on Christianity and political violence. Today, the political implications of religious fundamentalism, scriptural literalism, and Christian faith are very much live issues and the contemporary discussion of them should not omit pacifism. The Russian novelist offers an instructive case study in Christian pacifism and in the attractions and failings of strict, literalist, and simplistic religious approaches to the many and complex issues of politics. It presents Tolstoy’s pacifism as a striking case of the impact of religious idealism on political attitudes. This work of political science offers an account of Leo Tolstoy as a Christian thinker on political violence. A hundred years after his death, Tolstoy is a figure unfamiliar in political science, encountered, if at all, as the author of hortatory quotations on the wrongness of political violence or of allegiance to the state. His pacifism was rooted not in a moral doctrine or political theory but in his straightforward reading of the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels.ĭespite his fame, Tolstoy’s pacifism remains insufficiently studied. Tolstoy was a religious pacifist rather than an ethical or political one. ![]() He unreservedly rejected the use of physical force to these or any ends. Tolstoy was a strict pacifist in the last three decades of his life, and wrote at length on a central issue of politics, namely, the use of violence to maintain order, to promote justice, and to ensure the survival of society, civilization, and the human species. ![]() The most famous person alive at the dawn of the twentieth century, his international stature came not only from his great novels but from his rejection of violence and the state. Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) was the most influential, challenging, and provocative pacifist of his generation.
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