Free Will, War and the Tolstoy Paradox
Only someone with free will could write this free-will-denying book. That’s the Tolstoy paradox. I recommend reading this Pevear/Volokhonsky translation on Kindle, so you don’t have to lug the damn thing around.
December 22, 2023. I’m renaming the Sapolsky paradox. From now on, it’s the Tolstoy paradox. Writing a book that denies free will, especially a good book, requires free will, a capacity for conscious choices. That’s the paradox.
Determined by neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky is a fine example of the paradox, but Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which I just re-read, is better. Before I explain how Tolstoy exemplifies the paradox, I need to gush a bit about his 1,296-page page-turner. [See Postscript.]
War and Peace lives up to its grandiose title. No novel encompasses more of life, the best and worst, from a woman tenderly kissing her dying lover to a mob tearing apart a suspected traitor.
No narrator is more omniscient than Tolstoy, who seems to possess intimate knowledge of everything. Whether he is describing a wolf hunt, night-time sleigh ride, high-society ball, or battle, Tolstoy makes you feel you’re seeing things as they really are.
Unlike Vladimir Nabokov, Tolstoy is not a linguistic show-off. His prose is transparent, a window onto reality. He resembles a film director with an infinite budget, whose vision is constrained only by his dedication to realism, depicting life as it is.
As much as any writer, Tolstoy overcomes the solipsism problem, the isolation of each of us within an impermeable first-person bubble. Tolstoy imagines his way into the head of a girl falling in love for the first time (Natasha); a rake seducing the girl (Anatole); a rich, fat, self-loathing wastrel seeking life’s meaning (Pierre); a Russian officer having a mystical vision as he lies, wounded, on the battlefield looking at the sky (Andrei).
Tolstoy’s camera soars above the action, giving you panoramic views of Napoleon’s “victories” at Austerlitz and Borodino as well as his calamitous retreat from Moscow. Tolstoy also zooms in for close-ups of Napoleon, a vainglorious jerk with plump white hands magnanimously allowing his underlings (that is, everyone) to bask in his glory. Tolstoy’s Napoleon is a true solipsist; his world and the world are one. I’m a Joaquin Phoenix fan, but to grok Napoleon, skip the flick, read War and Peace.
Tolstoy skewers the vanity and folly of his characters, especially the rich and powerful, the princes and countesses and generals and emperors. Tolstoy disdains those who think they have the answers, and he admires those who search for answers--in religion, nature, love.
These seekers keep having epiphanies, during which they realize, This—this!--is how things are! Inevitably, the epiphany fades, doubt creeps in, until a new epiphany grips them, and they realize, I was wrong before, but now I see, This—this!--is how things are!
If there is an answer, it is love. Love redeems us, gives us meaning, not only romantic love but love of family, country, God. But love, Tolstoy warns, can make fools of us, mislead us, destroy us.
Although Tolstoy can be a vicious satirist, his work transcends satire, because he has such deep sympathy for his characters, even cruel, beautiful assholes like the seductress Helene and gambler Dolokhov. Tolstoy’s heart is big as his brain; he empathizes with all those who suffer—and we all suffer, don’t we?
Okay, back to the Tolstoy paradox. Tolstoy keeps interrupting his epic tale to insist, in authorial voice-overs, that no one is capable of self-understanding or self-control. Anticipating Sapolsky’s Determined, Tolstoy notes that science is revealing that all things, including humans, are ruled by gravity and other deterministic forces.
We think we have free will, but all of us, even Napoleon—especially Napoleon!--are pushed this way and that by forces we cannot fathom. An individual has as much influence over history’s trajectory as a drop of water has over a waterfall.
War and Peace rubs our faces in war’s stupidity and cruelty. And yet Tolstoy implies that war is inevitable, there’s nothing we can do to avoid it. Tolstoy looks askance at social self-improvement schemes, which often make bad situations worse. After all, Napoleon became a tyrant to end tyranny, he waged war to end war. So he insisted.
Tolstoy’s fatalism is all too persuasive, and understandable. This hard-nosed realist loathes the thought of giving us false hope. And his skeptical view of utopian do-gooders foreshadows the horrors wrought by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler. Save us from our saviors.
But Tolstoy, when he rejects free will, protests too much. War and Peace displays Tolstoy’s capacity for making aesthetic, intellectual and moral choices. So do Tolstoy’s late-life writings, in which he denounces violence, even in the service of a just cause, and urges do-gooders to pursue their goals nonviolently.
The key to successful nonviolent resistance, Tolstoy proposes, is to love or at least respect your oppressors, to recognize your common humanity. That message might sound too schmaltzy, and Christian, but it inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King, do-gooders who actually did good. Tolstoy thus proves that individuals with good ideas can make a difference--contrary to his fatalistic assertions in War and Peace. That’s the Tolstoy paradox.
Here we are, more than 150 years after Tolstoy published War and Peace, and we still live in a war-wracked world. Nations kill children in the name of national security. Almost everyone, including my students, thinks peace is a pipe dream; war is the inevitable manifestation of our aggressive nature.
In this cold, dark time, I take heart from the faint glimmer of the Tolstoy paradox.
Postscript: I started re-reading War and Peace after Lois, my stepmom, told me she was reading it with her Philadelphia book group.
Further Reading:
Free Will and the Sapolsky Paradox
Free Will and the Could-You-Have-Chosen-Otherwise Gambit
Is Killing Children Ever Justified?
You’re Not Free If You’re Dead: The Case Against Giving Ukraine F-16s
Dear Feminists, Please Help End War!
The organizations World Beyond War and Costs of War provide excellent information on the costs of war and benefits of peace.