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The last article concluded with the fact that three things are of paramount importance in the Western worldview: Free will, that is, the unbridled autonomy of man. The second is rationalism and the third is a powerful man with extraordinary abilities. Atheism is active as a soul in these three concepts. It is safe to say that atheism is common to almost all the philosophies and concepts that have appeared in Western thought.
For example, if you look at Hedonism, or denial of existence, etc., the denial of God will also be seen there. Where there is denial of God, even if God is present, they will be seen refusing to obey Him. All such ideas were at Tolstoy and Dostoevsky’s aim.
So when Friedrich Nietzsche in Germany burying God on his side and carving an idol of Superman, Tolstoy had written that in ancient notion whatever happens in this universe is by the God’s will. Then some wise men of the modern age (fifteenth century) declared this concept childish and assigned this position of God to some great conquerors.
Therefore, the creator of History is a powerful man, not God. And of course, there’s the concept of free will. So Tolstoy writes, combining these two concepts at once: “If every man’s freedom were unlimited, if every man had the power to do what he wanted, then the whole history of mankind would be nothing but a mixture of uncoordinated events.
“If only one in a million human beings in a thousand years had the power to do something with unlimited authority, then one illegal act of that one person would eliminate the possibility of any law for the whole of humanity.” In this short statement Tolstoy denies not only the denial of God but also of the powerful man and its free will and that too with a rational argument which cannot be denied.
In order to make this option acceptable, the concept of rationalism was introduced by the West that man is intelligent and he uses it to do “all good”. So Dostoevsky destroyed this rationalism in just two lines: “Whether it’s right or wrong, sometimes breaking something is just as enjoyable.”
In this simple line, Dostoevsky draws attention to this aspect of human instinct, the denial of which is equivalent to the denial of the sun. Who does not know that man does not make every decision according to the scale of right or wrong. Therefore, the man being intelligent does not guarantee that whatever one do will be right.
Dostoevsky then proves that European nations are on the path to self-destruction. Their luxurious society and their capitalism is nothing but self-destruction. Dostoevsky’s position can be accurately understood from the introduction of the man in his possession.
According to him, the most prominent identities of man are two. The first is that it is flawed. And second, it is self-harmful. Dostoevsky’s position can be seen in the use of all types of drugs, from alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and marijuana to heroin. Who does not know that all these things are destructive to man? But aren’t millions of people still suffering from them? If the intellect can guarantee protection from harm, then no intelligent person should have touched these things.
Hence, Dostoevsky writes here, focusing on the importance of God: “If there is no God, then everything is permissible.” And his city-wide novel “Crime and Punishment” is based on the same theme. The protagonist of this novel, Raskolnikov, had every rational reason for killing a rich woman. His plan was also spotless.
There was no fear of being caught. He was not seen during the murder, nor was he arrested after the murder. But after doing the act, his conscience created such turmoil inside him that he did not feel at ease for a moment. This turmoil seems to cover the whole depths of the human psyche throughout the novel. No one has been able to give a greater answer to rationalism other than Dostoevsky has dug up rationalism. What is this voice of conscience? That is God.
Let’s go back to the so-called powerful man of the West who has the status of the creator of history in Western thought under infinite freedom. In Western thought, this powerful man exists in two forms. If it is good then it is a hero. If bad it’s a villain. So from here you can see that the art of Hollywood and Bollywood is based on this concept.
But it’s not that simple. The historical fact is that if the powerful man is their own, then the one who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is also a hero. And if it is a different ideology, then the car bomb detonator is also a villain.
Commenting on this powerful man in War and Peace, Tolstoy says: “It’s a character of a story that the storyteller has exaggerated.” It doesn’t just end with this commentary, but it does portray Napoleon in War and Peace as a man of short stature who was no more important than a mere figure in a historical process. That is, he was not the creator of an event, but merely a part of it.
One of the sayings of the teacher Ahmed Javed is of great help in understanding this position of Tolstoy. The Western notion of history is that great heroes or villains are its creators. While my teacher’s concept of history is that history is of two kinds. One optional and the other incidental.
For example, my optional history is where I studied, where I lived, where I worked. Whereas my incidental history in which my authority is absolutely zero, is what nation I was born in, and what country I was born as a citizen, etc. Now, if you consider, Napoleon is nothing more than a limited part of history, a character of optional history.
If anyone says where did the role of optional history come from? He is the creator of this history by his own choice, so we should not forget that the power to make this optional history was given to him by his incidental history. In which he was born in France and the rest of the history took him to the place from which his triumphant journey began.
Thus Tolstoy seems to give the key in the description of his theory of history that you cannot see any recent event without historical background. There is a continuum of history behind the great event that took place today. And today’s event is the result of that continuity.
He illustrates with the example of the human body that the head is not alone. Its burden is borne by innumerable cells and many other organs. So these are the many small and big events of nature that together make a big event. And man is just a character in this event. He is not its creator at all. (To be continued)
