Ines Hijazi – Entry no. 1 (Tolstoy/Greer)

I have heard a lot about Leo Tolstoy War and Peace book published in 1869, but I have never taken the time to read it. Now I took, I feel like a little bit confused.

Tolstoy was a Russian writer of the nineteen-century, best known for his “novel” War and Peace. But War and Peace cannot really be considered as a novel. Indeed, the part two can rather be read as a thesis developed about the origins and the essence of history events. When you read Tolstoy, you can easily understand that for him, historic characters are before everything human. They are human and for it is impossible to say that the way they have acted is not simply a consequence of who they were and what they lived. He especially gives as example Napoleon and Alexander I. He starts with the premise that the Good is something relative and subjective. From this idea, he explains that people cannot understand why history choose this way in the nineteen-century and also that they are not able to judge scientifically if harmful or useful the act done by a history character was. He illustrates his point with what we can call “the bee metaphor”, which is for me, really interesting and crucial in accordance to his analysis. In the bee metaphor, he compares the bee with history events. By enumerating the different purposes of bees given by different type of person from children to botanist, he shows that there is not only one unique interpretation possible to reveal the reason of the bee existence. In the same manner, wars or whatever other history events cannot be limited to only one purpose according to him. It means that history is “beyond our comprehension” and that there is a kind of historic determinism that prevent us to determinate the purpose of the link and the power between historic character and nations. Can we conscientiously imagine the big consequences of such a theory? For example, regarding the twenty century, if we acknowledge the truthfulness of Tolstoy theory then we can easily say that “No, definitely not! Hitler cannot bear the responsibility for leading to the holocaust! Holocaust is only the product of several causes that are older than this historic character. Hitler is just human defined by natural laws independent from his willingness”

I can understand what was the fundamental idea of Tolstoy. He was willing to criticize that historian constantly put a leader to Nation movements whereas Nation movements are sensibly most of the time the consequences of the aggregation of individual will. Indeed, as Erin Greer shows in her article entitled Tolstoy and Tahrir, the movement happened in Egypt in 2011 is not the product of a leader but rightly the product of the gathering of individual action. But, this reality cannot lead us to the idea that there is not a key event or a key character that push the will into action. Each big history event in our era happened because of an ultimate purpose. And I don’t think that by affirming, I come down to a narrow reflexion. I think, history, as complex as it can be, cannot be limited to a scientific thesis. However, I can acknowledge that there is a kind of determinism that Tolstoy supports, about the way history goes. The end of the Cold War could not lead us to peace, since tensions and power’s competition are still current. For example, “the clash of civilization” anticipate by Albert Camus in 1947 and then fifty years latter theorised by Samuel Huntington can relatively be approved nowadays by some. But, in conclusion, I would like to sum up by saying that Tolstoy theory should be qualify, because as Erin Greer clearly says, his analysis is a little bit improper regarding the purpose of events history.

Georgina Kilborn - Entry no.1 (Tolstoy/Greer)

Tolstoy’s narrative, War and Peace (1869) offers insight into the pluralistic components contributing to colossal events throughout history. Both complementing and criticizing the work of Tolstoy, is Greer’s, Tolstoy and Tahrir (2013). Both of these writings engage in larger questions of history and theorize human experience, within differing contexts. While Greer’s analysis is filled with pertinent examples, Tolstoy’s attempt to further his evaluation with the addition of narrative examples is often disruptive and detracts from his contentions.

The subject of history, as pronounced by Tolstoy, is the analysis of the “manifestation of the force of freewill in human beings” in relation to time, space and in dependence on cause (1305). And, it is history that employs the laws of reason to define freewill, proclaims Tolstoy. The laws of inevitability, according to Tolstoy, prescribe all that is known to us about human life in history and conversely, ‘freewill’ denotes the unknown aspects in history. Yet, Greer challenges the idea of law’s dictating our knowledge of mankind in history, “no law discernible to human minds can explain…the freedom of the ‘inner force’”, such an idea, he claims is an “evasion of formal coherence”. It is precisely these antagonistic dualisms such as inevitability and freewill, the State and Power, morality and physical strength, freedom and necessity and consciousness and reason, which Tolstoy employs to analyze our conception of history. He explores these inharmonious elements in order to explain the “great movements of people’ throughout history and dispute “historian’s” idealization of the role of powerful men.

While his exploration of such concepts offer insight into alternative forces, driving nations, his form can certainly be criticized for it’s digressive and repetitive examples that act to subvert the contention being presented. Further, his assertion that, “All the contradictions and obscurities in history ...are due solely to the lack of solution on …the presence of the problem of the man’s freewill” [1293] is a bold and contentious statement. He himself describes numerous other contributing factors, such as our position in time and one’s intellect as creating grounds for contradiction.

For Greer, the words of Tolstoy can be likened to the revolt that took place in Cairo in 2011. He describes the reports on the events in Cairo as dominated by the actions of ‘great men’, exactly what both he and Tolstoy agree as having the least agency in historical phenomena. Greer draws on the disjointed writings of Tolstoy, who does not refer to periods of history in a chronological order and thus, Greer jumps back and forth in his examination on the causes of the revolt in Cairo’s Tahrir square. Greer focuses on different characters and how they all come to play a role in history, in the protests of Tahrir Square. They are “moved along with the force that exceeds them”, contends Greer, resembling the assertions of Tolstoy. Accordingly, Greer concludes by imparting Tolstoy’s contentions in the context of the recent events in Eygpt. Like all historical happenings, in order to ascertain an all-encompassing outlook on the uprising, an in depth analysis of all actors involved and the “sum of [their] individual human will” are requisite. Thus, while Greer is critical of some elements of Tolstoy’s, War and Peace, so too does he recognize that historical phenomena do not develop at the command of ‘great men’, but are rather a consequence of pluralistic factors.

Vincent Lê - Entry No.1 (Tolstoy/Greer)

In the Epilogue to War and Peace, Tolstoy argues that history should be a scientific study into the real causes of social formations and transformations. Apropos traditional historicities, then, Tolstoy rejoins that history is caused neither by the exceptional wills of great men such as Napoleon; nor by the same great men as the singular embodiments of collective and popular Wills; nor by the clash of these great men with equally great intellectual productions, such as Robespierre’s reading of Rousseau’s Du Contrat Social. Such historicities are mere modernizations of ancient theologies of God as human history’s Prime Mover. As such, all historicities hitherto, whether ancient or supposedly modern, simplify and mask the complex multiplicity of heterogeneous but interacting agents that assemble together to overdetermine the totality of the causes of historical events and situations. For instance, although Napoleon is praised as the singular driving force of the Napoleonic Wars, Tolstoy points out that information from the warfront was already out of date by the time it reached Napoleon’s headquarters. Consequently, by the time Napoleon’s chain of commands got back to the battlefield, his soldiers had been overtaken by new circumstances and chose to ignore his orders. By undermining traditional historicities of great men and mythic, causal Wills in this way, Tolstoy emancipates the full multitude of actors, namely the masses of people, as the true driving force of social morpthodynamics.

Homologously, in ‘Tolstoy and Tahrir’, Greer demonstrates that even though the single spark of Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation did start a prairie fire by mobilizing millions of protesting Egyptians, this assemblage of wills ultimately forced history in directions quite different from those Bouazizi himself had willed. For it was only the Egyptian masses, previously reduced to the statistical turnouts of technocratic polls and rigged elections, whom ultimately emerged as historical actors by overthrowing Hosni Mubarak, one of history’s so-called great makers. And all without substituting one ‘exceptional’ man with another, or a party, or a parliament, or a trade union, or any other centralized organ to (mis)represent their will. Amidst the Egyptian revolution’s overdetermination by the masses, it would come as little surprise to Tolstoy that some Western historicists (read: theologians) pursued the technocratic embodiment of the popular Egyptian will via virtual matrixes such as Facebook and Twitter.

Tolstoy goes even further, however, when he argues for a decentering of all humans, whether great or small, as, not the sole entity privileged with agency, but merely one type of causal agent upon the historical field, which is ultimately determined in the last instance by chance and fortune. As such, it was neither Napoleon himself, nor his people, but the tide of historical facticity that functioned as the final determining factor in sweeping Napoleon into power in spite of the mass republican will against him, as well as eventually ebbing him into history’s dustbins despite his own singular will against his fate. And was it not also Bouazizi’s circumstantial factors beyond his own choosing, such as being laid off from his job and losing his home, when combined with his chance encounter with a female police officer who slapped him in the face, which ultimately sparked the Egyptian prairie fire? Whereas earlier Tolstoy established that all humans have in themselves the freedom to make history, he now qualifies that such freedom is always constrained and determined in the last instance by the facticity given to us by our particular historical conjuncture. In other words, when misfortune befell Bouazizi, he was free to choose to endure or to die, although the facts of his situation were clearly compelling him toward the latter possibility. As Greer explains by way of Tolstoy, man’s freedom, ‘his personal life’, does not exist in a vacuum all by itself, but is always-already caught up in the network of his ‘swarmlike life’ that is determined in the last instance by the structural sea of historical necessity. In the last analysis, what Tolstoy and Tahrir Square evince is that anyone, indeed anything, can make history, even if we do not know that we can, and even if we may only do so out of conditions which are not of our own choosing. …

Manar Daoud Barghouti - Entry No. 1 (Tolstoy/Greer)

In Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Epilogue, he enters a discussion about a subject Tolstoy was known to be rather fond of, that is history. He argues against certain sides regarding the formation of human history, recalling of events and especially specific influential individuals, through the eyes of historians. This is mainly done since they are the ones who form the opinions concerning what is good or bad in accordance to their “limited knowledge” as he states.
For instance, the “Great men” theory, where Tolstoy takes the examples of Napoleon and Alexander I, attempting to dismiss the historian’s thought of the power of one man to be the motive for a revolution in a whole, the “genius” behind the “chance” – rather than focusing on the sum of the all the nation’s efforts in building revolutions – thus creating historical events such as that of the French revolution or the protest over throwing president Hussni Mubarak in Egypt’s Tahrir square.
This is as noticed in Greer’s article “Tolstoy and Tahrir”, where she adopts Tolstoy’s thoughts on the “great man” theory. She does this to dismiss the Western attempts of giving the Egyptian protests a leader to stand behind the glory of their cumulative action such as social media as Facebook and Twitter - which would make it simpler to explain the events taking place. According to Tolstoy these are the result of the obsession of constantly needing to analysis complex proceedings and simplify them which are the blame of the historians. He believed we must understand that something are out of capacity to understand or predict, and thus he also believed that history is composed in regard to the fact that there are no absolute laws nor are there absolute free will of individuals. However, the combination of both is what helped create (which as Greer mentioned in Tolstoy and Tahrir, talking about the collective wills of all protest) the “force” behind that change.
I agree with Tolstoy’s opinion; however I remain hesitant to how much he dismissed the influence of authority represented through “leaders” without giving much weight to the possibility of an individual to act as the motivating force for action and not necessarily an undemocratic style, influencing the direction of the will of individuals deeply.

Julie Bessler - Entry No. 1 (Tolstoy/Greer)

This week’s readings really spoke to me as an international affairs student. Most of the time, I
look at a situation in terms of statistics and circumstance. For example, I will research
unemployment rates, inflation, literacy, or human rights to evaluate a situation- like the
revolutions in the Middle East, especially Egypt. While this partially does explain why the
uprisings occurred in Egypt, it is not the entire spectrum. I think Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” and
Greer’s article really bring light to my shortcomings in understanding (which is already very
Tolstoyan).
In Tolstoy’s Epilogue Part I, he explains the limited understand of humans and our
inability to grasp the complexity of history. So called “historians” try to write history in a way
where great men are the forces of historical events, by either “chance” or “genius.” Yet, if we
learn to understand history as a series of happenings, events, circumstances, we can understand
the importance the individual in history. It is only when we can accept this can we start to
understand how a picture formed from pixels. Tolstoy gives the example of Napoleon, whose rise
to power was built on a series of chances. Because he succeeded in gaining power, invading
Africa, etc, he considered himself as great. Yet, according to Tolstoy, this is inadequate to
explaining history.
So in Tolstoy’s Epilogue Part II, he thus examines what is the force that causes events to
occur, such as the French Revolution. The concept of “power” is also inadequate as we cannot
explain how it works. He gives the example of a military command, where the soldiers fighting
are the least involved in directing the fighting. It is the moral power of a leader that can control
an event. Yet, even the soldiers on the battlefield will have to take into consideration time and
circumstance when trying to adhere to their commander’s orders. Most importantly, however,
Tolstoy argues again that our free will is an illusion that we preserve as we cannot understand the
complexities contributing to a circumstance.Tolstoy believes that we must come to terms with
our limited understanding and understand that is is part of a “predetermined historical
design.” (Greer)
Summing up his arguments, I can go back to my first point about my (limited)
understanding of the Egyptian uprisings. As an Egyptian, I can understand Tolstoy and Greer’s
viewpoints about “chance” and “genius.” As it was difficult to put a face to the Revolution, many
in the West picked Twitter and Facebook as the catalyst for the Revolution. Yet, there is a
paradox here as Twitter is an instrument of the people. It is not an abstract form that “moves
nations” on its own will. It is a medium of the people to facilitate a reaction and express the
collective will. As Greer says, we tend to search for a “great man” or technology to “assign
responsibility for the fact that...perhaps millions of human beings gathered over the course of 18
days to demonstrate against Hosni Mubarak.”
With the millions of people in Tahrir on January 25, 2011 and June 3, 2013 came millions
of narratives of why they decided to march that day. However, history will still be painted in a
way that searches for one driving force or “hero.” And each account of Tahrir will differ
according to the historians’ own grievances. The narrative is convoluted further if you look at
news media, where each organization assigns themselves to a certain agenda and therefore a
certain perspective on how to portray a history.

Matías Koch – Entry. No 1 (On Tolstoy-Greer)

I believed that Tolstoy is trying to separate the history of mankind in two ways. One is the historian’s point of view, in which all of the great movements were only made by the strong and influential leaders. And the other one, his chosen one, believes that only the circumstances rather than the ideas of these strong leaders, really decide which course will the humanity history follows. By this idea, we must ask ourselves: Does decisions are made by the leaders or by circumstances? If Tolstoy is right, these means that the kings weren’t really that powerful, because the needed, or follow the citizens desires. I must personally disagree with Tolstoy, because they are so many examples of kings going against the citizen’s rights and desires, that they cannot be listed. Though, it is right to say that king’s decisions were most certainly shaped by those opinions of the people. Opinion and circumstances do matter, but they aren’t decisive.
In modern times, these circumstances changed. And we must accept that now a day’s, social media have a strong power in politics and decision making. But it is also true, that the people who are in a position of power can also use this power of speech to modify and also persuade the citizens to take the positions they want them to take. So this generates a confrontation of the people that believe the rhetoric of politicians, and those who rather differ from this official speech. In Latin American countries, this is a common thing. People who aren’t really informed about the historical circumstances can easily fall in the lies and manipulation of the powerful leaders, which generate a confrontation scenario between both groups. So instead of becoming people against government, it usually becomes people against people, which lead to politicians making whatever they want to do.
So the manipulation of speech is now a day’s one of the most important part of politicians, which can easily give them the advantage to make the real scenario of politics confusing, and within this confusion, take advantage. But it is also true, that this can work until one point. Sometimes the lies aren’t enough, and this is when riots occur, making the system collapse, and putting the future of the country in hands of the prevalent group of citizens.
I don’t mean to be pessimist, but I don’t totally agree with Tolstoy and his view of human freedom as a matter of social and historical change. Some men are an important part of history, that cannot be denied, but the truth around humanity and history is that these are a little few ones. The large part of human beings isn’t really important to history. What can one man and his believes really achieve in now a day’s political and social realities. Most of political protest now a days last for short amounts of time, and aren’t really taken in seriously. The truth is that people tend to forget the mistakes of the leaders, and tend to accept as a way of failure, that some things cannot be change. It would be really comfortable to stop the corruption and the wrong politics from governments now a day, but the truth is that in most cases this doesn’t happen.
I don’t mean to be pessimist, but I cannot conceive the idea of history shaped by the majority voice, but rather the voice of the leaders. In some cases, sure, the citizens tend to achieve their goals and can managed to change and take historical movements in their own hands, but unfortunately, this isn’t that common.

Danièle Saint-Ville-Leplé - entry no. 1 (Tolstoy/Greer)

What does it mean to write history? There are times that leave us no choice but to realize we are living a historical moment. Be it in our personal life or in the society we belong to. Events and tiny details about people seem all of the sudden highly meaningful.  

How to proceed to capture the essence of this moment and understand it fully? This is way harder than it appears to be. Leo Tolstoy main concern was not exactly to write history. He aimed above all at conveying an idea quite original for the time – conventional ways of writing history overestimate the importance of great personages. Erin Greer echoes lucidly Tolstoy’s theories, taking in account their limits and contradictions, and give them a concrete contemporary application through a brief description of the events occurring in Egypt. Her text turns out to be a convincing illustration of how richer, full of energy – in a word, full of meaning – history becomes when it talks about those who really shape it.

I felt really enthusiastic reading the beginning of Tolstoy’s epilogues. It represented a sort of tempting invitation to give up on all of these preconceived ideas we often have about history. Yet I ended up with an impression of deep confusion and of strong disagreement with its conclusion – which consists basically in saying human impression of freedom is a mere illusion, exceptional once analyzed from a long-term perspective.

My disagreement was also reinforced by the author’s obsession with the idea of working on History like in natural sciences with the goal of isolating laws. It is undeniable correlations can be found through history – for example, bad economic conditions tend to lead to a deteriorated social climate and political tensions. Nevertheless, it could be misleading or even dangerous to base systematically our study of human society through ages on a rigid framework. It is interesting to observe that – even though this is not its purpose – Greer’s work brings other arguments in support of this mitigated final impression on War and peace through the critiques of other thinkers or writers.

All in all, these readings ask more questions than they offer answers. To my view – and that may be considered a paradox, knowing Erin Greer’s attitude toward those sources –

a better way to write with the purpose of contributing to the knowledge of history may be to take advantage of the occasion offered by the internet and social medias to collect historical material on a scale much closer to everyday people.

Walter Solon - Entry n. 1 (Tolstoy/Tahrir)

Among the greatest legacies we inherited from the post-enlightenment thought is its debate around the philosophy of history. Social Science’s century long debate in the 20^th century around agency and structure is indebted to a debate in the previous century. Then, the dualism was expressed as freewill versus determinism and the very existence of ultimate causes was subject of debate. Tolstoy’s passages in War and Peace argue against several types of historians, that is, those “specialists” who favored a national or personal account of causality for events, focused on the deeds of the individual leaders of powerful nations, those described as universal historians for their acknowledging of a multitude of connected people more or less involved in issues of power, and a third type, of historians of culture, who give historical importance to people not directly implicated in such issues, such as writers or women.

All of these approaches are limited, and Tolstoy advocates a total vision of history where no causality may be attributed to singular forces, only to a general sum of the forces of all individuals. Teleological attempts to find a destination for human progress are vain, and Tolstoy’s rationalism seems to me analogous to an agnostic cosmological view, according to which, the immense dimension of phenomena such as the creation of the world makes it impossible for humans to grasp them.

The terms of that debate seem actual even today, as seen in the article “Tolstoy and Tahrir”, where a Literature student proposes to read the political turmoil in Egypt in the light of Tolstoy’s telescopically novelistic narrative. At times endorsing critics who have disclaimed Tolstoy’s essayistic writings, but sometimes trying to see these as part of a complex system of dualisms and paradoxes that constitute not only Tolstoy’s novel, but of the novel as a general literary form, drawing on Bakhtin’s concept of poliphony and Lukacs’s depiction of the novel as an arena between form and content.

Greer’s attempt, in the end of his article, to perform a Tolstoyan fictitious reading of Tahrir through individual character’s trajectories is fruitful, and indicates that the importance given today to individualist, perspectivist accounts of historical events are not at all post-modern, but, as it has been states, are firmly rooted in the modern tradition since the 19^th century. It is then very clear why Tolstoy may be the foundational text to a course that aims towards a decentralized analysis of military warfare and peacemaking. 

Dea Closson- Entry No.1 (Tolstoy/ Greer)

When I began reading the epilogue to Tolstoy’s War and Peace the first thoughts that came to my head were about how everything he was discussing about history was wrong, and totally opposite to the methods I have learned in my educational career. But that is exactly the point to his writing. Tolstoy’s grandiose novel approaches what he indicates is the right way to think about, and record history. His theory is centered on the idea of determinism, with the thoughts that we, as humans, are incapable of ever fully understanding the ultimate purpose of our predetermined history. Tolstoy spends the epilogue to his book outlining his thoughts on history, and begins to outline his theme of determinism.

            In the first part of the epilogue Tolstoy begins to outline his thesis by discussing his concept of chance and genius. Chance is essentially the concept of being in the right place at the right time, while genius is the utilization of this advantageous situation. He uses Napoleon as the main example to explain this thought saying that chance repeatedly gave Napoleon opportunities that, in any historical context, should not have necessarily made sense to be given to him.  But Tolstoy quickly refutes the idea of chance and genius being an effective method of explanation for historical events.  This is where the idea of determinism first reveals itself.  He brings this idea in by refuting the “big man theory” saying “ The higher the human intellect rises the in the discovery of these (ultimate) purposes, the more obvious it becomes that the ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension” (Tolstoy, 1225)

            In the second par of the epilogue Tolstoy builds on this idea using two main methods, the explanation of power and the context of Free will.  Tolstoy spends the first half explaining what exactly power is, and this he does because he uses power as the driving force behind history.  He ultimately defines power to be the inverse relationship between participation in an event and opinions, predictions, and justifications given about the event.  Tolstoy goes to immediately say that power is not the singular defining factor to the reasoning behind history and that the men with power are ultimately floating in the general ebb of the people, that ultimately the whole of people make the history. He then introduces his defining contradiction between free will and determinism, saying that free will gives humans life, but to say that leaders make history by their free will is to break the laws of history, thus stating that everything is pre-determined. 

            It is through this lens that Erin Greer wrote her article “Tolstoy and Tahrir.” She immediately makes the connection between Tolstoy’s denouncement of the “big man” theory with the leadership of Mubarak.  She compares the revolution in Egypt and the protests in Tahrir square to the ebb and flow of the masses dropping the curtain on Mubarak’s power. She uses Tolstoy to explain the concept of a leaderless revolution.  She ultimately says that war and peace could be used as a lens to view these current events of history and can be used to explain why these events are occurring.

            Reading these two readings together really opened my eyes to alternate ways of thinking about how history is made. But is also seems to me that Tolstoy contradicts himself too much.  It seems that his ideas are fundamentally heading towards the same goal, but in practice end up contradicting themselves. This contradiction compared to a modern day event, taken in a more realistic viewpoint instead of a philosophical one, slightly cheapened some of Tolstoy’s theories while at the same time reaffirmed others. This comparison allowed for a thoughtful way of explaining current history.

Sara Gormley - Entry No. 1 (Tolstoy/Greer)

Tolstoy’s epilogue critically analyzes the way in which history is examined, and dares to explore human experience with a deeper scrutiny of historical events in order to reach a complete answer to our questions. As the Arab Spring is a modern day example of one of these events, we can use the lens which Tolstoy has provided to scrutinize the events that have occurred in Tahrir square. In Greer’s article, she considers Tosltoy’s multidimensional and at times paradoxical account. While at times his interpretation can be contradictory, maybe it is only by looking at opposing sides that dictates Tolstoy as the one best suited to look far and thoroughly enough to give credit to a legitimate analysis of historical events and human experience. It would be easy, as Tolstoy says has been done by historians, to apply one theory to all events. In reality, our approach must be as multifaceted and complex as the events themselves.

In the epilogue arises the notion of chance and genius, chance being everything that must align itself in order to provide an opportunity for a specific person to take power, and genius being what this person does with the power. Many events led to the ascension and maintenance of Mubarak’s power for so long, and similarly events would lead to his demise. This is comparative to the rise and fall of Napoleon’s power in France in the sense that certain events called for a specific leader who eventually revealed himself to many to be cancerous for the state. Tolstoy details Napoleon’s self-deluded confidence that convinced the world to accept his power. Greer equates this to Mubarak’s authority depending on “a shared delusion of power,” which she concluded through the Tolstoy point of view of power. In reality, as shown in the events of Tahrir square, Mubarak was in fact weak and simply human, without the exceptional strength many ancient historians, according to Tolstoy, believed rulers to possess.

Another way in which Tolstoy considers a topic which now parallels the revolution in Egypt is the question of whether all will of all people shifts to a new ruler when there is a change in power, even for those who did not participate in bringing about the change. In Egypt, for those not participating in the protests of Tahrir square, would their will shift to support the new ruler when the time came? With the emergence of a new government in Egypt, would the revolution of some transfer the will of all? Tolstoy gives a number of possibilities. First, that will is unconditionally transferred and second that this means any transgression of power is a violation of rules toward those who entrusted them with power. Finally, Tolstoy makes the point that will is transferred conditionally, albeit in an unknown and indefinite way which new leaders must adhere to or else face varying levels of conflict. Both Tolstoy and Greer however stress the importance in understanding the notion that, despite our attempts otherwise, questions like these surrounding historical events will be flawed due to our subjective point of view from our singular moment in history. Our attempts to discern events are futile as history will continue to change what it all means as time goes on. 

Finally, Greer describes the inadequacy of our modern society to equate historical events to the events of Tahrir square in order to make sense of our modern-day historical events. Many points Tolstoy makes throughout his epilogue can be brought back to this notion that historical analysis as it has been done is insufficiently analyzing current events. It is not enough to apply the explanation of one event to a completely unique and dimensional moment in history that has occurred in Egypt. Tolstoy stresses the importance of a multifaceted approach to historical analysis. We must ask the questions not just who, but why? Not just why, but for what reason? What does this mean and what is the force behind it? Ancient historians looked to a Deity to explain human actions, but modern day historians reject this idea without a replacement. This is where Tolstoy, as Greer put it, marks the necessity for a “grand theory” for a deep and thorough explanation. While historians often fall short in their response, Tolstoy's maverick theories are a bold and unique attempt to answer the questions behind life's great events.

Hannah Berwian - entry no.1 (Tolstoy/Tahrir)

Who makes history? What is power? Is there a God? Those are just a few of the fundamental questions of humankind that Tolstoy addresses in his Magnus Opus “Peace and War”(1869). Following a narrative of the French invasion of Russia and surrounding events from the perspective of Russian aristocrats Tolstoy dives into a philosophical discussion of historiography. The conundrum surrounding human free will and deter-minism lies at the centre of his epilogue furnished with an abundance of metaphors. Tolstoy starts off with a radical critique of modern historians who have fallen prey to the same pitfalls as ancient historians. Thus, their search for causes of historical events  focusing on great man guided by national goal such as civilization is futile. According to Tolstoy, their limited understanding makes humans as unable to grasp the purpose of a bee as the complexity of causality underpinning the movement of nations. As an object of time and space themselves historians are left with the task of describing the laws that they observe from history. But doesn’t the existence of objective laws governing human affairs contradict our subjective perception of a free will? Tolstoy introduces a set of equivalent dialectic relations that are immanent in conceptions of human action to varying proportions:  reason vs. consciousness, determinism vs. free will, objectivity vs. subjectivity, form vs. content but offers little to their resolution. Instead he seems to settle for a deterministic vision of history by calling for a Copernican revolution in its study. Just like the subjective impression that the earth does not move has for a long time nourished the belief in a cosmic anthropocentrism so does the subjective conviction of our freedom of will impede us to recognize our dependence upon an inevitable historical trajectory. Thus, Tolstoy concludes by demanding us to abandon the illusion of free will and submit to our determined role in some greater cause beyond human agency. What has conventionally been attributed to free will only outlines the limits of our understanding, what we don’t know and cannot explain. Hence, recognizing what we don’t know we come closest to grasping the complexities of history. Yet, Tolstoy’s conclusion of determinism seems to contradict his own narrative. The novel’s swirl of historical events and fiction reflects the same dialectic relationship as above swinging between “‘swarmlike’ historical movement” and “the most personal details of human life”, as Erin Greer points out. Given Tolstoy’s demand for the renunciation of free will, his focus on the intensity of life may be seen as a nostalgic clinging to the illusion of free will and above all to the possibility of “life” that according to Tolstoy is contentless if subject to determined laws. Like in the novel fiction comes in where totality is beyond human grasp, the fiction of free will is used by historians to fill the gaps of human comprehension. Moreover, Greer uses Tolstoy to criticise the narrative surrounding the 18 days of protest in Tahrir square in Feburary of 2011 that preceeded the fall of Egyption president Mubarak. In these days, the “great man” Mubarak is reluctantly disillusioned. Only the rising storm makes the ruler realize that the ship of the people has an enormous independent course and that he never directed it. Yet, this metaphor raises the question as to who brought about the storm or, in other words, who initiated the revolution? If the ship and its movements represent the Egyption people and the sea history, the cause of the storm must evidently be a force beyond human agency that outlines the historical trajectory. Although Greer uses this comparison to expose Mubarak as a “slave of history” while arguing that revolutions emerge from the collective will of the people the unknown nature of the storm suggests that this collective will is just as well subject to an incomprehensible force. Similary, Greer criticises the central role of social media as mirroring the inadequate attention to the ruler bemoaned by Tolstoy. As Greer emphasizes, Twitter and Facebook has been unduly given a causal role in the Western media distracting from the initiative and agency of the people. Consequently, Greer calls for a Tolstoyan narrative of Tahrir square, illustrating the intersection of independent fictional biographies with the greater revolutionary movement. However, the emphasis on collective human agency that Greer tries to put into focus by renouncing the role of rulers and social media is similarly diminished by Tolstoy’s demand for the renunciation of free will and hence human agency of any kind. Greer’s final allusion to the people’s souls suggests that she as much believes in a divine force to be pulling the strings as Tolstoy may.

bruno cuconato claro – entry no. 1 (on Tolstoy/Greer)

In his epilogue to his masterpiece, Tolstoy presents what could be called a general theory of the human condition.  It is full of analogies, repetitions, contradictions, and tautologies, but among what readers usually find the most boring part of the novel Tolstoy manages to reach interesting conclusions.  A central remark of the epilogue is “the subject matter of history is the life of peoples and humanity.”  From this follows that the perfect historiography would scrutinize every human being, combining each dream, each passion, each fear, and each desire in a true account of what is past.

Other important contributions by Tolstoy are his hatred for war (“throughout this twenty-year period vast number of fields go unploughed, houses are burnt down, trade flows in different directions, millions of men grow poor, get rich or migrate, and millions of good Christian folk who claim to love their neighbour go about murdering each other.”) and his critic to the historiography of the time, which focused its attention in some chosen individuals (the so-called “great people”) & regions (“that little corner of the world known as Europe,”) and which presupposed an ultimate goal to humanity.  Although his critic to historiography is correct in aim, Tolstoy employs untruthful analogies to prove his point (his scientific analogies are especially prone to decay, as the advance of science has rendered some of them illogical.)  In the analogy of the bee, Tolstoy states that every individual has a different view about the ‘purpose’ of the bee, but that its ‘ultimate purpose’ is “beyond comprehension,” just as “the purposes of historical characters and nations.”  The former statement doesn’t follow from the other, however, except if taken as a dogma.  From the analogy of the railway engine, Tolstoy concludes – again illogically – that the “only concept capable of explaining the movements of nations is the concept of a force that equates to the entire movement of the nations.”  Again, Tolstoy may be right about the goal of his critic, but is wrong in the way he develops it.  Force is a concept in physics, and he can’t employ it in history without defining it (“how many Newtons has Louis XVI contributed to the outburst french revolution?”)  Even if his opinion makes sense, we have no way of measuring if the forces presented by historians as ‘causes’ are equal to what Tolstoy calls “the movement of nations;” therefore, his statement is a fallacy.  

Tolstoy’s contribution to the concept of power is a welcome one.  His challenge of the historiography of the time is based on the inadequacy of representing all the wealth of human actions by telling the story of a few ‘great people’: “the activities of the millions who uproot themselves, burn their houses down, abandon the fields and go off to butcher each other never find expression in the descriptions of activities limited to a dozen personalities who don’t happen to burn houses down, work the soil or kill their fellow creatures.”  Tolstoy calls for a more adequate conception of power and the manifestations of power (i.e. the orders), questioning the dependence of the relationship between orders and events.   

In her article, Greer summarizes the arguments contained in the epilogue to War and Peace in a somewhat positive view, trying to excuse Tolstoy of his contradictions and digressions.  There is no basis to Tolstoy’s call for the renouncement of freedom, for as pointed out by Greer herself, “the reasoning that carries us toward this conclusion is anything but conclusive.”  Greer’s call for a Tolstoyan history of the Arab Spring, though, makes sense.  History being guided by the composite will of every individual, leaders have been necessary to the success of political movements because of their roles as articulators (“Kings are the slaves of history,” Greer quotes.)  As Tolstoy shows, leaders are not perfect manifestations of the will of the people.  The advent of the internet, however, may be eliminating the need for leaders in political movements, as people are now capable of more easily expressing themselves to a greater number of other people, and also of articulating themselves.  If the internet renders possible (not ‘causes’) leaderless movements, as it seems to be doing in the Arab Spring (and in the Turkish and Brazilian protests of last year,) the old historiography criticized by Tolstoy will lose its remaining credibility.

Greer tries to justify the existence of the epilogue to War and Peace, despite several critics to it and demands that it should have been erased. Alex Castro, a contemporary Brazilian author, has one sole rule for creative writing: “always erase your favourite passage, chapter, or scene of your own work.”  The reasoning behind this is that the favourite passage of an author is inevitably the passage where he shows off his wit instead of telling the story.  Castro, Flaubert, Turgenev, and Lubbock would all agree that the epilogue and the passages narrated by what Greer calls “the essayistic voice” were certainly among Tolstoy’s favourite passages.