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.