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In War and Peace, Tolstoy makes a profound statement:
“There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent.”
Tolstoy is presenting the formula for greatness, which can also be applied as the formula on how to live a great life.
- greatness = simplicity + goodness + truth
You must have simplicity, goodness, and truth in order to live a great life. But what does each piece really mean?
In this part the concept of “goodness” will be discussed. Previously I discussed “simplicity”, you can check out that article here.
Goodness
Are you a “good” person? What is “goodness”? Is it even something we can define?
The concept of “goodness” or being good is quite broad and can mean a lot of different things. It can mean adhering to religious dogma or simply being a “good person”, an oft-repeated phrase that in reality has no meaning by itself. To understand Tolstoy’s formula for living a great life, we must understand “goodness” from his perspective. But first, we must understand why “goodness” needs to be defined to begin with.
The Necessity to Define Goodness
Evil exists in the world. There’s simply no denying that. We can witness it all around us and in our history. We don’t even have to go that far back to see horrifying acts of evil whether it be Mao’s Great Leap Forward or the genocide happening today against the Palestinian people.
Newton’s Third Law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is one of the fundamental laws of our world. Chaos exists, therefore order must also exist. The feminine exists, therefore the masculine must also exist. Evil exists, therefore good must also exist.
In order for things to exist they must be defined with a meaning and have a name. That’s why in Eden God told Adam to name all things. This isn’t just a religious story or fairytale, as some may say. There’s a deeper meaning behind this. Things require a name to be real. Concepts and ideas are also things.
So now we’re faced with a name, “goodness”. This name appears to not have any associated meaning, especially in modern times where the entire concept of morality (good and evil) is being questioned with the rise of moral relativism, an ill-fated pursuit no doubt, but that’s a topic for another time.
This name, this thing called “goodness” is a concept that is currently undefined, which in other words means it doesn’t exist. Can we really live in a world where “goodness” is non-existent? No one wants to live in a world void of good. That’s why it’s necessary we define goodness.
Now, let’s get back to Tolstoy.
The Death of Ivan Ilych
In Tolstoy’s short story, The Death of Ivan Ilych, the main character Ivan lives a depressing life. A life so impersonal, external, and detached, it’s not even a “life” at all. He has no meaningful connections with anyone including his own wife and children. His whole life’s purpose was to climb the social ladder and only later did he realize that such a goal ultimately leads to misery and emptiness. Eventually, Ivan finds out what he really needed in his life all along but by that point it’s too late because he passes away. His death represents more than just a mere human death — it was a spiritual rebirth.
Through the character of Ivan, Tolstoy is giving us one of the keys to living a great life. Goodness is not something external or superficial, rather it is an internal quality rooted in having compassion for others and building strong, empathetic connections with other human beings.
Anna Karenina
In Tolstoy’s novel, Anna Karenina, he says:
“And I and millions of people who lived ages ago and are living now, muzhiks, the poor in spirit, and the wise men who have thought and written about it, saying the same thing in their vague language — we’re all agreed on this one thing: what we should live for and what is good”
What is this “good” that all men from all ages, from all walks of life — the rich and the poor, the wise and the stupid — have agreed upon? The debates around what is “good” are endless but there is one concept not up for debate: The Golden Rule.
The Golden Rule
Throughout human history we see a maxim that is so common amongst different cultures and civilizations that we now refer to it as the “Golden Rule”. One form of this rule comes in the New Testament: “Do to others what you want them to do to you” (Matthew 7:12). We see variations of this maxim in the Hindu Mahabharata, the Zoroastrian Avesta, the Islamic hadith corpora, as well as in the writings of various Greek philosophers like Plato and Epicurus.
One can argue that the Golden Rule is ingrained in us on a very primitive level deep in our biology just due to the fact that it is so common in the history of our ancestors. Religious texts, afterall, are simply the aggregation of collective human wisdom or at least localized collective human wisdom. Furthermore, the presence of a common theme across religious, cultural, and philosophical lines points to something much greater: a maxim or truth agreed upon not just on a local level, but rather a global level.
From one perspective the Golden Rule can seem very selfish. “I don’t care about others, I just don’t want them to harm me so I’ll treat them kindly.” But is this what Tolstoy believes to be the best way to view goodness and to live a great life? Not at all. What we discussed above about “The Death of Ivan Ilych” proves that. Goodness must be rooted in empathy and compassion for your fellow human, not in selfishness. The Golden Rule must also be rooted in that. In other words, you practice the Golden Rule BECAUSE you are a compassionate and empathetic human being.
Summary
To live a great life you must have live in accordance with the “natural good”, i.e. the Golden Rule. It is the product of being a compassionate and empathetic human being. This is what Tolstoy expresses in many of his works including “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and “Anna Karenina”.
We’ve now covered two out of three components in Tolstoy’s formula for living a great life. In summary, we must submit to an ideal much higher than ourselves. We must aim at something great. Even if we don’t get there we can at least tell ourselves that we made an honest effort to achieve it. We must live in accordance with the goodness innate in all human beings. This goodness is what everyone can understand and agree with.
In the next and final part we’ll discuss the concept of “truth”.