In A Confession, a memoir of his philosophical midlife crisis, Tolstoy recounts falling into despair after coming to believe that his life, and for that matter all human life, is meaningless and absurd. Although Tolstoy's account of the origin and phenomenology of his crisis is widely regarded as illuminating, his response to the crisis, namely, embracing a religious tradition that he had previously dismissed as “irrational,” “incomprehensible,” and “mingled with falsehood” seems unpromising, at best. Nevertheless, I argue, Tolstoy's account of his response makes a valuable contribution to contemporary thought about the meaning and absurdity of life. I begin by drawing on classic discussions in the philosophical literature, and on Tolstoy's memoir, in order to characterize the problem of meaning and the problem of the absurd, and to clarify the relation between these problems. I then draw on Tolstoy's account of his response to his crisis in order to characterize a form of faith in our deepest values. I argue that such faith supplies one important part of the story concerning how we might respond to the problem of the absurd — a part that has been overlooked by more recent discussions of these issues.

中文翻译：

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荒诞生活：贵族指南

在忏悔中，作为他的哲学中年危机的回忆录，托尔斯泰讲述了在开始相信他的生活以及所有人类生活毫无意义和荒谬之后陷入绝望的经历。尽管托尔斯泰对其危机的起源和现象学的描述被广泛认为具有启发性，但他对危机的反应，即接受他先前斥为“非理性”、“不可理解”和“夹杂虚假”的宗教传统，似乎充其量是没有希望的。尽管如此，我认为，托尔斯泰对他的反应的描述对当代关于生活的意义和荒谬的思考做出了宝贵的贡献。我首先借鉴哲学文献中的经典讨论和托尔斯泰的回忆录，以描述意义问题和荒谬问题的特征，并阐明这些问题之间的关系。然后，我借鉴托尔斯泰对他对危机的反应的描述，以描述一种对我们最深刻价值观的信仰形式。我认为，这种信仰提供了关于我们如何应对荒谬问题的故事的一个重要部分——这一部分在最近对这些问题的讨论中被忽视了。