al-Ghazālī (Existentialist of the Faith), Tolstoy (Existentialist of the Life), and Dostoevsky (Existentialist of the Psyche)

 

Among the greatest books that I have been fortunate enough to encounter—and which had a profound impact on my vision and way of thinking—are three deeply honest confessions, unprecedented in human history.

First: Deliverance from Error (al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl) by Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, the Proof of Islam, in which he recounts with deep sincerity his intellectual autobiography and the development of his thought and faith, beginning with kalām, then moving to philosophy, then to esoteric knowledge (ʿilm al-bāṭin), and finally to Sufism and the science of ḥadīth.

Al-Ghazālī was not satisfied with the dryness of kalām, nor with the rationalism and abstract spirituality of Greek philosophy, nor with the methodological and doctrinal ambiguity of esoteric knowledge; and in the end he accepted the Sufi path grounded in Prophetic ḥadīth.

This confession of al-Ghazālī’s was the first confession I came across, and I became passionately attached to it.

Then I read Tolstoy’s confession in his book titled A Confession, and I was even more astonished than I had been by al-Ghazālī.

Tolstoy is a literary, philosophical, and social thinker—one of the three great Russians—and one of the greatest philosopher-writers in history.

Tolstoy was an Orthodox Christian man, not religious in the conventional sense, but spiritual to the highest degree. And this must be compared with al-Ghazālī, who was by nature a scholar and jurist, religious by necessity, yet who shares with Tolstoy the most important quality: a sincere, profound spirituality that penetrates the depths of the soul.

Tolstoy’s spirituality was not absorbed by Christianity, nor by Orthodoxy, nor by atheism. In fact, what drove him toward atheism originally was the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

Tolstoy was also dissatisfied with all the rational proofs for the existence of God, because they are, quite simply, dry rational arguments that lack the essential element that faith must possess: spirituality.

Thus, in A Confession, Tolstoy recounts his search for God—a very arduous journey—and in the end he arrived only at the belief that God is Life, and that Life is God. This is a form of wahdat al-wujūd (Unity of Being) in the manner of Ibn Arabi and Spinoza, a doctrine that must be understood in their terms so that we may not fall short in grasping the true philosophy of these philosopher-gnostics.

Everything in Tolstoy’s confession revolves around fear—indeed, terror—of death. And all tranquility and contentment can be found only in life. Therefore: God is life, and life is God.

Here, “life” means the universe in its entirety, with everything it contains, and with its capacity (that is, the capacity of this universe) to manifest life through its causal, physical, and evolutionary laws.

Tolstoy eventually returned to Christianity, but he never returned to the Trinity, as he states explicitly.

In truth, Tolstoy’s confession is greater than the confession of al-Ghazālī.

Then came Dostoevsky with his confession, which is, in my view, greater than the confessions of both Tolstoy and al-Ghazālī combined.

Dostoevsky is a literary, philosophical, and psychological writer—Russian—and also one of the three great Russians, and one of the greatest philosopher-writers in history.

If al-Ghazālī focuses on divine will, and Tolstoy focuses on the will of society, then Dostoevsky focuses on the will of the human self—and this is far more important for us simple human beings.

Dostoevsky’s confession came in the form of a novel—the first among his great later novels—namely Notes from Underground.

Thus the confession appears on the tongue of the so-called “Underground Man,” the protagonist of the novella, who represents, in my opinion—one way or another—Dostoevsky himself.

Dostoevsky is not a scholar or jurist like al-Ghazālī; nor is he a traditional aristocrat-turned-atheist-turned-believer like Tolstoy. Rather, he is an ordinary man with a conventional kind of faith, with no fundamental problem with religion or religiosity, and not particularly concerned with questions of belief or atheism.

Therefore, he expresses us more than the others do.

The confession of the Underground Man—speaking for Dostoevsky—revolves entirely around consciousness, which both the Underground Man and Dostoevsky consider to be a cosmic mistake, something that should never have existed in this universe.

And this consciousness cannot be complete without things more essential than anything else: freedom, suffering, and evil.

Thus, according to the Underground Man, the most precious thing for the human being is freedom; he wants this freedom because he wants to be able to do anything—good or evil.

And this freedom and this consciousness cannot be fulfilled except through suffering, pain, and evil.

Indeed, the Underground Man wants to commit evil simply in order to feel his humanity, yet he finds himself unconvinced that he is truly evil.

This confession of the Underground Man, speaking through Dostoevsky, is considered the first existential literary confession—as Nietzsche states—and Freud later used it as a model for psychoanalysis and wrote a large book about it.

Thus: if al-Ghazālī is an existentialist of faith, and Tolstoy an existentialist of life, then Dostoevsky is an existentialist of the psyche—and this is more fundamental, because the self or consciousness is the foundation of life and existence (and not the other way around). And consciousness and life are themselves the foundation of faith.