Russian philosophy was an important context for the development of Tolstoy’s thought and was also decisively shaped by it, especially after his religious conversion. In A Confession (1882), Tolstoy explained the process and inner dynamics of his newfound faith: how he eventually became convinced that the ideals that had driven his lifelong efforts at self-perfection and moral perfectibility entailed a higher divine reality. This idealist conception of faith had much in common with Kant’s moral theology and was a powerful stimulus to the further development of Russian philosophy, culminating in the so-called Russian religious-philosophical renaissance of the early twentieth century. The first part of this chapter focuses on Russian philosophy after 1880, when Tolstoy’s influence was greatest. The second part turns to developments earlier in the century, showing how Russian philosophy, especially the famous Slavophile–Westernizer controversy of the 1840s and the subsequent development of Slavophile religious thought, formed the context for Tolstoy’s thinking on the three problems that most preoccupied him: human dignity, the meaning of progress, and the foundations of faith.

Chapter 2 discusses the ways in which liberal ideas of Western origin shaped Russian political theory during the period roughly between 1895 and 1903. The pan-European reassessment of many fundamental positivist assumptions after about 1890 inspired the Russian Silver Age, and occasioned a debate between liberally inclined thinkers about the proper philosophical assumptions on which to base their views of selfhood, freedom, and history. Neo-idealist liberalism thus developed as part of the search for new forms of understanding to accompany the social and cultural transformations that Russia was undergoing. The chapter argues that both positivism and neo-idealism contained the philosophical resources to support a moderate, pluralist view of human values, but not all of their variants were liberal.