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.

One of the abiding questions in the discourse on the idea of Europe since the Enlightenment has been whether Russia belongs within European civilization, or is essentially Asiatic. Following Peter the Great’s attempts to Europeanize Russia at the end of the seventeenth and in the early years of the eighteenth century, culminating in the construction of St Petersburg as a European city, Russia’s relation to (the rest of) Europe became a hotly disputed question both within and beyond Russia when Peter Chaadayev published his Philosophical Letters (1826–31), in which he claimed that Russia lacked all the qualities of a European nation. This led to a long-lasting debate between Westernizers and Slavophiles in Russia, culminating in the profoundly Slavophile views of Fyodor Dostoevsky, who took issue in particular with the Westernizing views of Ivan Turgenev. Russia’s relation to Europe was also explored by Western European writers, including Germaine de Staël and Astolphe de Custine. This Western European vision of Russia was often profoundly negative, with Russia being seen as an Asiatic threat to Europe. Chapter 4 explores this enduring debate on Russia’s relation to (the rest of) Europe, one that continues to this day.

Chapter 1 deals with those pre-twentieth-century Russian thinkers who developed their views of personhood and of freedom in dialogue with Western philosophy, and articulated the broad framework for later liberalisms. With the exception of Boris Chicherin, the men discussed in this chapter did not self-identify readily as liberals, but their engagement with both the value of negative freedom enshrined in law, and the idea of a social, ethical project, provided a powerful legacy on which their successors drew. While the possibilities for political participation increased towards the end of the century, the engagement with liberalism during this period was largely an intellectual endeavour.