Is it the era we live in or his writings? When will Tolstoy be surpassed? And ultimately, for which reader is Tolstoy intended?

Known from "War and Peace," "Anna Karenina," "The Death of Ivan Ilyich," etc., Tolstoy went through an internal crisis in the 1870s (possibly some post-traumatic shock from the time he participated in the Crimean War), which led him to search for and rediscover Christianity from scratch; obviously, the Eastern - Orthodox - Christianity, and indeed in its Russian version, which struggles even to this day to shed its Greek-Byzantine roots. The result? A peculiar Christianity or a sect; a question mark. He certainly created an entire movement called "Tolstoyism."

A fervent anti-clericalist, he was excommunicated in 1901. He never received the Nobel Prize in Literature, although he was nominated every year from 1902 to 1906, while his funeral in 1910 was the first political funeral in Russia. His work influenced many prominent figures of the twentieth century, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

The originality of Tolstoy, which becomes evident in this particular book, lies in the fact that he defended the moral mission of Christianity while simultaneously maintaining the principles of nature, as he interpreted them. The result was that instead of viewing human weaknesses generally and neutrally, he clearly denounced social institutions, such as the state, educational institutions, and the church, which he accused of distorting genuine Christianity and turning it either into paganism or atheism. And all this why? To continue distributing the fruits of power among themselves.

Some consider Tolstoy anarchistic and even the "father" of the movement known as "anarcho-Christianity" - for some "anarcho-Tolstoyism" or simply "Tolstoyism," introducing metaphysical reflections into anarchist, anti-systemic, and anti-authoritarian thought. He himself never admitted to being such a thing and even had a critical stance towards anarchists, as he had linked the entirety of the movement with the use of violence. For others, of course, he could not be anarchistic, as he accepted the existence of a principle that people ought to follow, although he presents it as a natural state. In any case, it is certain that he was influenced by Proudhon, who wrote "War and Peace" ("La Guerre et la Paix") in 1861 and, as it is said, inspired Tolstoy.

In his writings, Tolstoy does not resort to mysticism - he does not believe in an afterlife; he does not consider Jesus as the Son of God. However, it is this rationalistic approach of his, which, after the rejection of mysteries, rituals, and traditions, ends up ambiguous when it hints at metaphysical traces in defining both religion as "a specific relationship of man with the infinite universe" and morality as "the stable guide in life that arises from this relationship."

Overcoming his own contradictions, Tolstoy attacks the contradictions inherent in the coexistence of ecclesiastical Christianity and violence. He believes that these contradictions were rejected by various sects as well as some non-religious frameworks (he uses the term "teachings"), such as socialism, communism, and anarchism. The latest ones are considered as partly "manifestations of Christian consciousness in its true meaning, which denies violence." For Tolstoy, violence is something insatiable that, the more it is fed, the more it hungers. In other words, violence does not justify counter-violence for Tolstoy, which only results in an overall increase through its recycling. He observes that while love is listed as one of the virtues in all religions, only Christianity has established it as its non-negotiable foundation.

Tolstoy seems to be caught between two worlds: the logic and justice that passed into Christianity through ancient Greek education, for the bloodless resolution of (natural?) competitive relationships, and the pure, selfless, and unqualified love that Jesus brought. Thus, Tolstoy oscillates in this work, often without recognizing it or indifferent. And along with him, we oscillate a little less than a century and a half later, with some of us declaring "Tolstoyans" and some "Dostoevskyans," since, as George Steiner writes in "Tolstoy or Dostoevsky" (Antipodes Publications, 2015), neutrality in the dilemma of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky is impossible.

"What is Religion" was published in 1902, "The Law of Love and the Law of Violence" was published in 1908, while "Religion and Morality" had preceded it in 1894. All three texts are included in the present volume.