Book by Leo Tolstoy

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Chapter One

• Am I living because I have faith, or do I have faith because I’m trying to live?
• “I began to be disbelieve in what had given me life and enabled me to live.”
• “I lived a good life… but there was no meaning in it.”, He’s achieved success, yet is deeply unsatisfied. This marks the beginning of his existential crisis.
• Faith vs. Reason, and the beginning of his search for meaning.

Chapter Two

• He began asking: “Why do anything?” “What’s the point of writing, creating, loving, or living… if I will die?”
• What are “morals” nowadays, and do they really matter? How can I be a “moral man”.
• “What do I know, and what can I teach?”
• “My question… was the simplest of all questions… a question posed by every person in the innermost recesses of the soul: What will come of what I am doing today or tomorrow? What will come of my whole life?”, He’s no longer satisfied with shallow answers. He wants a truth that lasts.
• “Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?”, This is the core crisis. It’s not about success or happiness it’s about meaning in the face of death.

Chapter Three

• In this chapter, Tolstoy stops distracting himself and begins to confront the full weight of his despair.
• No meaning, just facts.
• No answers about purpose, only descriptions of what life is, not why it matters.
• Science can explain how things work, but not why we should live.