When Tolstoy Meets Kant - 571 Words

When Tolstoy Meets Kant Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy radiates throughout Leo Tolstoy’s short story â€Å"The Death of Ivan Ilyich.† The story begins with the death of Ivan Ilyich. Rather than morning his death, Ivan’s friends and family look for ways that they can benefit from his death. The narrative proceeds to portray the life of Ivan Ilyich leading up to his death. From a young age, Ivan displayed rather ordinary characteristics. He followed basic norms in an effort to attain a good job and uphold a family. He cozied himself next to people in high positions of power in order to advance his career. Ivan eventually married, not because he loved his wife, but because that is what other people expected of him. The feeling of indifference between him and his wife was eventually mutual. Later, Ivan is struck by a mortal illness. Ivan becomes swallowed by depression and isolation. He recognizes that the people around him are reaping rather than weeping ov er his death, and that the latter is masked by the former. Eventually, Ivan realizes that his life would have been more fruitful if he had had genuine relationships with other people. The thinking of Ivan Ilyich is polluted by a series of commissions and omissions. To begin with the former, Ivan does not value people for their own sake. Rather, he treats them as a means to serve a particular end. Even though he treats people with respect, the respect exhibited is grounded in social expectations. Ivan lacks a senseShow MoreRelatedEssay on Tolstoys Anna Karenina3020 Words   |  13 Pageschapters, where a watchman is accidentally run over by a train at Moscows Petersburg station, to the final, climactic scenes of arbitrary destruction when Levin searches for Kitty in a forest beset by lightning, characters are brought together and forced into action against their will by coincidence and, sometimes, misfortune. That Anna and Vronsky ever meet and begin the fateful affair that become s the centerpiece of the novel is itself a consequence of a long chain of unrelated events: culminating AnnasRead MoreImpact of Science on Society38427 Words   |  154 PagesUniversities of Bologna and Urbino and directing the English Schools in Bologna and Rome. He made his television debut in 1965 as a reporter for Granada Television’s Rome Bureau. Burke’s impressive following in the British Isles dates back t o 1966, when he joined the BBC’s weekly science show, Tomorrow’s World. As the chief BBC correspondent for all Apollo space flights, Burke won critical acclaim for his interpretation of the US space program to an audience of over 12 million people. During thisRead MoreImpact of Science on Society38421 Words   |  154 PagesUniversities of Bologna and Urbino and directing the English Schools in Bologna and Rome. He made his television debut in 1965 as a reporter for Granada Television’s Rome Bureau. Burke’s impressive following in the British Isles dates back t o 1966, when he joined the BBC’s weekly science show, Tomorrow’s World. As the chief BBC correspondent for all Apollo space flights, Burke won critical acclaim for his interpretation of the US space program to an audience of over 12 million people. During this