"If life is blessing, then death is blessing too": paradoxes of Leo Tolstoy's thanatology

Death is a key issue for both Tolstoy as a writer and Tolstoy as a thinker. All of Leo Tolstoy’s religious, philosophical and artistic investigations focus on the study of the phenomenon of existence through existential reflection on the fact of dying. It is Tolstoy’s story «The Death of Ivan Ilyich» that most consistently reveals the paradoxes of his thanatology. In his view, death is both an absolute evil and the greatest good; it is the opposite of life, being an integral part of it. «Death is life» - that is how Tolstoy paraphrases the words of the ancient Greek philosopher, and this statement represents the quintessence of the Russian thinker’s philosophy of death.