Death in the View of Tolstoy and Heidegger

Death has always been human’s concern. Tolstoy has especially explained the result of his meditations on death as a novella in The Death of the Ivan Ilych. Heidegger who has dealt with philosophical debate on death in Being and Time, pointed to Tolstoy’s The Death of the Ivan Ilych in a note on Being and time. The Death of the Ivan Ilych was apparently a great step forward in the debate of death from the humanistic point of view which has later been considered and explained as one of the aspects of human being and completed by Heidegger. Thus, it seems that the study of death in the view of Tolstoy and comparing with Heidegger’s view is very useful. Hence, in this essay the attitudes of Tolstoy and Heidegger were first explained and then the attitudes of Tolstoy and Heidegger were compared and explained. It has finally been followed that in The Death of the Ivan Ilych, Tolstoy has described two approaches to death: authentic and inauthentic. The approaches which have been developed by Heidegger and led to describing two kinds of life: authentic and inauthentic.