A lecture course delivered by V. V. Bibikhin at the Philosophy Department of Moscow State University during the fall semester of 2000 and the spring semester of 2001 is published for the first time. "Tolstoy's diaries and notebooks are flashes of insight, and just as a person quickly grabs a pencil or a nail to jot something down, so Tolstoy grabbed the first words that came to hand. A conceptual analysis of these notes would yield nothing; the only chance is to see the spark, always one, which illuminated the darkness for him and then immediately went out. ... At the foundation of everything, in the mind of being, living and, he is sure, inanimate as well, he sees love and poetry. These two things are crazy, reckless, sacrificial, unforeseen. Life flows from them."