Learning about Epistemology

I just finished reading A Confession by Leo Tolstoy (Jane Kentish translation) this afternoon. It is the first book I have read from him (though a short work, at only 60 pages).

I was first introduced to Tolstoy in Alexandre Christoyannopoulos's Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel, which I read in 2020. I was not left with a particularly positive impression of Tolstoy—let us just say that he is, well, a little bit iconoclastic.

But then, in 2022, I came across some quotations from A Confession in Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief by Jordan B. Peterson and knew that I had to read this book at some point in my life. William Barrett also mentions A Confession in Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy, another book I read later that year.

A Confession is autobiographical, depicting Tolstoy's struggle with finding meaning in life, as well as his difficulty accepting the theology of the Russian Orthodox Church. This work certainly gets my recommendation; here is just one passage that caught my attention: "I realized that my question as to what my life is, and the answer that it is an evil, was quite correct. The only mistake was that I had extended an answer that related only to myself to life as a whole."

Up next on my reading list is Theory of Knowledge by Keith Lehrer, which I acquired last April by using some in-store credit at Peryton Books. I never took a course in epistemology when I was an undergraduate student, so I am looking forward to being introduced to this branch of philosophy. Personally, I appreciate the retro cover of this 1990 publication. Some of the other interesting-looking titles from the Dimensions of Philosophy Series include Metaphysics by Peter van Inwagen and Philosophy of Mind by Jaegwon Kim.