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Every man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal aims, and feels with his whole being that he can at any moment perform or not perform this or that action; but, so soon as he has done it, that action accomplished at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
This essay will investigate the historical determinist perspective and argue that the role of battles and the characterization of leaders serve as important tools in Tolstoy's articulation of that historiographical perspective. One must first understand what Tolstoy's determinist perspective encompasses, before moving to analyze the important position that battles and leaders serve in it. I will derive Tolstoy's determinist perspective directly from War and Peace, as well as from Isaiah Berlin's The Hedgehog and the Fox. Once I have satisfied the "what" question, I will move on to the "how" question, specifically examining the role of battles and leaders. Tolstoy's portrayal of the Tsar Alexander and Emperor Napoleon, as well as his depictions of the battles of Austerlitz and Borodino, are effective in expressing his determinist perspective of historiography.
Determinism is an inherently abstract concept. A simplified definition leaves the idea ambiguous. An overly detailed definition causes the idea to contradict itself through the vast array of exceptions that arise when attempting to specify something abstract. Thus, the spirit of the definition of determinism is more important in this analysis than the letter. 'Determinism' is defined by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as the idea that "the world is governed by... Determinism if and only if, given a specified way things are at a time t, the way things go thereafter is fixed as a matter of natural law." Meanwhile, the seemingly synonymous concept of fatalism is defined as, "the view that we are powerless to do anything other than what we actually do" ('Causal Determinism'). While to philosophers the difference between these two concepts may very well be significant, that difference does not signify for this analysis and is therefore irrelevant. Rather, the term historical determinism will encompass any notion of determinism and fatalism that may be derived from the spirit...