All the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble… They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This “outgrowing” proved on further investigation to require a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest appeared on the patient’s horizon, and through this broadening of his or her outlook the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms but faded when confronted with a new and stronger life urge.
–Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
“And here is a miracle, the sole miracle possible, surrounding me on all sides, and I never noticed it … I have discovered nothing. I have found only what I knew.” As so often in Tolstoy, the truth lies not in the distance but in the prosaic facts right before our eyes. Levin has not exactly found an answer to the question of life’s meaning. Rather, he senses the meaning directly and so the question vanishes. As Wittgenstein observes, “The solution of the problem of life is in the vanishing of the problem.”
–Gary Saul Morson, Wisdom Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter
