Document Type : Original Article
Author
University of Mazandaran
Abstract
The False Coupon, one of Leo Tolstoy’s later works, explores the origins of evil, moral responsibility, and the possibility of breaking the cycle of violence through a bipartite narrative structure. This study aims to explain the mechanisms through which evil spreads and is interrupted in the story, drawing on Tolstoy’s late ethical thought and examining the explanatory potential of Emmanuel Levinas’s concepts of the “Other” and “asymmetrical responsibility.” This qualitative study employs philosophical hermeneutics as its research strategy and a descriptive-interpretive method, drawing on library-based sources. The narrative structure and characters’ actions are analyzed through textual evidence and interpreted in relation to the concepts of evil, responsibility, the Other, repentance, and forgiveness. Bakhtin’s concept of “non-alibi in being” is also employed as an intermediary concept for explaining the relation between individual responsibility and responsiveness to the Other. The findings show that, in the first part, evil spreads through a chain of seemingly independent actions in which excuses, denial, and the transfer of responsibility enable its continuation. In the second part, the process is reversed through an encounter with the Other and the acceptance of responsibility; repentance initiates the characters’ moral transformation, while forgiveness, by rejecting retaliation, makes it possible to interrupt the cycle of violence. The Levinasian framework helps explain this moral transformation without replacing Tolstoy’s own religious and ethical perspective. Thus, The False Coupon can be read as a narrative of the transition from denial to acceptance of responsibility and from the proliferation of evil to its interruption.
Keywords
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