The problem of comprehension of the essential in human "I" is discussed in the article as a phenomenon of the writer's psychology on the example of two images of the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" – Stiva Oblonsky and Konstantin Levin. Intuitive feeling of living as the expression of the essential combines two images taken by us, the mouthpieces of the two views on life in general, and on family in particular. Stiva Oblonsky and Konstantin Levin in the writer's conception of the philosophy of life by L. Tolstoy are the carriers of two forms of national family life. The characteristic of essential in the human "I" of Stiva Oblonsky and Konstantin Levin provides the capability to detect semantic references in the texts of L. Tolstoy and the German philosopher of the 20th century M. Heidegger, as both thinker understand the contents of the human "I" as a universal component of personality, which is the main criterion in the evaluation of a person, his thoughts and actions. Inter-textual analysis of "Anna Karenina” by L. Tolstoy and of the separate artistic and philosophical works of Heidegger has shown that the philosophy of life of Konstantin Levin, written by L. Tolstoy, resonantly echoes with the philosophy of "the pathway" of the German philosopher M. Heidegger
