Authors

Discussion

This talk examines Dostoevsky's article, Mr —bov and the Problem of Art (hereafter The Problem of Art). This paper compares The Problem of Art with Schiller's aesthetic thought, and examines what role beauty is thought to play in the development of the human spirit.

The role of beauty in the development of the human spirit, i.e. the theory of aesthetic education (ästhetische Bildung), has been an issue in the study of aesthetic thought from the end of the 18th century until today. The concept of aesthetic education emerged in Germany at the end of the 18th century, which was the time of the Enlightenment. Unlike the British Enlightenment, which emphasised experience and observation, and the French one, which developed a radical critique of religion, the German Enlightenment, which addressed theoretical questions aimed at improving the inner state of man and liberating him spiritually, aimed at the spiritual formation of a rational, autonomous man capable of thinking for himself. Immanuel Kantdefines the purpose of the Enlightenment as emerging from the state of other-oriented minors who need the guidance of others to an autonomous state in which they dare to use their own understanding. Thus, the main question of the aesthetic education that emerged in the context of the German Enlightenment is also fundamentally ‘how beauty makes us free’. The German poet Friedrich Schiller occupies an important place in the history of aesthetic thought as a pioneer of aesthetic education theory. Schiller, while absorbing Kant's aesthetic thought and criticising the reason-oriented tendencies of the Enlightenment at the time, aimed for the spiritual formation of free and autonomous human beings through the cultivation of the sense of beauty.

Dostoevsky, who is said to have been strongly influenced by Schiller, is also known as a writer who explored the spiritual ‘freedom’ of man. The 1860s, when The Problem of Art was written, marked the rise of materialists in Russia, including Chernyshevsky. What characterises their thought is rationalism. Its foundation was Chernyshevsky's Anthropological Principles in Philosophy. In it, Chernyshevsky develops a mechanistic view of man, in which man merely acts according to his physical needs. Such a view of man results in determinism, which denies free will in human action, and Dostoevsky, who returned to Petersburg from exile in 1859, opposed such deterministic rationalism. In exile, Dostoevsky became conscious of the issue of ‘freedom’ as human dignity, and his opposition to rationalism, such as in Winter Notes on Summer Impressions and Notes from Underground, can be seen mainly in the 1860s. The Problem of Art is written in the context of this conflict with materialist supremacy of reason. The Problem of Art, which discusses the significance of ‘freedom’ in creation in the context of the controversy