The Living Word of Reality: Aesthetic Normativity and the Work of V. G. Belinsky

The focus of this project will be on V. G. Belinsky, the 19th century Russian philosopher, and his answer to the question "what makes a work of art good?". One might think that art's function is the production of aesthetic experience or the creation of beauty and that these are the criteria we ought to use to evaluate art. Belinsky believed art must principally aim at truth and that we ought to evaluate a work of art based on how well it performs this cognitive role. Belinsky understands aesthetic value as an organic unity of a plurality of criteria and whilst beauty is vital to aesthetic success, it is not sufficient. The cardinal criterion for aesthetic success is that art must be "the living word of reality" and must "represent reality in all its fidelity". To represent reality, a work must reflect the social, historical and national circumstances of the reality within which it was produced. In representing reality, art conveys truths which contribute to our understanding of the world. Subsequently, Belinsky predicates aesthetic value on non-aesthetic concepts, specifically truth and reality, and gives art a distinct cognitive function. The task of this project will be to reconstruct and evaluate Belinsky's arguments for his aesthetic theory and determine which elements of his account, if any, have contemporary relevance.