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p L. Mariupolskaya

p The distinctive feature of modern art lies in its close contact with philosophical awareness. What is more, art’s rapprochement with philosophical awareness is turning into a new principle of artistic development.

p The ideological and artistic innovations of the art of socialist realism have a firm philosophical grounding. Marxism-Leninism’s philosophical and theoretical answer to the problem of man is one of the important premises of the indisputable aesthetic achievements of socialist realism.

p In bourgeois philosophical and aesthetic thought, howeyer, the process of the rapprochement of philosophy and art is at times given an intricate, paradoxical, and false expression. Idealistic philosophical trends, which grew out of the crisis of early bourgeois humanistic tradition but which still keep the problem of man in the centre of the research, are prone to gravitate towards aesthetics and art. “The philosophy of life”, pragmatism, phenomenology, and, in the most extreme form, existentialism pose the question of regeneration of the methods and problems of philosophy with the aid of artistic and aesthetic ideas. Art is viewed by them as a way of returning philosophy to a purely “hurqan” range of problems, to a human measuring of scientific truths. However, the crisis of idealistic philosophical thought is far from being overcome, it is rather becoming more intense; and as to art, its very existence is in jeopardy.

p The formula “Death of Art" goes back to Hegel just as the absolutising of art can be traced back to Schelling’s system. But no matter how Schelling or Hegel resolved the problem of whether art 99 or philosophy win out, the results are only variations of uniform patterns for moulding an absolute spirit.

p Hegel’s “Death of Art" and Schelling’s absolutising of art are in this sense phenomena of a similar order; they are similar in origin (from the absolute) and in content (a response of subjectivity to the absolute in the form of either contemplation or conception).

p The gravitation towards art in modern bourgeois philosophy is explained from the position of subjectivistic anthropocentrism as an expression of man’s urge to freedom as understood in the spirit of Kant’s philosophy. The personality, the philosophical and aesthetic discovery of the Renaissance era, is given specific elaboration by Kant. He defines man, the personality, through freedom, through a breaching of the cause-and-effect continuum of nature. But what is the positive content of this freedom? And under what conditions is this breaching achieved? Freedom as a concept of reason must be viewed “not as bestowed, but as a problem”,   [99•1  moreover a problem beyond the powers of scientific and theoretical cognition. The end to which transcendency is directed is, according to Kant, an “imagined focus" (focus imaginarius) of truth, beauty and goodness; in their unity, perceived by the mind, the “ultra-sensual substratum of mankind" is revealed. The philosopher set aesthetics a cognitive task that proved beyond the powers of scientific and theoretical thought. Art appears in Kant on the brink of an unfulfilled scientific quest for a new type of causality set by the postulates of practical reason, i. e., a quest for the freedom of man.

p Attention is usually drawn to the autonomy of the ethical and the. aesthetic in Kant. What is essential here is that the imperativeness of moral obligation is postulated, but the imperativeness of the aesthetic principle is manifested in the universal character of the subjective judgement of taste. However, this sometimes distracts researchers from the fact that the imperativeness of ethics and the universal validity of the aesthetic in Kant go back to a single source—to the principle of freedom as a profound attribute of the meaning of human existence. For “taste is in essence the ability to judge the sensuous embodiment of moral concepts (by means of a certain analogy of the reflection on both) from which, and from the stronger receptivity based on this to the feeling proceeding from these concepts (called a sense of morals), that pleasure which taste declares valid for mankind in general and not only for the personal feelings of each is brought out".  [99•2  In this way, through the means 100 of taste, the transition to the “above-sensuous substratum of mankind" is realised. In the present case Kant’s genius is displayed in the fact that he turned a category defying definition—taste—into a subtle instrument tor elucidating the “secrets of transcendency”, and, with its help, mastered the mechanism for transcending to freedom.

p Consequently, the subject of freedom is given suffrage as such only after its sensuous perception has been brought into agreement with a sense of morals and it has been annexed to humaniora, “by which people are distinguished from the limitedness of animals”,  [100•1  and only after its judgement has been premised by the culture of thinking and the ennobling of “human senses"—here are meant the senses of the transcendental rather than the empirical subject.

p The term humanitas, first used by the followers of Petrarch as a definition of the essence of man and human dignity, is used by Kant as well to substantiate the humanly valid principle of the aesthetic.  [100•2  And those attendant meanings—H:he general feeling of compassion, the ability to associate sincerely with other people, the sociability proper to mankind—noted by Kant clarify this conception and specify it in a broader conclusion about the fortunate combining of the discipline of the “highest culture with the power and Tightness of free nature feeling its own worth".  [100•3 

p At the same time Kant’s conception of humanism takes on the dramatic quality of appealing for a new historical synthesis. The universally valid content of freedom and the singularity of individual will constitute a contradiction which solidifies in the form of antinomy.

p A truly scientific answer to the problem of man, to the problem of humanism can be found in the Marxist philosophy. Marx’s classical formula states: “The human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations."  [100•4  Here the concept of man as a reasoning and social being receives equivalent theoretical expression. If we use an analogy with Marx’s thesis “wealth of the individual depends entirely on the wealth of his real connections”,  [100•5  then the pithy richness of the Marxist concept of man depends on the complexity of the specific historical process developed in reality. Marxism sets as its goal to replace “the cult of abstract man ... by the science of 101 real men and of their historical development".  [101•1  The modern French philosopher Lucien Seve legitimately defines Marxism as “scientific humanism" (humanisme scientifique).  [101•2 

p In modern bourgeois philosophy the crisis of the humanistic concepts and the phenomenon of alienation have brought about intensive attempts to validate a historically exhausted form of humanism. The anthropological abstract of man is called upon which, in Husserl’s phenomenology, is given a certain gnosiological modernisation, and in existentialism—a subjectivistic anthropocentric motivation of freedom.

p A digression into the sphere of philosophical principles is unavoidable here, since the context of the problems of the interaction of philosophy and art depends first and foremost on the concept of man.

p The subjectivistic anthropocentrism as the dominant content of consciousness contradicts the concept of genuine human freedom. The very idea of a humanism which defines man as a reasoning social being is put in jeopardy here. The life ties which ensure the real content of the concept of freedom are severed.

p Existentialism claims to be the ideal model of the reciprocal influence exercised by philosophy and art, where the rapprochement of competences is supposedly explained by the unity of the humanistic idea. But this only seems to be so, and in order to detect this ’it is necessary to expose the real purport of the basic philosophical principle of existentialism concealed by an abundance of “authorised” personalities who proceed from personal existentialist experience and by a variety of specific historical contexts defining the elaboration of compulsory existentialist themes. In connection with this the question arises: is there a stable internal form to such unequivalent phenomena as Heidegger’s anti-humanistic invectives, the “stoical anti-history" stand taken during the French Resistance and the theoretical complicity of existentialism with counter-cultural extremism? Is it possible to single out the substance invariant in such motley phenomena? Researchers are often content with an ethical standard for explaining the ambivalent manifestations of existentialism, losing sight of (evidently under the influence of psychologicalised terminology which casts its reflection on the content of concepts and, in particular, on the category of choice) the fact that on this point existentialism does not exceed the limits of Kantianism and 102 that the concept of freedom can appear, moreover, without attendant moral commandments. Therefore, to be content with the indeterminateness of morals, as the existentialists are. is the same as seeing only the whims of personal taste in the many different aesthetic positions connected with the ideas of existentialism—from the rapprochement with art to the destruction of art. There is an analogy here, but its essence is revealed not in the isolated comparison of ethical or aesthetic phenomena, but rather in the very concept of man. the external expression of which these phenomena are. Therefore, if we examine the category of freedom of choice in the context of the existentialist frame of mind and even, following the logic of existentialist thinkers, include in the field of vision the possible aesthetic aspect of choice, thus showing the dual—aesthetic and ethical—semantic definiteness of the category of choice, we find ourselves in a situation where illusions are gradually being revealed.

p In considering the problem of the aesthetically motivated content of freedom or, more accurately, the possibility of aesthetic motivation in its existentialist understanding, we have to note that researchers often ignore the character of the aesthetic tradition kindred to modern existentialism. Its disappearing boundaries lead to Kierkegaard’s vaguely described “natural” attitude to life. And it is typical that the Jena romanticists, a subject of Kierkegaard’s critical meditations, only began to develop the concepts of the “pagan” aestheticism, which are solved nihilislically in Nietzsche. The romantic dominant of beauty did not rule out an intellectualism. a superstructure over the most subtle nuances of the unconscious. The fantasy and feelings of the romantic converted the sphere of all past cultures into its own material. Romantic individuality reigns over the universe. In this lies the meaning of romantic irony. Criticism was understood as the guarantee of boundless creativity, and though ravages, being implicit consequences of romantic self-will (“I’m the master of law and object and only play with them like with my fancy, and in this ironic consciousness, in which I allow the loftiest to perish, I only enjoy myself”)  [102•1  begin to be echoed in mood (Weltschmerz), they are not yet realised as logically inevitable.

p Kierkegaard thought up for the romantics an inner logic and a prospect for developing in reality the principle of individualistic self-engrossment, and prognosticated that form of spiritual cul-dc-sac which he called “despair” and Nietzsche—“nihilism”. 103 Nietzsche consolidates Kierkegaard’s foresight and biologicalises aesthetics, bluntly renaming it “applied physiology”, and leaves to aesthetic feeling the role of intuitive indicator of the organism’s orientation in the environment. Ethical and spiritual categories are rendered meaningless, as the very function of spirituality is perverted: the actions of the spirit lead not to freedom from the natural but. on the contrary, serve as mechanisms for inclusion into the indivisible streams of life; “vigourousness”—this, strictly speaking, is. in Nietzsche, the “mark of quality" for spiritual phenomena.

p Therefore, such an “aestheticism” of choice as the embodiment of an obviously logical contradiction forces one to doubt initial humanistic claims of existentialism.

p While Kierkegaard, in opposition to the pagan aestheticism of the romantics, was elaborating the ethical motivation of freedom through the overcoming of despair, he was overtaken by the “poetic justice" of the plays of Ibsen, who already felt the icy emptiness of “nothing”. In Brand’s futile enthusiasm we find the whole “unblessed” future of existentialism.

p The asocial motivation of the personality equalises the results of the mutually excluding theoretical intentions of biologicalism and mysticism. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, who would seem to be antipodes in the kinds of philosophical goals they set, discovered, over the perspective of time, the essential common character of ontological premises and conclusions and stimulated homogeneous regressive trends.

p Sartre, Camus, and Merleau-Ponty rearrange the focus of philosophising: “body” takes the place of “soul”. “Body” is a more striking concept than the old “soul”,  [103•1  wrote Nietzsche. But even more significant is the exploitation of this “concept” in the theoretical quests of Kierkegaard’s spiritual successors and the adherents to the methodology of Husserl as well, who eliminated the psycho-physiological structure, i. e.,“body”, with the very same intention with which it will subsequently be postulated in the capacity of the central working concept of existentialism—ostensibly in the interests of a humanistic substantiation of philosophy and the freedom of the personality.

p Analogical processes are also taking place in the modern art of the West. They extort bitter lamenting from artists who don’t want to acknowledge “the end of man" or reconcile themselves to spiritual disintegration, moral degradation, and vandalism. Faulkner’s famous Nobel Prize acceptance speech was a 104 condemnation of the faceless and thoughtless debauch of illusory freedom. “There are no longer problems of the spirit.... The young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself.... He writes not of the heart but of the glands.... Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man.”  [104•1  It is typical that Camus, alarmed by the immorality of his own artistic conclusions, inasmuch as the end of man is subsequently modelled in the philosophical and artistic practice of existentialism, turns to this great writer, an adherent to the realist principle of creativity.

p Such is the paradox of the subjectivistic anthropocentrism with its theoretical mechanism of polarising the ripening antagonisms between the “real” and the socialised “I”, between the spontaneous impulse of senses and the instrumentalism of rational thought.

p The hidden starting point for existentialism’s criticism of preceding culture is biologism. Here lies the source of energy necessary for existentialism in its attempt to “breach” the general limits of the philosophical tradition of the “new age" and mainly the orbit of Kant’s philosophy. For Kantian “moral obliligation" was permeated yet by a profound emanation of the humanistic conception of man and personality revealed through freedom of goals.

p In his famous lecture “Existentialism is Humanism" Sartre sides with Kant, however only on the level of abstract ethical claims: “Kant declares that freedom wants itself and the freedom of others. Agreed."  [104•2  However, as the existentialist impulse takes the shape of a category the romantic halo of “freedom” loses its lustre, and the prosaic seamy side of “anxiety”, “concern”, and “fear” reveals the great social timidity typical of conformist bourgeois individualism and quite a limited area for the realisation of freedom, inasmuch as existentialist man is free only within the limits of the “situation” to which he is chained by real life circumstances. Man is “free” in ecstatic modulation to suffer through the initial tragedy of being. “Man is useless passion.” Every life situation turns out to be a “frontier” one; life is always doomed to death. In postulating the triumph of subjectivity, existentialism excludes man from the cultural historical process and turns every step beyond the bounds of “I” into an illusion. “Our physiological make-up allows us to express only symbolically and on the grounds of absolute contingency the constant possibility 105 which we are,”  [105•1  affirms Sartre, unwittingly exposing the fictitious character of existentialist innovations. The “freedom” proclaimed by existentialism as the foundation of ’spiritual values and the essence-bearing ontological characteristic of man turns out in the end to be the voluntary, spontaneous outburst of a disintegrated individual.

p “By the measure in which existentialism tends to enclose the individual in an interior of false consciousness ... leaving him powerless to the utmost extent, he is only one of the last avatars of speculative anthropology, the ideological expression of the eternal relapse of the revolt into a customary alienation."  [105•2  The contradictions between the individualism of bourgeois consciousness and the humanistic aims of philosophy are expressed in the form of distorting the idea of humanism: man is alienated from human essence.

p The most profound secret of existentialism is—nothing, emptiness generated as a result. Therefore, it is possible to catch the meaning of it only in negative definitions of what is the object of denial, what is subject to exploitation, and what valuable accumulations of spiritual culture are squandered.

p Existentialism resolves the problem of the attitude towards art in the general manner of consumerism typical of it as regards cultural resources, which is tantamount to their destruction. When this is found in the artistic phenomena stimulated by existentialism one can see, in the wonfeof Shakespeare’s Pplonius, its own order, and a certain coherence.

p In joining the tradition of artistic thought, where the topics of the meaning or meaninglessness of human life, which were excluded by the absolute thinking of Kant from the competence of scientific theoretical knowledge, continue to thrive, existentialism, however, didn’t offer any new ideas. Only the appearance is created that “that merging of the critical and poetic spheres, which was begun by the romantics and was powerfully stimulated by the philosophical lyricism of Nietzsche”, is realised in its production, that “the process obliterates the boundaries between science and art, infuses live pulsating blood into abstract thought, and inspires the plastic image."  [105•3 

p Giving this imaginary apology as an example in his article “On the Ideas of Spengler" (Uberdie Lehre Spenglers), it is no accident that Thomas Mann subsequently proceeds to expose the banality, scientific inarticulateness, and cultural desertion concealed by the 106 “brilliance of literary exposition and intuitive rhapsodic style" of Spengler himself—this “defeatist of the human race" as the unusually discreet Thomas Mann calls him. Indeed, for the artist possessing the richness of language, the value of thought dependent upon the metaphorical inertia of meaning and upon the euphony of “rhapsodic” singing is highly doubtful.

p A style similar to this blossomed forth in existentialism, and above all in Heidegger. Georg Mende characterises his terminology and method of treating concepts by the term “expressionism”.   [106•1  However, Heidegger was far from the first to display a skilful use of both etymological layers of language and artistic metaphors; all this was already well-known to aesthetics and art criticism and was not a revelation of existentialism.

p Art itself was an even richer object for exploitation by existentialism. Camus saw this immediately: “If you want to be a philosopher, write novels."  [106•2  He is seconded by Simone de Beauvoir: “If the description of essence depends upon philosophy itself, then only the novel permits one to communicate the original seething of existence in all its complete, singular, temporal reality."  [106•3  To the extent that this art is art, it undoubtedly exceeds the theoretical possibilities of existentialist thinking. It includes traces of figurative potential which live right up to their extreme decay—in the very material of art, in the elements of plasticity, in the artistic traditions, collisions and characters, perfected over the ages, and in the semantic richness of language. Existentialism exploits a whole series of the primary virtues of art for its own aims. But can we explain as chance the fact that existentialism, for which the “individual”, “specific”, “live” man becomes the focus of problems for<philosophical thought, and the aestheticising of the facts of his experience in life claims to elevate them to the level of ontological predicates, did not create any significant characters? All the important roles in existentialist collisions belong to eternal characters, to prepared formulae of typification—discoveries already made by the artistic thought of mankind. Namely from this Pantheon of artistic thought does existentialism borrow the suitable figures of heroes and martyrs. However, its own philosophical aims did not call into being a single image even remotely resembling the characters of (Teat art. Existentialist literature describes man mainly througn negative 107 definitions. Its genuine hero—-“The Outsider"—is a zero personality, mortally wounded by the “discovery” of his mortality even before the narrative begins. He personifies “life to death”, the forlornness of the “naked among wolves”, the freely-made choice of the unintentional murderer, consciously departing from the anxiety of intellectual life, from the “despotism” of Reason for a sojourn in “existence as it is”. As an individual he is lost in this “involvement in life”, acquires the passive resignation of a plant in order to suffer the meaningless execution predetermined by hostile reason.

p The Outsider completes a definite stage in existentialism’s disintegrating ties with the world of human culture.

p The antitheses put forward by existentialism to counter balance the “non-authenticity” of the historically formed status of philosophy are formulated as postulates for likening philosophy to art, which possesses the advantage of spontaneity and universality of the authentic concept that ensures a fixation of the parameters of human life that were “consigned to oblivion”. However, in the present case the means contradict the end: the vast expanse of the “world of life" in a work of art is reduced to the sensuous qualities of the individual locked in the psycho-physiological limits of the “body”. The substance of an artistic image possessing the advantage of a many-faceted aesthetic solution and a capacious image, embodying in a small form the large world of historical time, is reduced to a simple sensuous substance, to that “directly given”.

p The hopelessness of aesthetic tests based on the idea of the biopsychic essence of man and the phobia for reason, which ostensibly distorted, beginning with the Renaissance, the face of culture, was unwittingly proved by Herbert Read. While not a profound analyst, he is nevertheless interesting as a “chronicler” of the catastrophic results of the reciprocal influences exercised by the newest idealistic philosophy and modernistic art and of the attempts to “play out" all the possible variations of the rapprochement of philosophy and art with the view of overcoming the general cultural and philosophical crisis of the Western world.

p Captivated by Heidegger’s apology of art Read almost literally reproduces his idea (which received broad response in the most diversified versions of existentialism) that the philosopher must be an artist who shapes man’s existence. In convincing himself and his readers that the language of plasticity is heir to the language of philosophy, which had lost its live impulses, Herbert Read reaches a climax in his exposition of “new realities”. Thus the more typical is the dismal conclusion: “We have now reached a stage of 108 relativism in philosophy where it is possible to affirm that reality is in fact subjectivity, which means that the individual has no choice but to construct his own reality, however arbitrary and even ‘absurd’ that may seem. This is the position reached by the Existentialists, and to it corresponds a position in the world of art that requires a similar decision."  [108•1 

p The fervour of the allegedly humanistic declarations of modern bourgeois philosophers and aestheticians obscures the parallelism of destructive processes of the same type: the exclusion of the individual from concrete historical civic-social ties precedes the exclusion of the image from the broad context of the artisticaesthetic whole. Biopsychological reasoning of aesthetic activity entails the ontologising of the supra-historical nature of man. Vitalism in interpreting human nature theoretically prepared the destruction of culture and art long before the “new Left" began doing this in real earnest. Disconnected and absolutised predicates of the aesthetic bear the prerequisites for the biologisation of the human essence of man and the process of the elimination of art as such.

p In contrast to this true art preserves the existence of “human measuring" and the intellectual reserves of the genus of homo sapiens. The embodiment of the complex dialectics of life ties is presupposed by the very nature of art, which is directly included in the process of the aesthetic assimilation of reality, both in the creative act of the artist and in the perception equivalent to it.

p No matter in what technique art tries its hand, the true artist is inspired by a sense of realism and involvement in life and the spiritual experience of contemporaneity. Art is competent to “play over" the chosen theme on the keyboard of subtly nuanced aesthetic gradations—from fervour to irony. This wide scope of possibilities to research allows thinking artists not only to create impressive human characters but also to express the integrated sense of the spiritual make-up of the era, the historically specific types of consciousness, their reciprocal influences, historical role, temporary limits and universal value. True realist art reveals the vital content of the problems raised and the real prospects for their development. We must not forget the artist’s personal responsibility which is objectified in the artistic world of his work in a lyrically passionate or epically profound form.

p In the light of everything stated above the formula “Death of 109 Art" presents itself not simply as an unexpected whim of the ideological concepts of the radical Left but as a natural result of the metaphysical concept of the personality and asocial motivation of the essence of human nature as well.

p The sudjectivistic anthropocentric “planning” of freedom retains only superficial terminological ties with humanistic tradition: such an anthropocentrism alienates man from human nature, the essence of which lies in its social character. The protest against a socio-cultural determination of the personality replaces it with a psycho-physiological determination, immediately transforming any going beyond the bounds of “I” into illusion. Freedom turns out to be only a spontaneous outburst of the disintegrated individual, a “rebellion in shackles”. The spiritual stupor of the characters of drama of the absurd is a stage metaphor of the self-abolition of man, an artistic analogue of a corresponding philosophical concept.

p The position of “anti-reason” turned out to be a unifying principle of the poetic system and aesthetics of modernism. The negation of the objective logic of life found its expression in the absurdism of artistic logic.

p Withdrawal from reality, anticipation of discoveries motivated by the logic of “miracle”, and initial distrust of reason presuppose a spontaneous flow of the “stream” of consciousness. In addition, the aesthetic is lowered in its status and level.

p Joyce, one of the pioneers of avant-gardism and initiators of the technique of “stream of consciousness”, felt the danger of a vulgar reduction of the aesthetic. The subject is debated in the dialogue of Stephen Dedalus and the character with pathological traits who is incapable of a non-literal perception of art. A work of art exists not for people to rush off in pursuit of it, not for tempting primitive sensuality, and not for a literalisation of imagery. Aesthetic emotion ennobles the mind and forces one to linger in thought: to concentrate on the profound, intransient, and meaningful in man. Joyce, through the words of Stephen Dedalus, interprets the classical position of aesthetics: “‘Beauty expressed by the artist cannot awaken in us an emotion which is kinetik or a sensation which is purely physical. It awakens, or ought to awaken, or induces, or ought to induce, an aesthetic stasis, an ideal pity or an ideal terror....

p “ ’The aesthetic emotion ... is therefore static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing.’

p “‘You say that art must not excite desire.... I told you that one day I wrote my name in pencil on the backside of the Venus of Praxiteles.... Was that not desire?’

110

p “ ’I speak of normal natures,’ said Stephen. ’You also told me that when you were a boy in that charming carmelite school you ate pieces of dried cowdung.’ "  [110•1 

p In the pages of the novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man the character with the pathological traits is smitten by the arguments of the artist. However, in the real theoretical and practical embodiment of the method of the “stream of consciousness" pathology wins out. The literalisation of resemblance to life and the adaptation of separate devices snatched out of the whole to the views of “new sensuality" and to a biopsychic subjective interpretation of human essence are scientifically invalid acts.

p An aesthetic object presupposes a remoteness of perception. The artist can place his work in a real expanse of life, but it will remain in the aura of artistic creation; in our perception it retains its pedestal. Aesthetic emotion takes priority among “theorising emotions”. An aesthetic value directly perceived by senses cannot be reduced to the material substratum of a work of art. An image arouses contemplation; art mobilises the spiritual powers and tunes up the cognitive abilities for understanding the humanly meaningful sense of reality, opening the door for solving the agelong enigma: “what man makes of his life and what his life makes of him".  [110•2 

p The modernist reinterpretation of the role of art reserves other functions for it, that which Joyce or his alter ego Stephen Dedalus would call a mobilisation of kinetic emotions.

p Marxist theory holds a clear position in respect to the phenomenon of the neo-avant-gardist experiment in art and in aesthetics. The attempts to absolutise fantasy and the Utopian illusions connected with the activisation of “aesthetic senses" were given a timely, valid evaluation. “The tendency to isolate aesthetic senses from rational (theoretical) consciosness is the way to disintegrate the senses, the artistic form itself,"  [110•3  wrote E. Ilyenkov more than ten years ago, expressing the general view of Marxist scholars. Today we can appreciate the truth of this methodological foresight.

p The modernist formula “Death of Art" is logically grounded by the isolation of “aesthetic senses" from rational consciousness, by the aesthtic of the absurd and anti-reason. The ambivalent motives 111 of dehumanisation are solved here unequivocally. The removal from art of a well-shaped human character, plot clarity, meaningful life collisions, and the intellectual and emotional defmiteness of lyricism is concluded by the final destructive act—the annihilation of art itself.

p The principle of subjectivistic anthropocentrism in a regressing ideological context revealed an unforesen charge of destructive activism. The question is by no means in whether philosophy and art will trade their inherent subjects and functions in serving the historically exhausted form of humanism (in which lay the meaning of the initial existentialist hopes), but rather in the affirmation, by the means of both philosophy and art, of a new humanism of a loftier kind.

p And Marxist-Leninist aesthetics is making its contribution to its substantiation.

p The true freedom of man is revealed in revolutionary social practice, in progressive historical creativity. Humanist problems, included from the outset in the content of MarxistLeninist philosophy, are given their adequate artistic expression in the art of socialist realism.

p The thinking man, the true hero of contemporaneity, finds his artistic portrayal in socialist realist art, which possesses the advantage of organic ties with a genuine scientific world outlook and a direct affinity with the world of progressive philosophical ideas which stimulate his spiritual growth.

A profound study of the personality being formed in the living history of socialist construction also reveals the power of the new method of an art armed with a scientific world outlook. The adequacy of artistic thinking to historical progress and the depth of intellect characteristic of the works of our art allow us to speak of a new stage in the artistic development of all progressive mankind. Personality, in all its human magnitude, and society, developing in accordance with the realised idea of the historical creativity of the masses, is the dominant theme of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and socialist realist art.