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The aesthetic realism of Mikhail Lifshits: art, history and the communist ideal

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Abstract

The aesthetics of Mikhail Lifshits may be characterised as a quest for pravda (truth/justice) in art. The article discusses his assessment of the fate of art in the communist revolution and his view on revolution through the prism of classical art. Pondering the metaphysical foundations of his realist aesthetics, Lifshits offered a naturalistic version of the theory of reflection based on the contradistinction of “big” and “small” being.

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Notes

  1. “I remember that I submitted a report to the Director of the Institute, suggesting setting up a room for aesthetics, in order to study Marx’s and Engels’ aesthetic views. My initiative came to nothing. It was received with a certain irony, though kindly enough. Ryazanov did not believe that Marx and Engels had their own system of aesthetic views. However, nobody realised this at that time” (Lifshits 1988a, 278).

  2. “Ein Mann kann nicht wieder zum Kinde werden oder er wird kindisch. Aber freut ihn die Naivetät des Kindes nicht, und muß er nicht selbst wieder auf einer höhren Stufe streben, seine Wahrheit zu reproduzieren? Lebt in der Kindernatur nicht in jeder Epoche ihr eigner Charakter in seiner Naturwahrheit auf?” (Marx 1983, 45).

  3. “The term ‘realism’ may be used in a wide sense, as the truth of displaying the actual world in its inherent sensible form; and there is realism as a historical phenomenon, relating to definite literary-artistic currents” (Lifshits 1984c, 380).

  4. The term “nature” is used here in an ultimate sense, including people, human society. “Man is an avant-garde of nature” (Lifshits 2004, 121).

  5. “Sich des eigenen Einfallens in den immanenten Rhythmus der Begriffe entschlagen” (Hegel 1970, 56).

  6. “Schlechte Einzelheit” vs. “wahrhafte Einzelheit, Individualität, wahrhafte Subjektivität”. See: Hegel (1971, 170).

  7. See: Lifshits (2001), 106 (the last, unfinished work of Lifshits).

  8. A few pages in this collection of archival notes contain the most brutal ethical and “sociological” assessments of Solzhenitsyn’s worldview.

  9. “So tritt die ganze Welt des Reichtums, d.h. des gegenständlichen Wesens des Menschen, aus dem Verhältnis der exklusiven Ehe mit dem Privateigentümer in das Verhältnis der universellen Prostitution mit der Gemeinschaft” (Marx 1974, 45).

  10. Apparently, from here: “But I cannot stand forward and give praise or blame to anything which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction” (Burke 2005, 8).

  11. The word bezobraznyj in Russian means “ugly,” “shameful,” and etymologically—“shapeless” (bezobrazie is an Old Slavonic calque for Greek aschēmon). Lifshits uses this ambiguity in the title of his book on Modernism Krizis bezobrazija.

  12. “Ich mit Herzen nirgendwo und niemals zusammen figurieren will” (Marx 1963, 434).

  13. See: Arslanov 2010, 338–366. In the same volume, another author considers Stalin’s terror as a “perverse effect” of the revolution (Pavlov 2010, 398).

  14. For details, see: Maidansky (2015, 209–220).

  15. “Der Kommunismus ist die notwendige Gestalt und das energische Prinzip der nächsten Zukunft, aber der Kommunismus ist nicht als solcher das Ziel der menschlichen Entwicklung—die Gestalt der menschlichen Gesellschaft.” (Marx 1974, 546).

  16. “Reflection in general, in the objective sense of the word, as a reproduction. Reproduction has a cosmic sense, for in such a way the diffused universality is turning into the actual one” (Lifshits 2010, 25).

  17. “… It is logical to suppose that the whole matter possesses a quality essentially kindred to sensation, viz. the quality of reflection” (Lenin 1968, 91).

  18. See: Lifshits (2003, 271).

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Belgorod State University, ul. Preobraghenskaya 78b, kv. 79, Belgorod, Russia, 308000

    Andrey Maidansky

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Maidansky, A. The aesthetic realism of Mikhail Lifshits: art, history and the communist ideal. Stud East Eur Thought 68, 255–270 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-016-9263-8

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