Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary Russian Literature

Abstract

Ethical totalitarism in the sphere of culture – a feature of the present time – is more dangerous than ethical indifferentism. One of the possibilities for realizing the principle of ethical independenсe is focusing on aesthetic issues. The history of Russian literature shows that the less ethics bounds there is in creativity, the more successful is the creativity itself, and it is less dangerous to exist within the framework of some generally accepted moral codes than in situation of self-limiting by ethics rules. It turns out that, on the one hand, the rights of individuality are expanding in the modern world, on the other, the behavior of an individual is strictly regulated by the rules that are put forward by representatives of certain social groups. In the realm of aesthetic experimentation, the author seems to have more rights than responsibilities; in the sphere of ethics author is limited by the dominated norms of social institutions.