Идеал красоты у Ф. М. Достоевского
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Ideal of Beauty

Summary/Abstract: The article examines the formation of the aesthetic and ethical ideal of beauty in the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Based on the methodology proposed in the works of Toyofusa Kinoshita, the author traces the evolution of Dostoevsky’s understanding of the category of beauty — from his early fascination with the aesthetics of Chateaubriand and Schiller to the development of his own mature concept. The article analyzes how the writer reinterprets the philosophical tradition, particularly Friedrich Schiller’s ideas. Dostoevsky’s polemic with Schiller is reflected in the article “Mr. -bov and the Question of Art” (1861). While Schiller views beauty and freedom as harmonious ideals, for Dostoevsky freedom is an ambivalent gift, carrying both the possibility of moral ascent and the risk of sinful fall. It is an ideal that can only be endlessly strived for under the conditions of earthly existence, which explains why Dostoevsky’s artistic world focuses not on depicting harmony, but on the tragic search for a lost ideal. Central attention is paid to the writer’s polemic with the utilitarian approach to art and materialist anthropology, in particular with Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s theory of “rational egoism.” Dostoevsky’s concept is revealed in “Notes from Underground,” where irrational freedom is contrasted with the rational egoism formulated in Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s article “The Anthropological Principle in Philosophy” (1860) and artistically embodied in the novel “What Is to Be Done?” (1863). As a result, beauty is understood by Dostoevsky as a human need leading to the ideal embodied in Christ, and ethics, aesthetics, and religion merge in his later formula of ideal beauty: “The world will be saved by the Beauty of Christ.”

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