Russian literary critic and aesthetician Chernyshevski wrote it at the end of 1853. Because the reactionary university authorities delayed the defense time of this paper under various excuses, the public defense of the paper was not held until1May 855 10. In the aesthetic relationship between art and reality, Chernyshevski first expounded the content and mission of art, and he thought that "the scope of art is not limited to beauty … but includes everything in reality (nature and life) that can arouse people's interest …"; What is generally interesting in life is the content of art. He believes that art should truly reproduce life, explain life and make judgments on life, so as to promote people to transform their lives. He emphasized that the highest mission of art should be to play the role of "life textbook".
Before Chernyshevski put forward a new definition of the concept of beauty, he criticized the wrong arguments of idealistic aesthetics and pure art theory, pointing out that "everything that can fully express its concept is beautiful" or "everything that stands out is beautiful" is incorrect, because "not all outstanding things are beautiful, because not all things are beautiful." He also refutes those who think that "beauty is only an illusion in reality, beauty is our imaginary creation, and there is no real beauty in reality". Chernyshevski affirmed that beauty can only be found in reality, that is, in natural life and human behavior, thoughts and feelings. On this basis, he put forward the definition of "beauty is life" and explained: "Everything is beautiful in the life that we can see and think should be beautiful; Anything that shows life or reminds us of life is beautiful. " Chernyshevski advocates the beauty of reality and opposes the denigration of reality by religion and mysticism. He said that we should look for beauty on the earth, not in the sky.
While expounding that "beauty is life", Chernyshevski also analyzed the class nature of aesthetic feeling, pointing out that farmers engaged in labor have different aesthetic feeling from the upper class.
On the issue of drama, Chernyshevski inherited the tradition of Aristotle's tragedy theory and emphasized the tragic events in life and art.
It is not determined by fate, pointing out that "tragedy has no essential connection with the concept of fate or inevitability", but is the product of certain objective conditions, especially social phenomena, thus abandoning the mysterious content and idealism in the concept of tragedy. At the same time, he also attaches importance to the satirical and critical role of comedy in reality and opposes the tendency to despise comedy all the time.
On the typical issue, on the one hand, Chernyshevski thinks that artists should have the ability to distinguish between main features and non-main features, which shows a certain degree of realism; On the other hand, he despises typicality and thinks that art is only the copy and substitution of reality, and the beauty of reality is higher than the beauty of art. In this way, the absolutization of reality will confuse the truth of life and the truth of art, which has certain one-sidedness and metaphysics. In a word, in the aesthetic relationship between art and reality, Chernyshevski studied literary problems with the principle of starting from life rather than from ideas, and advocated that "beauty is life", which not only strengthened the realistic struggle of literature in the social democratic movement at that time, but also had a far-reaching impact on the development of materialistic aesthetics.