Art and Morality Tolstoy vs. Leontiev

Art influences people in different ways; in particular, it may cause certain moral effects. Is it right to say that the purpose of art is to produce certain moral impact on people or that its values depend essentially on how moral it is? The following paper observes aesthetic views of two famous Russian philosophers, Leo Tolstoy and Konstantin Leontiev, and, in particular, their conceptions of the relation between art and morality. It argues that although their accounts are in many respects antagonistic both thinkers agree that there is a profound link between artistic and moral values.