ABSTRACT

When prompted to reflect on her own status as an esthete as opposed to an ethical thinker, Selin Karadağ, the protagonist of Elif Batuman’s debut novel The Idiot, muses that she “thought ethics were aesthetics. ‘Ethics’ meant the golden rule, which was basically an aesthetic rule. That’s why it was called ‘golden,’ like the golden ratio.” As it will turn out, The Idiot is a novel that is singularly concerned with precisely the close relationship between beauty and goodness, to the extent that the two can indeed appear to overlap. This essay teases out the ways in which that relationship is worked through across the novel, from Selin’s frequent judgments of beauty to her slow realization that the object of her affections is no good. It considers the ways in which ethical judgments might be comparable to esthetic judgments, and reflects on the role that critical practice might play in both alike. In doing so, it develops a reading of The Idiot as a special kind of Bildungsroman: as the story of a woman for whom the development of a good life is also the realization of an esthetic life.

摘要

当被提示反思自己作为美学家而不是伦理思想家的地位时，Elif Batuman 处女作《白痴》的主人公 Selin Karadağ沉思道，她“认为伦理就是美学。“道德”意味着黄金法则，基本上是一条审美规则。这就是为什么它被称为‘黄金’，就像黄金比例一样。” 事实证明，白痴这部小说特别关注美与善之间的密切关系，以至于两者确实可以重叠。这篇文章梳理了这种关系在整部小说中的运作方式，从塞林对美的频繁判断到她慢慢意识到她所爱的对象是不好的。它考虑了伦理判断可能与审美判断相比较的方式，并反思了批判实践在两者中可能扮演的角色。在这样做的过程中，它发展了一种对白痴的阅读作为一种特殊的成长小说：作为一个女人的故事，对她来说，美好生活的发展也是审美生活的实现。