ABSTRACT
Robert Wilkinson treats L. Tolstoy as stating a necessary condition for all art. Thus he says that for Tolstoy ‘in any art worthy of the name, the artist must have lived through the feelings she or he wishes to express’. Tolstoy makes a comparison with speech. Through speech, a child without knowing it is drawn into human life and becomes fully human. Tolstoy has said that art is a means of unity among human beings. But that surely is not necessarily true. It can also be a means of disunity. For example, it can be used to stimulate hatred, to set one group of people against another. Tolstoy disagrees with Plato but he treats his view with respect. He says it is preferable to the view that the aim of art is pleasure. For at least Plato recognizes that art is a serious business, having important consequences for human life.
