Between Life and Work

Art as a sign of the "human figure" in the thought of Tzvetan Todorov

Abstract

The paper focuses on art as an intermediate space “between” ethics and aesthetics, trying to highlight the relationship of mutual influence between these two areas, starting from some reflections on art proposed by Tzvetan Todorov in different places and contexts of his production. In particular, it aims to highlight how the author’s interest in literature and visual arts is rooted in the broader attempt to understand the human being, in anthropological, social and political terms. In this sense, this paper’s purpose is to show how both the analysis conducted by Todorov in literary criticism and the numerous writings dedicated to the visual arts have as a prerequisite the clarification of the «relationship between “life” and “work”» by which art is conceived as connected to the fragility and incompleteness that characterize the human being.