Soviet Aesthetics Chanchal Chauhan Problems of Contemporary Aesthetics, edited by A Zis, T. Lyubimova, M. Ovsyannikov, Raduga, Moscow, 1984, 333 pp. THERE have been brilliant studies on problems of contemporary aesthetics in the Soviet Union since the days of the invention of philosophical materialism. Marxist aesthetics now is a developed system encompassing a number of issues relating to beauty, art, the creative process and realism. Some of these issues have been taken up in the articles compiled in the book under review. The articles were prepared for the Tenth International Congress in Aesthetics. Though some of the issues which are now more or less clinched reappear in Soviet aesthetics, yet one finds some new dimensions in this volume. "Some Methodological Problems in the Modern Study ofArts", an article by A, Zis takes up the elusive problem of finding a universal methodological approach for the study of art objects. Zis, in his article poses certain questions: Can a universal methodology, applicable to any field of knowledge, however specific, be developed ? Can methodology be regarded as a sort of mirror in which the object of investigation is reflected, or should we continue to proceed from the generally known proposition according to which method is modelled on and conditioned by the specific nature of the object of study? He does not answer the questions but suggests that "in the sphere of art study it is advisable to use the system approach... that orients the investigator to an integral and all-embracing.examination of the object, one that follows from the innef organisation of the object and postulates the dependence of each ele- Joumal of Arts and Ideas 93