<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>Tzvetan Todorov, one of Europe's leading intellectuals, explores the complex relations between art, politics, and ethics in the essays that make up <I>The Limits of Art</I>. In one essay, “Artists and Dictators,” Todorov traces the intimate relationship between avant-garde art and radical politics in pre-revolutionary Russia, pre-fascist Italy, and pre-Nazi Germany. Todorov sets forth the radical idea that the project of totalitarian dictators and avant-garde artists actually “emerged from the same womb”: both artists and dictators set out to make it new—be it art or society.</P> <P style="TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>Further troubling the role of art in the world at large, in “Art and Ethics” Todorov re-examines the age-old question of what can be expected from art and whether it should be emancipated from ethics. Must art be morally instructive, or should it be self-sufficient and concept-free? The answer is not an either/or to Todorov, who believes, like Baudelaire, that art has both cognitive and ethical aspects to it—even if it is presented as art for art's sake.</P> <P style="TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>Throughout the essays in <I>The Limits of Art</I>, Todorov insists on the essential need for artists to recognize, understand, and even love the world outside.</P> <P style="TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>“Todorov harbors no illusions about the mix of good and bad that enters into the fabric of all that is human. . . . He speaks throughout in his own voice, with rare breadth of sympathy and with a fine eye for the complexities of human experience.”—<I>New Republic</I></P> <P style="TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>“Like the authors he focuses on, Todorov is tolerant, understanding and wise.”—<I>Observer</I></P> <div></DIV>