Aesthetics for idiots: truth and beauty in Elif Batuman’s The Idiot

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.