The book is devoted to a critical analysis of one of the directions of modern bourgeois philosophical and aesthetic thought, which claims to solve the human problem from a religious-idealistic position. The central theme of personalist aesthetics: the development of the individual by means of art - ensures its popularity among representatives of the artistic intelligentsia. The author reveals the scientific inconsistency and reactionary essence of pseudo-humanistic constructions of personalist theory, while at the same time showing the inapplicability of the ideas of personalism in literary and artistic criticism.