In pursuit of understanding art and beauty (in pursuit of defining it), I begin with Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). But as I begin to look in to Aquinas, Joyce finds me:
— Art, said Stephen, is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end...
— Aquinas, said Stephen, says that is beautiful the apprehension of which pleases...
— Static therefore, said Stephen. Plato, I believe, said that beauty is the splendour of truth. I don’t think that
it has a meaning, but the true and the beautiful are akin. Truth is beheld by the intellect which is appeased by the
most satisfying relations of the intelligible; beauty is beheld by the imagination which is appeased by the most
satisfying relations of the sensible. The first step in the direction of truth is to understand the frame and scope of
the intellect itself, to comprehend the act itself of intellection. Aristotle’s entire system of philosophy rests upon
his book of psychology and that, I think, rests on his statement that the same attribute cannot at the same time and in
the same connexion belong to and not belong to the same subject. The first step in the direction of beauty is to
understand the frame and scope of the imagination, to comprehend the act itself of esthetic apprehension. Is that
clear?
— But what is beauty? asked Lynch impatiently. Out with another definition. Something we see and like! Is that the
best you and Aquinas can do?...
— This hypothesis, Stephen repeated, is the other way out: that, though the same object may not seem beautiful to
all people, all people who admire a beautiful object find in it certain relations which satisfy and coincide with the
stages themselves of all esthetic apprehension. These relations of the sensible, visible to you through one form and to
me through another, must be therefore the necessary qualities of beauty. Now, we can return to our old friend saint
Thomas for another pennyworth of wisdom. (Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)
Randy Stice writes:
"Aquinas taught that beautiful things possess three qualities: integritas, consonantia, and claritas. Integritas refers to completeness and perfection—nothing essential is lacking, nothing extraneous is present. Consonantia is the quality of proportionality in relation to an end, “the goal that God had in mind for it.”7 Claritas, the third element, is the power of an object to reveal its ontological reality. Umberto Eco describes it as “the fundamental communicability of form, which is made actual in relation to someone’s looking at or seeing of the object. The rationality that belongs to every form is the ‘light’ which manifests itself to aesthetic seeing.”8 Something that is truly beautiful has all of its constituent elements (integrates), is proportional to its ultimate purpose (consonantia), and manifests its essential reality (clarets).
It
is important to note that the concept of beauty as describe by Umberto Eco (Author of 'The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas), is particular to the sense of sight. I believe Integritas,
Consonantia and Claritas may belong to to any sensual encounter. I
am someone who believes in six senses, including the mind as a sense--similarly Buddhist philosophy believes in the mind as a sixth sense.
I have just placed the order to read Umberto Eco's book...and will be reading more from Joyce.
