The document discusses medieval aesthetics and key philosophers, including Augustine, Aquinas, and Dante. It provides background on their views of beauty, including that beauty emanates from God for Augustine and involves properties like proportion and harmony for Aquinas. It also discusses how Dante's Divine Comedy was influenced by Aquinas' philosophy and used allegory to reveal the true essence of individuals.

1. MEDIEVAL
AESTHETICS

2. INTRODUCTION
St. Augustine St. Thomas Aquinas Dante Aleghieri

3. INTRODUCTION
 Medieval philosophers did not develop a
system of aesthetics but they do provide an
interesting entry point to the study of
aesthetics.
 Ideas concerning the beautiful are spread
throughout their writings, gathered and
developed by later philosophers.

4. INTRODUCTION
 Medieval thinkers borrowed and improved
and revised notions of art from Plato,
Aristotle, Plotinus to contribute new
concepts/theories of art and beauty.

5. KEY CONCEPTS
 Platonism and Neoplatonism
 Doctrine of Forms
 Beauty
 Proportion
 Light: Natural and Divine
 Symbolism: Creation revealed (or symbol
of God), therefore, symbolic meaning could
be attributed through artwork.

6. THE PERIOD
 Medieval Period, Middle Ages
 5th to 15th century
 European History
 Antiquity, Medieval period, Modern period
 Early, High and Late Middle Ages

7. THE PERIOD
 High Middle Ages: after 1000 AD
 Increase in population
 Technological and agricultural innovations
 Manorialism/feudalism
 11th century, increased intellectual life

8. THE PERIOD
 Scholasticism-- an attempt by 12th- and 13th-
century scholars to reconcile authoritative
texts, most notably Aristotle and the Bible.
 Monasticism
 Bubonic plague
 Illuminated manuscript/Metalwork
 Mendicant orders- Franciscan and
Dominicans

9. THE PERIOD

10. THE PERIOD
Outstanding Achievements:
 Intellectual life: scholasticism/founding of
universities
 Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas
 Paintings of Giotto
 Poetry of Dante and Chaucer
 Marco Polo’s travels
 Gothic cathedrals

11. The art of stained glass, which served illuminative, decorative
and
didactic functions.

12. THE PERIOD
Miniature of Richard of
Wallingford, Abbot of
St. Albans,
mathematician and
inventor of a
mechanical astronomic
al clock. He is shown
seated at his desk
measuring with a pair
of compasses.

13. Source Text:
Augustine/Aquinas
Medieval Theory of Aesthetics
 by Michael Spicher
 University of South Carolina
 From the Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy
http://www.iep.utm.edu/m-aesthe/

14. THE PHILOSOPHER
Saint Augustine
Born, in present-day
Algeria
on Nov. 13, 354
Died, August 28, 430, also
in Algeria
Theologian and
philosopher
De Musica, Of True
Religion

15. THE PHILOSOPHER
Confessions
City of God

16. St. Augustine
 Set the stage for Medieval Christian
philosophers
 He drew on Platonist and neo-Platonist
traditions

17. St. Augustine
Distinctions:
 Ex nihilo – creation of God
 Ex materia – creation of artists
 Goal of the arts: mimesis or imitation
 God’s creation: not related to the notion of
mimesis

18. St. Augustine
 God’s beauty emanates out to natural
things through His act of creation.
 Framework is from Neoplatonic thought
particularly by Plotinus.

19. St. Augustine
Hierarchy of beautiful things based on form:
 Formless (matter) – without beauty
 More form – more beauty
 Perfect form (God) – supremely beautiful

20. St. Augustine
 God created matter, which was initially
formless, “without any beauty.”
 The earth occupies the lowest form of
beauty, and things become more beautiful
as they possess more form, and less of the
void.
 God is supremely beautiful, since only God
possesses perfect form.

21. St. Augustine
 Rhythm –important to St. Augustine’s
aesthetic theory
Rhythm:
 Came from God
 Immutable/eternal
 Just like math, is already pre-determined
 Can be discovered through investigation

22. St. Augustine
Main elements in Augustine’s theory of
beauty
 Unity
 Equality
 Number
 Proportion
 Order

23. St. Augustine
 I. Everything exists as a separate whole
unit; therefore, each thing has a unity.
 Everything that exists has a potential to be
beautiful. If it exists then it will also be a
unified whole.
 The more unified something is, the more
beautiful it will be.
 Likeness or equality: the existence of
individual things as units…, gives rise to
proportion, measure and number.

24. St. Augustine
3) Number measures rhythm. It is the basis of
rhythm. Number and rhythm are both
immutable.
4) In all arts, it is symmetry [or proportion]
that gives pleasure, preserving unity and
making the whole beautiful. (Of True
Religion,xxx)
5) Everything is beautiful that is in due order.
(Of True Religion, xli)

25. St. Augustine
 The degree to which things are in their
proper place is the degree to which they are
beautiful.

26. THE PHILOSOPHER
Thomas Aquinas
Born January 28, 1225 in Sicily
and died on March 7, 1274
Catholic priest, philosopher,
theologian
Scholastic, Thomist

27. THE PHILOSOPHER
Summa Theologica
Thomas' most significant work is his
Summa theologiae or 'summary of
Theology,' a gigantic work which
attempts to present all of Christian
theology as systematically as
possible.
Thomas worked on it from 1266
through 1273. Then, when he was
nearly finished, he underwent an
experience so intense that, as he
himself explained, everything he had
written seemed like straw.
He completely stopped writing and
died three months later. Thomas was

28. Thomas Aquinas
 Definition of beauty
 Standards of beauty
 Question of whether beauty is
transcendental
 Beauty is that which gives pleasure when
seen. (activity of contemplation or mind)

29. Thomas Aquinas
Mind: responsible for recognizing the beauty
of a given object.
Knowledge’s 2 aspects:
 1) passive
 2) active
 Passive- receiving of data from extra mental
reality
 Active – gives abstracted forms new
existence in the mind of the knower

30. Thomas Aquinas
 Form and beauty of an object exists in the
mind of the viewer
 Senses: important for cognition: employed
in perceiving the beautiful
 Beauty is objective. It resides in the object
and not in the mind.

31. Thomas Aquinas
Criteria/standards of beauty (ST, I.39.8c)
 Actuality
 Proportion
 Radiance
 Integrity

32. Thomas Aquinas
 Exposition of properties:from Armand
Maurer, Umberto Eco, Etienne Gilson
 Actuality:
 Beauty is grounded in the actual existence
of the object.
 “For without existence there is no being;
there is simply nothing. So the actuality of
existence is the source and origin of the
whole being, including its beauty.” (Maurer)

33. Thomas Aquinas
 Second aspect of actuality: Form
 A tree is beautiful to the degree in which it
perfectly attains to the form of a tree and,
likewise, a dog would be beautiful
according to the form of a dog.

34. Thomas Aquinas
 Third aspect: Action
 Action completes the actuality of existence
and form.
 Actuality: necessary condition for grounding
beauty in anything

35. Thomas Aquinas
 A dancer is most completely a dancer when
she performs the act of dancing.
 A painter is most beautiful when he is
painting.

36. Thomas Aquinas
 Proportion:
 Important to beauty
 The parts of the whole are in harmony with
one another.
 An object may be symmetrical, but it is
more important that it is well-balanced.

37. Thomas Aquinas
 ST: Proportion is twofold.
 In one sense it means a certain relation of
one quantity to another, according as
double, treble and equal are species of
proportion.

38. Thomas Aquinas
 In another sense of every relation of one
thing to another is called proportion. And in
this sense there can be a proportion of the
creature to God, inasmuch as it is related to
Him as the effect of its cause, and as
potentiality to its act; and in this way the
created intellect can be proportioned to
know God.

39. Thomas Aquinas
 Radiance: luminosity that emanates from a
beautiful object, which initially seizes the
attention of the beholder.
 Thomas connects beautiful things with
divine light.
 “All form, through which things have being,
is a certain participation in the divine clarity
[orlight]. And this is what [Dionysius] adds,
that particulars are beautiful because of
their own nature – that is, because of their
form” (Commentary on the Divine Names)

40. Thomas Aquinas
 Connecting again to the beauty of God as
the cause of all beauty.

41. Thomas Aquinas
 Wholeness. The last standard of beauty for
Thomas is wholeness or integrity.
 ST: The ‘first’ perfection is that according to
which a thing is substantially perfect, and
this perfection is the form of the whole;
which form results from the whole
having its parts complete.

42. Thomas Aquinas
 First meaning: it must exist
 Second meaning: it is perfect or complete in
operation
 In short, perfection in being and operation.
 Perfection: possessing the ability
or quality necessary for completion

43. Thomas Aquinas
 Transcendental: convertible with being.
 Transcendentals can also be found in
degrees.
 For example, every being is not perfectly or
completely good. Or, every being is good to
a degree.

44. Thomas Aquinas
 Aquinas’ list of transcendentals”
 It is a thing.
 It is one.
 It is true.
 It is good.

45. Thomas Aquinas
 On beauty:
 “…beauty relates to the cognitive faculty; for
beautiful things are those which please
when seen. Hence beauty consists in due
proportion; for the senses delight in things
duly proportioned, …”

46. THE PHILOSOPHER
Dante Aleghieri
Born on 1265 in Florence and
died on September 9,1321 in
Ravenna, Italy
Statesman, poet, language
theorist
Supreme Poet and Father of
the
Italian Language

47. THE PHILOSOPHER
Dante’s letters (named Epistulae in
Latin) are 13, all written in Latin
language.
They are about various topics and they
all are a very important biographical
source on Dante’s life.
Originally there were more, but some of
them have been lost.
Letters 5 - 10 are all about Emperor
Henry VII and his arriving in Italy.
All the letters are written in a very
affected and refined style,
according to the rules of the times.

48. THE PHILOSOPHER
One of the greatest works of world literature.
The poem is an imaginative and allegorical
vision of the afterlife, a summation of the
medieval world-view from the Western Church.
Divided into 3 parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and
Paradiso.
On the surface, the poem describes Dante's
travels through Hell, Purgatory, and
Heaven; but at a deeper level, it
represents allegorically the soul's journey
towards God. At this deeper level, Dante
It helped establish the Tuscan dialect, in which
it is written, as the standardized Italian
language.

49. THE PHILOSOPHER
Draws on medieval Christian
theology and philosophy,
especially Thomistic philosophy
and Summa Theologica of Thomas
Aquinas.
Consequently, the Divine
Comedy has been called
"the Summa in verse“.
Gustave Dore, The Styx, 1857
Illustration for Divine Comedy

50. Dante
 Dante’s aesthetic –at once medieval and a
reflection of what is to come in the
Renaissance
 Series of letters to one of his patrons
 Letter ten –explanation and justification of
his poetic method

51. Dante
 Remarkable combination of philosophical
explication and self-critical commentary
 Metaphysics of Aristotle: as reinterpreted in
the Christian context by Thomas Aquinas
served as important background

52. Dante
 Paved for a philosophy that stressed the
importance of the INDIVIDUAL in relation to
the world.
 Metaphysics became more concrete and
this-worldly

53. Dante
 Aquinas: levels that make up the universe:
 Substance and accidents
 Substantial form and prime matter
 Act and potency
 Essence and existence
 --each has special meaning by Aristotle
 Used by Aquinas to redescribe reality

54. Dante
 Everything combines actuality and
potentiality.
 For example, an oak tree actualizes a
potential to be an oak tree
 But it also remains potentially a piece of
firewood or a pile of ashes, neither of which
is no longer an oak tree
 Only God is pure act with no unrealized
potentiality.

55. Dante
 Everything that exists exists as some
essential being, but its essence is not its
existence.
 Essence defines a thing; existence merely
locates it.
 More concrete and specific than other
theological and philosophical systems

56. Dante
 Dante constructed this metaphysics and
shaped it into constructing a poetic world
 Hell, purgatory and heaven are formed
according to the picture drawn by Aquinas
 Everything has an ordered place
 Its nature is determined by its true form
 Concrete existence exhibits that form for all
to see

57. Dante
 Poetic world vs. ordinary world
 Poetic world shows the true nature of
people and unravels them from their
accidents
 Appearances are stripped to show each
individual in his or her precise circle of hell,
purgatory or heaven.
 Art: able to define and disclose the essence
of individuals and their place in an eternal
order in an exemplary way

58. Dante
 Neo-Platonism remained very important to
Dante as well.
 It provided: essential element in early
Renaissance poetics and art theory.
 Renaissance aesthetics: thoroughly neo-
Platonic
 But it is a new one transformed by the more
concrete metaphysics of Aristotle and
Aquinas

59. Dante
 For Dante (and other Renaissance poets):
the soul must undertake a journey to reach
its goal of purification.
 For him, the soul must undertake a journey
to reach its goal of purification.
 A second metaphor reinforces this
individuality.
 The second goal: reach his beloved

60. Dante
 Love is also a medieval metaphor,
developed as a secular alternative to
religion in the cults of courtly love and in
troubadour poetry, and also a metaphor for
union with God in much mystical theology.
 Dante and his contemporaries: made love
both specific and individual

61. Dante
 Beatrice is Dante’s beloved, an object of
real passion which undergoes symbolic
transformation in the poetry.

62. Dante
 Aesthetic philosophy became more
concrete and individualistic in the
Renaissance.
 Allegorical theory: staple of biblical
interpretation in the late classical and
medieval periods
 Allegory: a way of reading the signs that
have been built into the natural and
historical world by a God who controls
everything and destines it for a specific end.

63. Dante
Dante’s allegory:
 1) literal meaning – what happens
 2) allegorical meaning – its significance
Significance can be broken down into:
 Symbolic
 Moral
 Universal or anagogical meaning

64. Dante
 Dante’s allegory is a historical allegory.
 Real people and real political events figured
in the Divine Comedy.
 Dante turns the divine plan into a way of
understanding history.
 In the process, art becomes individual
expression; it depended on individual
emotions.

65. SUMMARY

66. READINGS FOR NEXT
MEETING
 18TH CENTURY BRITISH AESTHETICS
 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aesthetics-
18th-british/#Sha
 IMMANUEL KANT’S THEORY OF
JUDGEMENT
 http://www.iep.utm.edu/kantaest/
 Introduction up to Kant’s Aesthetics

67. HOMEWORK 2
 Based on the properties of medieval art
mentioned in the reference source:
 Select a medieval art form or artwork and
expound/elaborate on it using these
properties as reference or framework.
 Examples: stained glass, illuminated
manuscript, architecture such as
Gothic churches, tapestry, engraving,
paintings, etc.

68. HOMEWORK 2
 Inclusion:
 Image of the art form or art work
 Caption: Artist (if applicable), Title, medium,
year, size
 Description/purpose
 Essay on why it is a beautiful example of
either proportion, light and color and
symbolism
 Be thorough and straight to the point in your
essay

69. HOMEWORK 2
 Parameters:
 One sheet of bond paper only
 Font size, 11-12
 Calibri or any sans serif font
 Criteria for grading:
 Logical explanation
 Ability to connect with medieval artistic
property
 Correct grammar

70. Name
Course / Section
 Caption (artform, artist, title, artwork, date, medium, etc.)
 Description (5 to 7 sentences)
 Explanation of proportion/color and light/symbolism or allegory (elaborate as
much as possible as long as it fits the entire page)
 Reference(s)