Arts of the Beautiful

by Étienne Gilson

With his usual lucidity, Etienne Gilson addresses the idea that "art is the making of beauty for beauty's own sake." By distinguishing between aesthetics, which promotes art as a form of knowledge, and philosophy, which focuses on the presence of the artist's own talent or genius, Gilson maintains that art belongs to a different category entirely, the category of "making." Gilson's intellectually stimulating meditation on the relation of beauty and art is indispensable to philosophers and artists alike.

Genres: Philosophy, Art, Nonfiction, Theology, Catholic

189 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Étienne Henri Gilson was born into a Roman Catholic family in Paris on 13 June 1884. He was educated at a number of Roman Catholic schools in Paris before attending lycée Henri IV in 1902, where he studied philosophy. Two years later he enrolled at the Sorbonne, graduating in 1907 after having studied under many fine scholars, including Lucien Lévy Bruhl, Henri Bergson and Emile Durkheim.
Gilson taught in a number of high schools after his graduation and worked on a doctoral thesis on Descartes, which he successfully completed (Sorbonne) in 1913. On the strength of advice from his teacher, Lévy Bruhl, he began to study medieval philosophy in great depth, coming to see Descartes as having strong connections with medieval philosophy, although often finding more merit in the medieval works he saw as connected than in Descartes himself. He was later to be highly esteemed for his work in medieval philosophy and has been described as something of a saviour to the field.
From 1913 to 1914 Gilson taught at the University of Lille. His academic career was postponed during the First World War while he took up military service. During his time in the army he served as second lieutenant in a machine-gun regiment and was awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravery upon relief from his duties. After the war, he returned to academic life at Lille and (also) Strasbourg, and in 1921 he took up an appointment at the Sorbonne teaching the history of medieval philosophy. He remained at the Sorbonne for eleven years prior to becoming Professor of Medieval Philosophy at the College de France in 1932. During his Sorbonne years and throughout his continuing career Gilson had the opportunity to travel extensively to North America, where he became highly influential as a historian and medievalist, demonstrating a number of previously undetermined important differences among the period’s greatest figures.

Gilson’s Gifford Lectures, delivered at Aberdeen in 1931 and 1932, titled ‘The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy’, were published in his native language (L’espirit de la philosophie medieval, 1932) before being translated into English in 1936. Gilson believed that a defining feature of medieval philosophy was that it operated within a framework endorsing a conviction to the existence of God, with a complete acceptance that Christian revelation enabled the refinement of meticulous reason. In this regard he described medieval philosophy as particularly ‘Christian’ philosophy.

Gilson married in 1908 and the union produced three children, two daughters and one son. Sadly, his wife died of leukaemia in late 1949. In 1951 he relinquished his chair at the College de France in order to attend to responsibilities he had at the Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto, Canada, an institute he had been invited to establish in 1929. Gilson died 19 September 1978 at the age of ninety-four.

Reviews

[David Haines · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent analysis of the arts in general, looking at the purpose of the arts (to make beautiful things), the role of the artist in art, distinguishing talent and genius, beauty as a transcendental (and its relation to the other transcendentals). A must read.

[Rhesa]

Here Gilson, the noted French philosopher and historian laid down his thoughts about arts in 8 essays. I just read the first chapter, here I summarize it in 3 points:

1] Art is not a kind of knowledge, but it falls in the area called making. We confuse teaching art with teaching art appreciation. in the order of the fine arts, knowing is making, hence what is not directly relevant to the making of a work is ABOUT art, NOT art itself. I believe this insight also applies to sociology of law & "pure" law.

2] There are 2 kinds of beauty: Industrial & Fine Arts. Industrial art is like the beauty of for example jet turbine, car engines etc, they have their own beauty but it's different than beauty characterized by Fine Arts.

3] Art doesnt neccesarily have anything to do with truth, truth is a
concept nearer to the realm of being than beauty.

Hmm that s just chapter 1, still 7 chapters to go...I think it's going to be hard going but I don't know...

[Steven Felicelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

like most books on aesthetics, it's pretty dated (grappling with specious notions of 'Truth' & 'Beauty') - but the debate over making vs. expressing (/reproducing/interpreting) is still worth examining in the what-is-Art arena imo

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a decent work of aesthetics, but there are too many howlers: Gilson refers to Saint-Saën's fourth symphony when he means the third; he quotes Schumann's motif of the "gold" thread that is actually red; and much worse, and inexcusable in this sort of book, he criticizes Bernini for the design of St. Peter's façade, which was designed by Maderno. Aesthetic philosophy has been a notoriously amateur field, and I'm reminded of a young Santayana calling painting one of the "plastic" arts. I mention this because Gilson makes the same mistake.

Gilson's actually insightful moments are on the varying degrees of aesthetic insensibility. He coins "noble philistinism" to describe the fawning language of some professors and critics who, incapable of insight, are at least using their position to honor works of art. The subchapter on "classroom philistinism" is priceless for anyone who has had to suffer through undergrad courses on, say, Joyce's prose style. Aesthetic experience cannot be explained to people who lack culture.

[Marcos Junior · Rating 3 out of 5]

Resgatando o entendimento medieval de São Tomás, Gilson mostra como a arte está na dimensão do fazer e não se deve julgar pelos outros transcendentais (o bom e o verdadeiro). A beleza é seu critério último e filosofar sobre a arte é entender o nosso limite em copreendê-la apropriadamente. No fim, abundam os filisteus, que abundam na crítica e nas escolas, que subordinam a arte a alguma disciplina da ordem do conhecimento, perdendo nesta operação a essência da própria arte.

[Larissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE literature on the philosophies of art, beauty and aesthetic interpretation. Loved this one.

[Graham Hoppstock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really quite good and helpful. Annoying about the idealist, but not without some point and effect.

[Eduardo Costa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bom, porém o gilson desvia um pouco da temática.

[Simone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good and very worth reading. Also don’t agree with all of it, but I do agree that art is making while esthetics is knowing. The primacy of being lines of thought are indispensable.