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The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas
The well-known Italian semiotician and novelist Umberto Eco discloses for the first time to English-speaking readers the unsuspected richness, breadth, complexity, and originality of the aesthetic theories advanced by the influential medieval thinker Thomas Aquinas, heretofore known principally as a scholastic theologian. Inheriting his basic ideas and conceptions of art and beauty from the classical world, Aquinas transformed or modified these ideas in the light of Christian theology and of developments in metaphysics and optics during the thirteenth century.
Setting the stage with an account of the vivid aesthetic and artistic sensibility that flourished in medieval times, Eco examines Aquinas's conception of transcendental beauty, his theory of aesthetic perception or visio, and his account of the three conditions of beauty--integrity, proportion, and clarity--that, centuries later, emerged again in the writings of the young James Joyce. He examines the concrete application of these theories in Aquinas's reflections on God, mankind, music, poetry, and scripture. He discusses Aquinas's views on art and compares his poetics with Dante's. In a final chapter added to the second Italian edition, Eco examines how Aquinas's aesthetics came to be absorbed and superseded in late medieval times and draws instructive parallels between Thomistic methodology and contemporary structuralism. As the only book-length treatment of Aquinas's aesthetics available in English, this volume should interest philosophers, medievalists, historians, critics, and anyone involved in poetics, aesthetics, or the history of ideas.
287 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
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About the author
Umberto Eco
947 books11.9k followersUmberto Eco was an Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular 1980 novel The Name of the Rose, a historical mystery combining semiotics in fiction with biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory, as well as Foucault's Pendulum, his 1988 novel which touches on similar themes.
Eco wrote prolifically throughout his life, with his output including children's books, translations from French and English, in addition to a twice-monthly newspaper column "La Bustina di Minerva" (Minerva's Matchbook) in the magazine L'Espresso beginning in 1985, with his last column (a critical appraisal of the Romantic paintings of Francesco Hayez) appearing 27 January 2016. At the time of his death, he was an Emeritus professor at the University of Bologna, where he taught for much of his life. In the 21st century, he has continued to gain recognition for his 1995 essay "Ur-Fascism", where Eco lists fourteen general properties he believes comprise fascist ideologies.
Eco wrote prolifically throughout his life, with his output including children's books, translations from French and English, in addition to a twice-monthly newspaper column "La Bustina di Minerva" (Minerva's Matchbook) in the magazine L'Espresso beginning in 1985, with his last column (a critical appraisal of the Romantic paintings of Francesco Hayez) appearing 27 January 2016. At the time of his death, he was an Emeritus professor at the University of Bologna, where he taught for much of his life. In the 21st century, he has continued to gain recognition for his 1995 essay "Ur-Fascism", where Eco lists fourteen general properties he believes comprise fascist ideologies.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 25, 2023
This is easily one of the best books I’ve ever read on Beauty and Aesthetics.
Eco directly addresses the tension I've been feeling between Augustinian and Thomistic understandings/connections to Art, inspiration, divine ideas, and the differences of approach from signs/shadows and hylomorphism.
This is Eco's dissertation, originally released in Italian in the 1950's, and later translated to English in the 80's. It is NOT accessible for those unfamiliar with Augustinian/Thomist metaphysics, philosophical theology, or transcendental debates.
Eco directly addresses the tension I've been feeling between Augustinian and Thomistic understandings/connections to Art, inspiration, divine ideas, and the differences of approach from signs/shadows and hylomorphism.
This is Eco's dissertation, originally released in Italian in the 1950's, and later translated to English in the 80's. It is NOT accessible for those unfamiliar with Augustinian/Thomist metaphysics, philosophical theology, or transcendental debates.
April 1, 2014
I really did enjoy this. It is just marvellous, full, but clear. Eco's depth and grasp of medieval theology and philosophy is truly astounding.
March 5, 2023
Read this book only if you’re a big nerd about either aesthetics or Thomas Aquinas or preferably both. Otherwise it would be intensely boring.
September 14, 2011
Umberto Eco's reading of Aquinas is sympathetic, far from the extremes of uncritical Thomist fanpersonship (which is how he characterizes vast swathes of the existing literature at the time of writing in 1956; even the neo-Thomists he chooses to cite receive significant pushback) or offhand kneejerk dismissal of all things medieval, or in fact everything written about aesthetics before 1954. He teases fascinating ideas out of superficially unprepossessing material: Aquinas's ideas about beauty are scattered throughout his work, not set forth as a unified section of his unifying works, and briefly quoted may seem simplistic to the point of inanity–"that which pleases when it is seen", indeed.
By situating them within their proper context and striving to illuminate them, Eco may or may not convince you that these ideas have any merit in themselves. In his conclusion, appended at a later date, he proposes a more modest and subtle aim of the foregoing work:
By situating them within their proper context and striving to illuminate them, Eco may or may not convince you that these ideas have any merit in themselves. In his conclusion, appended at a later date, he proposes a more modest and subtle aim of the foregoing work:
Whenever philosophy claims, "This is how things really are," it performs an act of mystification. Aquinas's image of an immutable reality was mystificatory, when confronted with facts that demanded something quite different. The image of reality found in modern aesthetics is also mystificatory, when confronted with other facts. […] If we cannot say that one system of thought is more or less true than another, if all systems represent the effort to rationalize the historical relations found at a particular moment in the development of Western society, then they are all of equal value. Medieval and modern aesthetics are of equal value, provided that they are taken as explanatory models to point us in new directions, as a machinery with which to face the problems that now confront us.This may not seem like sufficient inducement to wade through 200 pages of extreme abstrusity; in which case, if you are nevertheless a fan of Eco's more popular works and mildly curious about this one, the conclusion alone might suffice in a pinch.
January 22, 2011
An exceptional book that provides a great incite into both Aquinas' understanding of the concept of beauty as a transcendental name of God, but it is also a thorough examination of the psychological framework in which desire operates relative to truth and goodness.
May 19, 2013
As is to be expected, Umberto Eco is strong on aesthetic analysis and weak on theological reflection. It is worth a read if you enjoy medieval aesthetics. Obtuse otherwise.
August 21, 2019
This book happens to have been the author's first book, and while it was a book whose contents were deeply interesting to me, they are not the sort of contents that I think would be of interest to most readers. To appreciate this book, likely a few of the following questions would have to be answered in the affirmative. Are you interested in philosophical discussions about beauty and its role as a virtue? Do you care about the thoughts of Thomas Aquinas about anything? Are you interested in the philosophical musings of medieval Hellenistic Christian thought? Are you interested in the way that questions about beauty intersect with other philosophical concerns? If you answered yes to at least one of these questions, you would likely get something out of this book. Eco is certainly sympathetic to the philosophical thinking of Thomas Aquinas and makes a strong effort to uncover a fair-minded Thomist approach to aesthetics within Aquinas' writings. Admittedly the subject is somewhat obscure, and the author's philosophical interests are likely not very common, but as someone who found much to agree with albeit much to be puzzled about in this book, I must admit that I am part of the small audience to which this book is aimed.
This particular book is a bit more than 200 pages and is divided into eight chapters. The book begins with a preface that justifies a revision and further edition of the book as well as a note from the translator. The main contents of the book begin with a discussion of the historiography and plan of research concerning the thoughts of medieval thinkers about the subject of aesthetics (1). After this comes a look at beauty as a transcendental value in both Aquinas' texts as well as with regards to modern interpretations (2). After that there is a discussion of the function and nature of the vision of aesthetics in medieval thinking (3) and a discussion of the formal criteria of beauty, not least how it relates to other concerns that Aquinas had relating to integrity and clarity (4). There is then a discussion of concrete problems of Aquinas' view of aesthetics and its applications in such areas as the beauty of Christ, mankind, music, play and playful verse as well questions of symbolism, allegory, and poetics (5). After this the author discusses a theory of art (6) that can be drawn from Aquinas' writings on beauty as well as a look at the question of judgment (7) and then a conclusion that wraps up the author's thoughts.
Again, this book is a philosophical inquiry about an often neglected area of an important medieval thinker who is mainly of interest to traditional contemporary Catholics, and as such is certainly not aimed at a very large audience. Yet even for readers outside of philosphical Hellenistic Christianity, the author does present some striking insights even if much of the text is admittedly challenging to get through, and that comes particularly in the author's insights that any philosophical system is going to contain within it some sort of contradiction to reality, for any model of reality is going to oversimplify and distort that reality so that it may be conceptually understood. Moreover, we can only read out of a text those layers and aspects that correspond to what we understand and recognize, and so our readings frequently distort what we come into contact with because we can seldom grasp all that a good author has to offer. It can be readily seen that this book will offer limited use for a reader seeking to appreciate Aquinas through Eco's writings (or that of any other commentator) not least because we can only appreciate through a commentary those aspects of the original text that the commentator was able to relate to where we can relate to the commentator as well.
This particular book is a bit more than 200 pages and is divided into eight chapters. The book begins with a preface that justifies a revision and further edition of the book as well as a note from the translator. The main contents of the book begin with a discussion of the historiography and plan of research concerning the thoughts of medieval thinkers about the subject of aesthetics (1). After this comes a look at beauty as a transcendental value in both Aquinas' texts as well as with regards to modern interpretations (2). After that there is a discussion of the function and nature of the vision of aesthetics in medieval thinking (3) and a discussion of the formal criteria of beauty, not least how it relates to other concerns that Aquinas had relating to integrity and clarity (4). There is then a discussion of concrete problems of Aquinas' view of aesthetics and its applications in such areas as the beauty of Christ, mankind, music, play and playful verse as well questions of symbolism, allegory, and poetics (5). After this the author discusses a theory of art (6) that can be drawn from Aquinas' writings on beauty as well as a look at the question of judgment (7) and then a conclusion that wraps up the author's thoughts.
Again, this book is a philosophical inquiry about an often neglected area of an important medieval thinker who is mainly of interest to traditional contemporary Catholics, and as such is certainly not aimed at a very large audience. Yet even for readers outside of philosphical Hellenistic Christianity, the author does present some striking insights even if much of the text is admittedly challenging to get through, and that comes particularly in the author's insights that any philosophical system is going to contain within it some sort of contradiction to reality, for any model of reality is going to oversimplify and distort that reality so that it may be conceptually understood. Moreover, we can only read out of a text those layers and aspects that correspond to what we understand and recognize, and so our readings frequently distort what we come into contact with because we can seldom grasp all that a good author has to offer. It can be readily seen that this book will offer limited use for a reader seeking to appreciate Aquinas through Eco's writings (or that of any other commentator) not least because we can only appreciate through a commentary those aspects of the original text that the commentator was able to relate to where we can relate to the commentator as well.
April 28, 2017
My favorite part of this book is when the Summa (or any major system of thought or values) is called what it really is, a computer. Also, the last sentence of this book should make anyone call Eco a saint. It is apparent that an arrogant trust in a "Summa" will lead to irrational thought, but it is also apparent that we become less comprehensible and far less universal when we proceed with the dialectic to a point where we can see the faults in a "faultless" system. The concluding chapter has a far different tone than the rest of this book, and I think that's because he wrote it after coming back to his first work - feeling like he was now "standing on the shoulders of giants" and could come back to properly analyze Aquinas. The conclusion is almost a defense to his fellow philosophers, claiming that he is now "with it" and has abandoned the medieval school of thought which he made the subject of his first scholarly work. In the end though, I think he has achieved what is good: he has properly pissed off any thick-headed bible-thumper while with almost equal enthusiasm, despises the modern relativism we see today in art as having no more integrity than the medieval computer of Aquinas' Summa Theologicae.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews