CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

 

 

THE TRANSCENDENTALITY OF BEAUTY

 

IN THE METAPHYSICAL THOUGHT OF THOMAS AQUINAS

 

BY

 

NATHAN D. MARCH

 

MSGR. JOHN F. WIPPEL

PHIL 356 METAPHYSICS II

29 APRIL 2004

 

INTRODUCTION

 

St. Thomas, quoting Pseudo-Dionysius, remarks: “omnis homo amat pulchrum.”[1] Everyone loves the beautiful.  Yet, as Armand Maurer notes, “we look in vain in the immense body of his writings for a detailed and comprehensive treatment of beauty.”[2] In chapter eight of his book Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas, Jan A. Aertsen takes up the question of the transcendentality of the beautiful in Aquinas. He notes that no text explicitly states its transcendentality.[3] Yet, he remarks, “In the research on Thomas of the last decades, more attention has been devoted to the beautiful than any other transcendental mode of being.”[4] In the opinion of Armand Maurer, Thomas “clearly considered beauty to be a transcendental mode of being.”[5] Gilson calls it the “forgotten transcendental.”[6]  Jacques Maritain calls beauty “the splendor of all the transcendentals together.”[7]

Aertsen’s investigation into the status of beauty in Aquinas begins with an enumeration of attempts by various scholars to find a distinct place for beauty as a transcendental. He suggests two questions for assessing the various claims. 1.) What universal mode of being does the beautiful express that is not yet expressed by the other transcendentals? 2.) What is the place of beauty in the order of these properties?[8] He critically examines Kovach’s position that Thomas over time developed his theory, influenced by the De divinis nominibu of pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, to include beauty as a transcendental.[9] Given the lack of textual evidence supporting the view that beauty is a transcendental, Aertsen rejects the notion that Aquinas ever considered beauty a general mode of being. After investigating what Thomas actually says concerning beauty, Aertsen suggests what best describes the place of beauty in Thomas is the extension of the true to the good.[10]

DE VERITATE 1.1

 

Thomas never wrote a separate treatise on the transcendentals, yet he made frequent appeal to them in various works indicating their centrality in his metaphysics.[11] The most complete account is contained in De veritate 1.1 concerning the question, “What is truth?”[12] In response to the question, “quid est veritas?” Aquinas begins with a reduction to the principles known per se to the intellect.[13] He holds that which the intellect first conceives as most known and into which it resolves all conceptions is being (ens).[14] All other conceptions of the intellect are taken from some addition of being.[15]

Aquinas immediately recognizes the problem of adding to being.  He states that nothing can be added to being extrinsically in the way a difference is added to a genus or an accident to a subject because if something was added to being it would fall outside of being.[16] Thomas remarks that some things are said to add to being insofar as they express a mode of being not expressed by the name being itself.[17] He accounts for two ways this can happen: that the mode expressed is some special, restricted, mode of being, or the mode expressed is a general mode of being that follows upon every being. The special mode of being is represented by the Aristotelian ten categories: substance and the nine accidents.[18] The general mode of being is further subdivided in two ways: being insofar as it follows upon each and every being from being itself or being insofar as it follows upon one being in relation to another.[19]

The first, the general mode of being insofar as it follows upon each and every being from being itself, happens in two ways depending on how something is expressed in being either affirmatively or negatively. That which is said affirmatively of every being is its essence and expresses the quiddity of a thing.[20] Accordingly the name “thing” (res) is imposed.[21] However, if the mode expresses something negatively that follows upon every being taken absolutely, it indicates indivision.[22] Accordingly the name “one” (unam) is used, because one is nothing other than undivided being.[23]

The second general mode of being, being insofar as it follows upon one being in relation to another is further subdivided: being insofar as it is divided from every other being and being insofar as it is in agreement or conformity with every other being.[24] Insofar as it is divided from every other being, the name “something” (alquid) is given because it expresses another “what”.[25] Aquinas accounts for being in agreement or conformity with every other being by reason of the Aristotelian notion of the soul as “in a certain way all things.”[26]Aquinas recognizes a further final subdivision based on the two powers of the soul: the cognitive and appetitive powers. He notes that being insofar as it expresses agreement with the intellect is called “true” (verum). Being insofar as it expresses agreement with the appetite is called “good” (bonum) which is “that which all things desire.”[27]

Thus, in De veritate 1.1 Aquinas accounts for five distinct mode of being which are as broad in extension as being itself and follow upon every being such that they are found wherever being is found.[28] They are not themselves really distinct from being, but only conceptually and therefore do not imply an addition of something extrinsic to being.[29] The five transcendentals are res, unam, alquid, verum, and bonum. In this account, Thomas does not posit beauty (pulchrum) as a sixth mode of being. Aertsen poses the question that if beauty was a transcendental for Thomas why does he omit it in this his most complete account?[30]  Maritain claims that “the classic table of transcendentals does not exhaust all transcendental value, and if the beautiful is not included, the reason is that it can be reduced to one of them (the good).”[31] Aertsen objects stating that a transcendental must add value to being conceptually in a way not reduced to another transcendental.[32] His position is that beauty is not a “forgotten transcendental.”[33]

 

BEAUTY

 

In Summa theologiae I,5.4 Thomas within the context of his discussion of the good, gives an account of beauty which relates it to goodness. He states in his reply to objection one, that beauty and goodness in a thing are fundamentally identical since they are based upon the same thing, namely, the form.[34] However, he notes that they differ conceptually, for goodness relates to the appetite whereas beauty relates to the cognitive faculty.[35] Since beautiful things are those which please when seen, and the senses delight in things duly proportioned, beauty therefore consists in due proportion.[36]

In Summa theologiae I,39.8 within the discussion of the Trinity and the properties attributed to the divine persons, Aquinas accounts for the essence of beauty.  He notes that beauty includes three conditions: 1.) integrity or completeness 2.) due proportion or harmony 3.) clarity or splendor.[37] However in Summa theologiae II-II,145.2, and II, 180.2, Thomas only mentions two conditions.  Within his discussion of temperance and honesty, he quotes pseudo-Dionysius saying, “Beauty or comeliness results from the concurrence of clarity and due proportion.”[38] And in his reply to objection three in the discussion on the contemplative life he states, “Beauty as stated above consists in a certain clarity and due proportion.”[39] To account for the difference Aertsen notes that the historic and systematic context in which beauty is discussed in I, 39.8, is the theology of Trinity and the doctrine of the Trinitarian appropriations in Hilary of Poitiers and St. Augustine.[40] Further, Aertsen remarks, “the dual formula stems from the authority of Dionysius. Thomas always refers to this text [De divinis nominibus 4.7] when he restricts the features of the beautiful to “consonance” and “clarity”.”[41]

 

PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS

 

Aertsen suggests Thomas’ reference to pseudo-Dionysius merits further investigation since he is the most important authority for the medieval doctrine of the beautiful.[42] In his treatise De divinis nominibus, pseudo-Dionysius provides an explication of the conceptual names of God. For Dionysius, God is the Cause of all, who transcends all, is rightly nameless and yet has the names of everything that is.[43] He begins his discussion of the divine names in chapter four with the name “Good,” which he notes is set apart for God from all other names.[44] “The sacred writers lift up a hymn of praise to this Good. They call it beautiful, beauty, love, and beloved.”[45] It is called Beauty because it is the cause of consonance and clarity in everything.[46] Dionysius continues, “The Beautiful is therefore the same as the Good, for everything looks to the Beautiful and the Good as the cause of being, and there is nothing in the world without a share of the Beautiful and the Good…This- the One, the Good, the Beautiful- is in its uniqueness the Cause of the multitudes of the good and the beautiful. From it derives the existence of everything as being.”[47]

Aersten remarks that, “For Dionysius there is not just a close connection between the good and the beautiful, but even an identity.”[48] The beautiful is the efficient, final, and exemplary cause of all things.[49] “With this thesis of identity the Areopagite is a typical representative of Greek thought, for in Hellenic culture the beautiful and the good are brought together in a single notion.”[50]

COMMENTARY ON THE DIVINE NAMES

 

Recalling Kovach’s thesis that Thomas’ thought on beauty as a transcendental developed due to the influence of De divinis nominibus, Aertsen looks for evidence in Aquinas’ commentary to support Kovach’s view. He notes that the Dionysian and the transcendental perspectives are different: Dionysius’ concern was the transcendence of the divine, whereas the transcendental perspective of Thomas is ontological.[51] For Dionysius, the Good was first, not Being, whereas with respect to the transcendentals, being is first.[52] Aertsen remarks:

“The possibility of connecting the two perspectives lies in Dionysius’s statement that ‘there is no being that does not participate in the good and the beautiful,’ because in this statement the universal extension of the beautiful is posed. ‘Everything is beautiful and good according to its own form,’ Thomas observes in his commentary. The beautiful seems to be a transcendental.” (Aertsen, 342)

 

Although Dionysius proposes an identity between the good and the beautiful, this does not mean that the beautiful is a property of being as distinct from the good.[53]

Aertsen highlights two points concerning Thomas’ commentary on chapter four of De divinis nominibus. First, the structure of the work brings out the close connection between the good and the beautiful.[54] Second, Thomas modified Dionysius’ thesis asserting that there is a conceptual difference between the beautiful and the good:[55]

“Although the beautiful and the good are the same in reality- because both clarity and consonance are contained in the notion of the good- nevertheless, they differ in concept. For the beautiful adds to the good an ordering to the power that is able to known that a thing is of such a kind.” (In De divinis nominibus, c.4, lect. 5, 356)

 

Although Thomas states that the beautiful and the good are the same, and even that the beautiful is convertible with the good, Aertsen doesn’t believe this suggests Thomas viewed beauty as a distinct transcendental.[56] This is because transcendentals express a general mode of being, but in the commentary Thomas only relates the beautiful to the good, never speaking of the relation between the beautiful and being.[57] Aertsen makes one further point concerning the possible objection that since the good is convertible with being an addition to the good would imply an addition to being.[58] He states:

“According to Thomas the beautiful adds ‘an ordering to the cognitive power,’ but in his order of the transcendentals, the good presupposes the true and the relation to the cognitive power is that which ‘the true’ adds to ‘being.’ One can therefore not interpret the addition of the beautiful to the good in such a way that this addition would be equivalent to an addition to being.”

 

Thus he concludes that in Thomas’ commentary on De divinis nominibus, there is no indication that beauty is a transcendental.

 

SUMMA THEOLOGIAE

 

Aertsen found no evidence to support Kovach’s thesis in Thomas’ commentary on De divinis nominibus so he looks for evidence of later development in the Summa theologiae. He notes that Thomas only speaks of beauty in passing; whereas he treats of other transcendentals, he never devotes a separate question to the beautiful.[59] The two most significant texts for the transcendentality of beauty both occur within the discussion of the good and reflect objections raised based on pseudo-Dionysius.[60] In Summa theologiae I,5.4, discussed earlier, Thomas emphasizes that beauty and goodness are fundamentally identical but differ conceptually. The good has the aspect of an end, but beauty relates to the cognitive power.

In Summa theologiae I-II, 27.1 Thomas responds to the third objection to the question “Is good the only cause of love?” He states that beauty is the same as the good, they differ in aspect only.[61] Once again he emphasizes that beauty adds to goodness a relation to the cognitive faculty: such that “good” means that which pleases the appetite while “beautiful” means something is pleasing to apprehend.[62]

Aertsen concludes from these two texts that there is no evidence to suggest Kovach’s thesis of a development of a transcendentality of beauty. As with Thomas’ commentary on Dionysius, the Summa emphasizes the relation between beauty and goodness, the conceptual difference between the two, but provides no evidence to support the view that beauty is a transcendental. Since Thomas’ texts provide no definitive answer to the question of the transcendality of beauty Aertsen rejects the notion that Aquinas ever considered beauty a general mode of being.

 

THE PLACE OF BEAUTY

 

Having rejected the transcendentality of beauty, and having examined what Aquinas has actually said concerning beauty, Aertsen accounts for the place of beauty in Thomas in the extension of the true to the good. He develops his argument from the two principles of beauty uncovered in both De divinis nominibus and Summa theologiae: 1.) Beauty is identical in subject with the good. 2.) Beauty adds to the good a relation to cognitive faculty.

In Summa theologiae I,39.8 Thomas had accounted for beauty as constituted by three things: 1.) integrity or perfection 2.) due proportion or harmony 3.) clarity or splendor. However in Summa theologiae II-II,145.2, and II, 180.2, Thomas only mentions due proportion and clarity. Aertsen adduces a philosophical reason for the change in number stating: “The first condition of the beautiful, perfection, is another kind than the other two. It is a generic condition that binds the beautiful to the good as good.”[63]

In Summa theologiae I,5.6 Aquinas gives an account of the good as good. He proposes a three-fold division of goodness according to the ultimate term of movement of the appetite: that which is desired as a mean to something else is called the useful; that which terminates the movement of the appetite in the form of rest in the thing desired is called the pleasant; and that which is desired for its own sake is called the befitting or virtuous.[64] Aertsen notes that Thomas identifies the befitting, that which is desired for its own sake, with spiritual beauty.[65]

In Summa theologiae I,5.5 Thomas gives an account of the good as good.[66]  A thing is said to be good insofar as it is perfect, for in that way only is it desirable. The essence of goodness, so far as it consists in perfection, consists in mode, species and order. Since everything is what it is by its form, for a thing to be perfect and good it must have a form (species).  The form presupposes determination or commensuration of its principles (mode). Everything acts and tends towards that which is in accordance with its form (ordo). Aertsen states, “If the beautiful is identical with the good because it is perfect, then the beautiful must follow the ratio of the good as good.”[67] He argues that Aquinas connects beauty with the essential constituents of the goodness of things in De veritate 22.1 ad 12.[68] In this account the due proportion of beauty, referring to commensuration, is thus related to the mode of goodness, and the clarity of beauty, referring to the form, is related to the species of goodness.[69]

Thomas’ modification of the identity proposed by Dionysius accounted for the beautiful differing from the good by adding to the good conceptually. The emphasis on the cognitive aspect leads to a shift of the place of beauty from the Greek emphasis on the relation of the beautiful to knowledge in the direction of “truth” in the Middle Ages.[70] That Aquinas relates beauty to truth is evident in two places: 1.) the discussion of the appropriation of beauty to the second person of the Trinity in ST I,39.8 suggests a closeness of beauty and truth; 2.) the constitutive element of beauty claritas,  which is related to the light which makes things visible and is thus identified with the truth and knowability of things.[71]

Thomas relates knowledge and the good in ST II-II, 145.2 “The object that moves the appetite is an apprehended good. Now if a thing is perceived to be beautiful, when apprehended it is accepted as fitting and good.”[72] Aertsen finds in Thomas’ commentary on the Sentences a distinction between two grades of knowledge: 1.) intellective knowledge directed toward the true; 2.) knowledge which understands the true as fitting and good.[73] With respect to the second grade of knowledge, Aertsen notes a further claim by Thomas that “the true is extended to the good.”[74] He concludes, “Because Thomas describes the apprehension of the beautiful in the same terms he applies to the second grade of knowledge, this extension of the true to the good must be the place of beautiful.”

CONCLUSION

 

Aertsen finds no evidence to support the transcendentality of beauty in the metaphysical thought of Thomas Aquinas. Rather, after investigating what Thomas actually said concerning beauty, he uncovers the Dionysian identity thesis equating the beautiful with good, and the subsequent Thomistic modification that beauty adds conceptually to the good. Aertsen suggests that the extension of the true to the good is the determination which seems to best describe the place of beauty in Thomas for three reasons: 1.) it does justice to the fact that beauty is not a distinct “forgotten transcendental” and since beauty is implied both in the order of truth and goodness, it makes this fact coherent; 2.) it retains the relation between beauty and the good as an appetitive moment that pleases; 3.) it accounts for the historical shift of the place of beauty in the direction of “the true” in the Middle Ages.[75]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Aquinas, St. Thomas. De veritate. John F. Wippel trans. (class handout)

Aertsen, Jan A. Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas ( NY: E.J. Brill, 1996).

Maritain, Jacques. Art and Scholasticism with Other Essays, J.F. Scanlan, trans. (London: Sheed & Ward, 1949).

Maurer, Armand A. About Beauty: A Thomistic Interpretation (Houston, TX: Center for Thomistic Studies, 1983).

Pseudo-Dionysius, “On the Divine Names” in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, C.E. Rolt and J. Jones trans. (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1987).

Wippel, John F. The Metaphyscial Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000).

 

Note: Thomas Aquinas texts unless otherwise noted were taken from New Advent and Corpus Thomisticum websites.

ENDNOTES