Thomas Aquinas on Beauty

Essay # 46655

History > European
Philosophy
Religion and Theology

An analysis of the spiritual function of beauty, as opposed to good, in the theological system of Thomas Aquinas.

2,067 words () | 5 sources | APA | 2002 United States

Paper Summary:

This essay explores the appointed function of beauty, as opposed to the function of goodness, in the perfection and elaboration of the created world, within the Thomistic context. It discusses Aquinas's position that the very aspect of an object that renders it "good" is the property that leads us to perceive the object as "beautiful."

From the Paper:

"Thomas Aquinas argues quite emphatically that, "the beautiful is the same as the good. " This does not mean, of course, that the abstract qualities of beauty and goodness are indistinguishable but simply that the very aspect of an object which renders it "good" is the property that leads us to perceive the object as "beautiful." As Aquinas puts it, beauty and goodness in a thing are identical fundamentally which is to say, the two descriptions are founded in a single attribute. For each quality is "based upon the form [of the object]. " Form, in turn, represents the immutable property of a created object's potential for perfect being. Beauty and goodness, therefore, only "differ logically." For according to Aquinas, goodness relates to the form of a thing as "an end" in that the goodness of an object consists in a "kind of movement towards" that perfect image . Beauty, on the other hand, is said to "add to goodness a relation to the cognitive faculty," as is its manifest only "when ["the perfect form of a thing"] is seen" through the analytical eyes of "knowledge.""