The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas

The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674006768
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
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In a final chapter added to the second Italian edition, Eco examines how Aquinas's aesthetics came to be absorbed and superseded in late medieval times and draws instructive parallels between Thomistic methodology and contemporary structuralism.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.

The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas

The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674006768
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Get Book

Book Description
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.

The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas

The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9780091823597
Category : Aesthetics
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description


Aquinas on Beauty

Aquinas on Beauty PDF Author: Christopher Scott Sevier
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739184253
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Aquinas on Beauty explores the nature and role of beauty in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Beginning with a standard definition of beauty provided by Aquinas, it explores each of the components of that definition. The result is a comprehensive account of Aquinas’s formal view on the subject, supplemented by an exploration into Aquinas’s commentary on Dionysius’s Divine Names, including a comparison of his views with those of both Dionysius and those of Aquinas’s mentor, Albert the Great. The book also highlights the tight connection in Aquinas’s thought between aesthetics and ethics, and illustrates how Aquinas preserves what is best about aesthetic traditions preceding him, and anticipates what is best about aesthetic traditions that would follow, marrying objective and subjective aesthetic intuitions and charting a kind of via media between the common extremes.

A Theory of Esthetic According to the Principles of St. Thomas Aquinas ... by Leonard Callahan ...

A Theory of Esthetic According to the Principles of St. Thomas Aquinas ... by Leonard Callahan ... PDF Author: John Leonard Callahan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Aesthetics
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description


Bonaventure’s Aesthetics

Bonaventure’s Aesthetics PDF Author: Thomas J. McKenna
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498597661
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
The authors of the standard approach to Bonaventure’s aesthetics established the broad themes that continue to inform the current interpretation of his philosophy, theology, and mysticism of beauty: his definition of beauty and its status as a transcendental of being, his description of the aesthetic experience, and the role of that experience in the soul’s ascent into God. Nevertheless, they also introduced a series of pointed questions that the current literature has not adequately resolved. In Bonaventure’s Aesthetics: The Delight of the Soul in Its Ascent into God, Thomas J. McKenna provides a comprehensive analysis of Bonaventure’s aesthetics, the first to appear since Balthasar’s Herrlichkeit, and argues for a resolution to these questions in the context of his principal aesthetic text, the Itinerarium mentis in Deum.

Philosophy of Beauty

Philosophy of Beauty PDF Author: Francis J. Kovach
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780806113630
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
There has long been a need for a work on the philosophy of beauty treating fundamental problems against the background of the history of aesthetics--ancient and medieval as well as modern and contemporary. This book answers that need with the comprehensive presentations of an objectivist philosophy of beauty to balance the currently popular aesthetic subjectivism. It includes a synopsis of views and theories expressed on the various questions about beauty by philosophers down through the ages. Kovach's acquaintance with relevant literature from the ancient Greeks to twentieth-century authors is staggering. He draws on the observations of thinkers from ancient times--Plato, Aristotle. Philo of Alexandria, Cicero, Plotinus, Augustine, Dionysius the Areopagite, and others; from medieval times--Alexander of Hales, John of la Rochelle, Thomas of York, Bonaventure, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Dionysius the Carthusian, and others; from modern times--Descartes, J. Addison, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Tolstoi, Santayana, Croce, Maritain, Sartre, H. Read, Thomas Munro, and others. With delicate precision Kovach systematically discusses the philosophy of beauty and the problems it raises. Whether or not one agrees with Kovach's objectivist position, no one in the field can afford to be without this book.

Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages

Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300093049
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
In this authoritative, lively book, the celebrated Italian novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco presents a learned summary of medieval aesthetic ideas. Juxtaposing theology and science, poetry and mysticism, Eco explores the relationship that existed between the aesthetic theories and the artistic experience and practice of medieval culture. "[A] delightful study. . . . [Eco's] remarkably lucid and readable essay is full of contemporary relevance and informed by the energies of a man in love with his subject." --Robert Taylor, Boston Globe "The book lays out so many exciting ideas and interesting facts that readers will find it gripping." --Washington Post Book World "A lively introduction to the subject." --Michael Camille, The Burlington Magazine "If you want to become acquainted with medieval aesthetics, you will not find a more scrupulously researched, better written (or better translated), intelligent and illuminating introduction than Eco's short volume." --D. C. Barrett, Art Monthly

The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas

The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas PDF Author: Brian Davies
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190208791
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
Thomas Aquinas (1224/6-1274) lived an active, demanding academic and ecclesiastical life that ended while he was still comparatively young. He nonetheless produced many works, varying in length from a few pages to a few volumes. The present book is an introduction to this influential author and a guide to his thought on almost all the major topics on which he wrote. The book begins with an account of Aquinas's life and works. The next section contains a series of essays that set Aquinas in his intellectual context. They focus on the philosophical sources that are likely to have influenced his thinking, the most prominent of which were certain Greek philosophers (chiefly Aristotle), Latin Christian writers (such as Augustine), and Jewish and Islamic authors (such as Maimonides and Avicenna). The subsequent sections of the book address topics that Aquinas himself discussed. These include metaphysics, the existence and nature of God, ethics and action theory, epistemology, philosophy of mind and human nature, the nature of language, and an array of theological topics, including Trinity, Incarnation, sacraments, resurrection, and the problem of evil, among others. These sections include more than thirty contributions on topics central to Aquinas's own worldview. The final sections of the volume address the development of Aquinas's thought and its historical influence. Any attempt to present the views of a philosopher in an earlier historical period that is meant to foster reflection on that thinker's views needs to be both historically faithful and also philosophically engaged. The present book combines both exposition and evaluation insofar as its contributors have space to engage in both. This Handbook is therefore meant to be useful to someone wanting to learn about Aquinas's philosophy and theology while also looking for help in philosophical interaction with it.

Being and Thought in Aquinas

Being and Thought in Aquinas PDF Author: Jeremiah Hackett
Publisher: Global Academic Publishing
ISBN: 9781586840358
Category : Religion
Languages : la
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Papers from Binghamton University's Conferences on Medieval Latin Philosophy, 1995-2000, on St. Thomas Aquinas' oeuvre. The essays examine his sources within the Neoplatonic and Islamicist traditions, major themes in his writing, and his reflections on time and thought.

Poetry, Beauty, and Contemplation

Poetry, Beauty, and Contemplation PDF Author: John G Trapani
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 081321825X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Poetry, Beauty, and Contemplation provides a basic introduction to, and an extensive examination of, Maritain's philosophy of art and beauty