Late Antiquity and Middle Ages

The concept of beauty

Aims

• Examine the concept of beauty in Late Antiquity and in the Middle Ages

• Observe a continuity between Antiquity and Modernity

Authors

• Plotinus (203-270)

• Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

• James Joyce (1882-1941)

The concept of Beauty

• Platonic Ideas

• Ideas, participationr (quality really in the thing)

• Examples: Ikons and sacred images

Examples from authors

• Plotinus

• Thomas Aquinas

• James Joyce

Plotinus

• Symmetry

• Form

• Unity

• Harmony

Symmetry 1

• Symmetry of the parts each to one another and to the whole plus color causes visual beauty

• Beauty is symmetry and harmony

Symmetry 2

• If so, then nothing simple can be beautiful, only what is composed

• If the whole is beautiful, so must the parts

• A beautiful whole can not be composed of ugly parts

• Symmetry does not apply to the parts

• Therefore beauty does not consist in symmetry alone.

Form

• Beauty: because of participation in form• Ugliness: outside regularity and form• Form creates one out of many, one

consistent whole by the symmetry of its parts

• Unity is what the form gives to the things, even though they are composed of a multiplicity

Unity

• Beauty reigns over matter– When it has been unified– And gives itself both to the parts and the whole

Harmony in the soul

• A hous is an “inner form” broken upp by matter (stones for instance)

• Perception moves this form to the interior of the mind

• It harmonizes with the soul

• Shows the same in another medium

Effect of beauty

• Evokes emotion– Wonder– Sweet startling– Desire– Passion– Wonderful excitement

Thomas Aquinas

• Pulchra sunt quae visa placent

– Beauty exists in things– Beauty gives pleasure

• Pleasure is a mark of beauty

Aesthetic value

• Ad pulchritudinem tria requiruntur:– Integritas (one whole)– Consonantia (inner harmony)– Claritas (clarity, brightness)

Joyce

• Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914)

• Artistic values– Wholeness– Harmony– Radiance

Joyce, frh.

• Wholeness: one thing

• Harmony: one thing

• Radiance: this thing