Dynamic Transcendentals: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty from a Thomistic Perspective

4. Beauty and the Perfection of Being

71 Beauty and the Perfection of Being Many metaphors have been used in order to understand God’s creative activity: the Leibnizian metaphor of the divine calculator , the functionalist metaphor of a divine automaton, Aquinas’s metaphor of the divine artist, to name but a few.1 The latter metaphor which, in my opinion, is more than a simple comparison is useful for a better understanding of the finality of creation.2 According to Aquinas, the end for which the artist produces his forms is none other than beauty; he says, “No one takes pains to make an image or representation except for the sake of the beautiful .”3 The divine artist thus creates something which is in itself beautiful and which is, in addition, expressive or representative of the divine artist himself. Now while it is true that beauty was not for Aquinas as important a theme as it was for the Franciscan tradition,4 it may nevertheless be said that in his comments chapter 4 1. Laura Garcia, “Divine Freedom and Creation,” Philosophical Quarterly 42 (1992): 212–13. 2. See Tomás Melendo Granados, “La expansión perfectiva del ente en el trascendental ‘pulchrum,’” Estudios Filosóficos 35 (January–April 1986): 103–28. 3. In De Divinis Nominibus, c. 4, 273. I am using Vernon J. Bourke’s translation of chap. 4, lect. 5–6, of the Exposition of Dionysius on the Divine Names found in The Pocket Aquinas (New York: Washington Square Press, 1960). Hereafter cited as In De Div. Nom. 4. I do not wish to enter here into the question of whether or not beauty is a 72  Beauty, Order, and Teleology 72  Beauty, Order, and Teleology on beauty, especially as they were influenced by the Neoplatonic tradition, one can find the necessary elements, along with his metaphysics, in order to develop an aesthetics of creation.5 The purpose of this essay will be to show how a consideration of the beautiful and its features coincides with a discussion of first and second perfections in Aquinas, how such a consideration of perfection is related to the order of the universe in its static and dynamic dimensions, and how this order is a work of divine wisdom and beauty, requiring in its turn the cooperation of intellectual creatures. We shall see how the provident activity of men contributes to the order and final form of the universe. The Beautiful and Its Features: The Order of the Universe Aquinas’s most extended discussion on beauty is to be found in his commentary on chapter four of Dionysius’s Divine Names. God is the superexistent, the supersubstantially beautiful, who in giving being, simultaneously imparts beauty. All things participate in beauty, just as they participate in being. “The beauty of a creature is nothing but the likeness of divine beauty participated in [it].”6 Since creatures receive beauty in accordance with their particular nature, they will thus have a particular or limited beauty.7 Now in Aquinas’s exposition of Dionysius, the beautiful possesses two essential features: harmony, or due proportion, and brilliance, or radiance.8 The brightness or radiance of the separate transcendental as are the true and the good. For this question, see Aertsen, “Beauty in the Middle Ages: A Forgotten Transcendental?” in Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas, 335–59. 5. See Henri Pouillon, “La Beauté, propriété transcendentale chez les scolastiques (1200–1270),” Archives d’HDLMA 21 (1946): 263–329. 6. In De Div. Nom., c. 4, 269. 7. Ibid., 270–71. 8. Ibid., 269–70. In ST I, q. 39, a. 8, Aquinas gives a third requirement for beauty, that is, integritas or perfectio (integrity or completeness). Beauty and the Perfection of Being  73 beautiful is to be understood primarily in an ontological way, but also has psychological significance. Beauty is inseparable from actuality; the first sense of actuality for Aquinas is being, since esse is the perfection of all perfections, the actuality of all acts. And the actuality of things is in itself luminous, brilliant.9 Since the form of a thing is that principle by which a thing has being, each form is also said to be “a participation in the divine brilliance.”10 Now this brilliance of being and of form has, in addition, importance within a psychological framework, for the beautiful is concerned with the cognitive power. The beautiful is what delights on being...