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In a final chapter added to the second Italian edition, Eco examines how Aquinas's aesthetics came to be absorbed and superseded in late medieval times and draws instructive parallels between Thomistic methodology and contemporary structuralism.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

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.

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.

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

Pope John Paul II bestowed upon St. Thomas Aquinas the accolade of Doctor Humanitatis, or “Doctor of Humanity,” because he was ready to affirm the good or value of culture wherever it is to be found. Thomas is a teacher for our time because of his “assertions on the dignity of the human person and the use of his reason.” (“Inter Munera Academiarum,” 1999). This collection of papers explores the various philosophical and theological aspects of the thought of both Thomas Aquinas and John Paul II pertaining to this theme of “teacher of humanity.” The topics discussed here include the political praxis of Karol Wojtyla; Gadamer on common sense; prudence and subsidiarity; embodied cognition; the knowledge of God; the commandment of love; Pope Francis on the Beatitudes; the new evangelization; Thomism and modern cosmology; and the challenges of transhumanism and gender ideology. The papers were presented at a conference held in Houston, Texas, USA, in 2013, cosponsored by the Center for Thomistic Studies, the John Paul II Forum, and the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. This work will help to realize in its small way the hopes of Saint John Paul II concerning St. Thomas Aquinas: “It is to be hoped that now and in the future there will be those who continue to cultivate this great philosophical and theological tradition [of Aquinas] for the good of both the Church and humanity.” (Fides et ratio §74) Additionally, it will undoubtedly be of interest to all participants in the cultivation of the thought of Thomas Aquinas, John Paul II, and the dialogue between Thomism and the modern world.

This volume presents an introduction to Aquinas and a guide to his thinking on almost all the major topics on which he wrote. The book begins with an account of Aquinas's life and the historical context of his thought. The subsequent sections address topics that Aquinas himself discussed. The final sections of the volume address the development of Aquinas's thought and its historical influence.

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.