The Aesthetic Thought and View of Art of Thomas Aquinas

This book examines Aquinas's aesthetic thought and view of art within the broader context of medieval aesthetics and the history of aesthetic development, emphasizing its profound influence on later aesthetics. The book not only elaborates on Aquinas's efforts to establish coherence between faith and reason, the transcendent and empirical, as well as its significance, but also discusses the main contents and characteristics of Aquinas's aesthetic thought from the three aspects of the ontology of beauty, the theory of form, and the theory of experience. By examining Aquinas's aesthetic thought and view of art in relation to modern aesthetics and twentieth-century aesthetics, this book reveals the immense vitality of Aquinas's aesthetic thought. Acknowledgments Contents 1 Introduction 1 The Formation of Thomas Aquinas’s System of Thought 2 Current Research on Thomas Aquinas’s Aesthetic Thought 2.1 Current Status of Research in European and English-speaking Academia 2.2 The Current State of Research Within the Chinese Academic Community 2 The Theological Philosophy of the Aesthetician Thomas Aquinas 1 Aquinas the Theologian 2 Theologizing and Philosophizing 3 Thomas Aquinas’s Aesthetic Thought and Aristotle’s Theory of Form and Matter 3 Content and Characteristics of Thomas Aquinas’ Aesthetic Thought 1 Ontology of Beauty 2 Formalisms of Beauty 2.1 Integrity or Perfection 2.2 Proportion or Harmony 2.3 Brightness or Clarity 3 Empiricism of Beauty 4 Thomas Aquinas’s View of Art 1 Art and Production 2 Art and Nature 2.1 Art Imitates Nature 2.2 Art Is Lower Than Nature 2.3 Remarks 3 Exegesis and Hermeneutics 3.1 The Tradition of Exegesis 3.2 Thomas Aquinas’s Exegesis: The Four Senses 4 Metaphor and Symbolism 4.1 Symbolism as a Form of Thought 4.2 The Symbolism of the Image of Jesus Christ 5 The Position and Significance of Thomas Aquinas’s Aesthetic Thoughts in the History of Aesthetics 1 Aquinas and Medieval Aesthetics 2 Aquinas and Modern Aesthetics 2.1 The Relationship Between the Beautiful and the Good 2.2 The Subjective and Objective Relationship of Beauty 3 Aquinas, Twentieth-Century Neo-Thomism, and Theological Aesthetics 3.1 Art as a Creative Act: Aquinas and Maritain 3.2 “The Luster of Form” and “The Light of Glory”: Aquinas and Balthasar 6 Conclusion 1 The Profound Influence of Aquinas 2 The Modern Value of Aquinas’s Aesthetic Thought Appendices Appendix I: Chronology of Thomas Aquinas's Life and Death*,** Appendix II: Chronology of the Chinese Translations of the Works of Thomas Aquinas *** Postscript References Index