- Email: [email protected]
The aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas
864
Book Reviews
Th6odore Tarczylo deals with masturbation and its historical ('brute facts') prejudices, whilst Randolph Trumbach's essay fuses together gender and prostitution in Fanny Hill, exploring safe-sex (domesticated) and fantasy-sex. The fine line between the 'real' and 'illusionary' is also examined by Bouc6 in the guise of imagination, pregnancy and monsters. Antony Simpson looks at age, vulnerability and female consent in relation to rape, and Gloria Flaherty's essay explores sex and shamanism. Porter's thesis examines the medical man as predator with patient as victim/client. Both his and Terry Castle's essay explore the moral (s)exploits of the male and female body, either as a 'diseased body' or as in 'masquerade'. The body as manipulating tool is explored by Lynne Friedli as her discourse on 'Passing W o m e n ' (women who dressed as men) shows the androgynous nature of self. This essay illuminates the public-self in relation to private sexual activities. This notion of 'cross dressing' was a marginal activity in eighteenth century England and yet surprisingly it was publically acceptable (for women, not men). Meanwhile from the ambiguous adornment of self to the exploits of medical men, from the transformation of 'otherness' to the illusionary reality of the Sexual Enlightenment, what the book is really saying, to use a twentieth century phrase is: 'Welcome to the Pleasure D o m e ' and its Enlightened U n d e r w o r l d - - S o m e enlightenment! Some underworld! As a post-script of criticism directed at the publishers and not the contributors I would like to add that for £29.50 1 expect a book to be well produced, fine quality paper, colour reproductions with an attractive dust-jacket. Sadly all of which are missing here. This is one instance, w h e r e - - y o u can't judge a book by its cover! Anne C. Darlington
Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London
The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, Umberto Eco, trans. Hugh Bredin (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988), xiv + 287 pp., $30.00, $14.95. This introduction to Aquinas' aesthetic theory is a second edition and English translation of a work written in 1954 and published in Italian in 1970. Beyond stylistic improvements, the author has reduced his criticisms of Aquinas' earlier interpreters and expanded his comments on Aquinas' own writings. Assuming that 'the [Scholastic] period was deficient in a sense of historical development and dialectical contradiction; and its picture of reality was rather like its social structures, hierarchical and fixed in immutable relations', Eco claims that 'the system' of aesthetics constructed from Aquinas' texts contains a fatal contradiction which 'leads to the history of aesthetics after him' (xi). Despite serious difficulties in his reconstruction of Aquinas and aloofness from a quarter century of research on medieval philosophy, Eco asserts that '[The Book's] historical method and its conclusions are still valid' (vii). In Aquinas' vocabulary 'beauty' (pulchrum) is a transcendental term. Like other such terms, e.g. 'being' (ens), 'true' (verum), ' g o o d ' (bonum), 'one' (unum) it is predicable of terms in every category. Thus, 'this tree' (in the category of substance) no less than 'green' (in the category of quality) may be said to be beautiful. Such predications express the speaker's judgment that what is seen pleases him. Chapters I I - I V and VII present an analysis of Aquinas' central aesthetic principle: ' Visaplacent'--Beautiful things please us
Book Reviews
865
when they are seen. Eco describes the visio as a judgmental act of a knowing subject whose senses have been stimulated by a particular thing and whose intellect has come to know the universal intelligible species or nature of that object. Eco rejects the views of Maritain, de Bruyne and others who reduce the visio to an intuition 'somewhere between sensible perception and intellectual abstraction' (p. 63). His own view is that 'Aesthetic seeing does not occur before the act of abstraction, nor in the act, nor just after it. It occurs instead at the end of the second operation of the intellect--that is, in the judgment' (p. 196). Eco assembles Aquinas' texts to support the thesis that there are three formal criteria of beauty: proportion (proportio), integrity (integritas) and clarity (claritas). All presuppose that the apprehension of beauty is a cognitive activity. 'Clarity is the fundamental communicability of form, which is made actual in relation to someone's looking at or seeing of the object' (p. 119). Integrity or perfection (perfectio) is 'the complete realization of whatever it is that the thing is supposed to be' (p. 99). Proportion is a complex notion but involves minimally 'a twofold relation of parts to one another and to the whole of which they are parts' (p. 90). According to Eco the concept of form or formal cause as 'that by which a thing is what it is', is primary, and the criteria of beauty pertain in the first instance to the form of a thing as apprehended in aesthetic judgment. In Chapter V Eco shows how his account of Aquinas' aesthetics applies to a number of topics such as the beauty of Christ, the beauty of mankind, symbols, allegory, poetry and music. Chapter VI relates Aquinas' aesthetics to issues in the theory of art. Eco's study has a number of virtues. It confirms for those ignorant of medieval Neoplatonism that aesthetics was alive and well in the middle ages. It assembles some main texts of Aquinas on the subject and offers some valuable interpretations. Its methodology respects the letter if it sometimes offends the spirit of Aquinas' texts. The greatest difficulty of the study is Eco's presentation of Aquinas' random ideas on aesthetics as a single closed system (pp. 19, 39, 55, 58, 64, 85, 97, 106, 116, 119, 163, 167, 180, 186, 188,189,194,202,204,205). One can allow that Aquinas is systematic in his treatment of aesthetic matters without conceding that he settled on a single system for dealing with them. Eco's assumption that 'the [Scholastic] period was deficient in a sense o f . . . dialectical contradiction and [that] its picture of reality was rather like its social structures, hierarchical and fixed in immutable relations', betrays a regrettable ignorance of the prominence of dialectic in the Scholastic tradition. Moreover, it shows a weakness in Eco's methodology which remains oblivious to the aporetic context (the positing of objections and replies) of quotations from Aquinas. Eco's failure to consider the aporetic nature of Aquinas' texts may explain why he sees no role for memory, imagination or intuition in Aquinas' aesthetics. Eco's predilection for didactic over aporetic argument mutes the tensions between Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism, between functional (formal, material and efficient causes) and teleological (final cause) approaches to experience in Aquinas. Arguing that aesthetic vision (visio) resides in judgment, Eco cites the central text on truth in De veritate I, 2c. He records two definitions of truth, namely ontological (the being of things) and formal (the adequation of intellect and thing); but he ignores entirely the third sense of truth, inferential truth by means of which we judge concerning subordinate things. This omission is surprising since it corresponds most closely to the account of visio which Eco tries to defend. Despite these shortcomings, Eco's work remains a useful introduction to Aquinas' aesthetics. Alan R. Perreiah
University of Kentucky
Book Reviews
Th6odore Tarczylo deals with masturbation and its historical ('brute facts') prejudices, whilst Randolph Trumbach's essay fuses together gender and prostitution in Fanny Hill, exploring safe-sex (domesticated) and fantasy-sex. The fine line between the 'real' and 'illusionary' is also examined by Bouc6 in the guise of imagination, pregnancy and monsters. Antony Simpson looks at age, vulnerability and female consent in relation to rape, and Gloria Flaherty's essay explores sex and shamanism. Porter's thesis examines the medical man as predator with patient as victim/client. Both his and Terry Castle's essay explore the moral (s)exploits of the male and female body, either as a 'diseased body' or as in 'masquerade'. The body as manipulating tool is explored by Lynne Friedli as her discourse on 'Passing W o m e n ' (women who dressed as men) shows the androgynous nature of self. This essay illuminates the public-self in relation to private sexual activities. This notion of 'cross dressing' was a marginal activity in eighteenth century England and yet surprisingly it was publically acceptable (for women, not men). Meanwhile from the ambiguous adornment of self to the exploits of medical men, from the transformation of 'otherness' to the illusionary reality of the Sexual Enlightenment, what the book is really saying, to use a twentieth century phrase is: 'Welcome to the Pleasure D o m e ' and its Enlightened U n d e r w o r l d - - S o m e enlightenment! Some underworld! As a post-script of criticism directed at the publishers and not the contributors I would like to add that for £29.50 1 expect a book to be well produced, fine quality paper, colour reproductions with an attractive dust-jacket. Sadly all of which are missing here. This is one instance, w h e r e - - y o u can't judge a book by its cover! Anne C. Darlington
Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London
The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, Umberto Eco, trans. Hugh Bredin (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988), xiv + 287 pp., $30.00, $14.95. This introduction to Aquinas' aesthetic theory is a second edition and English translation of a work written in 1954 and published in Italian in 1970. Beyond stylistic improvements, the author has reduced his criticisms of Aquinas' earlier interpreters and expanded his comments on Aquinas' own writings. Assuming that 'the [Scholastic] period was deficient in a sense of historical development and dialectical contradiction; and its picture of reality was rather like its social structures, hierarchical and fixed in immutable relations', Eco claims that 'the system' of aesthetics constructed from Aquinas' texts contains a fatal contradiction which 'leads to the history of aesthetics after him' (xi). Despite serious difficulties in his reconstruction of Aquinas and aloofness from a quarter century of research on medieval philosophy, Eco asserts that '[The Book's] historical method and its conclusions are still valid' (vii). In Aquinas' vocabulary 'beauty' (pulchrum) is a transcendental term. Like other such terms, e.g. 'being' (ens), 'true' (verum), ' g o o d ' (bonum), 'one' (unum) it is predicable of terms in every category. Thus, 'this tree' (in the category of substance) no less than 'green' (in the category of quality) may be said to be beautiful. Such predications express the speaker's judgment that what is seen pleases him. Chapters I I - I V and VII present an analysis of Aquinas' central aesthetic principle: ' Visaplacent'--Beautiful things please us
Book Reviews
865
when they are seen. Eco describes the visio as a judgmental act of a knowing subject whose senses have been stimulated by a particular thing and whose intellect has come to know the universal intelligible species or nature of that object. Eco rejects the views of Maritain, de Bruyne and others who reduce the visio to an intuition 'somewhere between sensible perception and intellectual abstraction' (p. 63). His own view is that 'Aesthetic seeing does not occur before the act of abstraction, nor in the act, nor just after it. It occurs instead at the end of the second operation of the intellect--that is, in the judgment' (p. 196). Eco assembles Aquinas' texts to support the thesis that there are three formal criteria of beauty: proportion (proportio), integrity (integritas) and clarity (claritas). All presuppose that the apprehension of beauty is a cognitive activity. 'Clarity is the fundamental communicability of form, which is made actual in relation to someone's looking at or seeing of the object' (p. 119). Integrity or perfection (perfectio) is 'the complete realization of whatever it is that the thing is supposed to be' (p. 99). Proportion is a complex notion but involves minimally 'a twofold relation of parts to one another and to the whole of which they are parts' (p. 90). According to Eco the concept of form or formal cause as 'that by which a thing is what it is', is primary, and the criteria of beauty pertain in the first instance to the form of a thing as apprehended in aesthetic judgment. In Chapter V Eco shows how his account of Aquinas' aesthetics applies to a number of topics such as the beauty of Christ, the beauty of mankind, symbols, allegory, poetry and music. Chapter VI relates Aquinas' aesthetics to issues in the theory of art. Eco's study has a number of virtues. It confirms for those ignorant of medieval Neoplatonism that aesthetics was alive and well in the middle ages. It assembles some main texts of Aquinas on the subject and offers some valuable interpretations. Its methodology respects the letter if it sometimes offends the spirit of Aquinas' texts. The greatest difficulty of the study is Eco's presentation of Aquinas' random ideas on aesthetics as a single closed system (pp. 19, 39, 55, 58, 64, 85, 97, 106, 116, 119, 163, 167, 180, 186, 188,189,194,202,204,205). One can allow that Aquinas is systematic in his treatment of aesthetic matters without conceding that he settled on a single system for dealing with them. Eco's assumption that 'the [Scholastic] period was deficient in a sense o f . . . dialectical contradiction and [that] its picture of reality was rather like its social structures, hierarchical and fixed in immutable relations', betrays a regrettable ignorance of the prominence of dialectic in the Scholastic tradition. Moreover, it shows a weakness in Eco's methodology which remains oblivious to the aporetic context (the positing of objections and replies) of quotations from Aquinas. Eco's failure to consider the aporetic nature of Aquinas' texts may explain why he sees no role for memory, imagination or intuition in Aquinas' aesthetics. Eco's predilection for didactic over aporetic argument mutes the tensions between Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism, between functional (formal, material and efficient causes) and teleological (final cause) approaches to experience in Aquinas. Arguing that aesthetic vision (visio) resides in judgment, Eco cites the central text on truth in De veritate I, 2c. He records two definitions of truth, namely ontological (the being of things) and formal (the adequation of intellect and thing); but he ignores entirely the third sense of truth, inferential truth by means of which we judge concerning subordinate things. This omission is surprising since it corresponds most closely to the account of visio which Eco tries to defend. Despite these shortcomings, Eco's work remains a useful introduction to Aquinas' aesthetics. Alan R. Perreiah
University of Kentucky