1. Late Antiquity and Middle Ages
The concept of beauty

2. Aims
Examine the concept of beauty in Late Antiquity and in the Middle Ages
Observe a continuity between Antiquity and Modernity

3. Authors Plotinus (203-270) Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
James Joyce ( )

4. The concept of Beauty Platonic Ideas
Ideas, participationr (quality really in the thing)
Examples: Ikons and sacred images

5. Examples from authors
Plotinus
Thomas Aquinas
James Joyce

6. Plotinus
Symmetry
Form
Unity
Harmony

7. Symmetry 1
Symmetry of the parts each to one another and to the whole plus color causes visual beauty
Beauty is symmetry and harmony

8. 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.

9. 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

10. Unity Beauty reigns over matter When it has been unified
And gives itself both to the parts and the whole

11. 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

12. Effect of beauty Evokes emotion Wonder Sweet startling Desire Passion
Wonderful excitement

13. Thomas Aquinas Pulchra sunt quae visa placent
Beauty exists in things
Beauty gives pleasure
Pleasure is a mark of beauty

14. Aesthetic value Ad pulchritudinem tria requiruntur:
Integritas (one whole)
Consonantia (inner harmony)
Claritas (clarity, brightness)

15. Joyce Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914) Artistic values
Wholeness
Harmony
Radiance

16. Joyce, frh. Wholeness: one thing Harmony: one thing
Radiance: this thing