A teoria do belo na Summa Theologiae

Abstract

This monograph aims to present and discuss how the Summa Theologiae articulates a coherent doctrine on the beauty (pulchrum), despite the absence of a formal treatise dedicated to the subject. The approach seeks to understand the status of beauty through the passages in Thomas Aquinas's work that mention it. Initially, it examines the scholarly debate on whether beauty should be considered a transcendental. The positions of specialized critics from the 20th and 21st centuries are analyzed chronologically, contrasting their favorable and opposing arguments. These opposing positions arise because Thomas states that good and beauty are identical in reality, yet he never includes beauty in the list of transcendentals in De veritate, for example. This first chapter concludes that the Summa does not provide a definitive answer to this problem but offers material that fuels and justifies the controversy's continuity. Subsequently, the properties that constitute the beauty of a being are investigated. An analysis is conducted of all the characteristics Thomas uses in the Summa to explain beauty. The analysis of the passages from the work concludes that, although many interpreters reduce beauty to three characteristics, Thomas presents a more flexible view. Finally, the dimension of the apprehension of the beautiful is explored, answering how the apprehension of the beautiful causes pleasure. By analyzing Thomas's theory of knowledge, it is observed that the process begins in the external senses, which delight in objects proportionate to themselves, but the perception of a given object is completed and unified by the cogitative power. This faculty compares (collatio) sensory impressions, allowing for an integral apprehension of the object's sensible aspects. The resulting pleasure has a dual aspect: a direct one, which comes from the beautiful being ontologically identical to the good, and the rest of the appetite in the good attained is the definition of pleasure; and an indirect one, which is the very act of successfully apprehending the ordered structure of the object a perfect operation (operatio) and, therefore, inherently pleasurable.