Objective Essence of the Category of the Beautiful

Both Aquinas and Joyce were in search of the Objective essence of this category.

In his work Aquinas postulated that Intergritas, Consonantia, Claritas (Integrity, Harmony, Clarity) could be regarded as constituents of the category of the beautiful.

Aquinas likened Integritas (Integrity) to perfection and considered it to be a first condition of the very existence of the beautiful. He wrote that ontologically the very existence of any thing depends upon its integrity [ S. th. 1a,g11 art.;цит. по: Лосев, 1978:150]. He considered Consonantia (Proportion or Harmony) to be the revelation of God’s wisdom. “God is beautiful because he is the cause of universal harmony and radiance” [S. th. 1a,g11 art.;цит. по: Лосев, 1978: 150]. Thus he considered God to be the source of Claritas (Radiance, Clarity). “Any existing form is a matter of Divine radiance (clarity)”[De div. Nom. 4,5; цит. по: Лосев, 1978]. Traditionally Aquinas regarded Divine radiance/clarity (Claritas) as light (lumen).

Joyce, who borrowed Aquinas’s INTEGRITAS, CONSONANTIA, CLARITAS as the three objective constituents of the category of the beautiful, interpreted their semantics slightly differently.

This interpretation could be found in the last chapter of his earlier novel “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” Stephen Dedalus, the central character of the novel explains the essence of the beautiful upon the example of a butcher’s basket. To comprehend its beauty it is necessary to look at it from the point of view of the universal objective conditions that do not depend upon an individual taste. These conditions are to be found in Aquinas’s formula Integritas, Consonantia, Claritas.

An example, chosen by Stephen, a butcher’s basket makes it easier to explain that the beauty could be traced not only in Divine objects but also in down-to-earth things. This formula works in the following way:

· Firstly, human mind thanks to the perception abilities singles out a basket as a separate object out of the visible space. This basket, comprehended in a visible space, is perceived as an integral whole, a thing that is impossible to split to perceive it as a whole object (basket). This makes Intergrity (INTEGRITAS).

· Then the human mind starts to comprehend the rhythm of the structure of the basket, the relations of the parts to the whole. "The synthesis of immediate perception is followed by the analysis of apprehension" [Joyce, 1969: 219]. Actually human consciousness takes the basket as a sum of different parts of the basket. This makes consonantia (harmony).

· According to Joyce the term CLARITAS (radiance, clarity) has a symbolic meaning for it denotes nothing but divine radiance, that can turn the matter into the shadow of an idea and reality into a symbol of an idea [Joyce, 1969: 219]. Such concept roots upon Aquinas’s perception of Claritas as either the emanation of an artistic purpose or the revelation of a certain generalizing power that can turn an aesthetic image into a universal one [Joyce 1969: 220]. He understood CLARITAS as a procedure of an object apperception from synthesis to analysis and again to synthesis. In other words we perceive a basket as a whole unit, then its parts and eventually the harmony of the parts. Actually, Joyce considered CLARITAS to be the sum of INTERGRITY and HARMONY.

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