INTRODUCTION

The eighteenth century was a surprisingly peaceful time, but this turned out to be the lull
before the storm, since out of its orderly classicism there developed a wild romanticism in art
and literature, and even revolution in politics. The aesthetic concept which came to be more
appreciated in this period was associated with this, namely sublimity, which Edmund Burke
theorized about in his “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our ideas of the Sublime
and Beautiful.” The sublime was connected more with pain than pure pleasure, according to
Burke, since threats to self-preservation were involved, as on the high seas, and lonely moors,
with the devilish humans and dramatic passions that artists and writers were about to portray.
But in these circumstances, of course, it is still “delightful horror,” as Burke appreciated,
since one is insulated by the fictionality of the work in question from any real danger.

“Sublime” and “beautiful” are only two amongst the many terms which may be used
to describe our aesthetic experiences. Clearly there are “ridiculous” and “ugly,” for a start, as
well. But the more discriminating will have no difficulty also finding something maybe
“fine,” or “lovely” rather than “awful” or “hideous,” and “exquisite” or “superb” rather than
“gross” or “foul.” Frank Sibley wrote a notable series of articles, starting in 1959, defending a
view of aesthetic concepts as a whole. He said that they were not rule- or condition-governed,
but required a heightened form of perception, which one might call taste, sensitivity, or
judgment. His full analysis, however, contained another aspect, since he was not only
concerned with the sorts of concepts mentioned above, but also with a set of others which had
a rather different character. For one can describe works of art, often enough, in terms which
relate primarily to the emotional and mental life of human beings. One can call them
“joyful,” “melancholy,” “serene,” “witty,” “vulgar,” and “humble,” for instance. These are
evidently not purely aesthetic terms, because of their further uses, but they are still very
relevant to many aesthetic experiences.

CONCEPTUAL CLARIFICATION OF TERMS

Aesthetics : According to Oxford Advanced Learner Dictionary (8 Edit) means the study of
feelings, concept, and judgement arising from our appreciation of art or of the wider class of
objects considered moving pr beautiful or sublime (1)

Philosopher: Also from Oxford Advanced Learner Dictionary (8 Edit) is a person who
studies or write about philosophy or a person who thinks deeply about things (1098),
Medieval : still from the same source as shown above, it is a connection with middle ages
(about AD 100 to 1450) (923.)

Era : Also from the same source is the period of time usually history, that is different from
other period and characteristics or events (495).

Epoch : From the same source as shown above, it is a period of time in history, especially
one during which important event or changes happen, or length of a period (493).

CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

An examination of the concept of aesthetics

Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy that explore the nature of art, beauty and taste, with the
creation and appreciation of beauty. In it more technical epistemological perspective is
defined as the study of subjective and sensor-emotional values, sometimes called judgement
of taste
Aesthetics studies how artist imagine, create and perform works of art, how people
use, enjoy, and criticize art, and what happens in their minds when they look at paintings,
listen to music, or read poetry, and understand what they see and hear. It also studies how
they feel about art and why they like some works and not others, and beliefs, and attitude
towards life. More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as “critical reflection on art,
culture and nature
Etymological, the word Aesthetics is derived from the Greek “Aisthetikos”, meaning
esthetics, sensitive, sentient, pertaining to sense perception, which in turn was derived from
Aisthanomal, meaning “ i perceive, feel, sense and related aesthesis (sensation)
The term aesthetics was appropriated and coined with new meaning by the German
philosopher Alexander Baugarten in his dissertation meditationes philosophicae de nonullis
ad poema pertinentibus (philosophical consideration of some matters pertaining poem). In
1735, Baugarten choose Aesthetics because he wished to emphasise the experience of art as a
means of knowing (Wikipedia - https//:en.org>wiki>Aesthetics)

AN EXAMINATION OF MEDIEVAL AESTHETICS IN THE THOUGT OF ST.

AUGUSTINE AND THOMAS AQUINAS
St. Augustine and his Aesthetics

Augustine was born in A.D 354 in north Africa. His father Patricius, was not a
Christian (although he became on of his deathbed). However, Monica, Augustine’s mother
was a devout Christian who was later declared a saint. Seeking the best education for him, his
parent sent him to carthage in 370 to study rhetoric.
Always seeking spiritual and intellectual fulfilment, Augustine fell under the
influence 0of the Michean religious cult. Subsequently, he was baptize St. Ambrose on ease
the Sunday in 387. Deciding to devote all his energies to the teaching of rhetoric and
retrieved to his home in Africa in the region now known as Tunisia. In 396, he was made
bishop 430, as the barbarians were taking over the empire and surging at the gates of Hippo
(William Lawhead, 124).
in his Confession, Augustine tells a little of his lost early work, De Pulchro et Apto
(on the beautiful and fitting), in which he distinguished a beauty that belongs to things in
virtue of their forming a whole and a beauty that belongs to things in virtue of their fitting in
with something else or being a part of a whole. It is no possible to be sure, from his brief
description, of the exact nature of this distinction. His later thoughts on beauty are scattered
throughout his works, and especially in De Ordine (Concerning order), De Vera Religione
(concerning True Religion) and De Musica, a treatise on meter.
The key concept in Augustine’a theory ares ss unity, number, equality,
proportion, and unity is the basic notion, not only in art (De ordine) but in reality. The
esxistence of individual things as units, and the possibility of comparing them with respect to
equality or likeness, gives rise to proportion, measure, and number (De Musica, Libereo
Arbitrio). Number, he emphasise various places, is fundamental both to being and to beauty –
Examine the beauty of bodily form, and you will find that everything is in its place by
number (De Libero Arbitrio, Burleigh translation). Number gives rise to order, arrangement
of equal and unequal parts into an integrated com0lex in accordance with an end. And from
order comes a second-level kind of unity, the emergent unity if heterogeneous wholes,
harmonized or made symmetrical through internal relations of likeness between the parts (De
Veras Religione).

An important feature of Augustine’s theory is that the perception of beauty involves a

normative judgement. We perceive the ordered objects as being what it ought to be, the
disordered objects as falling short; hence the painter can correct as he goes along and the
critic can judge (De Vera Religione, 60). But this rightness or wrongness cannot be merely
sensed (De Musica, 34); the spectator must bring with him a concept of ideal order, given to
him by “divine illumination”. It follows that judgement of beauty is objectively valid; there
can be no relativity in it (De Trinity, 41). Augustine also wrestled with the problem of literary
truth, and in his Soliloques, he proposed a rather sophisticated distinction between the
different sorts of lying or deception. In the perceptual illusion, the straight oar pretends to be
bent, and could be bent, but the statue could not be a man and therefore is not “mendacious”.
So, too, the fictional character could not be real and does not pretend to be real by his own
will, but only follows the will of poet ( Confession, 18)

St. Thomas Aquinas and his Aesthetics

Thomas Aquinas was born in 1225 (some say 1224) into a noble Italian family who
lived in southern Italy about halfway between Rome and Naples. Thomas was groomed by
his family for a carrier in church. Around age fourteen, he was sent to the university of
Naples, it was an exciting place to be abounding in new ideas, partly because of the recently
discovered Aristotolian texts and their Arabian commentaries had become a prominent part of
the curriculum. Came under the influence of the newly formed Dominican order, which he
joined sometimes around 1244 (William Lawhead, 167).
Thomas’s account of beauty is given tersely, almost casually, in a few key passage
that have become justly famous for their rich implications. Goodness is one of the
“transcendental” in his metaphysics, being predicable of every being and cutting across the
Aristotelian categories; it is Being considered in relation to desire(Summa theological, 5).
The pleasant, or delightful, is one of the divisions of goodness – “that which terminates the
movement of appetite in the form of rest in thing desired, is called pleasant” (Dominican
fathers translation). And beauty is what pleases on being seen.
Here, of course, “seeing” extends of all cognitive grasp; the perception of beauty is a
kind of knowing (this explains why it does occur in the lower senses of smell and taste).
Since cognition consist in abstracting that form that makes an obiect what it is, beauty
depends on the form. Thomas’s best known statement about beauty occurs in the course of a
discussion of Augustine’s attempt to identify the persons of the trinity with some key
concepts. The father, with unity, etc. Beauty, he says, “includes three condition. First, there is
“integrity or perfection”( integritas sive perfection) – broken or injured objects, incomplete
objects, are ugoly. Second, there is “due to proportion or harmony”(debita proportion siv
consonantia), Which may refer partly to the relations between parts of the object itself but
mainly refers to a relation between the objects and the perceiver: that the eminently visible
object, for example is proportioned to the sight. Third, there is brightness or clarity (claritas),
or brilliance. The third conditions has been variously explicated; it is connected with the
medieval Neoplatonic traditions in which light is a symbol of divine beauty and truth. Clarity
that splendor of form (resplendentia formae) shining on the proportioned parts of matter, In
the opusculum De Pulchro et Bono, written either by the young Thomas or his teacher
Albertus Magnus. The conditions of beauty can be stated univocally, but beauty, being a part
of goodness, is an analogical term( that is, when applied to different). It signifies a whole
family of qualities, for each thing is beautiful in its own way (Aquinas commentary on the
Psalms, 5)

CONCLUSION

To sum up everything, the medieval Age is seen as a dark age, it is not clear that it is
just a misunderstanding since the medieval age brings a new philosophy to the matter of
aesthetics. The matter of aesthetics in the middle ages is waved with the struggle between
eternal and temporal, good and evil and also spiritual and physical under the shadow of the
Christianity. To conceive the aesthetics of the middle age away from the church is not
possible. It can be interpreted that the worldly beauty is not completely neglected and
accepted as the reflection of the God’s beauty by the church; nevertheless, the physical
beauty is always defeated by the spiritual beauty in terms of value given in the middle age.
 WORKS CITED

Britannic. https://www.com>topics>aesthetics. Web.

Internet Encyclopaedia of philosophy. https://www.iep.utm.edu.medieval-aes-the-tics. Web.

Lawhead William. The Voyage of Discovery: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy.

Australia: Thomson Learning publishers, 2002. Print.

Rogers S. and Thomas M. Aesthetics: The Development of Western Aesthetic.

Https://www.com.compilerpress-aesthetics. Web.

Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (8th ed). Oxford University Press.

Wikipedia. https://.en,org>wiki>aesthetics. Web.

 BENUE STATE UNIVERSITY, MAKURDI

FACULTY:
ART
DEPARTMENT:
PHILOSOPHY

MATRIC NO:
BSU/AR/PHL/17/43185
NAME:
TYOAKAA TERSOO
COURSE TITLE:
INTRODUCTION TO AESTHETICS
COURSE CODE:
PHL 209

COURSE LECTURER:
MR TERZUNGWE INJA

NATURE OF WORK:
ASSIGNMENT

QUESTION :

Using two philosophers of the medieval era, explain the aesthetic attitude of that epoch.