Beauty

From "Gregorian Chant as the Paradigm of Sacred Music":

"The scholastics gave complementary definitions of beauty, “those things which when seen please,” 1 and “splendor formae.”2 The first describes what happens when beauty is apprehended—delight; the second gets at what it is that delights us—showing forth in a clear and radiant way the very nature of the thing.

1 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger, 1947), Pt. 1, Q5, Art. 4, Reply Obj. 1; Vol I, p. 26.

2 St. Albert the Great, De pulchro et bono, I, 2c; cf. Umberto Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, tr. Hugh Bredin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 45, 234; and Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, tr. J. F. Scanlon (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947), p. 20."

How do these definitions relate to physical beauty? It is clear that physical beauty pleases us; but does it get us anywhere to the nature of a thing? Or is the second definition of beauty inadequate? Of course, one can speak of the form or shape of a specific feature or part, and how it relates to the whole (harmony), like the shape of a nose, the shape of the face, proportion and so on. So the definition might work if form (and beauty, as well) are taken in an analogous manner.

As for the beauty of one's character, the virtues are manifested in our actions, and our actions can thus become the window into our soul. But there is something also to be said of the way we present ourselves, the gracefulness of our actions that exhibit rationality and appreciation of our embodiedness. The way we walk and talk, rise and sit, and so on... deliberate control coupled with ease and elegance. With our senses we can perceive signs of the beauty of the soul.

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There is some dispute among Thomists whether beauty is a transcendental or not. In so far as it is a term that can be predicated of members of all the categories, I would think that it is. But is it convertible with ever instance of being or goodness? While first nature has a goodness and beauty proper to it, the goodness with which we are concerned is moral goodness, which is to be found in second nature, the virtues or character we possess.