A Short History of Beauty: Ancient and Medieval Times

 

The Greek word καλός may denote beautiful, good, or useful. That is the case with many other languages, too: the word for beauty has several connotations, other than aesthetic. 

In the Greek philosophy, there were also several criteria that make beauty beautiful. The most prominent were order (τάξις), symmetry, and harmony. In a perfect body, harmony of the human limbs were in accordance with the harmony of the universe, of which the musical harmony was a sounding image. 

According to Plato, all visible beauty is originated in the idea of beauty. Diotima's celebrated speech in The Banquet begins with beautiful objects, then discusses beautiful soul and beautiful action, and ultimately presents the idea of beauty behind all this.  Beauty is inseparably connected with the moral goodness and the useful. The vehement criticism of art in Plato's The Republic is principally due to the enormous power of art to move the human soul.

Compared to Plato, Aristotle's view on kalos approaches more the aesthetic dimension as we understand it. Beauty is nevertheless irrevocably connected with morality. As Zenon put it,  μόνον το καλόν άγαθον, "only the good is beautiful", that is: there is nothing valuable beyond morality. 

Translating Greek into Latin has sometimes fatal repercussions, as happened when Cicero replaced the word pathos with perturbatio, that gave emotions a permanently suspect aura in Western philosophy. Passions are something that disturb rational thinking. Perhaps this was not the case with kalos, but the word had a handful of Latin equivalents: bellus, pulcher, formosus, venustus. A distinct word for moral beauty emerged (honestas) thus indicating that moral and aesthetic ideas were not the same anymore. 

Medieval aesthetics was a heir of both Greek philosophy and Christianity. The source of beauty is traced to proportion and/or brightness. Appreciation of beauty was based on Book of Wisdom 11:20, according to which God has ordered all things by "measure, number and weight." Hugh of St. Victor (12th century) wrote in his Didascalion, that the beauty of creatures consists of position (situs), movement (motus), shape (species), and properties (qualitas). Position includes the spatial dimension of a thing and its relatedness with other things. Movement is a matter of both senses, intellect, and action. Shape means the visible form of an object, including its color and size. Finally, properties mean the features that are perceived through other senses, such as sounds etc.  

Was beauty among the transcendentals in the Medieval times? Transcendentals mean "the most common notions" that irrevocably belong to being (ens). The three indisputable transcendentals were one (unum), true (verum), and good (bonum). Summa fratris Alexandri (often assigned to Alexander of Hales) attests that beauty (pulchrum) has a transcendetal status, although not an independent one. Good that is pursued for its own sake, is also beautiful. The difference between the good and the beautiful is that pulchrum delights the sensuous apprehension, whereas bonum pleases the affect. Being a matter of perception, beauty has also the aspect of verum. However, truth is an inner thing, but beauty inevitably an outer thing.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is a common statement that undermines the objectivity of aesthetic judgment. Medieval philosophers might well have said that, but that would have nothing to do with aesthetic relativism. There is a correspondence between the perceived object, the human sense organ (eyes, ears) and the sense. The aesthetic experience happens similarly as the key is applied to the lock. Harmonious proportions are innate in human beings. Therefore they respond to the right aesthetic stimuli with pleasure. 

Albert the Great portrayed beauty as having brightness (claritas) as its forma and proportionality (proportio) as its materia. Accordingly, beauty is "the brightness of substantial or actual form over the proportionate and limited parts of the matter." The definition of beauty by a pupil of Albert, Thomas Aquinas, issued from its consequences: pulchra sunt quae visu placent "things that please the sight are beautiful." That, however, does not mean that pleasure would constitute beauty. Another pupil of Albert, Ulrich of Strasbourg, explains that beautiful is not only synonymous with the good, but also with being (ens).

In Aquinas' aesthetics there are three essentials of beauty. The first is Integritas sive perfectio: Nothing incomplete or insufficient is regarded as beautiful. The second is proportio sive consonantia: Orderly proportion and harmony of the parts is required for a beautiful thing. The third is claritas. Brightness in colors is generally seen as beautiful. Light itself is beautiful.

 The medievalist Edgar De Bruyne has made a distinction between the aesthetics of proportion and the aesthetics of light. As seen above, both proportion and brightness belong to the true beauty. Compared to proportion, light has a more immediate power. Perceiving proportion presupposes a composite structure. It consists of parts. In contrast, light is a simple entity and has a more immediate effect on our mind than harmony. The charm of light is not in its harmony, nor in its weight, nor in any other physical attribute, but simply in the direct perception of it. Robert Grosseteste (1168-1253) declares that the brilliance of gold is beautiful, not because of its proportions, but because of its light. Likewise, the beauty of the stars is not based on the harmony of their elements, but on their joyous radiance. Light is beautiful, even without the harmonious proportions of physical figures. The aesthetics of light emphasizes the immediate pleasure of beauty. Grosseteste explains God’s words fiat lux "let there be light" as follows: the word of God created the world out of light, drove away the darkness (tenebras dispulit), destroyed sorrow (meroremque dissolvit), and rendered all things joyful and delightful (letam iucundamque). Thus, light itself is beautiful and pleasing to sight (visui iocundissima). To employ such words indicates that aesthetic perception is a matter of joy and pleasure more than of understanding and moral judgment.