Contemplation: Aesthetic and Religious

"Contemplation is the free, more penetrating gaze of a mind, suspended with wonder concerning manifestations of wisdom" (contemplatio est libera mentis perspicacia in sapientiae spectacula cum admiratione suspensa) - Richard of St. Victor, Benjamin major, chapter 4. 

At the crossroads of art and religion there is contemplation. Basically the verb contemplor means "to view attentively, to survey, to consider." Contemplation is the Latin equivalent of the Greek theoria, that, according to Plato, means the vision of the essential beauty. The essence of beauty surpasses all beautiful objects and actions, and is the source of them all. (Banquet 211b-e). Contemplation is not scrutinizing rationality, but rather immediate understanding. 

In terms of art and aesthetics, contemplation may be described as a disinterested enjoyment of an artwork. That means that one does not appreciate a work of art because of its price or fame, but simply because it overwhelms oneself and one enjoys the presence of the artwork. In Kant's aesthetics the disinterested pleasure does not ask whether the thing it enjoys does really exist. "When the question is if a thing is beautiful, we do not want to know whether anything depends or can depend on the existence of the thing either for myself or for anyone else, but how we judge it by mere observation." (Critique of Judgement 1.1.2.)

The key property of contemplation, in both cases, is its immediacy. It does not proceed through concepts or images, logical reasoning or moral evaluation. Christian spirituality approaches contemplation in the same manner. Richard of St Victor tells the difference between contemplation and meditation as follows: "Contemplation is a penetrating and free gaze of a soul  extended everywhere in perceiving things; but meditation is a zealous attention of the mind, earnestly pursuing an investigation concerning something." As a matter of fact, Richard distinguishes between three modes of thought. Mere thinking is travelling of the mind through and over different things. Meditation means concentrated activity of the mind aiming to a goal. Finally, contemplation is the flight of thought. At the heart of contemplation there is joy and amazement. Thinking and meditation are needed, but at the arrival of contemplation they are superseded, or abandoned
:

"For after a certain truth has been sought for a long while and is found at last, the mind usually receives it with strong desire, marvels at it with exultation, and for a long time clings to the wonder of it. Already, this is to go beyond meditation by meditating, and meditation passes over into contemplation. And so, it is the property of contemplation to cling with wonder to the manifestation of its joy. And in this, assuredly, it seems to differ as much from meditation as from thinking. For thinking, as has already been said, always turns aside here and there with a rambling walk, while meditation always aims, with
fixed advancement, toward further things."


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