The Aesthetics Of Thomas Aquinas
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
What does it mean for something to be truly beautiful, and can beauty itself be the subject of rigorous philosophical inquiry? In The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, Umberto Eco — better known for his celebrated fiction — turns his formidable intellectual gaze upon the medieval scholastic tradition, presenting a meticulous reconstruction of the aesthetic thought embedded within the vast theological system of Thomas Aquinas. Drawing on the full breadth of Aquinas's writings, Eco argues that a coherent and sophisticated theory of beauty — centred on the triad of integrity, consonance, and clarity — can be extracted from what is ostensibly a theological, not artistic, corpus. The result is a work of remarkable scholarly precision that bridges the medieval and the modern. Translated into English by Hugh Bredin, this landmark study illuminates the surprising richness of thirteenth-century aesthetic philosophy, situating Aquinas within the broader Aristotelian and Neoplatonic currents that shaped medieval thought. Eco's style is characteristically incisive: he marshals evidence with the rigour of a logician and the eloquence of a humanist, making a compelling case that medieval aesthetics deserves a central, not peripheral, place in the history of ideas. For anyone who believes that beauty is merely in the eye of the beholder, Eco's penetrating analysis may well force a profound reconsideration.
Author: Umberto Eco
Format: Paperback
Published: 1988, Radius
Genre: Philosophy
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
What does it mean for something to be truly beautiful, and can beauty itself be the subject of rigorous philosophical inquiry? In The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, Umberto Eco — better known for his celebrated fiction — turns his formidable intellectual gaze upon the medieval scholastic tradition, presenting a meticulous reconstruction of the aesthetic thought embedded within the vast theological system of Thomas Aquinas. Drawing on the full breadth of Aquinas's writings, Eco argues that a coherent and sophisticated theory of beauty — centred on the triad of integrity, consonance, and clarity — can be extracted from what is ostensibly a theological, not artistic, corpus. The result is a work of remarkable scholarly precision that bridges the medieval and the modern. Translated into English by Hugh Bredin, this landmark study illuminates the surprising richness of thirteenth-century aesthetic philosophy, situating Aquinas within the broader Aristotelian and Neoplatonic currents that shaped medieval thought. Eco's style is characteristically incisive: he marshals evidence with the rigour of a logician and the eloquence of a humanist, making a compelling case that medieval aesthetics deserves a central, not peripheral, place in the history of ideas. For anyone who believes that beauty is merely in the eye of the beholder, Eco's penetrating analysis may well force a profound reconsideration.