Art and the Desire for God

Aquinas Institute, Oxford

A special lecture from November 2018 from Prof Roger Pouivet.

Art and the Desire for God - A Thomistic Perspective in Aesthetics

Many philosophers claim that philosophy must question the nature of “aesthetic experience” Consequently, “Aesthetics” is mainly devoted to the description of this assumed aesthetic experience. My intention now is to try to show that this modern account, defining a large part of Aesthetics as a discipline, does not allow a correct description of our aesthetic life. Criticism of this modern and contemporary conception will be followed by the defence of a completely different thesis: 1) aesthetic properties are really possessed by the things to which they are rightly attributed (against aesthetic antirealism); 2) works of art are artifacts which function aesthetically (against artistic antirealism); and 3) we are made, thanks to our rationality which is the mark of our spirituality, to apprehend in natural things and works of art those properties by which they signify, and in particular their aesthetic properties (for a finalist account of human beings). Apprehension and appreciation of works of art presuppose the ability to respond to the aesthetic properties of things and works of art. We need to exercise virtues, intellectual and moral ones, to answer appropriately to aesthetic properties of works of art and natural things. Good in general, and good in our aesthetic life and in art, can be understood according to what Aquinas calls “the gradation to be found in things”. I will try to show that it is a reason to think that a successful aesthetic life is a form of desire for God as the source of all perfection.