Study Of Thomas Aquinas Aesthetic Thinking

The medieval ideas and culture of Europe not only have the historical position which forms a connecting link between the preceding and the following but also have their own independent value. The development of medieval ideas has two important symbolic periods: the Philosophia patristica period and the Scholasticism period. Thomas Aquinas is widely regarded as the representative of the Scholastica. He is the one of the greatest theologians in history as well as one of the ideologists who exerted important influence on the development of the overall western ideas and culture.The reason why the influence of Aquinas's thought is not limited in the theological field is that his idea is strongly realistic. The characteristic of the system of Aquinas's ideas is the trial to seek the unity between the relief and rationality, transcendence and experience. He reforms Plato's transcendental rationalism on the basis of theology, takes use of Aristotle's hylemorphism which is more dialectical and experimental and seeks the transcendental experimental existence and the enlightening rational evidence. Therefore, he is more concerned with the relation between God and human and regards relief as virtue, virtue as morale life. Aquinas' theology takes on the qualities of philosophy and ethics. In Aquinas's philosophical theology, belief is always in the first place. Ration and experience are always indispensable.Aquinas's aesthetic thought carries forwards the tradition of Greece as the conclusion and deepening of the medieval aesthetic ideas. Aquinas unifies the traditional and medieval aesthetic thoughts and takes them into his own large ideological system in which he interprets them thoroughly. This kind of interpretation is similar to Aquinas's trial to construct the unity between belief and ration, transcendence and experience. Therefore, Aquinas's aesthetic thought indicates the unity between the transcendental and the experimental. Beauty is transcendental, and the transcendental beauty is the good. In the ontological sense, beauty is unified with good. It is because of the unity...