Claritas: A central concept in the aesthetics of Joyce and Aquinas

This dissertation is written within the space sometimes identified as "the aesthetics of Joyce and Aquinas." The contested supposition is that James Joyce derived part of his own aesthetic theory from some statements of Thomas Aquinas upon the subject of beauty, as in the observation that beauty is marked with the characteristics of integritas, consonantia, and claritas. The focus of the dissertation is Joyce's interpretation of the last of these terms---" claritas is quidditas"---which is identified with the idea of an "epiphany" in Stephen Hero and reiterated by Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The general thesis here defended is that in this formula the modern Joyce has established a legitimate and valid insight into the philosophical position of the medieval Aquinas.;The dissertation does not pursue the other major statement addressed by Stephen Dedalus, pulchra sunt quae visa placent. Thus it makes no claim to encompass the aesthetics of Joyce and Aquinas. Nor does this dissertation explore the three-stage model of aesthetic experience offered by Stephen. It pursues specifically the concept indicated in the Latin claritas as this has been framed for modern attention by Joyce and as it appears in the philosophy and theology of Thomas Aquinas.;The dissertation does not undertake to trace historically the concept of claritas in this sense from its source in Dionysius the Areopagite (c. 500 CE), through its reception in the Latin West, to its appearance Thomas Aquinas (1225--1274 CE). The dissertation pursues directly the exposition of particular texts in Aquinas, bringing to bear whatever historical background is required to make a proper job of this exposition for a reader acquainted only generally with medieval philosophy and theology. Within this exposition the dissertation does attend to the question of whether and how a concept historically determined in a medieval theological context can be brought to a modern secular context with the legitimate understanding proposed in the thesis.;In pursuit of the proposition that Joyce does with his formula establish a valid insight into the concept, identifying claritas with quidditas or the "whatness" of things, this dissertation offers what I call its "core thesis", which is that Joyce may well have developed his idea out of a general acquaintance with the theory of knowledge in Thomas Aquinas. The dissertation does not undertake to ascertain actual influences upon the young James Joyce. The thesis is suggested in the fact that the term quidditas figures prominently in Aquinas's theory of knowledge, and no more than its plausibility is required for the argument of the dissertation. The demonstration is directed to establish and examine its theoretical possibility.;Beyond the text from which Joyce got claritas as a mark of beauty, then, the dissertation finds its focus in Aquinas's theory of knowledge as this is laid out in the Summa Theologiae, First Part, Questions 75--89, which is a coherent presentation in philosophical psychology sometimes described as his "treatise on human nature". My core thesis, with the exposition which constitutes its demonstration, is what sets this dissertation off from what has been generally offered upon the subject, such as the diversion to a theory of poetry in Thomas Noon, S.J., or the broad history and essentially modern semiotics of Umberto Eco. The demonstration of the core thesis, i.e. that Joyce might have developed his idea within Aquinas's theory of knowledge, itself accomplishes the demonstration of the general thesis, i.e. that the formula "claritas is quidditas" does indeed establish a valid insight into the philosophical thinking of Thomas Aquinas.;The procedure which guides my exposition of Aquinas's theory of knowledge is to trace his use of the metaphor of light. The procedure is suggested in exposition of the first text, upon beauty, in Summa Theologiae Ia Q. 39 Art. 8. References to Augustine (354--439 CE), and the historical exposition which they necessitate, lead to the working hypothesis that the concept of claritas is to be identified with the Neoplatonic concept of an "intelligible light" (lux intelligibilis ) or an "intellectual light" (lux intellectualis ). The terms figure in Augustine's theory of knowledge by the divine illumination of the intellect. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...