It is at this point, in the space of a single page, without insisting unnecessarily, that De Bruyne ventures as follows: “there is no aesthetic sentiment except insofar as intuitive knowledge itself satisfies us, thanks to its qualities of pure intuition: ‘id cujus ipsa apprehensio placet, [the very apprehension of which pleases]’ ” (De Bruyne [1946]1998: 286).
Unfortunately, on this point the same objection already raised against Maritain is also valid for De Bruyne: do we have any reason to state that (in Thomas) the apprehension of something, if it is to produce pleasure, must be intuitive? It does not appear so, especially when we recall that the term apprehensio is used as a rule precisely for abstractive intellectual knowledge. And yet De Bruyne concludes that, when the apprehensio
has to do with the vision of corporeal beauty, it is neither purely sensible nor purely abstractive but essentially intuitive, in the sense that it presents itself psychologically as a synthetic unity. “Non enim proprie loquendum sensus aut intellectus cognoscunt, sed homo per utrumque.” Intuition is an act of the whole man, in whatever way the connection between sensibility and mind is conceived. But in this intuition of the individual form, of which sensation is the first condition, it is the intellect that grasps, not just the meaning of the thing perceived, but also the value proper to pure perception [se rapporte à la vision du beau corporel , elle n’est ni purement sensible ni purement abstractive mais essentiellement intuitive, au sens où elle se présente psychologiquement comme une unité synthétique. “Non enim proprie loquendum sensus aut intellectus cognoscunt, sed homo per utrumque.” L’intuition est l’acte de l’homme tout entier, de quelque forme que l’on conçoive le lien entre sensibilité et esprit. Mais dans cette intuition de la forme individuelle, dont la sensation est la première condition, c’est l’intellect qui saisit non seulement le sens de la chose perçue mais aussi la valeur propre de la perception pure.]
Is it enough to say that “non enim proprie loquendum sensus aut intellectus cognoscunt, sed homo per utrumque” (De veritate II, 6 ad 3—which, when you think about it, is practically a truism) to posit the concept of an intuitive synthesis? Not only does one statement not imply the other, Thomas always said the exact opposite: that sense and intellect, that is, do not know through a lightning synthesis, but in two separate phases. The senses appear first, and then, once the phantasm has been formed, the senses retire into the wings and the intellect steps onstage. But De Bruyne was in need of a principle of knowledge of the individual for which Thomas’s aesthetics, sadly, made no allowance.
Thomas affirms that “the mind knows singulars through a certain kind of reflection, as when the mind, in knowing its object, which is some universal nature, returns to knowledge of its own act, then to the species which is the principle of its act, and, finally, to the phantasm from which it has abstracted the species. In this way, it attains to some knowledge (aliqua cognitio) concerning singulars.”38
But this aliqua cognitio is insufficient to explain the delight one feels in observing how the form shines from the proportionate parts of the matter it organizes, nor to evaluate all the varieties of proportion it exhibits, nor to judge the integrity of the object appreciated. For all of this we must proceed to acts of judgment, to an activity of division and composition, in which we seize “proprietates et accidentia et habitudines” (“properties, accidents and relationships”) (Summa Theologiae Ia, 85, 5 co.).
In this complex activity, which remains intellectual throughout, the aesthetic joy, even as it grasps the characteristics proper to the organized matter, remains an intellectual enjoyment, in which corporeality has a fairly reduced function. For Thomas the aesthetic visio is not something that differs from intellectual knowledge, but represents, if anything, one of its most complex levels. This is the limit of the Thomistic aesthetic (or for some readers, its strength, since aesthetic pleasure would no longer be an accident of the passions but a further exercise of the intellect).
This is Thomas’s position, which stems from his inability to explain the knowledge of the concrete. It is too late to have him change his mind.
De Bruyne was playing a tricky game. On the one hand, he took into account his Belgian predecessors, like De Wulf, who had insisted on the fact that for Thomas the subject has a fundamental role in aesthetic perception—and De Wulf was certainly correct. On the other, he found himself faced with Thomas’s unsatisfactory epistemology. He attempted therefore, relaxing his own historiographical rigor, to infer what Thomas ought to have said in order to make his position coherent and to lay the foundations for an aesthetic that would be satisfactory even to modern eyes.
He clearly shows his satisfaction when he is convinced that he recognizes an intellectual intuition in the Victorines or in Duns Scotus—and he is probably right; so this, we suspect, was why he considered his historical survey complete when he reached Duns Scotus. But if the Victorines and Duns Scotus agreed, so to speak, with De Bruyne, this does not mean that Thomas agreed with Scotus and the Victorines. In a word, the chapter on Thomas is really quite tormented and represents the “Maritainian fault” in De Bruyne’s otherwise impeccable work. Which goes to show how difficult it is for a militant Thomist to admit that Thomas cannot always satisfy the legitimate theoretical desires of someone who is attempting to come to terms not only with Thomas but also with modern thought.
And yet, perhaps in a fit of prudence, in the chapter of the Études dedicated to Thomas, De Bruyne avoids using the expression “intellectual intuition.” Maybe he really had been giving Roland-Gosselin’s reaction some thought.
If writing the history of thought means letting the authors of the past say what they actually said and not what we would have them say, we must be consistent and accuse De Bruyne of this historiographical inaccuracy. While recognizing, however, that he must have been somehow aware that he was treading on thin ice, since he confined his reflections on intuition in Thomas to a mere two pages, almost en passant. So that, forgiving him this single moment of weakness, or of excessive love for his author, we may continue to insist on the great distance that separates Maritain’s reading from his: the former consisting in a free use of the sources, the latter in an effort at interpretation.
This chapter is a revisiting of two previous texts: “Storiografia medievale ed estetica teorica” (Eco 1961) and “L’esthétique médiévale d’Edgar de Bruyne” (Eco 2004a). The latter was also published in Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 71 (2004): 219–232. On the difference between the use and the interpretation of texts, see Eco (1979, 1990). [Translator’s note: I am grateful to Hugh Bredin and to his translation of Eco (1988) for his example and for helpful suggestions.]
- Art et scolastique, first written between 1918 and 1919 and published in the periodical Les lettres in 1919, was issued in book form by the Librairie de l’Art Catholique in 1920. A copy of this edition, held in the University of Toronto library, can be read online at http://archive.org/stream/artetscolastique00mariuoft#page/n0/mode/1up. A second, revised edition appeared in 1927 (Paris: Rouart), with additional notes, as well as several new annexes (appendices or excursuses). The pages on poetry were extrapolated and reprinted, along with essays and poems by other authors, in the miscellany Frontières de la poésie [The Frontiers of Poetry] (Maritain 1935). The standard English version, Art and Scholasticism and The Frontiers of Poetry (Maritain 1962) was translated by Joseph W. Evans from the third and final revised French edition (1935).
- We may cite Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio (“Ragioni del bello secondo i principi di San Tommaso,” Civiltà cattolica, 1859–1860), Vincenzo Fortunato Marchese (Delle benemerenze di San Tommaso verso le belle arti, Genoa, 1974), Pierre Vallet (Idée du beau dans la philosophie de Saint Thomas d’Aquin, Louvain, 1887), J. Biolez (Saint Thomas et les Beaux Arts, Louvain, 1896), Domenico M. Valensise (Dell’estetica secondo i principii dell’Angelico Dottore, Rome, 1903), Paolo Lingueglia (“Le basi e le leggi dell’estetica secondo San Tommaso,” in Pagine di d’arte e di letteratura, Turin, 1915), Octavio Nicolas Derisi (Lo eterno y lo temporal en el arte, Buenos Aires, 1942), as well as—but after Maritain—Leonard Callahan (Theory of Aesthetics: According to the Principles of Saint Thomas, Washington, DC, 1928), Adolf Dyroff (“Über die Entwicklung und der Wert der Ästhetik des Thomas von Aquin,” Archiv für systematische Philosophie una Soziologie, 1929), Carlo Mazzantini (“Linee fondamentali di una estetica tomista,” Studium, 1929), Thomas Gilby (Poetic Experience: An Introduction to Thomistic Aesthetic, New York, 1934), Josef Koch (“Zur Ästhetik des Thomas von Aquin,” Zeitschrift für Ästhetik, 1931), Francesco Olgiati (“San Tommaso e l’arte,” Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica, 1934), down to Mortimer Adler who, in his Art and Prudence (1937), attempted to apply Aristotelian aesthetics, seen through a Thomistic lens, to the cinema. Among these commentators perhaps the most original was Maurice de Wulf with his Études historiques sur l’esthétique de Saint Thomas d’Aquin (Louvain, 1896), which underscored the psychological elements in Thomistic aesthetics. Less historiographically reliable was his Art et beauté (1920), mixing as it does, and as did many similar works, philosophical historiography and militant metaphysics.
[Translator’s note: It may be useful to point out that in what follows Eco will be using the term
