“aesthetic,” not only with reference to the artistic experience, but in its broader sense of the appreciation of beauty. This is made clear in his 1956 dissertation on Aquinas, now translated into English by Hugh Bredin as The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas: “The concept of the aesthetic refers to the problem of the possible objective character, and the subjective conditions, of what we call the experience of beauty. It thus refers also to problems connected with the aesthetic object and aesthetic pleasure. The experience of beauty does not necessarily have art as its object; for we ascribe beauty not just to poems and paintings but also to horses, sunsets, and women—or even, at its limits, to a crime or a gourmet meal” (Eco 1988: 3).]

3. Let us not forget that in 1944 he published a collection of essays entitled De Bergson à Thomas d’Aquin, essais de métaphysique et de morale (New York: Éditions de la Maison Française).
4. See my “The Poetics and Us” [“La Poetica e noi”] in Eco (2004b).
5. It is a known fact that nowhere in the Sherlock Holmes stories does Arthur Conan Doyle have his hero utter the famous phrase “Elementary, my dear Watson,” and yet the remark is as frequently cited as “To be or not to be.” The same thing has occurred with this formula of Maritain’s, which has continued to be repeated as authentically Thomistic by a multiplicity of authors. Even De Munnynk (1923), writing as a critic of Maritain’s method, continues to quote “pulchrum, est id quod visum placet” without batting an eyelid.
6. “id quod visum placet, ce qui plaît étant vu, c’est-à-dire étant l’objet d’une intuition.… Contemplant l’objet dans l’intuition que le sens en a, l’intellect jouit d’une présence, elle jouit de la présence rayonnante d’un intelligible qui ne se révèle pas lui-même à ses yeux tel qu’il est. Se détourne-t-elle du sens pour abstraire et raisonner, elle se détourne de sa joie, et perd contact avec ce rayonnement. Pour entendre cela, représentons-nous que c’est l’intelligence et le sens ne faisant qu’un, ou, si l’on peut ainsi parler, le sens intelligencié, qui donne lieu dans le coeur à la joie esthétique” (1927: 252–254, n. 55).
7. “C’est une vue simple, bien que virtuellement très riche en multiplicité, de l’oeuvre à faire saisie dans son âme individuelle, vue qui est comme un germe spirituel ou une raison séminale de l’oeuvre, et qui tient de ce que M. Bergson appelle intuition et schéma dynamique, qui intéresse non seulement l’intelligence, mais aussi l’imagination et la sensibilité de l’artiste” (1927: 277–278, n. 93).
8. Discovered in 1869 and at first attributed to Thomas, by the time Maritain was writing, the consensus inclined toward attributing it to Albertus Magnus (so much so that in 1927 Mandonnet would classify it among Thomas’s Opuscula spuria). Maritain had therefore a number of indications that ought to have encouraged him to a greater prudence.
9. See Maritain (1920: 42–44, 48–49, and 185–186, n. 73).
10. See Maritain (1920: 207, n. 130, and 217, n. 138), and Maritain (1935: 33, n. 1).
11. See, for a fuller treatment, Chapter 3 in the present volume.
12. See John of St. Thomas (1930). The terminus or term is “id, ex quo simplex conficitur propositio” (“that out of which a simple proposition is made”) or “vox significativa ad placitum ex qua simplex conficitur propositio vel oratio” (“a vocal expression significative by stipulation, from which a simple proposition or sentence is constructed”) (Deely 1985: 24); while the sign or signum is “id, quod potentiae cognoscitivae aliquid aliud a se repraesentat (“that which represents something other than itself to a cognitive power”) (Deely 1985: 25).
    “Essentialiter enim consistit in ordine ad signatum” (“For the being of a sign essentially consists in an order to a signified”) (Deely 1985: 218). See also Deely (1988) and Murphy (1991).
13. “Secundum autem diversificantur gradus prophetiae quantum ad expressionem signorum imaginabilium quibus veritas intelligibilis exprimitur. Et quia signa maxime expressa intelligibilis veritatis sunt verba, ideo altior gradus prophetiae videtur quando propheta audit verba exprimentia intelligibilem veritatem.… In quibus etiam signis tanto videtur prophetia esse altior, quanto signa sunt magis expressa” (“Secondly the degrees of this prophecy are differentiated according to the expressiveness of the imaginary signs whereby the intelligible truth is conveyed. And since words are the most expressive signs of intelligible truth, it would seem to be a higher degree of prophecy when the prophet … hears words expressive of an intelligible truth.… In such like signs prophecy would seem to be the more excellent, according as the signs are more expressive”) Summa Theologiae trans. by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, II–II, 174, 3.
14. Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry began life as a cycle of six A. W. Mellon lectures in the fine arts given at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, in the spring of 1952, and was published in 1953 for the Bollingen Foundation by Pantheon Books. Our quotations are taken from this edition.
15. It is worth remarking that, in the second chapter of the book, Maritain appeals once more to the Scholastic theory of art, expounding it faithfully. But he continues to imply that primary intuition, a notion foreign to Scholastic theory, must preside over the organization of the operative rules. For Maritain creative intuition is the fundamental rule on which the artist’s fidelity depends, and by whose standard it should be judged. For the medieval mind, on the other hand, the rules precede the productive act and its mental conception.
16. For a reconstruction of the process in semiotic terms, see Pellerey (1984).
17. “Intellectus possibilis intelligit hominem non secundum quod est HIC homo sed in quantum est HOMO simpliciter, secundum rationem speciei” (“The possible intellect understands man, not as THIS man, but simply as MAN, according to man’s specific nature”) (Contra gentiles II, 73).
18. “Singulare in rebus materialibus intellectus noster directe et primo cognoscere non potest. Cuius ratio est, quia principium singularitatis in rebus materialibus est material individualis, intellectus autem noster, sicut supra dictum est, intelligit abstrahendo speciem intelligibilem ab huiusmodi material. Quod autem a materia individuali abstrahitur, est universale. Unde intellectus noster directe non est cognoscitivus nisu universalium. Indirecte autem, et quasi per quandam reflexionem, potest cognoscere singulare, quia, sicut supra dictum est, etiam postquam species intelligibiles abstraxit, non potest secundum eas actu intelligere nisi convertendo se ad phantasmata, in quibus species intelligibiles intelligit, ut dicitur in III de anima. Sic igitur ipsum universale per speciem intelligibilem directe intelligit; indirecte autem singularia, quorum sunt phantasmata. Et hoc modo format hanc propositionem, Socrates est homo” (“Directly and immediately our intellect cannot know the singular in material realities. The reason is that the principle of singularity in material things is individual matter, and our intellect—as said before—understands by abstracting species from this sort of matter. But what is abstracted from individual matter is universal. Therefore our intellect has direct knowledge only of universals. Indirectly and by a quasi-reflection, on the other hand, the intellect can know the singular, because, as mentioned before, even after it has abstracted species it cannot actually understand by means of them except by a return to sense images in which it understands the species, as Aristotle says [in De anima III]. Therefore, in this sense, it is the universal that the intellect understands directly by means of the species, and singulars (represented in sense images) only indirectly. And it is in this way that it formulates the proposition, ‘Socrates is a man’ ”) (Summa Theologiae I, 86, 1 co.). “Species igitur rei, secundum quod est in phantasmatibus, non est intelligibilis actu.… Sicut nec species coloris est sensata in actu secundum quod est in lapide, sed solum secundum quod est in pupilla” (“Wherefore the species of a thing according as it is in the phantasms is not actually intelligible … even so neither is the species of color actually perceived according as it is in the stone, but only according as it is in the pupil) (Contra gentiles II, 59).
19. On this resolution of the contemplation of the concrete in the discursive act of judgment, which characterizes Thomistic epistemology and is important if we are to understand the type of aesthetic that derives from it, we dealt at length in chapter 7 of Eco (1956) (English translation Eco [1988]). In what follows we will have occasion to mention the article by Roland-Gosselin, “Peut-on parler d’intuition intellectuelle dans la philosophie thomiste?” In open polemic with Maritain’s positions, he concluded: “Sensation is an intuition of the sensible as such. Reflection, or psychological awareness, is an intuition of our acts, but determined primarily by their object. The other ‘views,’ more or less direct and immediate, that we have at our disposal do not attain the single reality. To reach concrete existence, that of things or the substantial existence of the ego, a detour or a discourse is called for.” [“La sensation est une intuition du sensible comme tel. La réflexion, ou conscience psychologique, est une intuition de nos actes, mais déterminée premièrement par leur objet. Les autres ‘vues’ plus ou moins directes et immédiates, dont nous disposons, n’atteignent pas la réalité singulière. Pour rejoindre l’existence concrète, celle des choses ou l’existence substantielle du moi, un détour, ou un discours s’impose à elles”] (Roland-Gosselin 1930: 730).
20. Only the external senses know individual things, but it is probably a metaphor to say that they know, because in fact they register and do not know themselves (Contra gentiles II, 66). On the limits of Thomistic epistemology, see also Mahoney (1982).
21. In Eco (1956) we stated that this reconsideration of the concrete object occurs for Thomas only in the act of judgment. We could hardly compel him to say more, but the fact remains that in this way too the enjoyment