Free Beauty and Functional Perspective in Medieval Aesthetics

Abstract

The concept of functional beauty is characterized by including an aesthetic appreciation of objects that evaluates their efficiency in terms of satisfaction of attributions. As opposed to the concept of free beauty, which includes an appreciation of perceptual qualities for their own sake, the knowledge of functions is a necessary condition for the aesthetic experience itself. The aim of this paper is to reintegrate the medieval tension between these two conceptions, which has been surprisingly neglected in contemporary aesthetic reflection. We start from the hypothesis that the modern opposition between functional beauty and free beauty is rooted in the medieval controversies concerning the role assigned to sensitive beauty. If this is true, it would open a path of interlocution for contemporary aesthetic and theological thought that, based on Patristics, runs through the whole of the Middle Ages. We focus on three tensions which constitute three turning points: (1) the categorical distinction between beauty and appropriateness through St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) and St. Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636), who raise the question in the tradition of Latin Patristics; (2) the opposition between aesthetic judgment based on function satisfaction or one based on the free and mere appearance of the object, as can be seen in the foundational thought of St. Basil the Great (330–379), whose influence is not only extraordinary in Greek Patristics, but also in the Latin world; finally, the controversy about practical value of aesthetic attitude, through texts by Hugh of St. Victor (1096–1141), St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) and Suger of St. Denis (1081–1151). The conclusions reveal the irreducible aesthetic value of functional beauty in medieval period and the extraordinary difficulties in accommodating a free and autonomous notion of beauty, as well as the practical benefits of its everyday treatment. In fact, the consideration of a free beauty as a good in itself persists in medieval thought, which is important not only for History of Philosophy, but also for the contemporary concern shared by Philosophy of Religion and Aesthetics about the role of sensitive beauty in the life of human being.

Mary’s Transparent Beauty in St. Bernard’s Aesthetics

“…The same question arises in Richard's thought on the power of the visible to reach the invisible, where sensorial beauty plays an indisputable role (e.g., Richardus S. Victoris 1855b, col. 153c). This difference can also be seen in aesthetic questions: the resistance of the Cistercian to consider Mary's sensitive beauty as an aesthetic element of appreciation is only possible if it depends heteronomously on a prior moral condition that anticipates that beauty as a sort of emanation, while in the Victorian framework it could be contemplated, according to the texts, as another element of Mariological dignity, but in any case autonomous (Kovach 1974;Pradier 2022).…”

“…As we know, both figures, Suger and St. Bernard, embodied two completely different ways of confronting material delights: while the latter wrote that "those of us who have come out of the people" are precisely those who consider the beauty of material things "as garbage" (ut stercora) (Bernardus Claraevallensis 1854a, col. 915a) 1 , the other, possibly influenced by the aesthetic theology of Hugues de Saint-Victor (Poirel 2001, pp. 141-70), interpreted the contemplation of material objects, in their aesthetic properties, as meditative occasion (Pradier 2022), suitable for a mystical ascent of anagogical character (more anagogico), in which Suger was "transferred from the material to the immaterial" (de materialibus ad immaterialia transferendo) (Suger of St. Denis 2018, p. 106;Suger de St. Denis 1867, p. 198) 2 . What is interesting, in this case, is that aesthetic tension between one and the other way of facing material charms does not develop in relation to the role of plastic arts in religious spaces-a genuine controversy of the aesthetic thought of the twelfth century, but around the feminine beauty through the figure of Virgin Mary.…”