Study On Aesthetic Ideas Of Tomas Aquinas

Aesthetics is an issue that many ancient theologians had studied. From the godfather in the ancient Greek to scholasticism in the Middle Ages the theology of Christianity lasting for more than one thousand years has accumulated rich ideological resources of theological aesthetics. Despite of that, aesthetics has still been a marginal topic to many theologians. Aesthetics can even be totally ignored in theology. Before the 13 th century few theologians realized the importance of aesthetics from the metaphysic perspective. In the early 13 th centuryscholasticism was flourishing,and the theological field gradually restored their interest in the ancient aesthetic ideas. Tomas Aquinas,a master of scholasticism in the Middle Ages,solved many difficult and fundamental issues of scholasticism, of which the issue of aesthetics was also covered by him. Statement of Tomas Aquinas about aesthetics was quite brief, but to the point.This paper studies aesthetic ideas of Thomas Aquinas from five perspectives.In Part 1, first, the family status, education background and major works of Thomas Aquinas are brief introduced. Second, the origin and background of his aesthetic ideas are illustrated.Third,achievements of Thomas Aquinas in the field of aesthetics are summarized.In Part 2,basic concepts and evolvement of theological aesthetics are expounded on. Though experts and scholars both at home and abroad have not yet reached an agreement about its concept,they all define it from the perspective of theology,aesthetics,art and religion,thus endowing theological aesthetics with the public nature. It is no longer confined to the scope of certain subject for discussion.In Part 3,scholasticism is introduced. As a branch of philosophy, scholasticism is undoubtedly important. The aesthetic ideas of Thomas Aquinas are rooted in such soilthus bearing unique fruits featuring integration of theological aesthetics and philosophical aesthetics.In Part 4, the valuable part of aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, namelyphilosophical aesthetics,is described.In Part 5 focuses on the innovation of aesthetic ideas of Thomas Aquinas compared with scholars before him and his influence on scholars after him.This paper is a specialized research on aesthetic ideas of Thomas Aquinas at an attempt to seek a relatively correct positioning of his aesthetic ideas.