A Thing or Two About Beauty

Why does a piece of art or architecture give us joy or make us feel delighted? Why do we feel good, relaxed, and happy inside one building, but not so much in another? Why do we enjoy strolling through one city, but not through another?

Can beauty be defined? And if so, how?

Unlike the modern claim that beauty is entirely subjective, Saint Thomas Aquinas argued in his Summa Theologiae that beauty has objective conditions. In his discussion of beauty, Aquinas identifies three qualities that contribute to it:

Integrity or Wholeness (integritas)

The object must be complete, lacking nothing that it ought to have. A church, for example, should not merely be a collection of attractive components. Its various elements should contribute to its identity as a church. 

The question being  - does this thing fully express what it is?

Proportion or Harmony (consonantia / proportio)

The parts of the object must fit together in an appropriate and harmonious way. A thing is not beautiful merely because each individual part is beautiful; the parts must also relate properly to one another.

A beautiful building therefore has an intelligible relationship between its parts, its whole, its purpose, and its scale.

Clarity or Radiance (claritas)

The form of the thing must somehow shine through and reveal itself clearly, producing intellectual or sensory delight.

This brings us to Aquinas's famous formulation:

“The beautiful is said to be that which pleases when seen.”

The word “seen” (visa) does not necessarily mean merely visually seen. It refers more broadly to apprehension—the encounter in which the senses and intellect perceive and grasp a thing's form.

Beauty, therefore, is not simply something we like. It is something whose form we can apprehend, and in that apprehension experience delight.

And perhaps this is why certain works of art and architecture affect us so profoundly.

A work may possess integrity. It may possess proportion. It may possess clarity. But when all three come together, something more happens. The object does not merely please us—it can reveal something beyond itself.

A great work of architecture can make an invisible reality perceptible through visible form. It can give shape to ideas that are otherwise difficult to express: order, harmony, transcendence, eternity, even the divine.

Perhaps this is why a person can walk into a beautiful church and unexpectedly find themselves moved to tears. Perhaps it is why beauty can sometimes become more than an aesthetic experience—it can become a spiritual experience.

And perhaps, at its highest level, beauty does not merely make us feel good. It makes us look beyond the thing itself.

Have a nice week everyone and enjoy looking at beautiful things!