Aquinas’ Aesthetics: Objective Beauty and the Moral Good

Abstract Aquinas’ recognition that “those things are beautiful which are pleasing when seen” has been consistently misinterpreted: since Kant, modern aesthetics has taken it as given that reference to an “eye of the beholder” must be understood as indicating a purely subjective response to beauty. This paper discusses how Aquinas anticipates and successfully disproves the claim that aesthetic response is essentially subjective by pointing out that all things in nature possess beauty “according to the nature of each” and by showing that the beautiful must possess honestas , which equates to virtue and thus to the good.