Michael Waddell, Ph.D.

Scholars have been fascinated by Aquinas’s very limited remarks about beauty for nearly 100 years. In this essay, I reflect on the place of beauty in Thomas Aquinas’s ontology, etiology, and psychology. I suggest that Thomas’s discussion of beauty in Summa theologiae 1.5.4, read in light of other important texts from Aquinas’s corpus, brings to the fore the integration of formal and final causality in his etiology, the integration of cognitive and appetitive faculties in his psychology, and the integration of truth and goodness in his ontology, as well as the more fundamental integration of ontology, etiology and psychology with one another in Thomas’s broader teaching. I then explore the bolder claim that beauty might even effect the integration of these various aspects of Aquinas’s thought and of reality as he construes it. Finally, I conclude by offering some suggestions for further reflection on the significance of beauty in Aquinas’s philosophy and theology in light of the account I offer in the body of the paper. https://www.anselm.edu/sites/default/files/Documents/Institute%20of%20SA%20Studies/Integrating%20Beauty.pdf