BEAUTY

And Desirability
GOD IS PERFECT…
◦ GOODNESS - worthiness
◦ TRUTH - meaningfulness
◦ BEAUTY – desirability

LIKE GOD….
We are created…
1. Good
2. For Truth
3. Beautiful!
Questions…
◦ 1. Do you think that Jesus was “beautiful” to look at during his time on earth? Why?
◦ 2. What are the three most beautiful things you have seen in your lifetime?
◦ 3. What is the difference between beauty and glamour?
◦ 4. Walk around the classroom. Ask at least 5 people to answer…
◦ A. What is your most beautiful sense-perceiving feature?
◦ B. What is your most beautiful interior feature?

◦ NOTE: THIS IS A ONE-ON-ONE FACE-TO-FACE discussion – you can’t

get in a group and decide together. Each has her own opinion!
How would YOU depict yourself?
◦ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=litXW91UauE
Jesus teaches…

I am the way, the TRUTH and the life! (Jn. 14:6) = God is Perfectly True.
Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone! (Lk. 18:19) = God is
Perfectly Good.
I will draw all to myself. (Jn 12:32) = God is perfect beauty
Russian existentialist philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev once said, "Beauty will save the world."
Scriptures
◦ I will draw all to myself. (Jn 12:32) ◦ Isaiah 53:2. For he grew up before him like a young
plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no
◦ You are the fairest of the children of men and grace is form or majesty that we should look at him, and no
poured upon your lips.” (Ps. 45:2) beauty that we should desire him.
◦ Song of Songs…the whole thing!  ◦ Isaiah 52:14. As many were astonished at you— his
◦ Matthew 17:1-2. And after six days Jesus took with him appearance was so marred, beyond human
Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them semblance, and his form beyond that of the children
up a high mountain by themselves. And he was of mankind—
transfigured before them, and his face shone like the
sun, and his clothes became white as light.
◦ Genesis 49:10-12. The scepter shall not depart from
Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until
tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the
obedience of the peoples. Binding his foal to the vine
and his donkey's colt to the choice vine, he has
washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the
blood of grapes. His eyes are darker than wine, and his
teeth whiter than milk.
◦ Matthew 28:3. His appearance was like lightning, and
his clothing white as snow
Do you see this woman as beautiful?
Why?
◦ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztJkD7-Vtks
Thomas Aquinas on Beauty
◦ For Aquinas, beauty is id quod visum placet, "that which pleases upon being seen.“

◦ In order to be faithful to the meaning of Aquinas' words, we must understand the specific
meanings of the words visum and placet. Placet connotes more than meets the eye. Its
meaning is closer to our understanding of the word "vision" (as opposed to "eyesight") and
refers to an intuitive knowledge that includes the senses.

◦ The two senses that are involved in the apprehension of beauty are what St. Thomas calls
"the senses of knowledge," that is, sight and hearing.

◦ The word placet means more than a mere sensual pleasure. It is better rendered as "a
delight for the soul." This delight is conferred when a person beholds a beautiful object by
means of an intuitive knowledge that incorporates either sight or hearing.
◦ Intelligence, therefore, which is our capacity to know, plays an indispensable role in the
apprehension of beauty. This is a most important factor because it means that beauty
is not merely subjective (or "in the eyes of the beholder," as many claim), but is
objective inasmuch as it is an object of knowledge. Beauty has it roots in reality.

◦ BEAUTY IS NOT IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER! IT EXISTS SEPARATE OF THE MIND BUT IS
PERCEIVED BY THE SENSES AND THUS UNDERSTOOD IN THE MIND.

◦ Beauty for Thomas has four criteria:

1. Actuality
2. Proportion
3. Radiance
4. Integrity
 ACTUALITY

◦ Everything has its ultimate source in actuality (or being); therefore, actuality (or being) is
the basis of beauty. Actuality is the GROUND of beauty.
◦ Actuality is used in 3 ways when referring to beauty
◦ 1. existence - For Thomas, everything that has being will also have a degree of beauty,
regardless of how small that degree appears.
◦ 2. form - Form separates the existence of different things. For example, a dog and a tree both
exist, but the dog exists as a dog and the tree exists as a tree. “As each thing has its own form,
so it has its own distinctive beauty. In the words of St. Thomas, ‘Everything is beautiful in
proportion to its own form.” A thing has more goodness [and beauty] when it achieves a higher
level of perfection in its form.
◦ 3. action - Action completes the actuality of existence and form.” A clear illustration of the
notion of action is a dancer. A dancer sitting and drinking coffee is still a dancer, in the sense
that she possesses the skill required for dancing. Yet she is most completely a dancer when she
performs the act of dancing. Strictly speaking, actuality is not a characteristic of beautiful
things; more precisely, it is the necessary condition for grounding beauty in anything.
PROPORTION
◦ Proportion refers to symmetry or harmony
◦ We have only to think of the symmetry of the
petals of an orchid, the balance of a
mathematical equation, the mutual
adaptation of the parts of a work of art, to
realize how important the factor of harmony is
in beauty.”
◦ The object may actually be symmetrical, but it
is more important that it is well-balanced. The
parts of the whole are in harmony with one
another.
 RADIANCE
◦ “Radiance belongs to being considered precisely as beautiful: it is, in being, that which
catches the eye, or the ear, or the mind, and makes us want to perceive it again.”
◦ Radiance is a bit more difficult to pinpoint than the other standards. Radiance signifies
the luminosity that emanates from a beautiful object, which initially seizes the attention
of the beholder.
◦ For example, in terms of natural light, there is a sense in which the paintings in a gallery
lose some of their beauty when the lights are turned off because they are no longer
being perceived.
◦ Thomas also connects beautiful things with the divine light. “All form, through which
things have being, is a certain participation in the divine clarity [or light]. This quote
provides another account of Thomas connecting all beauty to the beauty of God, as
the cause of all beauty.
 INTEGRITY
◦ Integrity refers to WHOLENESS.
◦ The last standard of beauty for Thomas is wholeness or integrity.
◦ “The first meaning of this term, for St. Thomas, is existential: it expresses the
primal perfection of a thing, which is found in its existence (esse). In a
second sense a thing is integral when it is perfect in its operation.
Wholeness, in short, demands perfection in being and action”
◦ If some particular thing was perfectly beautiful, then it would have to be
completely actualized, lacking nothing essential to its nature. In other
words, anything that is imperfect in some way is lacking some thing or
ability necessary for its completion.

◦ http://www.iep.utm.edu/m-aesthe/
But is beauty a choice?
◦ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APgEJoAYh0Y
Body Image of
Women
◦ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xrp0zJZu0a4
◦ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT9FmDBrewA
◦ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3c0HmhsQ1A
A Man’s View

◦ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmO16Je4K14&list=PLuREvFSnTFfYLU0a9lx9ZMP3CX
JV5VZvG

◦ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWi5iXnguTU