The Eclipse and Recovery of Beauty: A Lonergan Approach

Preface

Introduction

1 The Eclipse of Beauty and Its Recovery

• 1.1 Introduction
• 1.2 The Achievement of Thomistic Metaphysics and its Demise
  • 1.2.1 A Post-Kantian Transposition of Thomistic Metaphysics
• 1.3 Considerations for a Contemporary Philosophy of Beauty
• 1.4 Lonergan’s Philosophy and Hermeneutics: A Brief Overview
• 1.5 Conclusion

2 Every Being is Beautiful

• 2.1 Beauty as a Transcendental Property of Being
  • 2.1.1 The Development of Transcendental Beauty
  • 2.1.2 Aquinas and Transcendental Beauty?
  • 2.1.3 The Fourth Period
• 2.2 Beauty: A Thomistic Interpretation
  • 2.2.1 The Conditions of Beauty
  • 2.2.2 Further Questions
  • 2.2.3 Perception of Beauty
  • 2.2.4 Beauty and Art
• 2.3. Beauty: A Lonergan Approach?

3 Violence and the Loss of Beauty

• 3.1 Displacement and Distortion of Beauty
• 3.2 Nietzsche’s Aesthetics
• 3.3 Girard’s critique of Nietzsche
  • 3.3.1 Dionysus and the Crucified
  • 3.3.2 Culpability in the Collective Murder
  • 3.3.3 Dionysus as a Mimicked Distortion of Christ
• 3.4 A Re-orientation of Nietzchean Aesthetics?
• 3.5 Conclusion

4 Recovering Beauty in the Subject

• 4.1 Introduction
• 4.2 Kierkegaard’s Spheres of Existence
• 4.3 Balthasar’s Critique: A Closer Examination
• 4.4 The Existential Spheres and Intentional Consciousness
• 4.5 Conclusion

5 The End of Aesthetic Experience?

• 5.1 Introduction
• 5.2 The Loss of Aesthetic Experience
  • 5.2.1 Major Post-Kantian Approaches to Aesthetic Experience
  • 5.2.2 Shusterman: “The End of Aesthetic Experience”
• 5.3 Lonergan and Aesthetic Experience
  • 5.3.1 The Unrestricted Desire for Beauty
  • 5.3.2 Freedom from Instrumentality
  • 5.3.3 Elemental Meaning
  • 5.3.4 Ulterior Significance and ‘Surplus of Meaning’
  • 5.3.5 Transformative and Distortive aspects of Aesthetic Experience
  • 5.3.6 Lonergan and Shusterman
• 5.4 The Sensible and Intellectual Perception and Apprehension of Beauty
• 5.5 Aesthetic Experience and the Sublime
  • 5.1 Brief History of the Sublime
  • 5.2 The Sublime as Experienced
• 5.6 Conclusion

6 The Intelligibility of Beauty

• 6.1 Introduction
• 6.2 Beauty and Architecture: The example of Christopher Alexander
• 6.2.1Alexander’s 15 principles
• 6.2.2 Alexander’s principles and Aquinas
• 6.3 The Intelligibility of Beauty in Lonergan’s Theory of Consciousness
• 6.4 Conclusion

7 Judgments of Beauty

• 7.1 Introduction
• 7.2 Aesthetic Judgments in Kant
  • 7.2.1 Four Moments of Aesthetic Judgments
• 7.3 Lonergan and Judgment
  • 7.3.1 ‘Value’ in Method in Theology
• 7.4 Judging Beauty for Lonergan
  • 7.4.1 A Lonergan Appropriation of Kant’s Four Moments
  • 7.4.2 Beauty and the Preferential Scales of Values
  • 7.4.3 Three Moments of Beauty
  • 7.4.4 Is Beauty distinct from Goodness?
• 7.5 Concluding Comments

8 Creating, Contemplating and Loving Beauty

• 8.1 Introduction
• 8.2 The Aesthetic/Dramatic Operator
• 8.3 Philosophy of Art
  • 8.3.1Aesthetic and Artistic patterns of experience
  • 8.3.2 Art as Meaning
  • 8.3.3Developing Lonergan on Art
  • 8.3.4 Summing up: Lonergan on Art
• 8.4 Life and Beauty
  • 8.4.1Ethical living
• 8.5 Contemplating Beauty
• 8.6 Loving Beauty
• 8.7 Beauty and God
  • 7.1 From Aesthetic Experience to the Beauty of God
• 8.8 Conclusion

9 Philosophy for a Theology of Beauty

• 9.1 Introduction
• 9.2 A Summary and Overview
• 9.3 Towards a Theology of Beauty
• 9.4 Conclusion