St. Thomas and the Bard: On Beauty in the Tempest and the Limits of Aesthetic Experience

Abstract

The paper addresses the matter of differences of aesthetic judgment by examining Shakespeare’s Tempest through the Thomistic understanding of substance and of beauty. It seeks principally to explore three elements of aesthetic inquiry: (1) what characterizes the subject who perceives beauty? (2) what characterizes the object of aesthetic experience? and (3) how do aesthetic judgments differ from sensual perceptions? The Tempest serves as particularly fruitful territory for such exploration in virtue of the persons of Miranda and Caliban, who by the limitations of their experience delineate the generic borders, the degrees of virtual quantum excellence, which characterize the beautiful object. Their education at the hand of Prospero likewise elucidates somewhat the process of aesthetic training.

Keywords

• thomas aquinas
• aristotle
• william shakespeare
• genus
• aesthetics
• virtual quantity
• substance
• beauty
• perception
• taste