Interpreters of Thomas Aquinas have long argued about whether he holds that beauty is a transcendental.

That's to say a feature of reality coextensive with all that exists, like unity, goodness, and truthfulness.

I will argue here that Aquinas can be read to affirm in an implicit but clear way that beauty is a transcendental.

Then in the second part of this essay I'll consider what it might mean to speak of the transcendent divine beauty,

given Aquinas' metaphysical commitments, particularly with regard to his doctrine of divine simplicity.

And in the final part, I will treat the question of how the beauty of the creation both manifests and conceals divine beauty.

And I'll talk about creation as the iconostasis of God, of divine beauty.

So let me start with beauty as a transcendental feature of reality.

Noteworthily, Aquinas does not list beauty as a transcendental term in texts on transcendental notions.

Perhaps then we should simply exclude it from our responsible account of his teaching on the subject of the transcendentals.

However, at least two well-known texts should give us reason to pause before reaching such a conclusion.

One is found in the commentary on

Dionysius' divine names, Chapter 4, Lexio 5. The other, in his discussion of the beauty of the

eternal Son and Word of God, in speaking of the Holy Trinity in Summa Theologi, Prima Par's

Question 39, Article 8. I'll return to both these texts. In the first of these texts,

St. Thomas is commenting on Dionysius, who is a principal influence for him on this subject matter,

the extended text is analytically dense. Aquinas discusses ways in which one might say that God is

beautiful, and in what ways one might not say so.

And I will return to that in the second part of the presentation.

Here, however, it is pertinent to consider Aquinas' discussion of the presence of beauty in all that exists.

All that has being is beautiful.

He makes six points regarding this idea.

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