Sixto Castro

Along 19th and 20th centuries, art became a sort of new religion, sometimes coexisting peacefully with the institutional one, sometimes trying to provide what the institutional religion was not able to provide any more. Nowadays, art has adopted many of the solutions, topics and theories that theology has handled since it was born. Arthur C. Danto treats art as a reality whose history is over (and so, a escathological reality) and also as a metaxological (metaxy=between) reality dwelling between two realms. Thus, we cannot decide by pure perceptive means whether something is art or not. This consideration has important consequences for art theory.

En el presente artículo se relee el artículo de Fr. Buenaventura García de Paredes O P sobre la belleza en santo Tomás, publicado en los números 6 y 7 de Ciencia Tomista, en 1911, a la luz de las investigaciones actuales, ponderando la validez del mismo y tratando de condensar las investigaciones más actuales sobre la cuestión de la belleza en el Aquinate a la altura del siglo XXI. Se presta atención a la percepción de la belleza, a la discusión de su carácter trascendental y a otros aspectos que demuestran la vigencia del pensamiento tomista en el debate contemporáneo.In this paper we read anew the paper published by Buenaventura García de Paredes O P in the issues 6 and 7 of Ciencia Tomista in 1911, on beauty in Aquinas, in the light of current research, acknowledging its validity and taking into account the most contemporary investigations on the question of beauty in Aquinas . We pay special attention to the perception of beauty, the question of its trascendentality and other aspects that show the applicability of the Thomist thought in contemporary debates