International Congress of Aesthetics 2007
“Aesthetics Bridging Cultures”
The Concept of Beauty from the Plotinus
to St. Augustine and Ghazzali and Art of
Abstraction in Medieval Eastern
Mediterranean
Ali Uzay Peker, Assoc. Prof. Dr., Middle East
Technical University, Department of
Architecture, Turkey
Introduction
This paper is going to venture the established notion of “Islamic aesthetics” understood
as a non-historical and distinct cultural entity. Scholars of Islamic aesthetics occasionally
refer to Greek art theory as a precursor but there has been no stimulating attempt to
demonstrate the continuity from ancient to medieval art theory in eastern Mediterranean.
Scholars from Islamic world insistently emphasize the uniqueness paradigm. For the
fundamentalist, Islamic art is in the service of faith and is a mirror of the tenets. For the
academician it is the outcome of Islamic culture. Both detach antique traditions from the
so-called Islamic approach to art. Quite the opposite, scholars from Western world every
so often tend to dismiss the existence of an authentic body of art under Muslim donors
and by Muslim artists, particularly in the Early Islamic age. Art historian, Terry Allen,
holds the view that there is nothing Islamic in Islamic art. He says that in Late Antique
art, vine scrolls in vegetal ornaments became more and more abstracted and geometric
borders appeared in floor mosaics. In Islamic arabesque, these two were mingled and
vine scrolls welded onto geometrical borders. This last configuration is the end-product
of Late Antique art. He asserts that Early Islamic art is in fact Late Roman art.1
Allen‟s view is based on formal evolution of designs. We learn from his paper that an
evolutionary process continued under the Muslim patrons; but, Why? This question is not
asked by Allen. He does not refer to coeval concepts from the age when these abstract
designs were employed in the Islamic domain. His “continuity” paradigm is unsupported
with any corresponding conceptual background related to whatever Late Roman
(Byzantine) or Early Islamic decorative art despite the fact that such a background
inescapably existed since no artistic design ever brought forth without it.
The correlated imperial ethos under Roman, Byzantine and Muslim rulers is a frequently
referred source as a common conceptual background for arts. But it is not at all
explanatory in respect to the trend for abstraction. In medieval age, abstract designs were
highly ever sophisticated and became widespread from Central Asia to the Celtic world.
This age corresponds to the spreading of a mainstream mind-set emanated from the idea
of a God-centered universe. Monotheistic viewpoint and its understanding of beauty
promise an invaluable source to understand the continuity and evolution of abstract
decorative designs from Late Roman to Islamic epochs. Likewise the conception of
International Congress of Aesthetics 2007, “Aesthetics Bridging Cultures”
beauty transformed in a remarkable way in Eastern Mediterranean in the centuries
following the spread of Christianity and Islam.
Plotinus (ca. 205-270)
The role of Plotinus, father of Neo-Platonism, is crucial in understanding legacy of the
Late Greek aesthetic theory which survived all throughout the medieval era. Mimesis as
an aesthetic criterion stimulates a duality: Is imitation an act of copying, or a method of
interpretation? Before Plotinus, Plato (ca. 427–347 B.C.) was of the first opinion in
indicating that “an image-maker, a representer, understands only appearance, while
reality is beyond him.”2 Plato thinks that an artist is a copier. Plotinus on the other hand
assigns a dynamic role to the artist. He thinks that something is more beautiful the more
removed it is from „shapeless‟ matter. The best artists do not simply imitate the visible,
but go beyond, to the principles [and Forms] which produce nature, thereby being in
possession of beauty.3 Hence, Plotinus thought that beauty is a divine essence and one of
the many manifestations of the absolute. The ultimate criterion of beauty is the
intellectual principle. The Intellectual Principle is at once true, good and beautiful.4 He
consistently characterizes beauty in the world of sense as fake and contaminated by
matter. He praises intelligible beauty for being true and pure. 5 As J. P. Anton
summarizes, Plotinus thinks that man is an intermediary between nature and nous (first
will towards God, [thought, intelligence]). Once the One as the terminus of man‟s self-
realization is attained, the soul is said to lose itself in a mystical unity with it. The soul is
now beyond the realm of nous. It has come to the source of all science and all reason.
Man must realize what beauty is within him. Then beauty flows from the artist into the
sensible world. The more successful the artist as creator is, the closer he comes to the
source of beauty, and in the same measure the more he diminishes the initial distance
separating him from perfect being.6 Those who approach divine with their intellectual
faculties can be creative. Hence, the removal from matter and return to divine verify the
value of the work.
Plotinus thinks that there can be only one absolute source of creativity: the One. Only the
One is absolutely emanative and, consequently, non-imitative. So, it is essential to
Plotinus‟ doctrine that the artistic act be at once emanative and imitative.7 By way of
emanation, man‟s artistic imagination is the only avenue open to the higher ontological
levels of the cosmos for the inflow of more beauty into the structure of the sensible
universe. What the artist does is to complete the tasks of nature by bringing to the world
of plural materiality more Being and more Reality. 8 Plotinus maintains that the things in
this world are beautiful by participating in form; for every shapeless thing, which is
naturally capable of receiving shape and form, is ugly and outside the divine formative
power as long as it has no share in formative power and form. This is absolute ugliness.
But a thing is also ugly when it is not completely dominated by shape and formative
power.9 Ugliness is not only a formal essence. An immoral soul is an ugly soul. 10 The
soul when it is purified becomes form and formative power. Soul, then, when it is raised
to the level of intellect increases in beauty. The soul‟s becoming something good and
beautiful is its being made like to God, because from Him come beauty and all else which
falls to the lot of real beings.11 That which is beyond this we call the nature of the Good,
which holds beauty as a screen before it. So in a loose and general way of speaking the
Good is the primary beauty.12
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International Congress of Aesthetics 2007, “Aesthetics Bridging Cultures”
Rendering shape and form in this world means rendering good and divine, traits of the
beauty, through which gratification of the One is achievable. In this theory of emanation
and imitation there is a hierarchical order. Ugliness and immorality is at the bottom. It is
to be surmounted by man who has capacity to do this. This aesthetic theory elaborated by
Plotinus immensely affected medieval theories of beauty.
St. Augustine (354-430)
For the Christian thinker, matter was real and good in essence, and so too were the body
and its sense organs. In the Bible it is indicated that “the invisible things of God are
understood and seen through the things which are made”.13 Therefore, cosmos is thought
to be a sign of God. This general precept governed the understanding of beauty in the
Christian world. For St. Augustine, beauty is creation of God; artists and connoisseurs of
external beauty draw their criterion of judgment from a beauty higher than souls. 14 He
thought that the more measure, beauty and order shine out in created things, the more are
they good, the less the shining out of measure, beauty and order, the less are they good.
Measure, beauty and order are the three general goods that we find in all created things
whether spiritual or material.15 Emmanuel Chapman states that unlike Plotinus, for whom
that which remains completely foreign to all divine reason is absolute ugliness; Augustine
held that there could be no absolute ugliness since wherever there is any being there is
some beauty. The ugly differs from the beautiful not in kind but in degree. The ugly is
simply the privation of the beauty or form a thing should have, and nothing could be
completely deprived of beauty for otherwise it would not be.16 Though St. Augustine
thinks that the created beings take their beauty and goodness from God, he still ascribes
absolute beauty to God: “You, Lord, who are beautiful, made them (heaven and earth) for
they are beautiful. You are good, for they are good. You are, for they are. Yet they are
not beautiful or good or possessed of being in the sense that you their Maker are. In
comparison with you they are deficient in beauty and goodness and being.”17
In St. Augustine‟s understanding, ugliness is not anymore the dominating trait of the
earthly beings. They are good and beautiful for being created by God, but in a lesser
degree. In his concept of gradation, there is a hierarchy of goodness and beautifulness
from individual beings to their totality and to God. The more removed from the single
and particular, the mind gets closer to absolute beauty.
As Chapman articulates, St. Augustine holds that like the aesthetic judgment art requires
the divine illumination. No work of art could come into existence without the divine
illumination which proceeds from the Art of God. The artist cannot create out of
nothingness like God, but he continues God‟s creation by realizing in matter the forms
which he brings to completion. The artist does not copy God‟s creation, but finishes and
completes it. Through the illumination of art man can engender works in his own image
which resemble God. Beautiful works announce unconsciously the order and invisible
beauty of which they are signs. The virtues, which give the soul life and beauty, are
drawn from a source higher than the soul. The soul animates the body on which it confers
beauty, form and order. Material works of art may be considered as the extension of the
artist‟s body. In this sense it may be said that the artist does for his material work of art
what the soul does for its body. Just as the body has form, order, and beauty because it
participates in the ideas through the soul, so the work of art participates in the ideas
through the artist by the illumination of art which enables him to confer form, order, and
beauty on his materials. The shortest definition of the virtue is the order of love. Through
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International Congress of Aesthetics 2007, “Aesthetics Bridging Cultures”
love man orders inferior things which are beautiful in their own genus and species to the
superior.18 As it is clear in St. Augustine‟s ideas collected by Chapman, the artist‟s
creativity depend on the involvement of „divine illumination‟ and the virtues from God.
Furnished with them the artist renders the order and beauty immanent in the world
apparent. While Plotinus regards the material world as essentially ugly, St. Augustine
thinks that God‟s creation is incomplete and the task to complete it is given to
transcendent, God-like man.
Imam Ghazzali (1058-1111)
The concept of beauty encompasses diverse explanations in different Islamic theological
schools. These statements can be related to Koranic verses, which guided and monitored
them. In Koran, a greater emphasis is put on the concept of beauty. The term „beautiful‟
(husn) is in the main employed to denote ethical and religious value of the acts, which is
used 194 times in this sense. Husn is regarded by Islamic theologians as a criterion, an
„eye of the heart‟. The term „ugliness‟ (kubh), on the other hand, is used only once in the
Koran.
Here are foremost verses inspired Islamic philosophical schools and sufis:
Who made all things good which He created, and He began the creation of man from clay
(32/7, trans. Pickthal)
(We take our) colour from Allah, and who is better than Allah at colouring. We are His
worshippers. (2/138, trans. Pickthal)
It is Allah Who has made for you the earth as a resting place, and the sky as a canopy, and has
given you shape and made your shapes beautiful, and has provided for you Sustenance, of
things pure and good; … (40/64; trans. Yusufali)
As it is clear in these verses the created world is simply beautiful. That's why the material
world is regarded essentially beautiful by the Islamic theologians. According to the
advocates of the Prophet and his companions (ehl-i sunna) and Ashari School, things and
acts are initially neutral. Religious sincerity verifies their goodness and badness. The
Prophet once stated that “God is beautiful and He loves beauty.”19 Philosophers
approached the question of good (beauty) and bad (ugly) sanguinely. Fârâbî and İbn Sînâ
held that bad (or ugly) is relative and there is no evil in the essence of beings. Less
goodness is comparative. İhvân-ı Safâ thinks that goodness is essential in the universe;
evil exists only for a goal.20 In general, the beauties in the material world are considered
as manifestations of the absolute beauty (djamâl-i bâ-kamâl) with different degrees.
Through the observation of these one can reach divine beauty and God.21
In Sufî understanding, ugliness in things is not tangible, it is subjective and relative.
There is no unconditional ugliness in beings, but complete beauty. This means that being
is ontologically faultless and complete.22 A statement attributed to the Prophet by sufîs
gives to man the role of observer of God‟s beauty in the world: "I was a hidden treasure,
and I wished to be known, so I created mankind, and then made Myself known to them,
and they recognized Me."
Ghazzali states that “a more beautiful universe than this present one is improbable.”23
According to him the universe, in its entirety, is the art and organization of God.
Whoever stares and loves universe as a work of God, stares God, recognizes God, loves
God.24 Absolute beauty is God, who is One and beyond comparison.25 The highest love is
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the love of God‟s beauty.26 Every beauty in the universe is perhaps a beauty from the
beauties of his face (djamal).27 Ghazzali quotes a poem: “You appeared…You hide
curtained by whatsoever you become visible with. I wonder whoever veiled with the
known, how will be known.”28 Beauty of the created world is like a curtain before God.
This idea was most probably inspired by the view of Plotinus that God holds beauty as a
screen before Him.
Ghazzali distinguishes beauty of the apparent from the beauty of the hidden. He says that
heart conceives better than eye. The beauty of the meanings comprehended with intellect
is greater than the beauty of the extrinsic forms visible to eye. Ghazzali speaks about a
more complete pleasure from the comprehension of the essence of beauty. According to
him, beauty is also acclaimed on behalf of its individuality (zat).29 Thus Ghazzali
distinguishes the beauty admired for it is only beautiful.
According to Ghazzali, beauty is present in objects not comprehensible with senses.
Beauties are known only with the light of the heart‟s eye (basîra).30 Senses are
incomplete in comprehending them. With the permanency of beautiful qualities, love
remains permanent. Qualities turn into sciences and power, which can not be
comprehended with sensation. Their centre in the body is an atomic part. As a matter of
fact the loved is that part. The form, shape and sensible color of a part which is so small
that can not be torn to pieces, can not be envisaged, and can not be claimed to be loved it
is because visible.31 Intrinsic qualities render a writer‟s classification, a poet‟s poem, a
miniaturist‟s painting and a master‟s building beautiful.32 Ghazzali‟s introduction of the
concept of basîra is significant. It is a latent faculty in man. Basîra is commonly sealed
from birth with the exception of a few; but it can be opened through self effacing and
combat with satan (mudjahada). Those who manage this can see realities beyond the
reach of the senses.33
Ghazzali thinks that beauty depends on the virtue (kamalat) a thing possesses.34
According to him beauty of things depends on the existence of perfection appropriate to
them. Ghazzali relates the apex of beauty.35 In this way, he introduces gradation like
Plotinus and St. Augustine. Beauty here is a moral criterion and can be less or more in
respect to the virtues its owner holds.
Conclusion
From the act of „self realization‟ in Plotinus, to the involvement of „divine illumination‟
in St. Augustine and opening of „heart‟s eye‟ in Imam Ghazzali, we understand that a
mediator role is given to the artist who can realize these and beautify the material world.
This role provides us to introduce an „aesthetics of purity‟ advocated by these thinkers.
Plotinus holds that “Pheidias…did not make Zeus from any model perceived by the
senses, but understood what Zeus would look like if he wanted to make himself
visible.”36 Augustine thinks same way in stating that beautiful works announce
unconsciously the order and invisible beauty of which they are signs. For Ghazzali beauty
is beyond the veil of the known and the revelation of the hidden beauty renders an
artwork beautiful. In these views, beauty in art is understood as a manifestation of the
divine and ideal.
The idealistic representation of the gods embodied in human form by the ancients was
gradually replaced in medieval age by the representation of a supreme and single deity in
abstract forms like geometry symbolizing the Divine Intellect. In Christian art, though
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anthropomorphism survived, schematic and one-dimensional representation of the saintly
personalities gives a hint of this progress. This has been related by some scholars to a
presumed decline in artistic techniques. But the reason of it could be the
transcendentalism of the Christian aesthetics, which now disfavored the human body as
being made of bone and flesh, the matters at the lowermost level of the gradation this
paper talked about. Rendering the intellectual and moral faculties of the perfect man
without representing his material side was almost unattainable. One way of giving these
was distortion of the body. Hence, abstraction of the contours of the body reined supreme
in medieval Christian art. The greater emphasis put on the notion that the created world is
essentially beautiful distinguishes Islamic aesthetics from its precursors. This can be
regarded as the reason why abstraction was much more favored than figural
representation. Re-representation was denigrated by the Islamic artist like Plato does in
his Republic.
In Islamic geometrical decoration, „infinite pattern‟ consists of an interlaced line passing
over and under itself forming intricate patterns. Every part is subordinated to the pattern
which exhibits unity in multiplicity.37 This atomistic representation well accords with the
view that at the center is One, which is everywhere, but also distinct and beyond.
Infiniteness is a guise of all-encompassing God and His Intellect, who manifested His
beauty through the created world. Geometry was the most appropriate way of
representing His infinite existence and Intellect in and out of the created world. It is a
curtain or screen which only mind passes through for higher dimensions.
This brief history of aesthetic ideas from Plotinus to St. Augustine and Imam Ghazzali,
demonstrates a progress, the limitless patterns of Islamic geometrical decoration can be
regarded as the end-product of its manifestations in art. Allen‟s „continuity‟ paradigm
referred to in the introduction can now securely be related to a conceptual background
and the expression that “there is nothing Islamic in Islamic art” loses ground.
1
Terry Allen, “The Arabesque, the Beveled Style, and the Mirage of an Early Islamic Art,” eds. F.M.
Clover and R.S. Humphreys, Tradition and Innovation in Late Antiquity (Madison, Wisconsin: The
University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), p. 221.
2
Aesthetics: The Classic Readings, ed. D. E. Cooper (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), p.19.
3
Aesthetics, p. 56.
4
John P. Anton, “Plotinus‟ Conception of the Functions of the Artist,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism, 26/1, p. 92, 93.
5
Suzanne Stern-Gillet, “Plotinus and his Portrait,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 37/3 (July, 1997), p. 221.
6
Anton, pp. 93-98.
7
Anton, p. 94.
8
Anton, p. 96.
9
Aesthetics, p. 58.
10
Stern-Gillet, p. 221.
11
Aesthetics, pp. 61-62.
12
Aesthetics, p. 64.
13
Rom. I:20, quoted in Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford University, 1992), p.
184.
14
Saint Augustine, p. 210.
15
De Natura Boni, ch. 111, quoted in Emmanuel Chapman, “Some Aspects of St. Augustine‟s Philosophy
of Beauty,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1/1 (Spring, 1941), p. 47
16
Chapman, “Some Aspects of St. Augustine‟s Philosophy of Beauty,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism, 1/1 (Spring, 1941), p. 48.
17
Saint Augustine, p. 224.
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18
Emmanuel Chapman, Saint Augustine’s Philosophy of Beauty (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1939), pp.
73, 75, 76-77, 79-80.
19
Ramazan Altıntaş, İslam Düşüncesinde Tevhid ve Estetik İlişkisi (Ankara: Pınar, 2002), p. 78.
20
İlyas Çelebi, “Hüsün ve Kubuh,” TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. XIX.
21
Mustafa Oral, “Estetik ve Tarihçesi,” Köprü, 71 (2000)
http://www.koprudergisi.com/index.asp?Bolum=EskiSayilar&Goster=Sayi&SayiNo=71
22
Altıntaş, pp. 92, 95, 97.
23
Altıntaş, p. 96.
24
İmâm-ı Gazâlî, İhyâ Ulûm-id-dîn, vol. 9: Münciyat VI, Muhabbet, Şevk, Üns ve Rıza Kitabı , trans. Ali
Arslan (İstanbul: Arslan, not dated), p. 328, 332.
25
Gazâlî, p. 299.
26
Gazâlî, p. 310.
27
Gazâlî, p. 391.
28
Gazâlî, p. 333.
29
Gazâlî, pp. 284, 286-287.
30
Heart (kalb) in the Koran and Hadiths (Traditions) is regarded as a tool of comprehension, science,
knowledge and thinking. Sufis regard intuitive faculties of kalb as surpassing the human reasoning
(Süleyman Uludağ, “Kalb,” TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. XXIV). Heart‟s eye (basira) is a spiritual faculty
in the Haidths. It is the talent of seeing and also finding out the truth and true path in the Koran. Sufis think
that basira sees the hidden side of the things and events (Süleyman Uludağ, “Basîret,” TDV İslâm
Ansiklopedisi, vol. V).
31
Gazâlî, p. 289.
32
Gazâlî, p. 296.
33
Uludağ, “Basîret.”
34
Altıntaş, p. 63.
35
Gazâlî, p. 288.
36
Quoted by Stern-Gillet, p. 211.
37
Edward H. Madden, “Some Characteristics of Islamic Art,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism,
33/4 (Summer, 1975), p. 426, 427.
Ali Uzay Peker. (Ph.D.). Associate Professor, Architecture: History of Architecture,
Middle East Technical University, Turkey. Major publications; “Western Influence on
the Ottoman Empire and Occidentalism in the Architecture of Istanbul,” “Kanada
Mimarlık Merkezi (CCA): Kuruluş Süreci ve Mimari Betimlemesi,” “The Monumental
Iwan: A Symbolic Space or A Functional Device?,” “A Retreating Power: Ottoman
approach to the West in the 18th century.”
