Examining the relationship between the meaning of ugliness in medieval philosophy and the meaning of ugliness in modern aesthetics

Document Type : Original Article

Author
mahdi hamidi parsa
Member of the faculty of the Institute of Art and Islamic Thought
Abstract
The concept of ugliness and its quiddity is affected by its ontology changed. In this article the ugliness is discussed from two sides. At first the concept and quiddity of ugliness is discussed and is tried to give the analysis from ugliness and its meaning and then the ontology of ugliness is discussed; is it an existing category or nonexistent one. In Greek philosophy the ugliness was the nonexistent category. This point about ugliness was accepted by medieval philosophers like St. Augustine and St. Aquinas. The ugliness in that period was the formlessness but there is no pure formlessness thing in the universe. Everything has form and because it exist. The things that maybe imagine ugly, in fact are less beautiful. In that period ugliness was equivalent with evil. But in modern aesthetic ugliness become an existing category. It means that there is some ugly things in the universe and the question is about their feature not their existence.

Keywords

Theoretical Studies of Art
Volume 4, Issue 6
September 2024
Pages 41-57