Abstract

Aesthetic knowing is characterized by a humble and unselfconscious approach to Beauty as an end to be enjoyed rather than as a means to be used. Such an attitude yields knowledge of Reality which is otherwise inaccessible. Bonaventure is a proponent of this form of knowing from whom we may learn much. Bonaventure's epistemological and aesthetic thought represents the culmination of the Platonist, Augustinian and Dionysian traditions, balanced with Franciscan asceticism and with Francis of Assisi's example of suffering presence to produce a rich and nuanced philosophy. It is the understanding of the centrality of suffering gained from Francis which gives Bonaventure' s epistemology its particular aesthetic form. ;Bonaventure takes a Christological approach to epistemology, seeing the person of Christ as the solution to the classic problem of how our minds may come to have knowledge of the material world. All our knowledge is filtered through Christ, who contains within himself the essence of each created object. We can only know objects by knowing the mind of Christ in which the truth of all objects and beings is lodged. Even when we are unaware of the illuminating work of Christ in our minds, it is only by virtue of that work that we know anything at all ;Bonaventure teaches that the mind must travel to a knowledge of God through three stages: the symbolic, in which knowledge comes through the external world by means of sense perception and imagination; the speculative, in which knowledge comes through introspection; and the mystical, in which knowledge comes through encountering God as both Being and Goodness, and ultimately through ecstatic experience. On all three levels, aesthetic knowing is operative. Each of these forms of knowing has its own characteristic temptation or most likely weakness. Bonaventure avoids these potential dangers because of his commitment to Franciscan asceticism and to the compelling knowledge acquired through suffering in the person of Francis of Assisi