Aesthetic theory given in “A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man”

A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man is one of the most notable works of James Joyce. The novel deals with the growth of an artist, Stephen Dedalus, who is also the central character of this novel. In the last chapter, the reader comes across his idea of “Aeshtetics.”

The word “Aesthetic” means ideas concerned with beauty or the appreciation of beauty. Stephen develops his own ideas on Aesthetics based on Aristotle and Aquinas. The final chapter of the novel opens up showing Stephen going out of the house annoyed and frustrated. Wandering through rainy Dublin roads, he quotes poems and thinks about the aesthetic theories of Aristotle and Aquinas. We see two Latin quotations of Aquinas. The first one means, “Those things are beautiful the perception of which pleases”. The second one means, “The good is that toward which the appetite tends.”

We all know that Aristotle is a famous Greek philosopher and St. Thomas Aquinas is a renowned philosopher of the Middle Ages. They had significant contributions to aesthetic theory. 

Stephen asserts three propositions on aesthete:

I. Art is a stasis brought about by the formal rhythm of beauty.

II. Art or beauty, divorced from good and evil, is akin to truth; therefore, if truth can best be approached through intellection, beauty or art is best approached through the three stages of apprehension.

III. The three qualities of beauty which correspond to the three stages of apprehension are, in the terms of Aquinas, integritas (wholeness), consonantia (harmony), and claritas (radiance).

Stephen questions the religious and sexual desires of human soul, and defines these as “kinetic”. By the end of chapter 2, in the arms of the prostitute, the “movement” reaches its climax; and the second part reaches its climax at the end of chapter 4, with the static joy at the sight of the girl on the beach. The conflict between these two becomes a practical example of Stephen’s theory of kinetic and static effects. Ultimately, Stephen sees both sexual and religious desires as kinetic, towards which appetite ends to seek fulfillment outside itself. In contrary, the satisfaction of the aesthetic appetite is static; it is something that satisfies or pleases in itself; it does not move the individual to the acquisition or something or someone outside the self.

Art should not be didactic. Art is the realm of creation so it is related only to the good and perfection of the work produced. Thus, it remains outside the scope of human conduct and its limits, rules and values which are attributed to “men”. Art always strives towards perfection, therefore it is always good. On the other hand, the artist’s decisions are ethically vulnerable.  Art is always right, and if it ever seems to fail, it is because the artist has failed his art. The artist must be moral in creating his art because art is specific to human beings rather than being a mechanical production.

Stephen’s theory is bound up with the three cardinal aesthetic principles; integritas, consonantia and claritas of Aquinas. Integritas is the perception of the aesthetic image as one thing. Consonantia is the symmetry and rhythm of structure and claritas is given the approximate meaning of radiance.