In this essay, I offer a reflection on the importance of the notion of art as imitation of nature, the notion’s philosophical foundation, its power to liberate the artist’s creative imagination, and the dangers threatening the artist if this notion were abandoned. I provide a warning of the potential hazards that might befall the artist once she imagines her work to be untethered to the natural order. Further, I propose that the proportion and order of nature establish a horizon for the realty of the beautiful, providing context and meaning to beauty, a meaning without which the notion of beauty would float anchorless in the subjective realm of individual taste. This ambitious task, only summarily treated here, receives far greater and more detailed treatment in the book, The Shape of the Artistic Mind, published in 2023 by Pontifex University Press.Footnote 1
1. Art as virtuous imitation
Lists differ among thinkers, but classical philosophers (from Aristotle and Cicero to Aquinas) number five virtues as seated in the intellect perfecting the mind in its proper activity.Footnote 2 Three virtues perfect the speculative intellect in its operation of knowing the world: understanding, knowledge, and wisdom (knowing first principles; discursively drawing conclusions from those principles; and knowing the first causes of all things, respectively). But the last two virtues listed, prudence and art, do not perfect the intellect’s speculative activity but its practical activity of applying reason to various things. The virtue of prudence perfects the intellect in applying right reason to human action, saturating practical action with a share of right reason. The virtue of art perfects the intellect in applying right reason, not to human action, but to things made, saturating external things made with a share of right reason.Footnote 3 As a result of this, prudence (φρόνησις, phronesis) is called recta ratio agibilium, right reason of things to be done. Art (τέχνη, techne) is called recta ratio factibilium, right reason of things to be made.Footnote 4 The human mind, then, engages the order of the cosmos through activity flowing in two directions. Speculative activity reads, so to speak, the ordered reason of the cosmos and brings that reason inside. Practical activity, then, in a sense, applies that reason back into the world by extending that ordered reason either directly into human action or into external things made.Footnote 5
When philosophers labeled these five activities as ‘virtues’ (or claiming that these activities are perfected by virtue), they made a bold anthropological claim. The label implies that these activities come preloaded with a particular ratio shared with other virtuous action. As virtuous actions, each intellectual act must obey a type of rule or measure of its activity, a mean toward which the virtue directs the mental action toward its perfection. But I call this label a ‘bold claim’, not only because of what it positively affirms, but most of all, because of what it implicitly denies. It implies that the human mind is not the measure of its own activity as if the mind were its own creator, judge, or measure. Rather the human mind in all its activity must be measured by another, something outside of itself, or something other to which its action must conform. In other words, like all virtue, it must follow a certain mean.
But what thing outside the mind could possibly measure, or provide a mean for, the mind’s virtuous activity? Here, the same classical tradition does not leave us without an answer. Speculative reason is measured by the world that it knows, that is, the world of nature that it brings into itself.Footnote 6 Truth exists in the mind, as St Thomas famously teaches, when an adequatio or equality exists between mind and thing known.Footnote 7 If the likeness of a thing in the mind does not equate to that same thing in reality (i.e., in nature), no truth exists in the mind. The created world, then, is the measure of the mind’s knowing. And if this is true for speculative reason, it was no great leap to assume the same for practical reason, as well. Although not as intuitive, practical reason must also obey a type of measure in the natural world.Footnote 8 The natural world becomes a model or archetype for right practical reason and holds that practical reason to account. Just as the natural world measures the mind’s knowing, so also does the ordered and goal-directed pattern of the natural world measure human action.
Nature provides a pattern that speaks to the mind with a type of command, an ought, that thrusts human activity towards a good goal. This is the origin of the very idea of a natural law, an ordered teleology in nature imposing a measure upon practical reason giving meaning and order to its activity. The mind simply sees that certain goods ought to be pursued, and others avoided.Footnote 9 In other words, there is a goodness to the order of natural things impressing meaning upon the human mind’s ordered practical activity.
And again, if this were true of reason applied to human action, recta ratio agibilium, it was again no great leap for philosophers to assume the same for human making, recta ratio factibilium, or art. Human artistic reason also has a measure in the natural world. The natural world becomes a model or archetype for practical reason’s making; the ordered and goal-directed patterns of the natural world measure human things to be made just as it would measure human things to be done. This symmetry between art and prudence provides the foundation of the classical notion that art is an imitation of nature. ‘Skills imitate nature.’ St Thomas explains,
And this is because actions and effects are related as their sources are related to one another. But the source of things produced by skills is the human intellect, which is similarly derived from the divine intellect, and the divine intellect is the source of natural things. And so skillful actions necessarily imitate natural actions, and artifacts imitate things in nature.Footnote 10
Nature’s ordered patterns speak to the mind with a type of command, calling to be imitated, demanding to be imitated. And like a good teacher, the ordered patterns of nature direct human art toward its perfection and thrust human art towards a good goal. ‘If any teacher of a skill were to produce skillful work’, St Thomas explains again,
the pupil learning the skill from him would need to pay attention to the teacher’s activity, so that the pupil would also perform the task in the way he does. And so, the human intellect, which derives its intelligible light from the divine intellect, needs to be formed by examining the things produced by nature so as to act similarly regarding the things it produces.Footnote 11
2. Modern objections and the reality of beauty
Yet despite the streamlined logic here, the notion of art as an imitation of nature has not gone unchallenged in the modern world. The challenge arises when one attempts to place the work of the creative artist within this schema. Perhaps a type of craft, skill, or art of utility – the making of useful goods – may be called an imitation of nature, some may say, but the arts of the beautiful (as Gilson calls themFootnote 12), the fine arts, or arts for beauty’s sake, these arts and the creativity they inspire, could never be tethered to a mere imitation of natural patterns. If the fine arts are to be mere imitations of nature, some may object, would this not reduce the artist to a flat replicator of things already given? Would the creative work of the artist not cheapen to the mere skill of photo realist reproduction and evacuate the artist’s spontaneous imagination?Footnote 13 This is a valid concern, and it deserves to be taken seriously. Nonetheless, beneath the objection lies a false assumption about the very nature of artistic imitation, one that reduces imitation to a flat duplication. And with this false assumption in mind, it is natural for many modern thinkers to assume that an artist’s imitation of any form of beauty other than that which emerges solely from her own creative intuition would necessarily be a limitation, not a liberation, of the scope of her activity.
But this assumption would be a mistake. To illustrate why, we need look no further than the classical notion of beauty, the very telos of the arts of the beautiful. And here, just as the tradition provides a rich notion of art situated within the schema of virtues, so also does it provide a rich notion of beauty within the cosmos as well.
Beautiful things are ‘those which please when seen’.Footnote 14 Yet this pleasure response to the beautiful is far more than mere taste. Perceived beauty is a far richer reality. It comes pre-packaged with an integrity, proportion, and radiance all its own transcending one’s personal response to it. This is because true ‘beauty includes three conditions’, St Thomas teaches; ‘integrity or perfection, since those things which are impaired are by the very fact ugly; due proportion or harmony; and lastly, brightness or clarity’.Footnote 15 These three conditions – integrity, proportion, and clarity – imply that beauty itself is a type of measure. It is a content-rich reality to which other thing may be measured. Beauty possesses intrinsic qualities that resonate with those who see it and inspire in those who see it a sympathetic movement of pleasure and joy. Far from eliciting a reaction of approval for one’s personal taste, these three conditions strike the observing mind as an authoritative witness to a reality that ought to be appreciated and enjoyed. These qualities, then, must be given in things themselves, never imposed onto things from outside. They are given through objects, not imposed by subjects. To be at all pleasing when seen, these qualities must summon the perceiver to an appreciation beyond mere opinion. These qualities of the beautiful must first move the perceiver to an enjoyment of them; it could never be the perceiver that first places within the thing perceived these qualities only antecedently enjoyed as pleasant.
If all this is true of the perception of beauty, even more so would it be true of the artist’s creation of beauty. Beauty as a given reality must exists before the artist, it must transcend the artist, and it must be a reality greater than the artist’s mind alone. The artist must serve, and participate in, a beauty beyond and more primordial than herself. The creative artist must be a servant of integrity, proportion, and clarity, not its creator. If the creative artist were to assume that her spontaneous imagination held the position of creator, ex nihilo, of a integrity, proportion, and clarity emerging solely from within herself and not given to her by something greater, not only would she place himself in a position of a solitary, isolated god but would also, by that very fact, insolate herself from all others capable of participating in, perceiving, and enjoying the same integrity.
In this way, beauty may be a transcendent good. It can never be a solitary good. Beauty is not only a type of spiritual good capable of enjoyment by many at once without diminution or depletion, but even more, it is a shared good – a type of spiritual good capable of uniting all those who do in fact see it and enjoy it within one community that participates in the same integrity, proportion, and radiance. Beauty may be a true common good, a good not only shareable by many, but a good that unites those who share it – a good with the power to create community by ordering all who enjoy it by the same integrity, proportion, and clarity. In other words, beauty is a common good, not because it is first shared in common (even shared taste could do that), but because it has the power to unite into one, into one community, those who see it, share it, and are pleased by it.
3. The spiritual vocation of the creative artist
Due to this deeper reality of beauty, Christian thinkers (inspired by the classical Greek tradition) recognized the creative artist as possessing a type of vocation; a calling to be of service to a reality greater than himself. The creative artist, then, possesses a great responsibility. He could never be accountable to nothing other than his own creative intuition. Rather, he is accountable to another – another Who Is Beauty Himself, another Whose Own Beauty is infinitely shareable without depletion. Thus, before the creative artist learns to create beauty, she must first learn to read beauty. She must receive it. The artist must first learn to see before she can make.
But this leads to the question: From where might the artist learn to read a beauty greater than herself, existing before herself, and common to all? The answer is simple. The whole of created nature itself, first coming from the mind of God, provides a pattern, ratio, or model of integrity, proportion, and clarity, that speaks of a divine beauty. Nature speaks of a divine order, ever ancient ever new, connecting the artist’s mind to a beauty in which all creatures participate. Nature is like a proxy for an ordered reason calling all who read it beyond themselves to a unified and unifying good with the power to unite all. Only art as an imitation of nature possesses the power to connect the mind of the artist to a transcendent beauty, a beauty in which all may share, and most of all, a beauty that grounds the creative intuition of the artist within a horizon shared by others.
Yet we must give the above-mentioned objection credit where credit is due. It would certainly be a mistake to envision an artistic imitation of nature’s order as a simple replication or representation of a nature already given. It would be a mistake to suppose artistic imitation of nature to be no more than a photo realist replica of nature’s flat, horizontal, material parts. Far from it. Instead of a mere replica, the artist’s imitation is an elevation of nature. The artistic act must enhance the beauty given by nature and then highlight the hidden aspects of that integrity, proportion, and clarity.Footnote 16
Like a prophetic vocation, the artist must first read the manifold aspects of ordered beauty in the cosmos and then augment as explicit those aspects of proportion and clarity only implicitly present within nature. The artist must amplify the form, proportion, and order within nature to bring others to an experience of beauty they could otherwise not see. Thus, the artist, rather than a creator of beauty ex nihilo through her own creative intuition, is instead like a messenger of beauty bringing its meaning to those who need it. And given the Christian understanding of a fallen nature, a nature wounded by sin, this vocation becomes all the more prophetic. The creative artist must interpret the patterns and order of nature (as well as its visual appearance) and ask, not ‘What is it,’ but rather, ‘What ought it to be?’ ‘What is the message of the divine mind to which nature’s patterns point as a telos?’ Such a vocation requires tremendous imagination; it requires great inventive intuition. Far from stifling creativity, this calling liberates the artist’s spontaneous intuition by grounding it in the mind of the divine artist and teacher. This also requires tremendous skill; it requires disciplined training. Just as all students must learn by imitating their master’s work, so must the creative artist learn in the school of the natural order and hone her skill in the workshop of the divine exemplar.
Yet, once the artist breaks from this cosmological view, that is, once the artist severs her work’s connection to the given integrity, proportion, and clarity in the natural world, then her work becomes a mere display of her own personal taste, that is, a personal preference disconnected from the minds of others. In such a case, the artist’s work becomes, at best, solipsistic, isolating, and self-absorbed – it expresses nothing greater or more transcendent than her own individual intuition. And at worst, in such a case, the artist’s work may descend to a decomposition of beauty – a corruption of integrity, proportion and order – only capable of arresting the attention of another through its ability to shock or disturb. This sad condition would not be an expression of the artist’s virtue; and it would certainly not be an expression of the artist’s true vocation. And even worse, it would amount to a destruction of the image of God in the artist.
But retrieving the notion of art as imitation of nature allows us to recover an understanding of art as a participation in God’s good governance of the world. Creation itself is the ordered, intentional, and free act of God, the master craftsman, Who expresses His creativity in a planned, purposeful, and deliberate way. Creation expresses God’s good governance and providence. The human person, as a rational creature, participates in divine providence in a preeminent way, not only by being provided for, but also by providing for others, that is, by investing the created world with a greater share of that ordered reason.Footnote 17 In other words, the human person participates in God’s governance of the world through the virtuous activity of recta ratio factibilium. As intellectual soul and material body, the human artist acts as a high priest of created beauty. First, through the speculative virtues, the artist must read within nature the mind of the Creator; and second, through the practical virtue of art, the artist must reinvest the material world with an ever-greater share of that beauty and order. By imitating the natural order, the creative artist participates in, and expresses, this primal beauty – a beauty hidden in nature itself, patiently waiting for the liberating virtue of the artist to reveal it. In this way, the human artist acts like an ambassador of the beauty of God for all creatures. This is the true vocation of the creative artist, and retrieving art as imitation of nature provides it.
