The Implicit Transcendental: Beauty and the Trinity in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

HE TRANSCENDENTALS are elaborated by Thomas Aquinas as “additions” to being (ens), such that “the one” (unum), “the true” (verum), and “the good” (bonum) are all explicitly said to be “convertible” with being in reality, and “add” to it only in idea, by expressing something not explicit in the term “being” itself. They are those perfections in which all existing things participate as a necessary condition of their existence, and the coextension of the transcendentals with being means that they are also convertible with one another. Therefore, Aquinas states that the true and the good, for instance, are convertible with one another in subject, and differ from one another only logically. In his most extensive discussions of “the beautiful” (pulchrum), Aquinas states in very similar terms that it is identical with goodness in a thing, differing only logically because it adds to the good a relation to the cognitive power. Likewise, beauty and goodness are said to be convertible with