Contemplating God from the Mirror of the Soul. The First Level of St. Bonaventure’s Introspective Aesthetics from Its Inspiring Sources

Abstract

This article seeks primarily to highlight the first level of the introspective stage of Saint Bonaventure’s Aesthetics, as highlighted in Chapter 3 of his Itinerarium mentis in Deum. According to this Franciscan philosopher, if man considers his three spiritual powers, memory, intelligence, and will inside his soul, he will be able to contemplate intellectually as though in a mirror God one and triune, because those three powers are images of the Creator. Secondly, our article attempts to detect some of the doctrinal sources which could have inspired Bonaventure when proposing the different theses that structure this first introspective level of his Aesthetics.