Número y belleza en la estética de Agustín

Abstract

We will deal with a key notion in the aesthetic thought of Augustine: that of number (numerus), since on it, he articulates the concept of beauty (pulcritudum). We intend, in his hands, to inquire about the nature of beauty and its relationship with the enjoyment which emerges in the cognoscente subject. This will be an occasion to analyze his Platonic metaphysics, of Christian origin, and to assess his aesthetic of proportion. We will see how the latter is built on the first, and how both are crossed by a religious look. By this way, our thinker discovers the traces of the Infinite in the mutable and perishable; whether in nature, in art or in the soul. The via of interiority takes, on Augustine, mystical tones,  in a strain that goes from the temporal to the timeless, where the love for sensitive beauty is the sting that impels to the search for God.