Recta ratio factibilium

Følgende er to sitater fra St. Thomas Aquinas om kunst og imitasjon og taler tydelig om intellektets og kunnskapens essensielle plass deri.

Summa Theologicae, (II,I,57.3), min parentes:

"I reply that art should be called nothing else than right reason about things to be made. (recta ratio factibilium) Their good does not consist in any disposition of the human will but rather that the work that comes to be is good in itself. The artist is not praised as an artist because of the will with which he works but because of the quality of what he makes."

Kommentarer på Fysikken av Aristoteles(II,I,4,n.171)

"The reason art imitates nature is that knowledge is the principle of artistic activity. But all our knowledge is received through the senses from sensible and natural things. Hence our procedure in artificial things is similar to that in natural things. Natural things are imitable by art because the whole of nature is ordered to its end by an intellectual principle, and so the work of nature seems to be a work of intelligence since it proceeds in a determinate way to definite ends -- and that is imitated in artistic activity."

Kort sagt, ingen kunnskap, ingen kunst. Høres ut som en triviell bemerkning, men dette er en forståelse dagens kunstverden, også arkitekturen (i den grad det er mulig), har forlatt.

Spm. til videre studier: hvorvidt imitiasjon i den klassiske kunsten fordrer et rasjonelt univers basert på et intellektuelt prinsipp, dvs. Gud.