Bonaventure’s Aesthetics

The authors of the standard approach to Bonaventure’s aesthetics established the broad themes that continue to inform the current interpretation of his philosophy, theology, and mysticism of beauty: his definition of beauty and its status as a transcendental of being, his description of the aesthetic experience, and the role of that experience in the soul’s ascent into God. Nevertheless, they also introduced a series of pointed questions that remain without adequate resolution in the current literature. Thomas J. McKenna’s book, Bonaventure’s Aesthetics: The Delight of the Soul in Its Ascent into God, provides a comprehensive analysis of Bonaventure’s aesthetics, the first to appear since Balthasar’s Herrlichkeit, and, in doing so, argues for a resolution to these questions in the context of his principal aesthetic text, the Itinerarium mentis in Deum.