ABSTRACT
The concept of the aesthetic as it features in contemporary philosophy is a modern one deriving from eighteenth-century philosophical psychology and investigations into judgments of taste. The studies of Hutcheson, Hume and Kant were prompted by the question of how estimations of beauty, though expressing a personal response to nature or art, nevertheless seem to lay claim to truth, or at least are answerable to standards of correctness. Viewed from this perspective, modern aesthetics is a branch of philosophy of mind and theory of value. By contrast, medieval aesthetics may be said to belong to philosophical theology. This difference might suggest that a contemporary reader who is not interested in religious aesthetics has no reason to consider the ideas of medieval writers. This would be a mistake, however, since there are a number of places at which these philosopher-theologians find themselves posing questions and fashioning concepts and arguments that are of broad and enduring interest.
