The Relation of Beauty with Goodness and Truth in Dionysius the Areopagite's On the Divine Names

One of the conditions which gave rise to the emergence of modern aesthetics was the claim that beauty could and must be studied independently of goodness and truth. However, in pre-modern philosophy, namely that of ancient Greece and the middle ages, the beautiful was not understood and explained independently of the good and the true. Before Christanity and in the middle ages, the relation of beauty with goodness and truth was elaborated by Dionysius. In his On the Divine Names, by a combination of theological perspective with the late neo-platonic framework, Dionysius explains the relation of beauty with goodness and truth as three fundamental Divine Names. This paper tries, through the analysis of Dionysius' treatise, to study and explain the nature of these three Names and their relationships. This paper shows that Dionysius while declaring the essential unity of beauty, goodness, and truth, affirms the theophanic aspect of beauty and its function to motivate the soul powers of knowledge and love towards its ultimate goal, theosis. As such, Dionysius can be regarded as the founder of a kind of theological-mystical aesthetics.