On the Beautiful and Fitting - Classic Text | Alexandria
On the Beautiful and Fitting (De Pulchro et Apto), Augustine of Hippo's earliest known work, represents a lost philosophical treatise that tantalizingly bridges classical aesthetics and early Christian thought. Written around 380-381 CE when Augustine was a young rhetoric teacher in Carthage, this work existed as a dialogue in two or three books dedicated to Hierius, a renowned Roman orator.
The treatise emerged during a pivotal period in Augustine's intellectual journey, composed while he was still deeply influenced by Manichaeism and Neo-Platonic philosophy, yet before his dramatic conversion to Christianity. This timing makes the work particularly significant for understanding Augustine's philosophical development and the transformation of classical aesthetic theory in late antiquity. Though the original text is lost, Augustine himself provides valuable insights about its content in his Confessions (4.13.20-15.27), where he reflects on it with a mixture of criticism and nostalgia.
According to Augustine's later account, the work explored the nature of beauty and harmony, attempting to reconcile physical and spiritual beauty within a Neo-Platonic framework. The treatise reportedly distinguished between what is beautiful in itself (pulchrum) and what is beautiful by virtue of its fitness or appropriateness to something else (aptum), a distinction that would influence medieval aesthetic theory. The loss of this text has sparked centuries of scholarly speculation about its complete contents and potential influence on subsequent philosophical discourse.
The work's enduring mystique lies in its position as a missing link between classical aesthetic philosophy and Christian theological aesthetics. Modern scholars continue to debate its potential content and significance, drawing from Augustine's later works and contemporary philosophical texts to reconstruct its arguments. The loss of De Pulchro et Apto serves as a poignant reminder of the fragility of ancient textual transmission and raises intriguing questions about how its recovery might reshape our understanding of Augustine's intellectual evolution and the development of Western aesthetic theory. What hidden insights about beauty and harmony might this lost work have contained, and how might they have influenced the trajectory of philosophical thought had they survived?