Immediate surroundings
Discerning order
Physical limitations
The mirror doesn’t create the reality it reflects, but rather reveals it in a particular way, much as philosophical inquiry doesn’t create truth but seeks to uncover it.
“The perfection of the human being is in the perfection of the intellect.” – Averroes
Placid pond
Verdant embrace
Fleeting shimmer
Augustine, ever seeking the truth beyond the fleeting shadows of empirical existence, would likely perceive in this tranquil landscape an echo of divine order and beauty.
“And what is beauty? What attracts and wins us through its grace? Unless some measure of unity be found in it, nothing can be beautiful.” – Augustine of Hippo
Intricate tapestry
Nascent primer
Exposed metal
In this image, we encounter not merely a collection of accidental qualities—a patch of rust here, a glint of primer there—but a substance (the vehicle itself) undergoing a process of change and revealing its underlying form.
“Actuality is prior to potency.” – Aristotle
Paving strip
Temporary parking sign
Intricate marks
Each stroke, each overlapping tag, is an act of creation, a momentary imposition of order, or perhaps a new form of disorder, upon a pre-existing surface.
“Just as our soul, being air, holds us together, so do breath and air encompass the whole world.” – Anselm of Canterbury
From which it is woven
Understanding aesthetics
As a window into the underlying reality
The deep blue of the iris, with its intricate folds and velvety texture, appears solid and defined against the shimmering, almost liquid background.
“Just as our soul, being air, holds us together, so do breath and air encompass the whole world.” – Anaximenes
Merely arrangements
Infinitely complex
Intermingled reality
From an aesthetic perspective, beauty lies not merely in its composition, but in its ability to hint at a deeper, underlying order within the seemingly chaotic dance of light and shadow.
“In everything there is a portion of everything.” – Anaxagoras
Momentary pause
Ceaseless ebb and flow
Boundless and the bounded
Here we delve into an aesthetic metaphysics where the perceived world is but a fleeting manifestation emerging from, and returning to, the boundless and indeterminate.
“Whence things have their origin, thence also their destruction happens, according to necessity; for they give to one another justice and recompense for their injustice, according to the ordering of time.” – Anaximander
Form is actuality
Indeterminate substratum
Pure potentiality
The very act of aesthetic apprehension becomes an exercise in discerning the underlying forms, those enduring realities that constitute the true essence of things.
“Art is a productive state involving a true course of reasoning.” – Alexander of Aphrodisias
Clear distinctions
According to
Proper form
In these visual forms is the manifestation of substances and accidents, each contributing to the particularity of the scene.
“Every being, inasmuch as it is being, is good.” – Albertus Magnus
Noumenal presence
Hinting at a truth
Beyond immediate apprehension
The lights, freed from their mundane sources, become pure phenomena, echoes of a hidden order.
“There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.” – Ernst Haas