ABSTRACT
Rik Van Nieuwenhove examines the playful dynamic at the heart of contemplation by bringing Thomas Aquinas’s notion of intellectus and intuitus simplex into conversation with Gadamer’s understanding of art in terms of play, festival and symbol. Van Nieuwenhove suggests that Aquinas’s notion of intellectus and its relation to ratio may enrich the anthropological basis of Gadamer’s understanding of art as play (pursued for its own sake, characterised by an inner to-and-fro dynamic), symbol (as a way of integrating our fragmented world) and festivity (its timelessness). In Van Nieuwenhove’s view, these characteristics cohere well with what Aquinas means by intellective contemplation as leisurely and playful, intuitive and integrative, and beyond discursive time. Van Nieuwenhove suggests art offers a privileged medium for nurturing a contemplative disposition of receptivity, one which is also at the heart of our encounter with God. Contemplation, then, is the necessary disposition of receptivity needed to approach art as an event of disclosure (or ‘truth’ in Heidegger’s sense).
