Aesthetic experience and spiritual well-being: locating the role of theological commitments

I discuss three accounts of the spiritual significance of aesthetic experience. Two of these perspectives I have taken from the recent literature in theological aesthetics, and the third I have constructed, building on Thomas Aquinas’s conception of the goods of the infused moral virtues. This broadly Thomistic approach occupies, I argue, a middle ground between the other two, on account of its distinctive understanding of the role of theological context in defining spiritually significant goods. These perspectives are not mutually exclusive, but they do present rather different conceptions of the ways in which aesthetic goods can contribute to spiritual well-being, and provide a focus for religious practice.