МЕТАESTHETICS OF THE TRANSFIGURATED BODY

Text topic: The Body Aesthetics in Christianity

Text author: Милан Радовановић

Man is a corporal being whose life is fulfilled not only through spiritual, but also through bodily experience. One’s relationship towards the body is often divided between two opposites – from rejection and devaluation to magnification of the flesh as the source of pleasure and enjoyment. Christian point of view determines that the body is not an isolated object that only has sensory and aesthetic function but is an integral part of one’s personality, with which one has to be transfigured into a new dimension of being. There is a vast number of testimonies regarding saints reaching that graceful state that is manifested as radiant godly light representing the visible character of God’s energies. That is why the basic category of Christian ethics sees the other side as transcendental beauty that spreads like innate godly light. Traditional aesthetic theory is not sufficient for understanding the metaphysical status and aesthetics of the body in Christian experience and theology.That is why it is essential that the term of aesthetics includes more adequate and comprehensive term of metaesthetics. With a metaesthetic experience, the viewer does not see the body as an exterior material object that represents, reflects and radiates the unspeakable divine beauty, but also, as its recipient, become integral part.