Intellectual Appetite: A Theological Grammar

12. Novelty

203 12 Novelty Sed miseri homines, quibus cognita vilescunt, et novitatibus gaudent, libentius discunt quam norunt, cum cognitio sit finis discendi. Et quibus vilis est facilitas actionis, libentius certant quam vincunt, cum victoria sit finis certandi. Et quibus vilis est corporis salus, malunt vesci quam satiari , et malunt frui genitalibus membris quam nullam talem commotionem pati; inveniuntur etiam qui malunt dormire quam non dormitare: cum omnis illius voluptatis sit finis, non esurire ac sitire, et non desiderare concubitum, et non esse corpore fatigato. But we miserable human beings, bored by what we know and delighted by novelties, would rather study than know, even though knowledge is study’s goal. And those who find leisure boring would rather struggle than win, even though victory is struggle’s goal. And those bored by a healthy body prefer to eat than to be satisfied, as they also prefer genital pleasure to not suffering such disturbances. There are even those who prefer sleeping to not being weary, even though the end to which all these sensual pleasures point is not to be hungry or thirsty, not to want sexual intercourse, and not to be tired in body. Here, toward the end of one of his early works, On True Religion (53.102), Augustine discusses appetite for knowledge and how it may go wrong. One of these ways, he says in a passage that comes just before the one quoted, is by mistaking w 204 S nov e lt y intimacy with changing things for intimacy with unchanging things. That mistake is damaging because it makes the peace that comes with knowing the unchanging impossible. The result will be restlessness, and endless search for novitates, new things, as he says at the beginning of the quoted passage, and this in turn is best understood as a series of performatively incoherent exchanges: of studying for knowing, even though knowing (cognitio) is the proper end of study; of struggle’s difficulties for the ease of victory, even though victory is the proper end of struggle; of eating for the health of the body, even though the body’s health is the proper end of eating; of sexual excitement for the peace of undergoing no such disturbance, even though such peace is the proper end of sexual arousal; of sleeping over not being tired, even though the proper end of sleep is not to be tired. Each of these exchanges has the same structure: there is a better condition and a worse one; the miseri homines—people who are miserable because confused in mind and disordered in will—prefer the worse; but the worse will, if not grasped and held, lead to the better, and has all its meaning and goodness given to it by that fact. Holding and grasping it, therefore, refusing to let it go so that it can give way to what it points to, is an action that guarantees its own failure. This is what the curious man does with novelties. w Novelties are news, new things, res novae. But newness is not all of the same kind. Some novelties are experiential, which is to say that they are new in someone’s experience, while others belong to the order of being, which is to say new in reality, previously uninstanced. The first man, the first air-breather, the first supernova, the first solution to Fermat ’s Last Theorem: all these are novelties in the order of being. My first kiss, my first smell of India’s softly and warmly spicy air, my first calculated lie: these are experiential novelties, things new to me but not new simpliciter. This distinction between the ontological and the experiential novelty could be pressed far enough to make it crumble. nov e lt y S 205 It could, for example, be said that my first kiss is an ontological reality as well as an experiential one. The world, after all, had not, when I kissed (and was kissed) for the first time, ever had me kissing anyone in it before, even though it had seen very many kisses. But the distinction will nonetheless serve to mark out the territory in a rough-andready way, and it serves, too, to emphasize that the kind of novelty the curious seek is experiential: they want to be faced with a phenomenon —an appearance—they have not been faced with before, and to enter into some degree of knowing intimacy...