Intellectual Appetite: A Theological Grammar

2. Curiositas

19 2 Curiositas Quamobrem omnis amor studentis animi, hoc est volentis scire quod nescit, non est amor eius rei quam nescit, sed eius quam scit, propter quam vult scire quod nescit. Aut si tam curiosus est, ut non propter aliquam notam causam, sed solo amore rapiatur incognita sciendi; discernendus quidem est ab studiosi nomine iste curiosus, sed nec ipse amat incognita, immo congruentius dicitur: odit incognita, quae nulla esse vult, dum vult omnia cognita. And so, every love that belongs to a studious soul which wants to know what it does not know is not a love of what it does not know but rather of what it does know. It is because of what it does know that it wants to know what it does not know. But someone so curious as to be carried away by nothing other than a love of knowing the unknown, and not because of something already known, should be distinguished from the studious and called curious. But even the curious do not love the unknown. It is more accurate to say that they hate the unknown because they want everything to become known and thus nothing to remain unknown. Augustine writes here, in the tenth book of his work on the Holy Trinity (10.1.3), that the love which belongs to the studious is prompted always by a love for something already known, not by a love for what is not yet known. He then w 20 S Cur ios itas notes that the curious might be carried away or dragged off by force (all implications to be found in rapiatur, a word that lies behind the English verb “to rape”) solely by love directed at knowing what they do not yet know, and might in that way be distinguished from the studious . But even the curious, so understood, do not really love what they do not know. It would be better to say that they hate what they do not know, because they would like that set to be null, an ambition to be realised only by coming to know everything. Therefore, they wish to extinguish all unknowns. The studious, by contrast (it is not said in this passage, but implied), have a more limited desire, which is to come to love what they know more fully by seeking knowledge toward which its love (both subjective and objective genitive intended here) points them. The studious are directed, then, by love; the curious, knowledge seekers though they are, by anxious hatred of what they know not. w Premodern western Christians used the word studiositas for what they thought of as well-formed intellectual appetite, and curiositas for its deformed kissing cousin. It will be useful to begin with a formal definition of each. The definitions that follow are concordant with those found in the Christian tradition, but are not identical with any of them. I give them not in an exegetical spirit, but rather as a contributor to a tradition of thought whose authority I accept, and that I consider it a privilege to speak out of and thereby to extend. Curiosity is a particular appetite, which is to say a particular ordering of the affections, or, more succinctly, a particular intentional love. Its object, what it wants, is new knowledge, a previously unexperienced reflexive intimacy with some creature. And what it seeks to do with that knowledge is control, dominate, or make a private possession of it. Curiosity is, then, in brief, appetite for the ownership of new knowledge, and its principal method is enclosure by sequestration of particular creatures or ensembles of such. The curious want to know what they do Cur ios itas S 21 not yet know, and they often want to know it ardentissimo appetitu, with supremely ardent appetite. But the appetite for new knowledge that belongs to them ravishes them: they are violated and dragged away, with full consent and eager cooperation, by what is likely to seem to them a noble desire for nihil aliud quam scire, nothing other than to know the incognita. The appetite of the curious is in that way closed, seeking a sequestered intimacy: the knowledge they seek is wanted as though it were the only thing to be had, and this means that the curious inevitably come to think that the only way in which they can be related to what they seek to know is by sequestration...