Abstract

This article examines Thomas Aquinas’s treatment of the origin and limits of the search for knowledge. It situates Aquinas’s treatment of studiousness, the virtue to describe proper habits of intellectual inquiry, within the broader quarrel over the status of human curiosity. Avoiding curiositas is one thing, but how ought one to pursue knowledge? Aquinas partially links the search for knowledge with obligations incumbent on one’s station in life. A difficulty arises, however, in his exhortation not to understand beyond one’s own means, and not to seek out things that should not be known. Studiousness is helpful in describing the virtues necessary to succeed in a prescribed course of study. It does not, however, tell one whether to begin such a study, or whether one has fulfilled one’s quest. In precisely those areas where study would not be curiositas but studiositas offers little advice, the modern defense of curiosity makes its entrance.