Abstract

Can we find true bliss in any kind of knowledge or is it proper to wisdom only? In this essay I consider different medieval models of the relationship of knowledge to wisdom and pleasure, beginning with Augustine, then to monastic models, before turning to Scholastic models: the early Scholastic model of the relationship between knowledge is very different from the Aristotelian understanding of intellectual felicity developed by Scholastic philosophers and theologians in the thirteenth century. For Nicholas of Cusa intellectual pleasure is above any pleasure that can be attained by discursive reason; finally, I discuss Charles Bovelles’ synthesis between the neo-Platonic model of the relationship between knowledge and wisdom, which he himself devised, and Augustine’s understanding of the distinction between the two. Thus, after a long historical development we return to the beginning.