Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Curiosity as Sin or Virtue

Stanley Fish has an interesting post on curiosity in the NYT.

In short, curiosity — sometimes called research, sometimes called unfettered inquiry, sometimes called progress, sometimes called academic freedom — is their God. The question, posed by thinkers from Aquinas to Augustine to Newman to Griffiths, is whether this is the God — the God, ultimately, of self — we want to worship. Given the evidence, including Chairman Leach’s address, the answer would seem to be yes.

Interesting that in the entire post, Fish does not mention the opposite of curiosity might be ignorance or something like that (apathy?).

It is obvious where I stand on this as one of my key strengths/weaknesses is a deep curiosity about a great many things. That is why my choice of profession is ideal.

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