Plaisir de la connaissance comme émotion intellectuelle chez Hugues de Saint-Victor

Abstract

In Hugh of St Victor the pleasure of knowledge is seen as an ‘intellectual emotion’, in that it exists at the intersection between affectivity and rationality. This is clear from various texts: from the De fructibus carnis et spiritus to the De quinque septenis and the Sententiae de divinitate, gaudium is seen as the intellectual emotion par excellence, as it is an ‘inner’ joy, a jucunditas spiritalis that produces happiness. From an anthropological point of view, joy and pleasure combine with knowledge to help men abandon the pleasures of the body and devote themselves to those of the spirit. This is linked to Hugh of St Victor’s ‘hedonistic’ pedagogy, which holds that docet quod scire delectet, in that one learns more easily what is pleasant. Similarly, limited, restricted knowledge does not produce as much pleasure as extensive, wide-ranging knowledge. The essay sets these analyses in a table of Hugh’s terminology that is organized in four semantic poles: 1) pleasure and desire (delectatio, voluptas, oblectamentum, desiderium, libenter); 2) joy (iucunditas, laetitia, laetari, gaudium); 3) happiness (felicitas, beatitudo); 4) love (dilectio, dilectus adj, dilectus subst).