A few weeks ago I read an article written about a decade ago by Daniel De Haan on kinds of “pleasure” in Aquinas (h/t Brandon). De Haan’s claim in that article is that Aquinas uses the words delectatio, gaudium, and fruitio to identify three different kinds of pleasure corresponding with three different kinds of knowledge. He takes delectatio to be the pleasure that comes from externally sensed goods, gaudium to be the pleasure arising from internally sensed goods, and fruitio to be the the pleasure arising from intellectually sensed goods.
I think De Haan has dug up a very nice insight out of something that is not at all clear in Aquinas. I also think what he proposes is an eminently reasonable way to make sense of human experience. But at the risk of playing the insufferable “my Thomism is better than your Thomism” game, not to mention punching up at a wildly successful professional philosopher teaching at Oxford, I have some objections to this as a reading of Aquinas and (I think) some improvements to suggest.
Continue reading Delectatio, Gaudium, Fruitio
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