CURIOSITY. - Excessive craving to know and to learn, both in the intellectual field and in the experimental sensory field.
The desire to know is natural to man, who therefore feels impelled to acquire, even with effort, all those cognitions that are necessary for the preservation, well-being, orientation, and comforts of his existence; to form and increase his own culture; but just as the desire to eat is in itself a good thing, yet can become disordered and excessive, so too the desire to know. When it keeps within proper limits, one has the virtue of studiousness (Summ. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 166); when it errs by excess one has c. (ibid., q. 167); when it errs by defect one has culpable ignorance.
C. can be exercised: 1) In the intellectual field: a) when one applies oneself to the knowledge of truth for a bad end, for example, out of pride or in order to commit evil; b) when one seeks to attain knowledge by unjust and illicit means (spiritism, occultism, divination, vain observance, theosophism); c) when one claims to know truths or events beyond one's own intelligence or reserved by God to Himself (the end of the world, the mysteries of the faith, the secrets of the future, God's free future dispositions); d) when, for the sake of a vain and pleasurable study, one neglects more important studies required by duty and by one's profession (cf. St. Jerome's reproach to the ecclesiastics of his time, who «neglected the Gospels and the prophecies in order to read comedies and sing bucolic songs [Epist., 21: PL. 22, 386]). 2) In the field of the senses, when one uses our senses, especially sight, hearing, and touch, to know and learn good things, but for a bad end, and above all things that are unnecessary and at the same time dangerous (glances, readings, theaters, films, dances, etc.). Nor, especially in this matter, is the pretext of «wanting to know everything,» or «trying everything,» of any avail, just as it is of no avail and does not apply to foods and drinks, which are taken, instead, by carefully distinguishing the useful from the harmful. 3) A field in which c. is exercised with the greatest unconcern and grave harm is constituted by other people's affairs. «To watch and take an interest in what others do, with a good spirit, whether for one's own benefit (to draw from it a stimulus to the example of good), or for the benefit of one's neighbor (to correct him according to the rules of charity and the duties of one's office) is praiseworthy; but to consider the defects, failings, and vices of others in order to despise one's neighbor or abandon oneself to detraction, is deplorable and easily offensive to charity and justice» (Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 167, a. 2, ad 3ae).