A Feast for the Mind

The title of my new blog, "Gallimaufry-Intellectus," is more than just a strange mouthful of eight syllables.

The first word, 'gallimaufry,' means (according to The American Heritage Dictionary) "a jumble; a hodgepodge" (etymology: French galimafrée, from Old French galimafree, sauce, ragout : probably galer, to make merry; see gallant + mafrer, to gorge oneself [from Middle Dutch moffelen, to open one's mouth wide, of imitative origin]). In medieval times a gallimaufry was a chicken stew with bacon, mustard, and wine. Today 'gallimaufry' can be used as a culinary term to denote any dish with a hodgepodge of ingredients, such as a stew, ragoût, or hash.

The second word, 'intellectus,' refers to one of two modes of thinking identified by the medieval scholastics. The other mode is ratio. Put very simply, ratio is discursive thinking and intellectus is intuitive thinking. According to the late German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper, in his book Leisure: The Basis of Culture (St. Augustine's Press, 1998),

“The medievals distinguished between the intellect as ratio and the intellect as intellectus. Ratio is the power of discursive thought, of searching and re–searching, abstracting, refining, and concluding [cf. Latin dis–currere, ‘to run to and fro’], whereas intellectus refers to the ability of ‘simply looking’ (simplex intuitus), to which the truth presents itself as a landscape presents itself to the eye. The spiritual knowing power of the human mind, as the ancients understood it, is really two things in one: ratio and intellectus: all knowing involves both. The path of discursive reasoning is accompanied and penetrated by the intellectus’ untiring vision, which is not active but passive, or better, receptive — a receptively operating power of the intellect.”

So my "Gallimaufry-Intellectus" is a mixture of musings inscribed at my leisure. I will be making merry with a miscellany of mental mulling. I invite the reader to taste and see whether the words are good.