What does it mean to be wise? What is Wisdom?
One of the more interesting aspects to wisdom is self-awareness. “Thinking about wisdom,” writes Stephen Hall in his book Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience, “almost inevitably inspires you to think about yourself and your relationship with the larger world.” The book is an investigation into fuzzy questions such as how can it help us shed light on the process by which we deal with big decisions and dilemmas.
He writes:
Wisdom requires an experience-based knowledge of the world (including, especially, the world of human nature). It requires mental focus, reflecting the ability to analyze and discern the most important aspects of acquired knowledge, knowing what to use and what to discard, almost on a case by case basis (put another way, it requires knowing when to follow rules, but also when the usual rules no longer apply). It requires mediating, refereeing, between the frequently conflicting inputs of emotion and reason, of narrow self-interest and broader social interest, of instant rewards or future gains. Moreover, it expresses itself through an insistently social vocabulary of interactive behavior: a fundamental sense of justice (which is sometimes described as an innate form of morality, of knowing right from wrong), a commitment to welfare of social (and, for that matter, genetic) units that extend beyond the self, and the ability to defer immediate self-gratification in order to achieve the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. (more…)
Recently I’ve been listening to The Teaching Company CD’s while I work out. I was particularly intrigued by a discussion of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, a Roman Emperor who had always wanted instead to be a philosopher. His philosophy could be summarized in this way: Get out of bed, do your duty, and appreciate things along the way. Not bad.