Wisdom: “It’s the Context, Stupid.” In his recent blog “Can wisdom be taught with words?” Howard Nusbaum points to research suggesting that intelligence is context-specific, and Howard builds on this idea to propose that wisdom, too, may be “specific
Wisdom: “It’s the Context, Stupid.”
In his recent blog “Can wisdom be taught with words?” Howard Nusbaum points to research suggesting that intelligence is context-specific, and Howard builds on this idea to propose that wisdom, too, may be “specific to particular contexts.” I think not only that wisdom is context-specific but also that research clarifying the relation of wisdom to its context would represent an important step toward answering the question of whether wisdom can be taught.
In brief, it is not sufficient to say that wisdom is context-specific unless we argue further that only particular aspects or problems within that context are able to prompt responses that could appropriately be called wise. Howard mentions an example from the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm that allows me to illustrate my point, the situation of giving advice to a pregnant teenager. One could imagine giving the young woman sensible advice about conversing with the father. One could imagine giving intelligent scientific advice about reproductive health. One could imagine giving prudent advice about all sorts of things. But what aspects of the situation might be said to call for or elicit wise advice? I tend to think that wise advice would be advice that helped the young woman resituate her immediate circumstance in a broader frame of reference than her own relatively brief life experience might afford. Beyond the immediately ensuing months, how might this pregnancy relate to her longer-term joy, remorse, meaning, aspiration, and responsibilities? Wisdom, in such cases, encourages taking a wider perspective on matters in the very moment of anxiety or crisis that tempts us to narrow the focus of our attention or the range of our choices.
This suggests that to find out whether wisdom can be taught, we probably need to ask whether and how a style or practice of contextual reasoning can be taught. Wisdom as a habit of reasoning about situations would be a sort of mental training or discipline that trained us to identify and address those aspects of a “context” that were not amenable to resolution through technical knowledge, the straightforward application of general principles, or standard operating procedures. Wisdom is the habit of reasoning required when we need fresh ideas about what to do. At the limit, wisdom is the habit of reasoning required when there is nothing we can do.
- Clark Gilpin, Margaret E. Burton Distinguished Service Professor of the History
of Christianity and Theology in the Divinity School, University of Chicago
(photo taken from Idea-Listic at Flikr Creative Commons)
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