Forum: Featured Discussions: Is it possible to define wisdom without saying what it is?

 In 1873, American poet John Godfrey Saxe published an English-language version of the philosophical fable about the blind men and the elephant. Touching various parts of the elephant, each of the blind men offered his own account of what the elephant was. The man near the trunk said it was like a snake; the one holding the ear likened it to a fan; one next to the leg thought it a pillar; and so on. It is an old story that, in its many versions, has appeared in Buddhist, Hindu, and Sufi sources. But Saxe, writing in the heyday of high modern antagonism toward professional theology, used the old image to comment on what he saw as the silliness inherent in theological disputation:

So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!

As academic wisdom-seekers, it is no doubt true that we have blindnesses of our own, or, at the very least, that we are in the habit, for good or for ill, of focusing our vision by donning disciplinary blinders. Unlike Saxe’s bickering theologians, though, I think we have shown restraint, the kind that comes from being trained to take critical account of methods and assumptions.

Take earlier postings on this blog for example. Contributors have not set out to examine wisdom per se but rather to attune us to critical frameworks relevant to wisdom inquiry. Joy Wattawa nudged us toward a more collaborative, tech-savvy pursuit of wisdom. Howard Nusbaum drew attention to the limits of our understanding of the expressive power of language. Clark Gilpin followed with a helpful brief on the role of contextual reasoning in decision-making. Most recently, Valerie Tiberius, in a theoretically explicit way, has proposed shifting the discussion about wisdom from metaphysics to epistemology.

All to the good. I, for my part, see no way to pursue our common project without adequate attention to technology, language, contextual reasoning, and the role of critical reflection. And, from the perspective of my own checkered disciplinary past (some mix of history, philology, and theology), I believe that we might say even more about meta-issues that bear on the study of wisdom. For example, it might be helpful to think about the role of text and tradition in forming communal visions of the good life (my DW project), the effects of religious belief on moral and scientific thinking (considering, for example, the ‘open’ and ‘closed’ ‘immanent frames’ of Charles Taylor), and the tension between individual fulfillment and communal flourishing over the long and rich history of the Western intellectual tradition. This small list could surely be extended.

And yet I wonder whether meta-sapiential reflection of this sort engenders too much restraint. Is it possible to define wisdom merely by analyzing the technological, psychological, philosophical, cultural, or social processes that we, for one reason or another, happen to associate with wisdom? I believe that an ‘analytics of wisdom’ is a desirable and necessary thing, but I am not sure it is all that is needed. I wonder, in other words, whether we ought to try and touch the elephant.

Valerie has offered a sound reason for not doing so. Any “uncontroversial” assumption about the specific content of wisdom, she argues, is likely to be “bland and general and therefore not very revealing about wisdom.” This is certainly true.

But why restrict ourselves to uncontroversial assumptions? In the realm of intellectual inquiry, I know of no productive assumption or consequential idea that is uncontroversial. The kinds of beliefs that command loyalty, deepen the moral imagination, and inspire bold action tend to be pointy. In Western religious, political, and intellectual history, influential “wisdom” traditions grew up around people and ideas with sharp profiles. To be sure, we ought not accept the historical legacies of such people and ideas uncritically, appropriating them merely because they were influential or, for that matter, pointy. Nor should we be ignorant of the counterproductive ways that strong, deeply held beliefs (and the people who held them) have troubled human societies throughout history.

Yet, I believe that wisdom, inasmuch as it makes claims on action and belief, engages human aspiration at its deepest levels—and not simply its technical ones. The problem for academic wisdom-seekers is that wisdom brings questions of meaning, content, and value into its compass, while modern scholarly inquiry cannot adjudicate such questions.

In his famous 1919 lecture on “science as a vocation,” Max Weber probed the nature of modern Wissenschaft. According to Weber:

Science… presupposes that what is yielded by scientific work is important in the sense that it is 'worth being known.' In this, obviously, are contained all our problems. For this presupposition cannot be proved by scientific means. It can only be interpreted with reference to its ultimate meaning, which we must reject or accept according to our ultimate position towards life.

What is “worth being known,” what is meaningful, and what is good can only be determined in light of one’s ultimate values. The critical processes associated with modern scholarship cannot generate content in its deepest sense; they can only operate on what is given (Latin: data). Because scholarship on the Weberian model cannot decide among ultimate values, it can only direct us in the pursuit of goals we have already accepted as worthy.

What it would mean to broach non-trivial questions of content in the context of this project I am not entirely sure. What are immediately obvious are the obstacles, problems, and objections: the functional relativism inherent in disciplinary boundaries, lack of experience or vocabulary for handling such questions in a way that remains fair and rigorous, fear or discomfort associated with self-disclosure, and so on. It may be best, in light of these issues, not to raise substantive questions.

Like all who hear the elephant story, I find it is easy to smile at the blind men quarreling, to pity and even to disdain them. I certainly do not want to emulate them. Yet I wonder about the true nature of their mistake. Surely it was not in being blind, which they could not help, nor in touching the elephant, which curiosity certainly warranted. Perhaps the problem was that the blind men reached their conclusions hastily—and without comparing notes.

Michael C. Legaspi
Creighton University

Photo by Matthieu

Might I offer an addendum to the old elephant story and some musings?

The child observed the circle of old men variously tugging on parts of the elephant and arguing over their "views" of the great lady.  The elephant saw the child and she winked.  Sensing the kindly invitation the child dashed forward, accepted the leg up, and off they road to see what there was to see.

 Defining wisdom is not the difficulty.  It never has been.  'Tis the paying attention to the Wonder of It All that has ever posed the challenge.  In the old story the men began with their need to define and agree.  In the offered addendum the child sensed and responded to what the elephant actually offered.  Knowledge of is all fine and well and needed, of course.  But wisdom is not correct knowledge.  The Great Lady invites us to ride open-eyed that we might be in-formed by the Wonder of what there is to see.

 Gordon Raynal

Inman, SC 

A good question is raised.  Why is the philosophical fable about the blind men and the elephant humorous?  Touching various parts of the elephant, each of the blind men offered his own account of what the elephant was.  Perhaps, the amusing aspects are, among other things, first that there is in fact an elephant (God, as according to Newton, Maxwell, Kepler, Locke, Faraday, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Milton, Bronte, etc.) and second that finite humans can reach a level of understanding of the infinite and immutable to which those with misunderstandings seem "blind."  It is true that the Being of the first cause of all effects must reveal/confirm certain aspects, it is not logically true that all opposing theological versions of this Being are equal in legitimacy.  Then, it would seem that gathering as much knowledge of the "elephant" and then applying it would be the model for defining wisdom.

 John Fowles in his novel, The Magus, writes:

" But I am talking about the general psychological health of the species-man. He needs the existence of mysteries. Not their solution."

Or is it possible to define wisdom without defining it? 

I have only ever known one wise man, but have also known many others who, when taken together, might display a sort of wisdom.  I don't know whether one can define wisdom, only that it is possible to be wise.  In this sense, perhaps it is not definable but to the degree that one may describe someone who is wise.  I have seen from this wise man that there are definable traits which seem to make one wise, or perhaps mark one as wise.  Wisdom would then be defined as the sum of these factors.  I have seen several factors which seem to generate wisdom in an individual:  One must know one's self deeply, in a psychological sense.  One must know the reasons for one's actions and thoughts on a deep psychological level.  Know yourself was the expression found carved in stone at the Orical at Delphi.  I don't know what the possible extent of such knowledge could be.  Almost certainly it is impossible to know one's self fully, though it is the only thing that one can truly know to any real degree.  The second trait that I have observed in this wise man is the knowledge of unknowability.  This is expressed by the story of Socrates and the Orical at Delphi.  Socrates was the wisest of all men since he knew that he knew nothing.  This story of the blind men and the elephant would hint at such a concept about wisdom.  A wise blind man would know that he was blind and thus that he could not fully know the elephant.  It is not knowing the most which makes one wise, but knowing the limits of one's ability to know - knowing that we are all blind.  This goes well with the idea that the univese is much to complex to be predictable or just.  This wise man does not believe in Karma or in the supernatural control of events.  That is not to say that this wise man is an athiest.  He is more agnostic than not, or perhaps a deist, but only because he recognises that there is some kind of inherent order in the universe.  Following from these concepts is the idea that, though it is important to know as much about the universe as possible so as to act properly, one must surrender to the whim of chance and be open to the conspiring of complex events.  These notions find most favor in the Tao Te Ching and other philosophically taoist writings as well as some buddhist philosophy.  This wise man does not believe in absolutes.  These seem to be the philosophical aspects of a wise man.  I have only known one however, so I don't know any of this for sure. 

There also seem to be ethical and personal aspects:  This wise man in a genius.  He is the most intelligent person I have ever met.  He might have forgotten more than I will ever know and his reasoning skills are unrivaled.  This wise man loves all people and all things.  This love is unconditional; but it is fully unconditional!  There is no associated desire attached to it.  Accepting the unpredictability of the universe, he does not overly desire a certain fate for that which he loves.  This is especially Taoist, but is also treated by the budhist concept of enlightenment.  It is not the kind of love found in western religions.  It is too detached for that.  This wise man strives to act ethically, but knows that such ethics are uncertain.  Ethical behavior is predicated upon what we know.  This would echo Kant to some degree, but not in every respect.  This wise man is not very happy, but enjoys certain things.  The greatest displays of enjoyment which I have witnessed in him are always in reaction either to the beauty of nature or the realization of an elegant idea.  But, wisdom does not bring happiness.  Most people are happier than this wise man.  The only thing that he seems to be unable to comprehend is war.  He is not a complete pacifist, but he cannot seem to figure out how it is that human beings could be capable of conducting wars.  Though he feels love for everyone, he has decided that the human race is doomed, and that it is not worth trying to save.  He has accepted that almost every human being ever born will not be wise and will not care to be, and that humans will simply continue to kill each other and do stupid things until they are either extinct or they evolve into something better.  He believes that the only good things that one may do are to become wise enough to work out what one truly wants one's life to be about, and to make a consious decision to persue that.  I have only known one wise man.  All I can do is describe him.

Professor Legaspi identifies the central problem in defining wisdom when he says, "What is 'worth being known,' what is meaningful, and what is good can only be determined in light of one's ultimate values."  What is most poignantly illustrated by this comment is that wisdom is knowledge subjected to a standard higher than itself.  There is that which is knowable, and then, within that set of items, there is that class of knowable that are "worth being known."  I venture to say that "worth being known", "meaningful" and "good" in Professor Legaspi's pregnant statement are more or less interchangeable.  They are all references to a standard that subjects knowledge to a critique, and, to do so, that standard must somehow transcend knowledge.  If this standard is in any way relative, and especially if it is peculiar to each individual, then there is no standard whatsoever, and the pursuit of wisdom is a pure chimera.

     If my analysis so far is correct, then the search for wisdom is in fact the search for an absolute standard of value, meaningfulness, worth, substance, weight, direction or whatever other term one might want to use.  My reading of philosophy leads me to subsume all of these terms under the term "good".  The problem that appears immediately with such a line of thinking is that, if meaningfulness lies at a level that transcends knowledge, how are we, who are after all by definition knowers, to gain any kind of awareness of this standard?  How do we know that which transcends knowledge?

     Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his "Lecture on Ethics," faced precisely this problem.  What he said about it was that, although he conceded that the question was of the highest importance, speaking of it was like beating oneself against the bars of one's cage.  That "cage" is the limits of language.  But language can do more than simply re-present.  With all due respect to Wittgenstein, I put it to you that language can in fact serve a function beyond mere representation.  Language, and cognitive thought, can point beyond itself.  Allow me a simple illustration.  Someone asks me, "Who is Michael Legaspi?"  I say, "Well, he is a brilliant scholar of ancient languages and biblical texts.  He is a professor at Creighton University.  He is thus tall and weighs thus much.  He has this and that hobby."  I may go on describing various aspects of Michael Legaspi.  My questioner might, however, say, "No.  I want to meet him.  Who is he among all the people here?"  I have now been asked to identify the unique, concrete existent, to do the one thing that language cannot do.  So, instead, I point across the room and say, "There.  That is Michael Legaspi."

     I propose that the search for wisdom is precisely of this nature.  Wisdom is knowledge in service to value.  The searchers for wisdom take upon themselves the task of bringiing themselves to the edge of knowledge, to point at that which transcends knowledge and which endows knowledge with meaningfulness.

     Human frustration with this painful task has led humans to opt out of the search by assigning the status of absoluteness on some particular event or principle.  To do so is to, in various ways, abandon reason.  One may say that the ultimate value is the subject him/herself.  That is a patent abandonment of reason, since reason is, by definition, a shareable event.  One may say that the ultimate value is completely extraneous to reason.  These are the believers in the various kinds of blind faith whose signature is to hold reason completely incapable of achieving meaning.  Finally, there are those who accept a certain standard of knowledge without examining the standard.  Chief among these are those who define truth as that which is verifiable by sensible measurement.  Their failure is illustrated by the following question:  If you hold as absolutely true that only that which is verifiably by sensible measurement is true, then how do you verify the absolute truth of that statement?"  I have found that most scientists have never thought that out, and that, when faced with the conundrum, generally respond by saying something like, "Well, it works."  What "works" means they do not say.

     As to how one goes about structuring a pursuit of this standard of meaningfulness, my own journey has led me to Husserlean phenomenology, and specifically to the application of that technique by Emmanuel Levinas.  I am completely unworthy of doing his writings justice, and can only recommend that one tries to gain access to his thought.  There is a collection of interviews he gave.  The collection is entitled "Is It Righteous to Be?"  With that disclaimer, however, let me give it a try.  The modern intellectual and cultural world functions on the unexamined premise that the primary event of human consciousness is a sense act, an act of the subject.  If, however, one strips consciousness down through the painful process best illustrated in Husserl's Fifth Cartesian Meditation, one finds that there is an event that precedes that act of the subject.  It is not an act but a pure passivity.  It is the imposition of an other upon the consciousness of the subject.  And, when one closely examines the various kinds of impositions suffered by the subject, one finds that there is a qualitative difference in the kinds of impositions suffered by the subject.  In other words, the imposition, by itself, carries a meaningfulness independent of any act of the subject.  Chief among these qualitatively different impositions is the imposition of another human subject upon the subject.  The unique quality of this imposition is that it is, before any act of the subject, a mandate on the subject not to reduce the other to a mere object of cognition.  In other words, before the subject ever acts, the other subject involves the subject in an ethical mandate, something like "Thou shalt recognize me independent of any reduction to an object of your knowledge."  This mandate is absolute, i.e., it is independent of any act of the subject.  Levinas does an exhaustive analysis of this event of imposition and actually concludes that the ethical mandate not only precedes cognition, theory, but actually gives rise to theory.  I leave that to others to explore.  At any rate, behold your absolute value by which you can judge the meaningfulness of knowledge.  I have tried all my life to find such an analysis.  This is the first one that I have found that actually works, and, in my own mind, any other that works must be reducible to this one.

Levinas' two magna opera are:  Totalite et Infini (trans. Alphonsus Lingis as Totality and Infinity) and Autrement qu'Etre ou Au Dela de l'Essence (Trans. Otherwise than Being).  The density of his prose is attributable primarily to the fact that he is carrying on the conversation between Husserl and Heidegger, both of which served as his teachers.  It is my own opinion that you cannot get into Levinas' prose until you have understood what Husserl was trying to do in his Fifth Cartesian Meditation.  There are good intros, particularly that by Sean Hand.  Richard Cohen, a professor at UNCC, has written several treatises on Levinas, all of which are simply excellent. 

---- MICHAEL GILLICK

Here are some of my insights on the blindmen/elephant analogy.

1. The blindmen argumentation is based on two-outcome logic (dialectic) i.e. mine is correct (confirmed) yours is different (unconfirmed or assumed), therefore you are wrong. This logic is appropriately applied if we know for sure there are only two outcomes i.e. black/white, up/down, big/small... otherwise, the logic fails.

 2. When there are possible multiple outcomes, the moral of the story is not to reject outright a different view, but to ask the question "are we missing something?" or "is it complete?" 

3. In Chinese, "real elephant" also means "the Truth". Can we see with perfect vision, or can we as blindmen consort with other blindmen to figure out the real elephant (the Truth)? That I would argue is the meta-issue of wisdom research.

Anthony Liew

Psalm 111:10 puts the matter succinctly: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding." (The New Revised Standard Version)  We live in an AWEsome universe that "speaks" that AWE to us in a myriad of ways.  "Oh my!" is the first expression of being confronted by such. (Such is the response to true WONDER!)  "Oh me!" is the word that soon follows.  (For when we are stopped and stilled by AWE we surely "stand under" that which arrests and awakens all our senses to that which evokes the WONDER).  And "ahhh..." is the third breathy response.  (For if and when we find our "standing" in relationship to the AWEsome, then we are indeed enlivened.) Perhaps, just perhaps, in these moments wisdom has defined us!

These responses don't necessarily come together in a given moment.  Sometimes they do.  But sometimes we are awed, but soon turn away from it.  Sometimes it is only later that "the oh me" comes upon us, but then we busy ourselved with other matters.  Sometimes "the ahhh" comes much later and then we say, "Now I get it!"  Wisdom's moments don't function of the control of the clock.

 Proverbs 3:13-18 goes on to say this about wisdom:  "Happy are those who find wisdom, and those who get understanding, for her income is better than silver, and her revenue better than gold.  She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her.  Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor.  Her ways are the ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.  She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called happy."

Gordon Raynal

Inman, SC   

The only way to DEFINE wisdom without saying what it is, is by saying what it is not.

This cannot work because we lack the concept of the Whole, which, when subtracted by what wisdom is not, would leave a specific conceptual boundary that defined wisdom.

Yes, the blind men should not have reached their conclusions hastily.  No, the mistake of the blind men was not about not comparing notes.  Any composite of metaphors such as a snake, a fan, a pillar, a wall, cannot be expected to yield an elephant.

They should each have waited until they had touched everything contiguous with what each had first touched.  I.e., the one who experienced the snake first would have had to continue to touch the rest of the elephant past the trunk to the ears, the side, the legs, and the tail until one had touched all of the surface of the elephant.  Only such an examinations could have given him a direct experience of how the parts relate both to one another and the rest of the whole.

Thus it is with wisdom. Wisdom is about the ability to grasp the whole in a way that relates each part not only with the whole, but therefore, also with each of the other parts.

We all start out receiving our experiences and learning in a sequence of pieces.  The resulting fragmented and unorganized conceptual content and structure certainly defines our lack of wisdom.  But we can imagine what wisdom could be.  It would be the cleaning up of the content to be consistent with our common direct experiences, and restructuring the remaining in a way that links every part with the resulting whole, and with all of the other pieces that comprises the whole.

This might give us a framework for reconfiguring our conceptual content in a way that could generate wisdom in any one.

Wisdom is probably more often "modeled" than spoken, hence the abysmal lack of it in todays society.

It is not enough to be able to define wisdom if we are not willing to act upon it. The idea that we are searching for the "ultimate values" might be seen as a way to excuse our failure to really take a stand on an issue.

There are values which are beyond question. To ignore those under the guise of seeking "ultimate" answers is one of the real problems facing us. How do we encourage making wise choices unless it is by making them ourselves?

We really do know what is the "right" choice about 99% of the time.

Douglas McKee CRNA

Here is my attempt at the definition of "wisdom":

Wisdom is the understanding of universal truth, sound judgment, and appropriate execution.

It includes knowledge, intelligence, values and beliefs, and actions or behaviors. One can then debate what is the universal truth, sound judgment, and appropriate execution....

 Note: This definiton is limited to earthly wisdom and not divine wisdom...