WHAT IS WISDOM?
Will Durant
To the philosopher, all things are
friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. –
Emerson
[Photo] Socrates' Portrait. He is known as the father of Philosophy.
What is wisdom? I feel like a droplet of spray which proudly poised for a moment on the crest of a wave, undertakes to analyze the sea. Ideally, wisdom is total perspective -- seeing an object, event, or idea in all its pertinent relationships. Spinoza defined wisdom as seeing things sub specie eternitatis, in view of eternity; I suggest defining it as seeing things sub specie totius, in view of the whole.
Obviously, we can only approach such
total perspective; to possess it would be to be God. The first lesson of
philosophy is that philosophy is the study of any part of experience in the
light of our whole experience. The second lesson is that the philosopher is a
very small part in a very large whole. Just as philosopher means not a "possessor"
but a "lover" of wisdom, we can only seek wisdom devotedly, like a
lover fated, never to possess, but only to desire. Perhaps it is more blessed
to desire than to possess.
Shall we have examples? Rain
falls, and you mourn that your tennis games must be postponed. You are not a
philosopher. But you console yourself with the thought, "How grateful the
parched earth will be for the rain!" You have seen the event in a larger
perspective, and you are beginning to approach wisdom.
You may be a young radical, or an
old businessman crying out for limitless liberty, and as such you may be a
useful ferment in a lethargic mass. But if you think of yourself as part of a
group, and recognize morality as the cooperation of the part with the whole,
you are approaching perspective and wisdom. You may be a politician just
elected to Congress for a term of two years, and you spend half your time
planning re-election. This situation encourages a myopic perspective,
contracepting wisdom.
Or you may be a secretary of
state, or a president, seeking a policy that will protect and improve your country
for generations; this is the larger perspective that distinguishes the
statesmen. Or you may be an Ashoka, a Marcus Aurelius, or a Charlemagne
planning to help humanity rather than merely your own country; you will then be
a philosopher-king.
I have in my home a picture of
the Virgin nursing her Child with St. Bernard looking at the Child. Your first
thought may be that he is looking in the wrong direction. You are not a
philosopher, or you may remember Bernard as the persecutor who hounded Abelard
from trial to tribulation until only the philosopher’s bones were handed to
Heloise. You vision for a moment the long struggle of the human mind for
freedom, and you are seeing the picture in a larger perspective. You touch the
skirts of wisdom.
Or again, you see the mother and
her child as a symbol of that vast Amazon of births and deaths and births that
is the engulfing river of history. You see woman as the main stream of life,
the male as a minor commissary tributary. You see the family as far more basic
than the state, and love as wiser than wisdom. Perhaps then you are wise.
In a total perspective, all evil
is seen as subjective, the misfortune of one self or part. We cannot say
whether it is evil for the group, or for humanity, or for life. After all, the
mosquito does not think it a tragedy that you should be bitten by a mosquito.
It may be painful for a man to die for his country, but Horace, safe on his
Sabine farm, thought it very dulce et
decorum -- that is, very fitting and beautiful.
Even death may be a boon to life,
replacing the old and exhausted form with one young and fresh; who knows but
death may be the greatest invention that life has ever made? The death of the
part is the life of the whole, as in the changing cells of our flesh. We cannot
sit in judgment upon the world by asking how well it conforms to the pleasure
of a moment, or to the good of one individual, or one species, or one star. How
small our categories of pessimism and optimism seem when placed against the
perspective of the sky!
Are there any special ways of
acquiring a large perspective? Yes. First, by living perceptively, so that the
farmer, faced with a fateful immensity day after day, may become patient and
wise. Secondly, by studying things in space through science. Partly in this way
Einstein became wise. Thirdly, by studying events in time through history. The
past is not dead. It is the sum of the factors operating in the present. The
present is the past rolled up into a moment for action. The past is the present
unraveled in history for our understanding.
Therefore invite the great men of
the past into your homes. Put their works or lives on your shelves as books,
their architecture, sculpture, and painting on your walls as pictures; let them
play their music for you. Let these men be your comrades, your bedfellows. Give
them half an hour each day. Slowly they will share in remaking you to
perspective, tolerance, wisdom, and a more avid love of a deepened life.
Don't think of these men as dead.
They will be alive hundreds of years after I shall be dead. They live in a
magic City of God, peopled by all the geniuses -- the great statesmen, poets,
artists, philosophers, women, lovers, saints -- whom humanity keeps alive in
its memory.
Plato is there, leading his
students through geometry to philosophy. Spinoza is there, polishing his
lenses, inhaling dust and exhaling wisdom. Goethe is there, thirsting like
Faust for knowledge and loveliness, and falling in love at seventy-three.
Mendelssohn is there, teaching Goethe to savor Beethoven. Shelley is there,
with peanuts in one pocket and raisins in the other and content with them as a
well-balanced meal. They are all there in that amazing treasure house of our
race, that veritable Fort Knox of wisdom and beauty. Patiently there they wait
for you.
Be bold, young lovers of wisdom,
and enter with open hands and minds the City of God.
____________________
Note(s) [Summary]
> A wise person is satisfied on what the nature possess. Appreciation is the key word here.
> Always keep on question everything. That's what a wise person does. But remember, respect other's ideas and beliefs.
> As you can see in this post, there is logic in the things it represented. Once you'll understand the concepts, you'll finally know the very principle of wisdom itself.
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