Philosophy and Wisdom
Peter Jonkers
AbstractAgainst the dominant trends of the scientification and naturalization of philosophy and the concurrent reduction of traditions of practical wisdom to private opinions, this article pleads for a revaluation of philosophy’s original relation with wisdom. It does so by shedding a philosophical light on several related aspects of wisdom through three different lenses. The first one, taken from Aristotle, explores the relation between theoretical and practical wisdom, leading to the conclusion that practical wisdom has to confront general moral principles with particular situations. The second lens, taken from Kant, argues that wisdom offers existential orientation, which requires the combination of an external and an internal moral principle. Yet, the external principle cannot be determined univocally because it is not empirically given. This lack of univocity raises the question of the fate of wisdom in our times, marked by a plurality of
existential points of orientation. With the help of a third lens, stemming from Ricoeur, it will be argued that universal moral rules should be amendable to enrichment by ‘potential universals’ embedded in foreign cultures, thus creating a situation of reflexive equilibrium between theoretical and practical wisdom.
Keywords: Philosophy, wisdom, Aristotle, existential orientation, Kant, Ricoeur, reflexive equilibrium.
1 Introduction1
Wisdom is often defined as an encompassing, theoretical, and practical knowledge, which orients people in their search for the good life.2 Furthermore, a wise person not only has a profound
insight in what is true and good, but is also able to relate this insight in a meaningful way to the particular existential situations of concrete individuals or societies. Last but not least, a wise person is someone who not only has wisdom, but also uses and lives it.3 Hence, it is no wonder
Yet paradoxically, even though the word philosophy means love of wisdom, many contemporary philosophers seem to have fallen out of love with their object. The defenders of philosophy as practised in its modern professional academic guise often consider philosophers who still pursue wisdom as outdated or even suspect, and anyway unworthy of philosophical attention. Descartes’ plea for the scientification of philosophy is largely responsible for this paradigm shift in philosophy’s relation with wisdom. He states that philosophy should follow the method of mathematics, so that it can serve as the solid foundation of all branches of human knowledge.5 Ancient wisdom, on the other hand, was built on sand, or so Descartes says. As a
result of this approach the content of wisdom is redefined in a radical way, namely as the highest and most perfect fruit of scientific knowledge.6
The Cartesian method of ‘mathesis universalis’ has served as an exemplar throughout the history of modern and contemporary philosophy. To appreciate this one only needs to refer to Hegel’s programmatic statement: ‘[To] help bring philosophy closer to the form of Science, to the goal where it can lay aside the title “love of knowing” and be actual knowing […] is what I have set myself to do.’7 The overall result of this paradigm-shift is that academic (Western)
philosophy has become ‘a purely abstract and theoretical subject, cut off from the goal that gave it its very raison d’être in earlier times’.8 Another result of this development is that scientific
assumption that only scientific rationality is able to solve the moral and existential questions of humankind.9
Yet, it would be unfair to accuse the whole of contemporary Western philosophy of turning its back on the original object of its love. Several prominent philosophers have pleaded to reconsider philosophy’s relationship with wisdom. Odo Marquard, for example, deplores that philosophy has abandoned its love of wisdom ever since it restyled itself as a rigorous science. In contrast to this view, he argues that philosophy is still a love of wisdom, but approaches it in a new way: less divine and more human. Whereas philosophy originally aimed at an unchanging absolute knowledge of the unchanging absolute, today it strives for a human knowledge of what is human, i.e. is an attempt to get insight into and to orientate people in a contingent world. In other words, the love of wisdom realizes itself not anymore in the deification, but in the humanization of knowledge.10
In his essay In Praise of Philosophy Maurice Merleau-Ponty stresses, just like Marquard, that philosophy is essentially a human thinking about contingent matters, which cannot be determined once and for all and without ambiguity. This contingency not only characterizes individual human lives, but also the history of humankind. ‘Without such contingency there would be only a phantom of history. If one knows where history is going inevitably, events taken one by one have neither importance nor meaning.’11 Hence philosophy should give up the
opening the space, in which human beings give orientation to their lives in a world without pre-given answers.
Merleau-Ponty also points to another aspect of philosophy’s relation with wisdom, namely that it examines critically what presents itself as wisdom. Although philosophy is, just like every other human activity, embedded in the contingencies of history,
[Philosophy] is never content to undergo its historical situation (just like this situation is not content to undergo its own past). Philosophy changes this situation by revealing it to itself and, therefore, by giving this situation the opportunity of entering into conversation with other times and other places where its truth appears.13
By doing so philosophy makes the tacit, latent meaning of history manifest and therefore open to critical reflection. Moreover, this attitude not only defines philosophy’s attitude towards the contingencies of history and people’s individual lives, but also towards well-established wisdom-traditions, religious as well as secular. In other words, philosophy does not coincide with
doctrines of wisdom, but takes a step back from these doctrines, reflecting upon what presents itself as wisdom by raising critical questions and formulating ‘afterthoughts’. In other words, because every philosopher heeds Socrates’s saying that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being’,14 she not only loves wisdom, but also examines the object of her love
It is, in fact, the Utopia of possession at a distance. Hence it can be tragic, since it has its own contrary within itself. It is never a serious occupation. […] The most resolute philosophers always wish the contrary – to realize, but in destroying; to suppress, but also to conserve.15
Yet, this attitude manifests not so much philosophy’s lack of seriousness, but its true vocation, which is anything but frivolous: ‘One must be able to withdraw and gain distance in order to become truly engaged, which is, also, always a commitment to the truth.’16 Obviously, this
distancing from all wisdom-traditions is not the prerogative of philosophers; it also characterizes the human person as such, namely as ‘the difference in man himself between he who understands and he who chooses, and every man, like the philosopher, is divided in this way’.17
matters. This raises the question of whether the external reference-point, i.e. the highest good, which is needed for existential orientation, can be known univocally, given the finitude of human knowledge. This refers to another aspect of the relation between theoretical and practical
wisdom. Especially in our times, in which we are confronted with different, competing wisdom-traditions, this lack of certain knowledge of the ‘principle’ of existential orientation raises a third question, namely, of how to deal with this wide variety of traditional and non-traditional, secular and religious ways of life in a non-exclusivist way. To respond to this situation the relation between theoretical and practical wisdom has to be redefined in such a way that the insights of the latter can be integrated in the former. What relates these three questions is the challenge to find a (new) balance in the relation between theoretical and practical wisdom. Against the background of the urgent need for orientation in moral/existential matters, this question is an urgent one. The different answers to this question will be given with the help of three lenses, taken from ancient, modern, and contemporary philosophy. Obviously, other questions could be asked and other lenses used, since the realm of wisdom is vast, covering all secular and religious traditions of the world. Confronted with this immense field, I can only say that my choice of the three lenses is determined by (the limits of) my philosophical expertise and the inevitable constraints of a journal-article.
2 The relation between theoretical and practical wisdom
someone with political or technical skills, or with a proficiency in music or poetry; accordingly,
Sophia referred to a knowhow, resulting from an education by a master, the fruit of long
experience, and a gift received through divine inspiration. Moreover, Sophia not only consisted in a certain way of speaking and arguing, but also in a specific way of being, acting, and looking at the world.18
The introduction of the word philosophy, in the fourth century BCE, meant a decisive turn in the understanding of the sage, and brought about a deep suspicion against all pretended expressions of divine wisdom. People became aware of the divine nature of true wisdom, and of the immense distance that separates it from human wisdom.19 Plato exemplifies this suspicion
with his sharp distinction between the perfect knowledge of the Gods, who possess true wisdom, and the philosophers, whose life is devoted to coming closer to the transcendent ideal of wisdom, but without reaching it.20 Aristotle gives a similar definition of a philosophical way of life: by
leading a life of wisdom, the philosopher fulfils his vocation in the most superb way, but also realizes that wisdom, because of its divine nature, is beyond the human condition.21 In sum,
philosophy is the essentially human exercise to attain divine wisdom, thus making the philosopher both an ironic and a tragic figure: he is ironic, because he knows that he knows nothing, knows that he is not wise, and he is tragic since he loves to attain a wisdom that escapes him.22
Because true wisdom was seen as something divine, it became increasingly identified with epistèmè, that is, with a rigorous theoretical knowledge of eternal and unchangeable things, although it continued to be seen as part of a philosophical way of life.23 This evolution can be
his faith in the philosopher-king, for Aristotle it was a theoretical life, that is, a life completely devoted to the activity of the spirit, to knowing only for the sake of knowing, and withdrawn from the inconveniences which the active life inevitably involves.24 Yet, even for Aristotle, this
theoretical life was not opposed to a practical one, since it was applied to the very praxis of philosophizing. In other words, theoretical wisdom is intimately connected with ethics, practical wisdom, and a philosophical life is a practice of theoretical wisdom.25
The views of Plato and especially those of Aristotle enable us to understand why the current separation of theoretical knowledge and practical wisdom, exemplified by the ‘scientification’ of philosophy and the concurrent reduction of practical wisdom to private opinion, is so problematic, thus showing that it is timely to rebalance the relation between these two aspects of wisdom.26 Aristotle defines theoretical wisdom as a demonstrative knowledge of
the universal and necessary principles of all things, which by definition cannot be otherwise. Practical wisdom, by contrast, is a true and reasoned capacity to act with regard to the things that are good or bad for man. Because these things are by nature particular and contingent, practical wisdom cannot attain the same degree of exactness and certainty as theoretical wisdom.27
However, because it is essentially a reasoned capacity practical wisdom cannot be reduced to private opinion or technical knowhow. Rather, it integrates theoretical wisdom about what is truly good for all human beings, in the sense that theoretical wisdom enables practical wisdom to distinguish true insight from self-conceit, reasonable deliberation from phantasy. So, practical wisdom requires the general moral rules and principles of theoretical wisdom to give a correct assessment of existential situations. Yet because the matter of the practical is mutable,
the conditions of human life, but bases her judgment on a long and broad experience of these conditions.28 In other words, a wise person does not downplay the importance of the theoretical
knowledge of the common good and universal moral rules that follow from it, but recognizes that these rules cannot and should not serve as the only standard for moral decisions in contingent situations because they cannot capture the fine detail of the concrete particular. The values that are constitutive of a good human life are plural and incommensurable and therefore need to be valued for their own sake. Hence, practical wisdom has to seize the general principles of theoretical wisdom in a confrontation with the situation itself, and to do so it needs flexibility, which theoretical wisdom lacks. To illustrate the way in which theoretical and practical wisdom are connected with each other Aristotle uses the image of the builders of Lesbos, who measure with a flexible lead rule that ‘adapts itself to the shape of the stone and is not rigid’.29 In other
words, a truly wise person starts with examining whether his universal, theoretical principles, and rules are truly wise, and then tries to relate them in a meaningful way to particular, existential situations. Proceeding in this way is a never-ending, painstaking endeavour, which requires a lot of creativity and sensitivity to the particular situation. Yet it is an essential characteristic of the real sage, because it distinguishes her from someone who just utters universal platitudes like ‘East, west, home’s best’.
Theoretical wisdom is essential for practical wisdom for yet another reason. As
summaries of the wise judgments of others, general rules and principles are guidelines in moral development; furthermore, they guide virtuous adults tentatively in their approach to the
Furthermore, rules give constancy and stability in situations in which bias and passion might distort judgment. In sum, rules are necessities because we are not always good judges.30 Finally
and most importantly,
The particular case would be surd and unintelligible without the guiding and sorting power of the universal. […] Nor does particular judgment have the kind of rootedness and focus required for goodness of character without a core of commitment to a general conception – albeit one that is continually evolving, ready for surprise, and not rigid. There is in effect a two-way illumination between particular and universal.31
This quote summarizes the importance of theoretical knowledge for practical wisdom in existential matters, as analysed above. Yet, it also points to the importance of practical wisdom for theoretical knowledge: the precise appreciation of the particular case has a profound impact upon the content of the universal rules and principles, as will be discussed in more detail in the fourth section of this paper.
3 Wisdom as orienting knowledge
A second aspect of wisdom is that it gives orientation to our search for the good life as individuals and as societies. To get a clearer picture of the complexities of moral orientation I make use of a second lens, taken from Kant’s philosophy, in particular his essay What is
Orientation in Thinking?.32 In comparison with Plato’s and Aristotle’s views on wisdom, Kant is
To get a clear view of the complexities of orientation in moral affairs, Kant compares it with geographical orientation. Every kind of orientation requires both an objective, external and a subjective, internal principle. In the case of geographical orientation, the objective point of reference is, for example, the place of the sun in the sky at midday; the subjective principle is the awareness of the difference between our left and right hand. Both principles are necessary to orient ourselves: without an external point of reference, the very idea of orientation would be pointless, and without the internal awareness of left and right, we would not be able to determine the four points of the compass in relation to our position, so that we would have no clue in which direction to go.
When it comes to orientation in moral matters or, as Kant calls it, orientation in thought, we also need an internal and an external principle. For Kant, the idea of the highest good is the external principle of our moral orientation. Obviously, we could save ourselves a lot of moral deliberation if this external principle would be as objective and univocal as the principle of geographical orientation, but this is impossible because of the fundamental difference between these two kinds of orientation: whereas the sun is an object of sensuous experience, so that it indeed can serve as the objective principle for geographical orientation, the idea of the highest good is supersensible. Therefore, reason is unable ‘to subsume its judgements under a specific maxim with the help of objective criteria for knowledge’.33 This confronts moral orientation with
need of reason alone’.34 This subjective, but reasonable ground is the highest good. It stands
midway between, on the one hand, an objective knowledge, which is impossible, and on the other hand, yielding to an immediate, subjective intuition, which leads to all kinds of fantasy and is therefore unsuited to serve as a trustworthy maxim in moral orientation. Rather, we should think of the idea of the highest good as something that can suitably be related to our moral reasonings about the experienced world. In other words, reason is subjectively justified to assume that the manifold instances of the moral good in this world are related to the highest good, whose existence needs to be presupposed to explain that these concrete instances of the good can legitimately be qualified as such.35 Only if this condition is fulfilled can the highest
good serve as the ground for our orientation in thought.
Kant calls this attitude a reasonable belief; it is a conviction of truth which is subjectively adequate, but objectively inadequate. Because of its practical necessity, this belief differs
fundamentally from a purely theoretical hypothesis; it is a postulate of reason, whose practical
truth is not inferior in degree to knowledge […], even if it is totally different from it in kind. Thus, a pure faith of reason is the signpost or a compass by means of which the speculative thinker can orientate himself on his reasonable wanderings in the field of supersensible objects.36
Kant’s analysis of orientation in thought offers a fascinating elucidation of the complexities of wisdom as moral orientation at an individual, societal, and political level. First of all, it shows that the need for this kind of wisdom is deeply engrained in human beings for the correct
and profound transformations on various levels the need for existential orientation is acute because people often find it hard to see the wood for the trees.
Secondly, orientation is always a combination of an external and an internal principle. Throughout history, religious and secular traditions of wisdom have provided external points of reference, spiritual sources of meaning against which people situated their lives.37 Although
many people in our times are of the opinion that moral orientation with the help of external principles is in flat contradiction with their sense of autonomy, it is Kant, of all people, who holds the opposite view. He argues that the idea of the highest good is a postulate of practical reason, and that it is essential to give meaning and orientation to moral autonomy; without postulating the reality of the highest good, morality would remain an empty ideal.38 Yet, Kant
also thinks that an internal, subjective principle is needed for orientation in thought too, since external points of reference can only fulfil their orienting role if a person can relate them in a meaningful way to her particular moral situation. This internal principle is a person’s moral consciousness, which is not a matter of sensuous experience either, but rather a fact of reason.
belief, and indeed of every revelation’.39 However, from a contemporary perspective, Kant’s
thesis that the belief of reason is universal, so that all particular (revealed or secular) wisdom-traditions are but subordinate instantiations of it, and the corresponding idea that these wisdom-traditions accept the idea of the highest good as their common ground, is highly problematic. Moreover, the distinction between the universal, but also formal postulate of the highest good, on the one hand, and the particular, concrete nature of all our moral reasonings and decisions, on the other is much larger and more differentiated than Kant assumed. These remarks refer to the fundamental problem, already briefly noted above: to prevent the very idea of orientation in thought from remaining abstract and hence useless, the particular, concrete sensitivities of practical wisdom have to be integrated in the universal, abstract insights of theoretical knowledge.
4 The challenge of a plurality of wisdom-traditions
How to respond to people’s need for orientation in our times, marked by a wide variety of ideas about the good life? The result of the previous section was that we can no longer hold on to the traditional idea of practical wisdom as just an ‘application’ of theoretical knowledge. To find an answer I will use a third lens, taken from Paul Ricoeur’s insights on wisdom, in particular his analysis of the ‘confrontation between the universalist claim attached to the rules claiming to belong to the principle of morality and the recognition of positive values belonging to the
historical and communitarian contexts of the realization of these same rules’.40 Because this
conflict is fundamental, Ricoeur thinks that we have to move beyond Kant’s solution. Ricoeur qualifies his answer as an expression of practical wisdom, which he defines as ‘a moral
judgement in a particular situation’, mediating between these conflicting claims.41 His views are
e.g. Rawls and Habermas. These two authors are largely indebted to the Kantian legacy for the idea that the particular wisdom-traditions are subordinate instantiations of (the reasonable belief in) the highest good. In contrast, Ricoeur starts from the irreducible heterogeneity of these traditions, so that he is able to value the particularity of practical wisdom for the universal principles of theoretical knowledge much more than Habermas and Rawls.42
Ricoeur gives several examples of the mediation between the universalist principles of theoretical wisdom and the specific situations with which practical wisdom is confronted, but in this article, I will limit myself to his analysis of the ongoing discussion about human rights. Kant’s famous substantiation of the idea of the unconditional, universal, and equal value of human dignity has served as one of the reference points for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.43 Yet, in spite of its claimed universality, this declaration is often suspected to be
the fruit of Western liberalism, a political and cultural tradition that is not shared by most non-Western civilizations.
This observation urges Ricoeur to reconsider the relation between theoretical and
practical wisdom. He proposes to conceive practical wisdom as a moral judgement in a particular situation. It consists in assuming the following paradox: maintaining the universal claim attached to a few values, where the universal and the historical intersect, and submitting this claim to discussion at the level of the convictions incorporated in concrete forms of life. This means that universal moral rules are amendable for enrichment by potential universals embedded in foreign cultures, thus creating a situation of reflexive equilibrium.44 The idea of a reflexive equilibrium
and societies. It therefore does justice to the importance of practical wisdom for theoretical knowledge, thus preventing the Kantian deadlock of the notion of the highest good, which loses its orienting function in existential matters because of its formalism and abstractness.
In my view, secular and religious traditions serve as concretizations of the reflexive equilibrium between universalist moral principles and particular situations. From a Christian perspective, the parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates this. It starts with a lawyer asking Jesus what he should do to inherit eternal life. Jesus asks him what is written in the Law, and the lawyer answers by quoting from the Hebrew Bible a universal moral rule: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.’ Apparently, the lawyer is not satisfied with Jesus’s quoting of the universal rule, so he asks again: ‘And who is my neighbour?’45 Then Jesus starts
telling the parable of the Good Samaritan, thus realizing, through a moral judgement in a particular situation, a reflexive equilibrium between the universal rule of the love of one’s neighbour and a concrete situation of existential neighbourliness.
This parable has been read, told, and interpreted times and again, thus offering an
orientation to all generations living in very different socio-historical situations. Yet, to make sure that this orientation is indeed a truthful one, interpretations of this parable require a constant critical appraisal. Moreover, this parable is not a theoretical account of the Christian caritas, but a story that everyone can in principle understand and relate to her specific cultural and historical situation. This highlights the importance of the narrative aspect of practical wisdom, which is crucial for keeping the universal principles flexible.
The philosophical reflection on wisdom has generated some important insights. Wisdom cannot be reduced to a set of practical lessons in life or to a handbook for happiness, but should
incorporate a theoretical reflection about the good life. Yet, at the same time, the (theoretical) principle of the good life requires flexibility lest it be disconnected from practical wisdom’s sensitivity to the contingencies of human existence. Furthermore, since wisdom aims at giving a truthful orientation to human beings in existential matters, it needs an external point of reference. Yet, because the latter is the idea of the highest good, it cannot be known univocally, especially when it comes to its concrete implications for human existence in its wide historical and cultural variety. This raises the question of the relation between theoretical and practical wisdom again, but now from the perspective of the relevance of practical wisdom to theoretical reason. To prevent universal moral principles from being detached from the concrete lives of human beings, a reflexive equilibrium between theoretical and practical wisdom has to be found, so that the latter’s sensitivities can be integrated in a meaningful way in the universal principles.
practical wisdom, which means that it is fragile, always open to reconsideration. And because people live in a context of growing plurality, there is rather more, not less need for wisdom.
3 Nozick, ‘What Is Wisdom?,’ p. 275. See also Kaufman, ‘Knowledge, Wisdom’, p. 130. For a further development of the term wisdom see: Jonkers, ‘Serving the World through Wisdom’, pp. 88-90.
4 For a broad, cross-cultural, historical overview of wisdom see Curnow, Wisdom. 5 Descartes, Discours de la méthode, p. 8.
6 Descartes compares philosophy with ‘a tree, of which metaphysics is the root, physics the trunk, and all the other sciences the branches that grow out of this trunk, which are reduced to three principal, namely, medicine, mechanics, and ethics. By the science of morals, I understand the highest and most perfect which, presupposing an entire knowledge of the other sciences, is the last degree of wisdom.’ See: Descartes, Principes de la philosophie, p. 14. 7 Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, p. 11.
8 Cottingham, ‘Philosophy and Self-improvement’, p. 149. 9 See Jonkers, ‘Philosophy and (Christian) Wisdom’, pp. 38-44. 10 Marquard, ‘Drei Betrachtungen‘, pp. 278, 287.
11 Merleau-Ponty, Éloge de la philosophie, p. 54. 12 Idem, pp. 48.
13 Idem, p. 58.
14 Plato, Apology 38a5-6.
15 Merleau-Ponty, Éloge de la philosophie, p. 59f. 16 Idem, p. 61.
17 Idem, p. 60f.
18 Hadot, Discours et mode de vie philosophique, pp. 177f. See also Idem, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique?, p. 334.
19 Hadot, Discours et mode de vie philosophique, p. 178f.
20 Plato, Symposium 204a f.; Idem, Phaedrus 278d. See also: Hadot, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique?, pp. 84f. 21 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics X 7, 1177b 26ff.
22 Hadot, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique?, p. 81.
23 Hadot, Discours et mode de vie philosophique, p. 179f. For an overview of the different conceptions of ideal wisdom and the perfect sage in ancient philosophy, see Idem, pp. 182-86.
24 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics X 7, 1177b 32-1178a 9. See also Hadot, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique?, pp. 124f.
25 Hadot, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique?, pp. 129f, 138.
26 For my analysis, I am largely dependent on Nussbaum, The fragility of goodness, pp. 290-317.
27 Aristotle, Metaphysics, I 1, 981b-982b; Idem, Nicomachean Ethics, VI 3-7, 1139b-1141b; VI 8, 1142a 23-4. 28 Nussbaum, The fragility of goodness, p. 290.
29 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, V 10, 1137b 29-32. 30 Nussbaum, The fragility of goodness, p. 304. 31 Idem, p. 306.
32 Kant, Schriften zur Metaphysik und Logik, pp. 267-283. 33 Idem, p. 270.
34 Idem, p. 271. 35 Idem, p. 273. 36 Idem, p. 277.
37 See Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self, pp. 91-107. 38 Kant, Schriften zur Metaphysik und Logik, p. 274. 39 Idem, p. 277.
40 Ricoeur, Soi-même comme un autre, p. 318. 41 Idem, p. 319.
42 For a critical analysis of the positions of Rawls and Habermas on this issue, see Peter Jonkers, ‘A Reasonable Faith?’, pp. 221-241.
43 Düwell, ‘Human dignity: concepts, discussions, philosophical perspectives’, p. 23. 44 Ricoeur, Soi-même comme un autre, p. 336.
45 Luke 10: 25-29.
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About the author
