Wisdom
and Philosophy
Practical Philosophy March 2000 Volume 3.1 Pages 10-13
Trevor Curnow
Imagine, if you will,
university students turning up for their first philosophy class.
Imagine, then, the tutor asking them why they wish to study philosophy.
Imagine, further, a student replying, 'Because I am searching for
wisdom.' I leave it to you to imagine what happens next. It is well
known that the etymology of 'philosophy' is 'love of wisdom', but
wisdom itself is conspicuous by its absence from philosophy curricula
at all levels, and it is certainly not what philosophy departments
profess to teach. On the face of it this seems a curious situation.
How has it come about, and what does it mean?
It was not always thus.
In The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom (Rice, 1958,p.2)
Eugene Rice wrote, 'Wisdom was an ideal of twenty two centuries.
It described the highest knowledge men were capable of and the most
desirable patterns of human behaviour. It mirrored man's conception
of himself, of the world, and of God.' These twenty two centuries
came to an end at the close of the Renaissance, and commenced with
the earliest days of ancient Greek philosophy. However, long before
even that distant time, wisdom was an aspiration of other cultures
of the ancient world. The oldest extant wisdom texts from Egypt
were written another twenty two centuries before the time of the
first Greek philosophers.
What has happened since
the Renaissance to overturn such a long tradition? Why is it that
now 'wisdom' is a term more associated with New Age texts than philosophical
ones? It is not a simple story. In the first place it should be
pointed out that whereas wisdom may have been universally prized
in the ancient world, there was no universal agreement as to what
it actually was. Secondly, it was widely regarded as belonging to
the gods rather than humans. Thirdly, those who allowed it a place
within the human frame of reference often saw it as embodied in
concrete individuals rather than in written texts. This is one of
the reasons why histories of philosophy written in the ancient world
show a predilection for structuring their narratives in terms of
lineages, indicating the importance attached to the close personal
relationship between teacher and pupil. (The histories of Buddhist
sects tend to be structured the same way, although sometimes personal
transmission is replaced by reincarnation.)
Wisdom has been pushed
to the sidelines of modern philosophy, when it has not been banished
altogether, for a number of reasons. At the risk of considerable
over-simplification, I will suggest some of these with reference
to a handful of individuals who played significant roles in this
process. First, there was Gutenberg. The invention of movable type
transformed the role of the written word in western culture. (Marshall
McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy
(McLuhan,1969) is a set of fascinating, if sometimes eccentric,
reflections on the impact of this development.) Then there was Francis
Bacon. Along with a number of his contemporaries, such as Galileo,
he pushed science in a more experimental direction, providing the
foundations of modern technology. Next (although he died only a
few years after Galileo) there was Descartes. Under his influence
the problem of knowledge became the central concern of philosophy
(historians of philosophy have reinterpreted a great deal of ancient
philosophy in this light), with the truths of mathematics becoming
the standard by which all other claims were to be judged. A striking
illustration of this last point lies in the fact that Spinoza, one
of the great figures of modern philosophy who was very much interested
in wisdom, felt the need to write about it (in his Ethics) in a format appropriated from geometry.
Finally, perhaps I should mention Hume. The impact of the 'is/ought'
distinction which he introduced in his A
Treatise of Human Nature has been very considerable, whether
or not it was what he intended.
Having outlined some
pieces of the jigsaw, I will now try to build a recognisable picture
out of them. To return to Rice's characterisation of wisdom, "man's
conception of himself, of the world, and of God" has been very
much seen as the business of science in the modern world. With a
massive helping hand from Newton, a mechanistic outlook was developed
which had no place for God, along with a fairly inconspicuous one
for man. (Although enormously subverted by developments in atomic
and sub-atomic physics, this mechanistic outlook is still, I suspect,
widely regarded as the
scientific one.) Neil Armstrong's small step was not so much a giant
leap for mankind as an indication of what a particular culture increasingly
centred around science and technology could achieve. Even when the
subject which science studied was human nature itself, the framework
for the pursuit of knowledge laid down by Descartes in his Discourse
on the Method meant that it was likely to take an analytical
and reductionist direction. The very term 'social science' betrays
the prevalence and power of the scientific paradigm.
The other area of wisdom
to which Rice refers concerns "the most desirable patterns
of human behaviour", or, for want of a better word, ethics.
The fate of moral philosophy (and, to some extent, philosophy as
a whole) in the modern world seems to me to exemplify the belief
that there is a choice between being scientific and being irrelevant
or trivial. This idea is sometimes, wrongly, associated with Wittgenstein,
but its antecedents can clearly be seen in Hume. Utilitarians sought
to give moral philosophy a scientific basis by founding it on measurement,
and utilitarianism has achieved a certain everyday credibility for
that reason. On the whole, however, I think the position is best
summarised by Karl-Otto Apel in his Towards
a Transformation of Philosophy (Apel, 1983,pp 228-23), where
he suggests that the modern world has tended to convert both ethics
and religion into purely subjective areas of life. They have become
approximated to matters of taste, and de
gustibus non disputandum. The reluctance of philosophers in
the English speaking world to engage with any kind of practical
moral issue for several decades of the twentieth century perhaps
constituted the high watermark of this particular tide.
The fact that the tide
now appears to have turned may afford some grounds for optimism.
However, the matter is not quite so simple. A good illustration
of this may be had in the relatively new field of environmental
ethics. Environmental ethicists come in many different philosophical
shapes. One of the best known is Peter Singer whose work on the
proper treatment of animals is solidly within the utilitarian tradition.
Perhaps less well known, but certainly highly influential, is Arne
Naess, who has come up with the term 'ecosophy'
(Naess, 1989, p.37). For Naess and many other radical environmental
philosophers, the aim of environmental philosophy might be characterised
as seeking to understand the nature of the world, our place in it,
and how best to act in it. A comparison of this characterisation
of environmental philosophy with Rice's of wisdom readily reveals
why 'ecosophy' may be a particularly appropriate term. It is also
interesting to note that Naess seems to have attracted something
of a personal following. How significant for the cause of wisdom
these developments are, it is too early to tell. However, it does
seem fair to say that at least
in some areas, wisdom is once again an object of interest within
philosophy.
Whilst this is to be
welcomed, it also needs to be placed in its appropriate perspective.
'Philosopher' was a term which, in its origins, suggested a degree
of humility. The lover of wisdom did not claim to possess it. It was, as Rice says, an ideal.
Even those schools of antiquity which believed it to be an attainable
ideal nevertheless also thought that few actually managed to achieve
it. (New Age literature, on the other hand, seems to suggest that
it is readily and widely available, thereby priming the pumps of
ego inflation!) It cannot be assumed that just because philosophers
may want to be wise again, they will be. If it were that easy, we
would all be wise already.
How, then, should the
lover of wisdom proceed? It seems to me that the philosophical pursuit
of wisdom requires that philosophy itself be substantially overhauled
and given a new direction (which is also a very old one). The following
points are indicative of what I have in mind.
(1) Philosophy should once more be seen as a way
of life. At the very least this means recognising that ethics lies
at the heart of philosophy. (It seems to me that all the great philosophers
are united in this recognition.) The idea that ethics is just another
part of philosophy needs to be firmly rejected.
(2) At the same time, ethics itself needs to address
the whole of life, and not just a special area or set of problems
within it. This is a problem which a lot of recent work on applied
ethics has unfortunately only served to exacerbate.
(3) Given that our lives take place within a wider
context, an effort must be made to understand that context. This
involves at least three different projects. First, although philosophy
should not ape science, it should not scorn it either. Secondly,
science itself needs to be located within a metaphysical outlook.
We neglect metaphysics at our peril. Thirdly, in addition to an
intellectual knowledge of the world, there must also be a proper
perceptual knowledge of it. In particular, this means attempting
to perceive the world as it is rather than in terms of our own interests.
(4) Our understanding of the world needs to be
complemented by an understanding of ourselves. There is no older
philosophical motto than 'Know thyself!', and few greater temptations
than self-deception.
It will, I think, be
plain even from this very brief account that such a programme is
a daunting one. It also diverges radically from what routinely takes
place in academic institutions, with, again, at least one honourable
exception in the shape of some courses in environmental philosophy.
It may well be that if this kind of reorientation of philosophy
is to be achieved, it will happen largely outside the academic world.
It would be gratifying to think that the activities of members of
the SCP will be instrumental in this.
There is much more that
could be said, and a lot of it I have already said in my book Wisdom, Intuition and Ethics (Curnow, 1999]. For those who prefer
something older (and cheaper!), you might begin with The Discourses of Epictetus. As a closing thought, it occurs to me
that when I meet my next group of environmental philosophy students,
should any of them reveal that they have joined the course in order
to search for wisdom, I might tell them that they have at least
taken a step in the right direction!
References
Apel,Karl-Otto (1983) Towards
a Transformation of Philosophy, London: RKP
Curnow, T (1999) Wisdom,
Intuition and Ethics, Aldershot: Ashgate
Epictetus (1995) The
Discourses of Epictetus, London: Dent
McLuhan,M (1969)The Gutenberg Galaxy, Toronto: New American
Library
Naess,A (1989) Ecology,
Community and Lifestyle, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Rice, E (1958(
The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom Cambridge,
(Mass): Harvard University Press
