DIALOGUE AND UNIVERSALISMNo. 11–12/2009

Andrew Targowski

THE PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH TOWARDS WISDOMVIEWED BY THE USER OF PHILOSOPHY

ABSTRACT

This investigation of wisdom reflects the view of a user of philosophy. His position is that every mentally healthy person has some level of wisdom. This view was not shared by majority of famous philosophers who wisdom attributed to God only. A re-view of philosophers’ perception of wisdom is evaluated through the centuries and dif-ferent civilizations. A graphic model of Aristotle’s approach to wisdom is provided. A model of the ends of live is provided by the author to fulfill Aristotle’s postulate that since people do not know their ends of life therefore cannot be wise. The question-can philosophy deliver wisdom is raised and answered. The transformation of today’s soci-ety towards the wise society and civilization is characterized.

Keywords: philosophy; philosophers; wisdom; ends of life; wise society; and wise civilization.

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this study is to review how philosophy, which is “love of wisdom”, developed the theory of wisdom. In order to do so, four periods of civ-ilization (pre-philosophy, ancient, middle ages, and modern) will be reviewed in respect to major philosophical contributions in the area of wisdom. Particular emphasis will be put upon what can we learn from philosophy about wisdom? One of the lessons is the Aristotle Model of Wisdom, which will be graphically presented for the first time to better understand the philosopher’s contribution. Based on Aristotle’s claim that wise men can be only such one who knows his/her end of life, the hierarchy of the life’s purposes in Western Civilization as they are perceived in the 21st century will be also graphically presented to cast awareness of how a concept of life has changed since the ancient times, when Great Philosophers lived and spoke about the life and its wisdom. Hence, all major Western philosophical contribution towards wisdom will be presented in

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a graphic model, which will be analyzed from its current practical point of view. Finally the question is raised: Can philosophy deliver wisdom? The answer is provided together with solutions, which are not limited to philosophy.

This synthesis of philosophical contributions to the theory of wisdom is lim-ited to Western Civilization. This approach is based on the premise that wisdom is one in all civilizations, oriented by religions. However, ways to wisdom (among them reasoning) differ in particular civilizations, as is clearly explained by Walter Benesch in his study of Comparative Philosophy (1997).

This study is done by the end-user of philosophy, who is interested in apply-ing its contributions in the area of Knowledge Management Systems, informa-tion technology-oriented.

THE BEGINNINGS OF WISDOM

The book of Genesis is the first book of the Bible of Judaism and of Chris-tianity, and the first of five books of the Pentateuch or Torah. It recounts Judeo-Christian beliefs regarding the world from creation to the descent of the chil-dren of Israel into Egypt, and contains some of the best-known stories of the Old Testament, including Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel, and the biblical Patriarchs. For Jews the theological importance of Genesis centers on the Covenants linking God to his Chosen People and the people to the Promised Land. Christianity has reinterpreted Genesis as the pre-figuration of Christian beliefs, notably the Christian view of Christ as the new Adam and the New Testament as the culmination of the covenants. Scholars be-lieve that it reached its final form in the 5th century BC, with a previous history of composition reaching back possibly to the 10th century. However, the con-tent considers the beginnings of heavens and the earth, the beginning of human life on earth, and so forth.

The Bible is considered by many people as an important source of human understanding and moral directions based on wisdom. But it is not human wis-dom but it is wisdom based on divine revelation and relying on prophecy. In this book, the beginning of wisdom comes not from wonder but from awe and reverence, and its goal is not understanding for its own sake but rather apply it as a right thing (Kass 2003:3). This book reflects wisdom of Jerusalem not wis-dom of Athens, which provides foundation for main stream of civilizations and their scientific achievements based on searching for the truth through reasoning. Unfortunately, in the following centuries and millennia this truth-oriented search replaced the quest for human wisdom, which was substituted by Jerusalem wisdom by many important philosophers. Because, according to them, humans are not wise, only God(s) have license for wisdom.

Science and technology-driven contemporary civilizations push humans to-wards the rats’ race for wealth, health, and pleasure with the help of moral rela-tivism, cynicism, greed or nihilism. These kinds of qualities cannot solve prob-

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lems of gene engineering, overpopulation, ecological disasters, strategic re-sources depletion, and sustainability of civilization. Human knowledge is not good enough to solve these problems, hence wisdom is needed, which to be suc-cessful must be applied together with spirituality (beliefs and values). The latter did not change much since the biblical times; therefore the Bible may be still the source of morality and some wisdom for some humans if not for all ones. The right complementary combination of Jerusalemian and Athenian wisdoms perhaps is the solution to current civilizational problems.

FIRST RECORDS OF WISDOM

The first information about wisdom comes from Egypt after 3000 B.C. It was a period when “complex society” was emerging as the by-product of the Egyp-tian state formation based on the dynasty, military control, and hieroglyphic writings for economic and administrative purposes. Most of the evidence for early writing comes from a mortuary context, and its use was mainly associated with the king and state. The state was governed by the institution of kingship, which the all-encompassing ethical concept of ma’a was sometimes personified as a goddess. It was the king’s duty to guarantee ma’a—an early order, which included the prediction and taking care of the annual flooding of the Nile and the agricultural cycle, and the interpretation of the cosmic order of the gods in which the king was the sole intermediary for his subjects. Often translated as “truth” or “justice”, ma’a is known from the 2nd/3rd Dynasties onward. The Old Kingdom state was a long-lived one, with no fundamental disruptions for more 500 years, and faced no serious external threats (Bard 2008:124). One can assume that the ideology of ma’a not only represented “truth” and “justice” but also “wisdom” of the ruler, who was the interpreter of gods.

About 600 years later a vizier by the name of Ptahhotep attained high repute for his wisdom. His precepts, in the form of a collection of proverbial sayings, are a sort of ethical treatise; they assume the nature of the good life and under -take to tell how this can be realized by the special group for whom they were written. The so-called “Maximes” of Ptahotep, of Ka-gemini, of Ani, of Amen-emope and others belong to the genre of didactic or wisdom literature, a popular form of expression throughout the ancient orient. Advice is put into the mouth of an old man admonishing a younger on the rules of good behavior, or a king who gives advice on wise rule to his heir. This kind of “wisdom” has been learned by heart as a part of a young man’s education and widely quoted in con-versation and contain many parallels with Hebrew Literature on wisdom (Ency-clopedia Britannica, 1970:52, 601).

Through the following 15 or more centuries many other wise men arose in Egypt, some of whom left bodies of proverbs, others of whom were led by cir-cumstances to consider more deeply the worth and meaning of human life—that is, to think about metaphysical problems. Wisdom speculation likewise arose in

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Babylonia, where writers composed bodies of proverbs and pessimistic writings that denied any value in life. It is obvious that this kind of activity, reflecting real life of ordinary peoples, could not have been confined to a few favored ar-eas. Even uncivilized peoples ask and answer questions about the nature of the world and the meaning of human life, and such speculation is universal among more advanced civilizations.

Hence, wisdom was pervasive through the ancient East. Edom (the ancient land bordering ancient Israel, in what is now southwestern Jordan, between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba. Edom prospered because of its strategic loca-tion on the trade route between Arabia and the Mediterranean and its copper in-dustry at Ezion-geber) was famous for its wise men. Apparently there were wis-dom movements among the Canaanites before the Hebrews entered Palestine which regularly emphasized the importance of wisdom in their Hebrew litera-ture. It would seem that Israel was introduced to wisdom by the Canaanites (original pre-Israelite inhabitants of an area encompassing all of Palestine and Syria), to whose culture it was deeply indebted. This explains its otherwise as-tonishingly early appearance. Even in the days of the Judges (about 1200–1050 B.C.) devices of the wise men, such as the fable and the riddle, were familiar. In David’s time (early 10th century B.C.) there were professional wise persons and Solomon’s wisdom became proverbial.

Through the following centuries the wise men were at times the object of re-buke by the prophets, who disliked their pragmatic realism. But the exile brought a change in Hebrew wisdom, as in much else of the nation’s character. Wisdom became deeply religious; the wise men were convinced that religion alone possessed the key to life’s highest values. It was that mood that domi-nated the final shaping of the Hebrew wisdom literature. The Hebrew wisdom books were produced from approximately ancient times to the beginning of Christian times. Their main idea was that the reality existed before the world, which is made of reality and as such it is wisdom. Such reality as wisdom comes from God and is the expression of God’s activity in all created things. In partic-ular it operates in human life as the impelling force that insistently and unceas-ingly leads men to higher things. One of books belonging to this kind of He-brew literature is the Book of Job, which describes the bitter facts of experience, particularly in the area of where injustice is rampant. The book is composite; many thinkers have contributed their views. But the main author of the Dia-logue, which is the core of the book, was an optimist; he had an answer of faith and hope. Other books contain considerable bulk of maxims which underline that the transcendent wisdom is the supreme fact of human experience.

Today, the book Jewish Wisdom by Telushkin (1994) compiles most famous wisdom-oriented quotes from about 400 books of that kind, researching the roots of Jewish wisdom since 3,500 B.C till the contemporary times. It gives an-swers to such questions:

— When, if ever, should lying be permitted?

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— If you’ve damaged a person’s reputation unfairly, can the damage be un-done?

— Is a person who sells weapons responsible for how those weapons are used?

— If the fetus is not a life, what is it?— How as an adult, can one carry out the command to honor one’s parents

when they make unreasonable demands?— What are the nine biblical challenges a good person must meet?

If the first group of historic civilizations had grown up along the rivers of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and India, the second group of historic civilizations took form on the Mediterranean with a very good climate. However, climate did not draw civilization to Greece; perhaps it has never made a civilization anywhere. What drew men into the Aegean were its islands. The islands and waters were beautiful and convenient for sailing, transportation, trade, and communication. In these waters the Phoenicians and Greeks developed the art and science of navigation and later a series of civilizations. Each of them became more and more complex and required more skills to respond to natural and social chal-lenges.

Hence, Greece respected wisdom (as a tool to deal with the growing com-plexity of life) as India respected holiness (as a tool to be immortal), as Renais-sance Italy respected artistic genius (as a tool of making beautiful surround-ings), as America respects business (as a tool of making a good life). The heroes of Greece (since about VI century B.C.) were not saints, artists, millionaires, but sages; and its most honored sages were not theorists but those who made their wisdom function actively in the world. They were recognized as the Seven Wise Men: Thales, Solon, Bias, Pittacus of Mytile, Periander of Corinth, Chilon of Sparta, and Cleobolus of Lindus in Rhodes. The sayings of these men became proverbial among the Greeks, and were some in cases inscribed in the temple of Apollo at Delphi. People liked to quote. For example, the remarks of Bias: “Most unfortunate of men is he who has not learned how to bear misfortune; that men ought to order their lives as if they were fated to live both a long and a short time; and that wisdom should be cherished as a means of traveling from youth to old age, for it is more lasting than any other possession” (Durant 1966:141).

PHILOSOPHY AS “LOVE OF WISDOM”

It is no accident that the Greek word philosophy means “love of wisdom”. The full measure of Greece’s debt to the Orient has never been determined, but Greek philosophy was heir and in some measure disciple of the age-old specula-tion of the East. Yet wisdom was both more and less than philosophy. Much that is now included under the term had not then raised above the intellectual

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horizon, but also much that then was wisdom, later attained an independent po-sition. The practical shrewdness of businessmen and administrator, incipient science, general knowledge, reflection upon known facts, and much else of the sort, as well as more strictly philosophic speculation, went into total wisdom. The educated man, particularly if he/she gave thought to human conduct and its ends, was the wise man. Wisdom was the total of the intellectual culture of the age.

During the 7th and 6th centuries, Thales (624–547 B.C.) had begun the transformation from the mythology to science (logos) and from practical skills to knowledge (truth about reality), which at that time had been developed as philosophy. He was an experienced trader, traveler, politician, and recognized as a “sage” who not only was successful in practical solutions but exercised practicality. He stated that “every thing that is made of water, comes from wa-ter, and consists of water”. His major achievement was in asking good ques-tions, not necessarily providing answers. Since then, this kind of thinking led to the development of philosophy as the love of wisdom. In other words, wisdom became the ultimate quest of human thinking (Tatarkiewicz 2004: 23).

The next 2,6 millennia-oriented development of the “love of wisdom” was oriented towards the philosophical space, which is about introspection of the physical (objects and events) and mental (concepts) spaces in which humans op-erate. In the philosophical space we turn our mental processes upon themselves to try and understand what we think and why we think it (Benesch 1997:6).

The contemporary philosopher Walter Benesch also recognizes the wisdom space (or rather subspace) of the philosophical space, where we consider the possibilities and problems of defining as a mental process and ask ourselves what it means to define. He argues that in mental space we apply concepts of true and false to our statements about the sensed world, but in wisdom space we try to define true and false as concepts. In this way, philosophy’s mission is thinking about thinking (or understanding as a mental process) (Benesch 1997:16), rather than tracing human wisdom in all realms of life (Figure 2–1). Simon Blackburn (2003:1) is very straightforward when he says that “the word ‘philosophy’ carriers unfortunate connotations: impractical, unworldly, weird.” According to Blackburn, philosophy is about concept engineering; if the engi-neer studies the structure of material things, then the philosopher studies the structure of thoughts. In both approaches we would like to know what would happen for better or worse if changes took place.

Looking at the topics of major philosophers through the last 2,6 millennia, it is evident that their fascination is with the human ability to think and understand more than with “wisdom” itself as an independent process or virtue. Table 2–1 illustrates the development of Western Philosophy and their major areas of in-terests.

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Table 2–1 The Development of Western Philosophy in the last 2600 years

PERIOD AREAS OF INTERESTS MAIN PHILOSOPHERSPRE-PHILOSOPHYUntil the 6th century B.C.

Religion, Myth, Cos-mogonyCuriosity & Skills of Liv-ing

Ptahhotep, Ka-gemini, Ani, Amenemope

ANCIENT PHILOSO-PHY6TH century B.C.–6th A.D.

The Search for World Or-der

Thales, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine

MIDDLE AGES PHI- The Search for Religion Gilbert, Bacon, St. Thomas

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LOSOPHY6TH century A.D. – 14th A.D.

& Spirituality, ScholasticsEternal Happiness

Aquinas,

MODERN PHILOSO-PHY15TH century A.D. – 20th A.D.

From Existence to Cogni-tionFrom Religion to ScienceThe Search for Reason

Bruno, Copernicus, Descartes, Galileo, Locke, Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Bergson, Russell, White-head, Carnap, Wittgen-stein, Heidegger, Sartre, Popper, Levi-Strauss, Fou-calt, Kuhn, Derida, Haber-mas

NEW PHILOSOPHY21st century A.D.

From Cognition to Sur-vivalThe Search for Knowl-edge & Wisdom

As Table 2–1 illustrates, “wisdom” is not among the topics of major areas of philosophy’s interests. This does not mean that wisdom was absent in their thinking about thinking. Rather, it was usually hidden in the philosophers’ opin-ions and definitions as theoretical wisdom of philosophical concepts. These con-cepts have been slowly evolving from myth to logos, testing on the way, practi-cal skills of life, spiritual skills of how to reach eternal happiness, theoretical knowledge about the world, and logical reasoning. In the 21st century, humans are now ready for investigations of wisdom. It is needless to say that correct rea-soning is condition sine qua non for approaching wisdom. However, the latter depends on many other factors too than just upon logical “reasoning.”

Some philosophers sometimes expressed their view of universal wisdom, which will be reviewed in this study. It happens once in the history of philoso-phy when a group of teachers who called themselves Sophists [(wisdom in Latin), what can be translated into English as “wisdomers”] tried to apply and teach practical wisdom. In the second half of the 5th century B.C., particularly in Athens, the “Sophists” came to denote a class of itinerant intellectuals who taught courses in “excellence” or “virtue”, speculated about the nature of lan-guage and culture, and employed rhetoric to achieve their purposes, generally to persuade or convince others. The Sophists claimed that they could find the an-swers to all questions.

The Sophists turned attention for investigation from science for the science’s (about the nature) sake towards human activities in public life such as dialectics, rhetoric, politics, and ethics. They subordinated research activities to practical objectives and successful skills. Also they replaced the deductive method by the empiric one to be close to human experience, emphasizing the importance of observed facts. They did not trust science, nor did they believe that people have

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the good ability to understand the world dynamics in a universal and complete manner. They argued that there is no universal truth, since the truth is recog-nized by human’s senses, which may only lead to relative opinions. Hence, the Sophists admitted that opposite opinions can be truthful also, but the choice of one of them depends upon its practical meaning for a given decision-maker. As Protagoras (481–411 B.C.) stated, if one solution is better than other one, then one must chose the better one. If someone chose the worse solution, he should direct his thinking in such a way to change for the better. Therefore, wise people are such those who can change their behavior by thinking.

Many of the Sophists taught their skills for a price. Due to the importance of such skills in the litigious social life of Athens, practitioners often commanded very high fees. The practice of taking fees, along with the Sophists’ practice of questioning the existence and roles of traditional deities (this was done to make “the weaker argument appear the stronger”) and investigating into the nature of the heavens and the earth prompted a popular reaction against them. Their at-tacks against U (in fictional prosecution speeches) prompted a vigorous con-demnation from his followers, including Plato and Xenophon, as there was a popular view of Socrates as a Sophist. Their attitude, coupled with the wealth garnered by many of the Sophists, eventually led to popular resentment against Sophist practitioners and the ideas and writings associated with sophism.

Most of these Sophists are known today primarily through the writings of their opponents (specifically Plato and Aristotle), which makes it difficult to as-semble an unbiased view of their practices and beliefs. From the modern per-spective, the Sophists’ teaching can be called pragmatic and is typical for West-ern Civilization in the 20th century, perhaps even beyond this century. This pragmatic approach was not accepted 2000+ years ago by the Greeks, despite of the fact that it was the classic period of Greek culture. This culture gained so-phisticated complexity, full of achievements in architecture (Parteon 447–432), art (Phidias d. 438), and trade, science [philosophy (Socrates-Plato-Aristotle), poetry (Sophocles 442), history (Herodotus about 430), mechanics (Archytas 370), medicine (Hippocrates 420) and so forth. Despite the fact that Greece was not attacked from outside, internal politics was full of conflicts and wars be-tween cities (Athens contra Sparta, Peloponnesian War lasted from 431 to 404 B.C.). The fall of Pericles’s democracy (429)—certainly were driven not by “wisdom” but by hate, greed, and fame.

Perhaps the most decisive factor in the rejection of the Sophists’ wisdom was the fact that two greatest Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, lived in those times and preferring the universal approach rather than the Sophists’; both were very strong critics of that kind of sophia (wisdom). Greece, being situated at the crossroads between Europe, Africa, and Asia, was the revolving door to these three continents as the center of the world. Hence, these two great philosophers were more interested in universal understanding of the world than the Sophists’ more pragmatic view, which was limited to the internal dynamics of a city-ori-

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ented society. Perhaps as a paradox one can notice that the business and techno-logical successes of Western Civilization in the last 200 years (1800–2000) were based on “particular wisdom”. In the 21st century when the globalization process integrates the world, the more universal wisdom must be pursued in or-der to put in order such a huge and complex entity as the whole global civiliza-tion.

In the legacy of Sophists one can observe among the Skeptics [Pyrro (360–275 B.C.), Descartes (1596–1650), Hume (1711–1776)] and in the 19th and 20th centuries among German, English, and Polish philosophers, belonging to positivistic and pragmatic circles. Laas in Germany, Schiller in England per-ceived rather Protagoras than Plato and Aristotle as a pioneer of modern philos-ophy. In Poland, Kotarbiński (today, called ontologist rather than sophist) pub-lished A Treatise about good job (1955), Efficiency and Fault (1956), Medita-tions about good life (1966), Praxiology. An introduction to the sciences of effi-cient action (1965) which were a very pragmatic explanations of how work/ac-tion should be done rightly. His books were published during the totalitarian regime in Poland (1945–1989), when in public; practice was at a very low level of motivation to do a job well. Perhaps as the continuum of these praxiological principles, Szczepański and Kuczyński in the 1990s promoted an idea of univer-salism, which should lead to a society composed of good and wise people. These two concepts of praxiology and universalism were pragmatically aimed at the Polish totalitarian regime, which supported a dehumanized society that, in turn, was easy to rule.

In the following sections, an idea of wisdom will be analyzed through the ar-guments of selected philosophers of Western Civilization. Evaluation of the leading philosophers’ view of wisdom will be used the following approach:

1. The quality of implicit wisdom reflecting from a given philosopher’s philosophical contribution.

2. The quality of explicit wisdom reflecting from a given philosopher’s view of wisdom.

3. The quality of personal wisdom reflecting from a given philosopher’s life.

ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS ON WISDOM6TH century B.C. – 6th A.D.Socrates (470–399 B.C.) was a classical Greek philosopher. Credited as one

of the founders of Western philosophy, he devoted himself to free-wheeling dis-cussion with the aristocratic young citizens of Athens, insistently questioning their unwarranted confidence in the truth of popular opinions even though he often offered them no clear alternative teaching. Unlike the professional Sophists of the time, Socrates pointedly declined to accept payment for his work with students, but despite (or, perhaps, because) of this lofty disdain for material success, many of them were fanatically loyal to him. In his use of critical rea-soning, by his unwavering commitment to truth, and through the vivid example

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of his own life (he was sentenced to death and executed for his political activi-ties and corrupting the youth, accepting this fate with remarkable grace), fifth-century Athenian Socrates set the standard for all subsequent Western philosophy in the area of extreme intellectualism: virtue is the ultimate goal of men and knowledge is a general mean leading to that. One who possesses virtue and knowledge possesses the highest good and therefore, is happy (Benson 2000).

Socrates devoted his life to one question only: How he and others can be-come good human beings, or as good as possible. The questions he asks others, and discovers that they cannot answer, are posed in the hope that he might ac-quire greater wisdom about just this subject. But although the new answers pro-posed to Socrates’ principal question avoid the errors revealed in the preceding cross-examination, fresh difficulties are uncovered. In the end the “ignorance” of Socrates is revealed as a kind of wisdom, whereas the interlocutors are im-plicitly criticized for failing to recognize their ignorance.

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that, because Socrates professes ignorance about certain questions, he suspends judgment about all matters what-soever. On the contrary, he has some ethical convictions about which he is com-pletely confident. As he tells his judges in his defense speech: Human wisdom begins with the recognition of one's own ignorance. “The unexamined life is not worth living, ethical virtue is the only thing that matters, and a good human be-ing cannot be harmed” (because despite whatever misfortune he may suffer, in-cluding poverty, physical injury, and even death, his virtue will remain intact).

He cannot believe that the gods might harm him, because he is confident that he is a good man and that a good man cannot be harmed. That is why he has no fear of other human beings. Even if the jury votes to banish him from Athens or to kill him, he will not be worse off because his peculiar kind of wisdom and virtue—his acknowledgment of his ignorance and commitment to continual self-examination—will remain intact. That is also why he is sure that, when he dies, his affairs will not be neglected by the gods (Encyclopedia Britannica 2007).

In summary of Socrates’ view of wisdom, one can state:1. The quality of his implicit wisdom is very high and is characterized by the

Socratic Method based on dialogue, which eventually leads to a wiser solution. This method emphasizes the power of communication, which in the 21st cen-tury is the most important technique of solving civilization problems.

2. The quality of his explicit wisdom is reflected in his famous statement “I know that I do not know”, which had being applied through the last 2,400 years of human experience. However Socrates’ definition of wisdom is very limited.

3. The quality of his personal wisdom is controversial. On one hand he is a martyr, a saint, the example of simple living and dying for the sake of his be -liefs. On another hand he may seen as an unwise individual who unnecessary scarifies own life when he does not have to.

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Plato (427–347 B.C.) was a classical Greek philosopher, who, together with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy. Plato was also a mathematician, writer of philosophical di-alogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world. Plato was originally a student of Socrates and was as much influenced by his thinking as by what he saw as his teacher’s un-just death. His philosophy can be characterized as the “Platonian System,” which concerned many aspects and which were analyzed according to the same framework. This consisted of the concepts of idea, soul, and goodness and can be analyzed at the ideal and real level of being where the latter is impacted by the former.

In the ethical scheme of his most famous work, Republic, three roles or “three lives” are distinguished: Those of the philosopher, of the votary of enjoy-ment, and of the man of action. The end of the first is wisdom; of the second, the gratification of appetite; and of the third, practical distinction. These reflect the three elements, or active principles, within a man: rational judgment of good; a multitude of conflicting appetites for particular gratifications; and spirit, or will, manifested as resentment against infringements both by others and by the individual’s own appetites.

This tripartite scheme is then applied to determine the structure of the just society. Plato develops his plan for a just society by dividing the general popu-lation into three classes that correspond to the three parts of man's soul as well as to the three lives. These are the statesmen, the general civilian population that provides for material needs, and the executive force (army and police). These three orders correspond respectively to the rational, appetitive, and spirited ele-ments. They have as their corresponding virtues: wisdom, the excellence of the thinking part; temperance, that of the appetitive part (acquiescence of the non-rational elements to the plan of life prescribed by judgment); and courage, which of the spirited part (loyalty to the rule of life laid down by judgment). The division of the population into these three classes would be made not on the basis of birth or wealth but on the basis of education provided for by the state. By a process of examination, each individual would then be assigned to his ap-propriate rank in correspondence with the predominant part of his soul (Moravcsik and Temko 1982).

The Philebus contains Plato’s ripest moral psychology. Its subject is strictly ethical—the question of whether the Good is to be identified with pleasure or with wisdom. Under the guidance of Socrates a mediating conclusion is reached: the best life contains both elements, but wisdom predominates (Ency-clopedia Britannica 2007).

In summary of Plato’s view of wisdom, one can state:1. The quality of his implicit wisdom is very high and is characterized by in-

troducing idealism, which is the inspiration and modus operandi of many peo-

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ple through the millennia and modern times. This contribution emphasizes the power of ideas, which control the development of civilization.

2. The quality of his explicit wisdom is limited since he perceived wisdom only among people of the highest strata of society.

3. The quality of his personal wisdom is very high. Plato was well-educated intellectually and physically, traveled to Egypt and Sicily to learn, and founded the Academy (for men and women) which functioned for the next 900 years. He was once sold into slavery and returned safely to Athens, which means that he risked being abroad and taking part in some conflicts. Later he distanced him-self from politics (despite of his royal heritage and connections with active politicians) and married life, enjoying a very comfortable life as the head of his Academy and contributing philosopher without material problems.

Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) was a classic Greek philosopher, logician, and sci-entist, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. Aristotle is gener-ally regarded as one of the most influential ancient thinkers in a number of philosophical fields, including political theory. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato’s teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding fig-ures in Western philosophy. He was the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and sci-ence, politics and metaphysics.

His understanding of wisdom has roots in the theory of virtues. According to Aristotle there are two kinds of virtue, moral and intellectual. Moral virtues are exemplified by courage, temperance, and liberality. The key intellectual virtues are wisdom, which governs ethical behavior, and understanding, which is ex-pressed in scientific endeavor and contemplation (Brentano 1977).

People’s virtues are a subset of their good qualities. They are not innate, like eyesight, but are acquired by practice and lost by disuse. They are abiding states and they thus differ from momentary passions such as anger and pity. Virtues are states of character that find expression both in purpose and in action. Moral virtue is expressed in good purpose—that is to say, in prescriptions for action in accordance with a good plan of life. It is expressed also in actions that avoid both excess and defect. A temperate person, for example, will avoid eating or drinking too much, but he will also avoid eating or drinking too little. Virtue chooses the mean, or middle ground, between excess and defect. Besides pur-pose and action, virtue is also concerned with feeling. One may, for example, be excessively concerned with sex or insufficiently interested in it; the temperate person will take the appropriate degree of interest and be neither lustful nor frigid (Cooper 1975).

The mean that is the mark of moral virtue is determined by the intellectual virtue of wisdom. Wisdom is characteristically expressed in the formulation of prescriptions for action—“practical syllogisms”, as Aristotle calls them. A prac-tical syllogism consists of a general recipe for a good life, followed by an accu-

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rate description of the agent’s actual circumstances and concluding with a deci-sion about the appropriate action to be carried out (Łukasiewicz 1957).

Wisdom, the intellectual virtue that is proper to practical reason, is insepara-bly linked with the moral virtues of the affective part of the soul. Only if an agent possesses moral virtue will he endorse an appropriate recipe for a good life. Only if he is gifted with intelligence will he make an accurate assessment of the circumstances in which his decision is to be made. It is impossible, Aris-totle says, to be good without wisdom or to be wise without moral virtue. Only when correct reasoning and right desire come together does truly virtuous action result (Charles 1984).

Plato had posed the question of whether the best life consists of the pursuit of pleasure and good life or the exercise of the intellectual virtues. Aristotle’s answer is that properly understood, the two are not in competition with each other, but that at life’s end should be happiness. The exercise of the highest form of virtue is the very same thing as the truest form of pleasure; each is iden-tical with the other and with happiness. The highest virtues are the intellectual ones and among them Aristotle distinguished between wisdom and understand-ing. To the question of whether happiness is to be identified with the pleasure of wisdom or with the pleasure of understanding, Aristotle gives different an-swers in his main ethical treatises. In the Nicomachean Ethics, perfect happi-ness, though it presupposes the moral virtues, is constituted solely by the activ-ity of philosophical contemplation, whereas in the Eudemian Ethics it consists in the harmonious exercise of all the virtues, intellectual and moral (Kenny 1978).

Aristotle distinguished between theoretical and practical wisdom. His con-ception of practical wisdom is significant, for it involves more than merely choosing the best means to whatever ends or goals one may have. The practi-cally wise person also has the right ends. This implies that one’s ends are not purely a matter of brute desire or feeling; the right ends are something that can be known and reasoned about. It also gives rise to the problem that faced Socrates: How is it that people can know the difference between good and bad and still choose what is bad? As mentioned earlier, Socrates simply denied that this could happen, saying that those who did not choose the good must, appear-ances notwithstanding, be ignorant of what the good is. Aristotle said that this view was “plainly at variance with the observed facts”, and he offered instead a detailed account of the ways in which one can fail to act on one’s knowledge of the good, including the failure that results from lack of self-control and the fail-ure caused by weakness of will (Encyclopedia Britannica 2007).

Aristotle argues that practical wisdom cannot be taught by philosophy as if it were a purely theoretical discipline. It is taught by custom; in other words, by showing obedience to the law. Furthermore, he thinks that in addition to the in-tellectual virtues such as wisdom or rather practical wisdom, we must add moral

The Philosophical Approach Towards Wisdom 15

virtues which are related to practical wisdom and whose norms are determined by law (Popkin 1999).

He also stresses that most people are incapable of practical wisdom since ac-quiring these virtues, which consists of coming to correct decisions after a pe-riod of deliberation, requires a number of conditions most people cannot meet. The first of these conditions is that the person must have a correct ultimate end in life that will guide his or her deliberation. The second is that he or she must have the appropriate intellectual disposition that would render them capable of finding the means to reach their end. According to Aristotle, most people do not have either intellectual disposition or awareness of their ends or even intermedi-ary goals. For these reasons, people lacking in the necessary conditions for practical wisdom are, like children, naturally dependent upon others (Popkin 1999).

Figure 2–2 illustrates the Aristotle Model of Wisdom, modeled by Targowski who applied cognitive informatic-oriented graphic tools and suggested some re-lations among components either by implication or intuition. If Aristotle had knowledge of these kinds of tools, certainly he could present his wisdom model in more detail and with better precision; he was not only the philosopher but also a scientist and biologist.

In the Aristotelian System, a soul plays a central role; it is a part of a body under a form of energy, which dynamites the whole organism of a person. Fur-thermore, it is a thinking soul, which is as good as is its intelligence is efficient and capable. He contrasted body with soul and senses with mind (Tatarkiewicz 2004). In modern terminology, a soul is “software” and a body is “hardware”. Since a soul is thinking it can recognize goodness and badness. Knowing good-ness it can control will which becomes reasonable and can move toward the highest end of life, which is happiness.

A person’s soul acts in the micro-cosmos and within the context of the macro-cosmos, where the soul of God rules as an independent “supervisor” of the micro-cosmoses. Hence, there is the divine connection between both kinds of souls. Moreover, virtues are of two types, moral and intellectual, reflecting a person’s learned/acquired behavior as a state of person’s character. Since this a learned behavior, virtues are products of the thinking mind. In such a frame-work, if a person must act, then is controlled by wisdom as a prescription for ac-tion, which is defined by the syllogic process. It is a logical process drawing conclusions by implications: if A belongs to C and B belongs to C, then A and B are related. Wisdom at the same time is a prescription for action and updates the state of intellectual virtues, which will generate wisdom in the next cycle of synolligation.

16 Andrew Targowski

In summary of Aristotle’s view of wisdom, one can state:1. The quality of his implicit wisdom is extraordinary and is characterized by

introducing the integrated system of philosophy, which is the foundation of Western and Islamic Civilizations. He developed a philosophy of the center, avoiding extreme solutions and was ready to accept some truth in each of them.

2. The quality of his explicit wisdom was innovative and extensive for his times. His wisdom model is still actual in the following scopes:

The Philosophical Approach Towards Wisdom 17

a) Wisdom is perceived as a prescription of action. In modern times we say that it is a right judgment and choice of a solution.

b) Wisdom is defined by the syllogic process. In modern times we reach wis-dom thru the semantic process, processing data into information, and the latter into concepts, which are filtered by knowledge. Wisdom is then applied as a cer-tain kind of strategy for judging and choosing the right concept/solution/posi-tion/understanding.

c) Soul is perceived as energy controlling thinking and acting. Nowadays, the soul is accepted in religion as a divine steering spiritual unit of a person. In non-religion considerations, it is recognized as behavioral energy identifying human personality in terms of its character and also in very speculative analysis, its characteristics in bio-internal and external relations during a person’s life and beyond it in the universe.

d) Intelligence is perceived and expected as the driving ability of reaching wisdom. Currently, the intelligence quotient (IQ) is recognized as the same kind of ability and widely accepted in measuring someone’s mind’s efficiency.

e) Mind is recognized as a reasoning set of processes taking place in a brain. Nowadays we understand a role of mind/brain in a similar manner.

f) Practical versus theoretical wisdom is very meaningful and important dif-ferentiation. However, Aristotle does not provide an explanation of how are they related to each other. According to this author they are inclusive.

g) Teaching of wisdom cannot be limited to philosophers as it was a purely theoretical discipline taught by custom. Nowadays we see that philosophy is somehow more interested in other areas of human reasoning than just in wis-dom. Also, we see that wisdom is not only a privilege of the elite, but is incorpo-rated in decision-making processes of all people, particularly differentiating among many kinds of professions. Therefore wisdom is taught in many disci-plines not only in philosophy, and unfortunately there is no apparent relation-ship between these two kinds of teaching and researching of wisdom.

Some disagreement is noticed in the area of wisdom users. Aristotle assumes that wisdom takes place only in directing practical actions while modern wisdom has much more broader applications in any kind of human activity when a judg-ment and choice of the right concept/solution/position/understanding must be taken. He also limits a person’s environment/context mostly to god’s and situational contexts. Today, a wisdom’s “users” act in many layers of con-text and environment which have impact upon his/her way of searching for wis-dom.

3. The quality of his personal wisdom is very high. He was very well-edu-cated in an empirical way of thinking as a son of physician who worked at the royal court. He was a tutor of Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.), one of the most successful Grecian leaders, who conquered the Middle East including a part of India. As a very young person, he was certainly one of the best educated in the history of all emperors in the world. However, Aristotle left the Emperor

18 Andrew Targowski

when he felt that his student was moving too far into Asia, thinking it was a wrong strategy. He returned to Athens where opened a school (similar to Plato’s Academy) teaching humanistic and scientific topics. When, after Alexander’s death, the anti-Macedonian sentiment took place in Greece, he left Athens and moved to Chalcis where soon he passed away. His great mind was supported by great work and altruistic pursue of truth and concentration upon scientific inves-tigations. He was an able organizer of others’ teamwork, had positive material conditions which gave him the independence, necessary to elaborate such a great system of knowledge.

These three great philosophers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and their pupils lived in ancient Greece, where The Beginning of All Wisdom took place accord-ing to Stavropoulos (2003). Due to Greek wisdom, this country stood for moder-ation, sufficiency, patriotism, and philosophy, where the first Olympic Games (773 B.C.) took place and scientific, literary, and military geniuses lived. The Greeks were wisely able to defend their islands against the attacking hordes be-tween 500 and 449 B.C. and succeeded in creating the Athenian Golden Age, which gave rise to the Classic Civilization (or Greek-Roman Civilization) as the foundation to Western and Global Civilizations. The latter is just emerging in the 21st century as the world-wide civilization, horizontally penetrating other civilizations. Its roots, however, are in the Classic Civilization, rich in sages. Some people say that Greece had sages while other countries have saints.

With the emergence of the Roman Empire’s Golden Age at the beginning of the 1st millennium A.D., Greece was eventually relegated from a cultural center to a mere province of this Empire. The role of philosophers had declined. Even in Rome they were not allowed to live, an ordinance what was later removed. Rome soon became the political and military center of that part of the world. The growing popularity of Christianity competed with the Platonian philosophy during so-called the Age of Faith when universal structures (social order) took over the agency (autonomous actions of individuals).

MIDDLE AGES PHILOSOPHERS ON WISDOM

6TH century A.D. – 14th A.D.In the Middle Ages philosophy was transforming from a dominance of faith

to the importance of reason. This differentiation we own to two great Christian philosophers, St. Augustine (354–430) (formally he belongs to the Ancient Times, but his role fits rather this Ages) and St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). As a result of their teachings, Western Civilization began practicing the separa-tion of state from religion and the theorem that there is no contradiction be-tween faith and reason. This led to an accelerated development of this Civiliza-tion till modern times. The Augustinian concept of wisdom is as follows (Kowalczyk 2006):

— Wisdom is a cult of God.

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— True wisdom is nothing but truth, thanks to which we perceive and posses the highest right.

— Secondly, persons and values, not things are the objects of wisdom.— Responsible life is not possible without wisdom: searching for it and be-

ing guided by it is the essence of one’s life.— Wise man is the one who knows why he lives and how he should live. Only the last two principles of wisdom can be applied nowadays. The first

three principles are questionable. For example, wisdom is not only God’s abil-ity; each human has potential for developing and applying wisdom. Wisdom as a strategy for solution does not have to be always a matter of truth. In the military a wise general is one who can deceive and outmaneuver his opponent. Why can things not be objects of wisdom? If someone chooses a gas-efficient car, the lat-ter is the object of wisdom application in a given decision-making process.

St. Thomas opened the closed mind of man by arguing that even God can be investigated and understood by a reasoning man, which was thus far not possi-ble according to actual dogmas. St. Thomas argued that it is metaphysically im-possible for any creature to be perfect and that man’s freedom to sin is the price he must pay for freedom of choice. Without that freedom, man could be a ma-chine. He won an epochal victory for reason and brought the Age of Faith to an end (Durant 1950). Since St. Thomas was very much devoted to the Aristotelian philosophy, one can assume that he accepted Aristotle’s concept of wisdom. He reinforced a role of the soul as the extension of God’s wisdom and omnipotence. For Aristotle, however, God was any god while for St. Thomas, God was the Christian Trinity. Aristotle’s concept of the syllogic process was replaced by a more universal concept—the reasoning process. Since then humans could uti-lize reasoning to freely quest for wisdom, which they did. This trend was sup-ported by the opening of several universities in main European cities where knowledge and wisdom have been investigated until modern times: Paris (1200), Naples (1229), Cambridge (1243), Sorbonne (1257, Lisbon (1290), Cra-cow (1364), Vienna (1365), Heidelberg (1386), and Colon (1388).As the result of this period, one can distinguish the following trends in philosophy:

1. Dualism (St. Augustine, 354–430).2. Thomism (St. Thomas Aquinas, 1225–1274).

MODERN PHILOSOPHERS ON WISDOM

15TH century A.D. – 20th A.D.The modern philosophers concentrated mostly on methods and techniques of

reasoning, which eventually led to the improvement of wisdom strategies. Their interest was not in wisdom but was general and more directed towards generic issues of reasoning and world views. Among the main method one can recog-nize the following (Tatarkiewicz 2004):

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1. Methodology (Rene Descartes, 1596–1650)2. Empirism (John Locke, 1632–1704) 3. Subjectivism, uncertainty, and instinct in experimentation (David Hume,

1711–1776).4. Utilitarism (William Paley, 1743–1805) under a form of democracy.5. Rationalism, naturalism, and justice (Voltaire-Francois-Marie Arout,

1694–1778)6. Materialism (Julien Offrey de La Mettre, 1709–1751)7. Sensualism (Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, 1715–1780)8. Positivism (Jean Leonard d’Alembert, 1717–1783)9. Criticism, apriorism (Emanuel Kant, 1724–1804)10. Radicalism and pleasures (Jeremy Bentham, 1748–1832 and James Mill,

1773–1836)11. Idealism(evolutionary-dialectics) (George W. Hegel, 1770–1831)12. Spiritualism as internal experience (Marie F. P G. M. de Biran, 1766–1824)13. Messianism (Jozef Maria Hoene-Wroński, 1778–1853)14. Realism (Johann F. Herbart, 1776–1841)15. Naturalism (Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804–1872)16. Materialism-Dialectic (Karl Marks, 1818–1883, Friedrich Engels, 1820–

1981)17. Individualism-elitarism (Striner, 1806–1856 and Carlyle, 1795–1881)18. Existentialism (Soren Kierkegaard, 1813–1855) 19. Evolutionism (Herbert Spencer, 1820–1903)20. Scientism (Karl Pearson, 1857–1936)21. Skepticism (Ernest Renan, 1823–1892)22. Relativism (Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844–1900)23. Pragmatism (William James, 1842–1910)24. Intuicism (Henri Bergson, 1859–1941)25. Phenomenologism (Edmund Husserl, 1859–1938)26. Logicism (Bertrand Russell, 1872-1970, Rudolf Carnap, 1891–1970, Jan

Lukasiewicz, 1878–1956)27. Functionalism and Hormism (William McDougall, 1971–1938)28. Sociologism (Emil Durkheim 1858–1917)29. Formalism (Vilfredo Pareto, 1848–1923)30. Naturalism (Alfred North Whitehead,1861 – 1947 )31. Behaviorism (John B. Watson, 1878–1958)32. Psychological philosophy (Sigmund Freud, 1856–1939)33. Philosophy of nature (Alfred N. Whitehead, 1861–1947)34. Praxeology (Tadeusz Kotabiniski,1886–1981) 35. Universalism- post-metaphysical (Janusz Kuczynski, 1930–)36. Eco-philosophy (Henryk Skolimowski, 1930–)37. Critical theory (Jurgen Habermas, 1929–)38. Philosophy of mind (John R. Searly, 1932–)

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39. Philosophy of science (Karl Popper, 1902–1994, Thomas S. Kuhn, 1922–1996)

40. Feminist philosophy (Simon de Beavoir, 1908–1986)41. Political philosophy (Plato, 427–347 B.C. John Rawls, 1921–2002,

Robert Nozick, 1938-2002)42. Philosophy of action (Donald Davidson, 1917–2003)43. Postmodernism (Jacques Derrida, 1930–2004)44. Comparative philosophy (Walter Benesch, 1930s–)45. Cognitive informatics (Andrew Targowski, 1937–)The presented trends or methods of the philosophical reasoning are orga-

nized in a list of 45 major attempts, which took place for the first time in the history of philosophy. Some of these reasoning methods were repeated later un-der different forms, for example as “updated” idealism or existentialism (ex. Jean Paul Sartre,1905–1980). Perhaps one can assume that about 200 methods/techniques of reasoning exist as derivatives of these original 45. More will be developed certainly. Their main interest was/is rather in world view than in wis-dom. To prove this statement one can be reminded that Encyclopedia Britannica does not contain an entry on wisdom despite of the fact that is very broadly writ-ten and edited?

In summary we will use the following approach:1. The quality of implicit wisdom reflecting from given philosophers’ philo-

sophical contributions is enormous. About 45 specific methods and perhaps 200 more on human reasoning have been contributing strongly to the knowledge of thinking. However, these methods create the philosophical silos, not shared properly with other growing in meaning sciences, which also have been con-tributing to the reasoning knowledge.

2. The quality of explicit wisdom reflecting from these philosophers’ view of wisdom is limited. Only after specific study of a given philosopher’s way of thinking and carefully tracing his/her writings one can found their ideas of wis-dom. For example, Nietzsche viewed wisdom as “disruptive wisdom”, expressed in a “permanent critique of ourselves” (Hicks and Rosenberg, 2005). To a cer-tain degree it is a reminder of Socrates’ wisdom, “I know that I do not know.” Bernard Russell was famous not for his definition of wisdom, but for his wise aphorisms, even collected in a book—The Wisdom of Bernard Russell (1968). Perhaps more such books could be written reflecting other great philosophers’ aphorisms. But these kinds of aphorisms are not contributing to the theoretical knowledge of wisdom.

3. The quality of personal wisdom reflecting from a given philosopher’s life. Many of the aforementioned philosophers had “colorful” lives (B. Russell), some of them had quiet lives, devoted to philosophy entirely (E. Kant), some straggled with lives (F. Nietzsche), and some others had good lives (S. Freud). But most of them had/have passion for philosophy, since they considered phi-losophy as a science of sciences, which “controls” the world.

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WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM PHILOSOPHERS ABOUT WISDOM?

We can learn from philosophers about wisdom the following aspects:1. Wisdom is the highest humans’ intellectual activity and virtue (Aristotle).2. Wisdom is a prescription for action (Aristotle).3. Wisdom depends upon intelligence (Aristotle).4. Wisdom can be reached by people who know their ends of lives (Aristo-

tle).5. Wisdom is contingent upon times in which given intellectual activities

take place.6. Wisdom is reflection of the ability to reason rightly.7. Wisdom is a sum of knowing.

What we cannot learn from philosophers:1. There is no accepted philosophical definition of wisdom (even the Ency-

clopedia Britannica has no entry about wisdom).2. There are no established attempts to expand explicitly reasoning methods

into the most important end product of it, such as wisdom. 3. What is the reason that through so many centuries (since Aristotle) and by

so many philosophers, the concept of wisdom was not taken seriously in the form of rigorous investigations?

4. Why some did great philosophers consider that only God can be wise and why they do not see that every person and particularly every professional ap-plies wisdom (better or worse) in performing its duties, either in action or con-ceptualization?

In respect to a definition of wisdom, the following reflects prudence, which can be considered as some sort of synonym of wisdom (Merriam-Webster Ency-clopedia-online 2009):

1. The ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason.2. The sagacity or shrewdness in the management of affairs.3. Skill and good judgment in the use of resources.4. Caution or circumspection as to danger or risk.

A definition from the Polish Small Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1996) is more about wisdom per se (Krzysztof Kosior):

Wisdom (gr. sophia, lat. sapientia) is:1. The understanding of existence according to its rules, awareness of a path

leading to that understanding, assuming skills of differentiating facts from illu-sions, goodness from badness, beauty from ugliness. It is a virtue making man more suitable for the nature. These skills characterize spiritual development of mature man and are available gradually in thinking and action.

2. One of intellectual-ethical rules, gained and lasting efficiency, enhancing intellect, different from moral virtue.

The Philosophical Approach Towards Wisdom 23

THE ENDS OF LIFE AND WISDOM

Aristotle argued that only the person with the defined purpose of life can be wise and added that the best end of some one’s life is happiness. On the other hand, Plato argued that the best end of life is a good life. Can these ends stand out to the contemporary thinking about life’s purposes? Perhaps not, since in the last 2,400 years life became more complex than those in the times of these Great Philosophers. Figure 2–3 depicts the Hierarchy of Ends of Life as they are perceived in the 21st century by the Author.

Of course it is not necessary to pursue the life’s end step by step. A given life’s end can be entered at any level and pursue at any time in life. Certainly as someone’s life progresses his/her purposes may vary. Very often older people can perceive less complex purposes of their lives. This model does not contain Aristotle’s happiness, since the author considers it as a state of feelings, which are usually short. In a long stretch, one can say that if somebody’s life has a positive balance of any mentioned ends of life, he/she may perceive his/her life as happy. On the other hand there are people who despite of their positive life’s balance may feel unhappy since happy people are usually those who want to be happy. To accomplish one of these life’s end one must first of all conduct wise life.

Happiness is a state of mind or feeling such as contentment, satisfac-tion, pleasure, or joy [Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (accessed 2008-Dec-23)]. A variety of philosophical, religious, psychological and biolog-ical approaches have been taken to defining happiness and identifying its sources. Philosophers and religious thinkers have often defined happiness in terms of living a good life, or flourishing, rather than simply as an emotion. Happiness in this older sense was used to translate the Greek Eudaimonia (hu-man flourishing), and is still used in virtue ethics as “what is the highest of all goods achievable by action” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Etics (NE), I, 4:1095a). In everyday speech today, however, terms such as well-being or quality of life are usually used to signify the classical meaning, and happiness is reserved for the felt experience or experiences that philosophers historically called pleasure. Happiness forms a central theme of Buddhist teachings, which focuses on ob-taining freedom from suffering by following the Eightfold Path. In the Buddhist view, ultimate happiness is only achieved by overcoming craving in all forms. Aristotle saw happiness as “the virtuous activity of the soul in accordance with reason”, or the practice of virtue. In Catholicism, the ultimate end of human ex-istence consists in felicity, or “blessed happiness”, described by the thirteenth-century philosopher-theologian Thomas Aquinas as a Beatific Vision of God's essence in the next life. The contemporary positive psychology, describes hap-piness as consisting of positive emotions and positive activities. In most reli-gions, happiness is the eternal reward for those who meet certain criteria. In Western Civilization, happiness serves as a sign of human perfection to which

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all human aspire in this life. The Enlightenment Era claimed that happiness can be pursued and obtained in the here and now (McMahon2006:13).

A crucial discovery of happiness research in the last few years has been that happiness is not just epiphenomenon, but plays a casual role in bringing about various benefits. For example happiness is associated with satisfaction of vari-ous facets of life, such as in the British Model of Happiness Quantified (Van

The Philosophical Approach Towards Wisdom 25

Pragg & Ferrer-i-Carbonell 2008:93) (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8) and this Author’s Model (9,10,11,12):

1. Job satisfaction 2. Financial satisfaction 3. Housing satisfaction 4. Health satisfaction 5. Marriage satisfaction 6. Social satisfaction 7. Leisure-use satisfaction 8. Environment satisfaction 9. Childhood satisfaction10. Family satisfaction11. Political satisfaction12. Education satisfaction

Hence, happiness as a degree of well-being satisfaction can be pursued at each level of the Hierarchy of Life Ends (Figure 2–3). It can be also quantified as it is indicated by Van Pragg and Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2008). Happiness not only correlates with success in various life domains, but it also precedes and causes it (Lyubomirsky, King, and Diener 2005). Therefore it is included in the Model of Life Purposes, since it develops forces of the mind, as it was noticed by Marcel Proust in his Remembrance of Things Past. However he argued that unhappiness develops human reaction. The recent view is that rather opposite, happiness leads to the development and better use of intellectual skills, and re-sources (Bruni, Comim, and Pugno, 2008:70). Therefore humans should have tendency to understand their life end in the framework of achieving well-being satisfaction, since happier life is more attractive than unhappier one and more productive as well more useful. For example “a stage of meaningful life” can be happy or unhappy or mix of both states, as it is a case of many social leaders (such as Socrates, A. Lincoln, M. L. King, L. Wałęsa, and others) who scarified their lives for the sake of common good.

It is important to notice that the life ends (important stages) last longer than the degrees of satisfactions. Tatarkiewicz (1962:31) argues that happiness can be ap-plied to the whole life, which can be seen as full and lastingly satisfied. But such situation is too ideal, since people are not so perfect and cannot be happy without any reservations. Hence, according to that Polish Philosopher one can recognize ideal and real happiness. It is important to perceive happiness as a reasonable state of life not as the impossible one, based on illusion. Since human life is a journey between; conflict, crisis, normality, success, and failure, therefore happi-ness should be perceived as the positive balance of one’s life (1962:40). As a re-sult of it, the meaningful life can be happy or not happy if respectively its balance is positive or negative. On the other hand for many people sometimes a happy moment can be more important than the happy balance of the whole life. This

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kind of situation varies in practice and fortunately exceeds human expectations in negative and positive sense, since life is not science but art.

If happiness or its lack can be seen as the boundaries of someone’s life’s ends, another measure or criterion can be helpful in this analysis to find out to what degree this life is fulfilling. Mainly, each life can be fulfilled vertically through a certain number of achieved ends and at the same time every end can be fulfill horizontally, defining a degree of happiness. For example, the end of having meaningful life can be pursue in military competence, work, wealth, rep-utation, personal relationships, afterlife, intellectual inquiry, public service, pri-vate charity, and physical activities, and so forth. These are means to an end. Most of the time, as Aristotle observed and Stafford (1689:225) noticed; “the lower sort of mankind does not know other ends of life than food, clothing, sleeping, and rising up early to take pains; all their care is what they should eat, and wherewithal to be clothed, and how to get money for necessary things. They know no other reason for their coming into the world.” Unfortunately, this state of less fortune people (perhaps the majority of world population) did not change much in the last 300+ years.

Fulfillment is a matter of personal choice of ends and means, and cannot be seen as the adherence to inherited role or required codes of behaving, pro-vided by others. Since life is not based on science but rather on art which the latter is gained through someone’s experience. On the other hand fulfillment can be understood as development-oriented capacity for certain knowledge/skills (ex. music, sport, or art, and so forth) and as ability to aspire to certain ends. Both components; capacity and aspirations form human felicity (Gewirth 1998).

In summary, human wise (positive) life usually is accomplished through self-realization or self-creation within boundaries of happiness degree, which depends on knowing a given life’s ends and means leading to them. The former are subject to development of one’s capacities and aspirations as human poten-tial for pleasing, shaped by social interaction. In the Western Civilization of 21st century, a person’s felicity implies liberty and freedom of choice.

COMPARING WISDOM OF MEANINGFUL LIFE AMONG CONTEMPORARY CIVILIZATIONS IN THE 21st CENTURY

BEYOND THE PHILOSOPICAL APPROACH

Among these eight stages of life’s ends (depicted in Figure 2–3), some ends/stages are self explanatory. However, the range of “good life” can be very broad as well as the range of “interesting life”. The most difficult to define is the purpose of “meaningful life”. Particularly it is difficult if one would like to define this purpose for the current eight different, religion-oriented civilizations; Western, Eastern, Chinese, Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, and African, and Global Civilization-business oriented which resembles Western Civiliza-tion’s goals and values (Targowski 2009).

The Philosophical Approach Towards Wisdom 27

To find an appropriate solution one can approach this task in many different ways. According to Ford (2007) one can distinguish the following approaches which can define meaning of life differently within the context of philosophical ideas:

— The mythic mind searches for orientation and identity.— The philosophical mind looks for permanence and stability.— The scientific mind appreciates predictability and control.— The postmodern mind seeks to undermine fanaticism and monolithic

forms of thought and experience.— The religious mind seeks a renewed sense of wonder entirely in this

world.— The archetypal psychology-oriented mind looks for identity and stability.— The metaphysic mind appreciate a timeliness and universal basis for

value and orientation beyond relativism.— The pragmatic mind seeks a way to accommodate pluralism and the limi-

tations of intentional, instrumental thought.

Certainly through the deeper analysis of these approaches it will be possible to find some common themes which would satisfy unity or diversity of solu-tions in terms of meaningful life. However, to make the task more understand-able for common users of meaningful live, one can offer the following (non-philosophical) pragmatic set1 of goals for people belonging to Western, Eastern, and Global Civilizations:

1. To share love (friendship) and well-being.2. To gain respect in the society.3. To achieve economic success.

For people living in the Hindu Civilization, meaningful life is defined by the accomplishment of the following goals (at once or at different stages of life) (Satish Deshpande):

1. To practice ethical and ritually correct life (Dharma-Virtue)2. To attain absolute happiness (Moksha) and be liberated from the material

world and the reincarnation cycle and duality (Mukti, Samadhi, Nirvana).3. To work for and achieve of success in terms of fame, wealth and power

(Artha-Success).4. To enjoy aesthetic pleasure including both physical and emotional (Kama-

Pleasure).

Meaningful life for an African includes the attainment of the following goals (Anne-Marie Oulai):

1. To practice strong cultural values (understanding own culture, speaking native language).

2. To have strong family ties and be able to provide for own family, and hos-pitality.

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3. To share a sense of community, be integrated, accepted and respected by your peers.

For the people of the Buddhist Civilization meaningful life can be achieved through the accomplishment of the following goals:

1. To follow the Eightfold Path (right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration bringing about the cure or cessation).

2. To achieve a favorable rebirth after death, or even to reach enlightenment, a state of spiritual purity which is completely free from worldly concerns and from the cycle of rebirth.

3. To fully understand of the Buddhist truths, living well, and avoiding work that might harm others.

For the people of the Chinese Civilization meaningful life can be achieved through the accomplishment of the following goals (Bernard Han):

1. To understand the relationship with God (Sky or Tian) and have the abil-ity to follow the example set by the historical role models (e.g., Confucius)

2. To obtain a status that you are able to take care of yourself, the family with additional ability in benefitting others in the community.

3. To establish imperishable virtues, written doctrines, and memorable con-ducts.

For the people of the Islamic Civilization meaningful life can be achieved through the accomplishment of the following goals (Mushtaq Luqmani):

1. To worship only and to bow in total submission only to the one God, who is the creator and sustainer of this entire universe and of all the worlds.

2. To seek the pleasure and mercy of God by doing good in this life and avoiding what is evil as ordained by the Quran and previous scriptures, and practiced as shown by the teachings and example of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH: Peace Be Upon Him.).

3. To do good in this life and to prepare for the hereafter recognizing that you are born pure and sinless and that you are solely accountable for your own actions and deeds.

4. That everything belongs to your creator (nothing belongs to you) and that as a trustee on this earth you are responsible for wisely using the bounties and resources given to you by your creator and for establishing peace on earth, and by respecting and protecting the creation of your creator and the rights of self, individual, family, society, diversity and beliefs, community and all of creation.

5. To love humanity and to recognize that all people are equal in the sight of God and no one is superior over another except for piety which only God and God alone can judge.

For the people of the Japanese Civilization meaningful life can be achieved through the accomplishment of the following goals (Oleg Benesch):

The Philosophical Approach Towards Wisdom 29

1. The Japanese religious landscape is very diverse, and it would be difficult to identify any homogeneous spiritual goals. People that are religious tend to follow various sects of Buddhism or Shinto, but most of these are not exclusive and there is a lot of crossover. As a result, some people tend to believe in the Buddhist idea of reincarnation, while others have faith in the existence of Heavens and Hells, while many others don't give the issue much thought. Most attempts to generalize Japanese spirituality (and there have been many) fail because of this.

2. To benefit from individual and group success in terms of prestige and wealth (This is more or less a universal trait across civilizations, but Japanese may tend to derive greater satisfaction from group (company, family, team) suc-cess than people in the US, for example. Again, this is only a possible trend and does not necessarily apply to everyone).

The comparison of criteria of meaningful life among the contemporary civi-lizations is provided in Table 2–2.

Table 2–2. The Comparison of Meaningful Life’s Criteria in Contemporary Civi-lizations

CIVILIZATION SPIRITUAL/CULTURAL

SOCIETAL ECONOMIC OTHER

AFRICAN Apply cultural val-ues

Accepted and re-spected by the community

Provide for the family

BUDDHIST Follow the Eight-fold Path and reach the spiritual purity

Quest for Bud-dhist truth

Live well Do not harm others

CHINESE Understand rela-tionships with God

Benefit the com-munity

Take care of your-self and the family

Establish legacy

EASTERN Share love (friend-ship) and well-be-ing

Gain respect in the society

Achieve economic success

HINDU Practice ethical and ritually correct life

Attain absolute happiness in a dual life

Achieve success in terms of fame, wealth and power

Enjoy physi-cal and emotional pleasure

ISLAMIC Submit to one God All equal in the sight of God

Practice life shown by Muhammad

Nothing be-longs to you who is a trustee on this earth

JAPANESE Enjoy mutual re-spect and smooth interactions with oneąs peers and relations

Benefit from indi-vidual and group success in terms of prestige and wealth

WESTERN Share love (friend-ship) and well-be-ing

Gain respect in the society

Achieve economic success

GLOBAL Go virtual Achieve economic success

30 Andrew Targowski

In the last 5.8 millennia the goals of meaningful life were changing, particu-larly in the last 200 years of the Industrial Revolution. In the 21st century the main challenge for civilization comes from the Population Bomb, Ecological Bomb, and Depletion of Strategic Resources Bomb (Targowski 2009). Nowa-days, civilization is at the brink of decline and this kind of goals must be adapted accordingly. Let’s try to define a set of composite, universal goals of meaningful life in the 21st century which could take into account some common themes which would satisfy unity or diversity of solutions among the nine civi-lizations, mentioned above. The set of such required goals perhaps may be per-ceived as follows:

1. Be spiritually accountable (virtues and paths vary among religions and non-religion concepts)

2. Be rather good than right, apply dialogue, solve wisely problems, and do not harm others

3. Share sustainable (economically, environmentally, and societally) well-being in terms of material, conceptual, and emotional, within family and the so-ciety.

These goals emphasize a kind of one’s behavior which should have positive, meaningful impact upon others. They replace very individualistic success-driven goals which can be spectacular but usually are achieved at the others’ cost (ex. Medoff’s scheme in 2008) and are not sustainable. A good example of meaningful lives provide Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, who are the richest men in the world (2009) but significantly share their wealth with others, less fortu-nate. Figure 2–4 illustrates a model of meaningful life, which is when one acts is applying such virtues as inspiration, motivation, and wisdom.

The Philosophical Approach Towards Wisdom 31

WISDOM AS SEEN IN DIFFERENT PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACHES

In the Figure 2–5 The Model of Philosophical Wisdom Dynamics is shown. This model is defined by applying the cognitive informatics approach. This ap-proach characterizes an object/process’ complexity in a graphic and holistic man-ner. This model is based on all main views/components of wisdom developed in philosophy (for the clarity of the model, some reasoning methods have been not shown). It assumes that if all these components will be somehow interconnected then they will contribute to the development of wisdom in a given decision-mak-ing cycle. This model does not prefer any reasoning methods as the best. Each one or their matrix has some applications for a given situation, which should be selected by a decision-maker who knows these methods (which is very doubtful in reality).

There are two kinds of reasoning methods shown in this model:— Vertical reasoning methods, which being specific can provide a recipe for

action or conceptualization (the latter was not in Aristotle’s model)— Horizontal reasoning methods are “filters” of vertical methods, clarifying

a way of delivering a wise recipe by the vertical reasoning methods.

CAN PHILOSOPHY DELIVER WISDOM?

So far, philosophy used to be the only one theoretical discipline whose mis-sion was and still is to pursue issues associated with wisdom. The beginning of philosophy in times of Aristotle was very promising that wisdom perhaps will be in the center of philosophy’s orientation. In reality it did not happen since philosophy was facing the more basic issues of faith and reason, which took more than two millennia to “solve” them.

The Western Philosophical Model of Wisdom presented in Figure 2–5 looks very promising but in fact is not applicable in real life. Its systemic concept in-dicates that wisdom is achievable if it could be treated this way by the philoso-phers and their stakeholders. The fact of the matter is that:

1. Philosophy does not have a well-defined constituency, mostly grouping philosophers who write their treaties for other philosophers with the implicit art of making previous methods usually obsolete (?),

2. Philosophy presents its solutions in very eclectic manner, mostly without any relationships of presented reasoning methods to each other and without strong examples of their applications in real life. For example, certain reasoning methods are appropriate for a given period of time when certain social pro-cesses take place. Same methods can be inappropriate for another period of time if its social processes changed significantly. This kind of analysis/synthesis is rarely found in philosophy. Also, there is a lack of indications in philosophy and what reasoning methods are universal (basic) through times and what peripheral ones are. If one takes a look at most philosophy books, they list reasoning meth-

32 Andrew Targowski

ods more from the historic point of view than from applicable point of view, particularly in the contemporary settings.

The Philosophical Approach Towards Wisdom 33

34 Andrew Targowski

3. Philosophy created the Ivory Tower, whose habitants have been with-drawing from the real life as the rule of being a “philosopher”, in the contradic-tion to other sciences’ practice, which apply empiric and utilitarian approaches, not only to be close to practice but most importantly, to serving to it.

In defense of philosophy one must be reminded that most of social revolu-tions, which have changed humanity, were strongly influenced by the philoso-phers, as follows:

— The English (Glorious) Revolution (1685–1714) was triggered by ideas of such philosophers as Francis Bacon (1561–1626), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), James Harrington (1611–1677), John Lock (1632–1704), Charles Blount (1654–1693) and their peers among them William Shakespeare (1564–1616), John Milton (1608–1674), poet.

— The French Revolution (1789–1794), which was triggered by ideas of such philosophers as; Jean Charles-Louis Montesquieu (1689–1755), Jacque Rousseau (1712–1778), Voltaire (1694–1778) and others,

— The American Revolution (1775–1783) was influenced by such philoso-phers as David Hume (1711–1776), and the French philosophers, particularly by Charles-Louis Montesquieu,

— The Bolshevik Revolution (1917) was led by intellectuals such as Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) and Leon Trotsky (1879–1840), who pursued communistic ideas of such philosophers as Karl Marks (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1981),

— The Polish Solidarity Revolution (1981–1989), which was victorious over communism, was led by an electrician Lech Walesa (1943), but who was sup-ported by a group of intellectuals such as Bronislaw Gieremek (1933–2008), Jacek Kuron (1934–2004), Karol Modzelewski (1937–), Adam Michnik (1946) and others, who were students of a philosopher Leszek Kolakowski (1927–).

It looks that the philosophers are particularly very useful in pre-revolution-ary times, when ideas (mostly freedom and social justice oriented) were formu-lated and applied to trigger revolutions. In peaceful times, particularly post-rev-olutionary periods, the philosophers are going back to their shelves and discon-nect with the reality.

On the other hand, the search for wisdom cannot be left only to philosophy. Every scientific discipline should transfer philosophical ideas of wisdom to their ways of thinking and contributing to them with their own understanding of what does it means to be a wise businessman, engineer, physician, lawyer, politician, artist, teacher, and so forth acting within a wise organization, society, and civil-ization.

For example, Noble Prizes in economics are mostly given to those who have improved economic reasoning. Among them are those who have even defined wisdom in decision-making. For example, scientists such as Leonid V. Kan-torovich (1912–1985, USSR) and Tjalling C. Koopmans (1910–1985, U.S.) re-

The Philosophical Approach Towards Wisdom 35

ceived the Nobel Prize in 1975 for work on the theory of optimum allocation of resources, which in fact is about making wise decisions within constraints. Her-bert Simon (1916–2001, U.S.) received the Nobel Prize in 1978 for his pioneer-ing research into the decision-making process within economic organizations. He argued that managers do not satisfy their stakeholders because they mange by constraints (the only wise alternative of managing in complex situations). Their work on economic wisdom was not noticed in philosophy. This reinforces that philosophy is disconnected from the real life of making decisions, even from their theoretical concepts.

In the not–so-distant past, philosophy passed a period of the same chal-lenges. By the end of the 19th century some philosophers tried to break with philosophy and replaced it with more scientific disciplines, particularly those based on the empiric approach, such as psychology. However, mathematical lo-gic which is rather deductive was also taken out from philosophy. In the 20th century philosophy did not create any new synthesis and rather explored ana-lysis of partial truths. The search for cognition was somehow left to other dis-ciplines, such as computer science (Alan Turing, 1912–1954). Its main tools of very universal meaning, cybernetics and the General Systems Theory, were defined outside of philosophy, respectively by Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) and Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972). These discipline’s theories have been adapted by sociology, psychology, engineering and particularly by inform-ation technology, but have been unfortunately unnoticed by philosophy.

By the end of the 20th century the first rigorous research on wisdom was un-dertaken by the psychologists from the Planck Institute in Germany (Brugman, 2000) by American psychologists led by Robert J. Stenberg (1990) and inform-atician Andrew Targowski (1990: 136–138) under a form of the Semantic Lad-der, where the last step of information processing leads toward the application of wisdom, which is applied in computer-based judging and choosing the right decision.

It is necessary to underline a great effort undertaken (by the end of the 20th century and continued thru the next one) by the Polish and international philo-sophers led by Janusz Kuczyński, who publishes Dialogue and Universalism, devoted mostly to meta-philosophy as the wisdom of science and life.

The question is whether philosophy can deliver the theory of wisdom? Per-haps it could if philosophy could collaborate more closely with other disciplines and to a certain degree re-engineer some of its methods to be more useful in real life oriented processes. This call is not for:

— Re-definition of philosophy’s mission of solving problems which cannot be solved by other sciences and dethroneized it from being the science of sci-ences.

— Transform philosophy into science sensu stricte.These types of calls in philosophy were many in the past and did not work.

Philosophy should remain philosophy, although not as the isolated speculations of

36 Andrew Targowski

sages but as an integral part of social and political life. Philosophy is a mixture of theology and science. Sometimes it speculates (mythos) and sometimes it reasons (logos). Defined rules and laws belong to science and defined dogmas belong to theology. However, between theology and science and the Universe and humans (as stakeholders of both disciplines) there is an empty space which is philosophy. Figure 2–6 illustrates a role of philosophy in filling this “empty” space. Philo-sophy as opposed to science is more optimistic, since it thinks that the humans have some relationships with the purposeful universe. Science does not have that kind of illusion but assumes that humans’ wisdom can make the world closer to our wishes. This is a practical, as contrasting to a metaphysical, optimism.

Perhaps philosophy should be more comprehensive and synthesizing and should be courageous in offering assumptions about the Universe’s dynamics which science is not yet ready to make. Philosophy’s biggest contribution should be in hypotheses, which are uncertain. Otherwise humans will be con-fined in finite, closed, and common-sense-oriented views and beliefs. That kind of thinking will be the end of thinking. For example, there are many questions that cannot be answered by science but answering them would help humans to live (Russell 1996):

1. Do we survive death in any sense, and if so, do we survive for time or forever?

2. Can mind dominate matter, or does matter completely dominate mind, or has each, perhaps, a certain limited independence?

3. Has the Universe a purpose?4. Is the Universe driven by blind necessity?5. Is the Universe a mere chaos, and jumble, in which the natural laws (that

we defined) are only a fantasy generated by our love for order?6. If there is a cosmic scheme, has life more importance in it than astronomy

would lead us to suppose?7. Is our emphasis upon life mere parochialism and self-importance?

So far nobody has provided good answers to these questions. However, philosophy should keep alive the interest in these questions and scrutinize sug-gested answers as one of the roles of philosophy.

Philosophy’s scope that we learn in general education is different than philo-sophy’s scope that we should learn in professional studies, although it should be a bridge between both. The result of that kind of cooperation between two “philosophies” should be a value of large practical importance. It should provide to the professional a just measure of himself in relation to the society, to the whole civilization and to the cosmological Universe. By enlarging the scope of considerations, humans can minimize their anxieties about the past, present, and future.

The Philosophical Approach Towards Wisdom 37

So far humanity’s hope to make life less stressful and satisfying lies in ac-quiring more knowledge about the life, nature, and the Universe. In the last 900 years (since the first university in Paris) the quest for better life is steered by the knowledge inquiry, practiced at all universities, colleges, and schools. It has led to many critical and stunning discoveries, but they did not solve humans’ bad decisions controlling their existence. Since, there is a lack of one of the most important intellectual link in human decision-making processes, which is wis-dom.

38 Andrew Targowski

To develop successful applications of wisdom in human existence one can apply one of or all strategies as follows:

1. Leave the philosophical study as it is now, as a lesser fair bottom-up ap-proach about “everything”.

2. Secure funding for selected research centers to provide intensive research on wisdom and disseminate their results, hoping that they will impact wise hu-man existence.

3. Transform universities’ knowledge inquiry into wisdom inquiry and for-cing academic curricula and research toward wisdom issues, solutions and the-ories.

The third strategy may be the best strategy, which within 1–2 generations should educate more wise universities’ graduates; professionals, including teachers. The latter will educate pupils as wise citizens and the former should wisely manage organizations, society, and civilization. Figure 2–7 depicts the idea of the Third Strategy of Wisdom Development among stakeholders. The first who argued for this kind of strategy is Maxwell (1984, 2005) who believes, and argues, with passion and conviction, that the abysmal failure of science to free society from poverty, hunger and fear is due to a fatal flaw in the accepted aim of scientific endeavour—the acquisition and extension of knowledge. The philosophy of wisdom commends itself, furthermore, not only to the heart but to the head and gives science and scholarship a proper place in the human social order.

What is ahead of research and teaching about wisdom is illustrated in Figure 2-8 under the form of the Wisdom Matrix, where all kinds of “wisdom” should be investigated, disseminated, and applied. The Wisdom Matrix is self-explanat-ory and indicates that every sphere of human activities may apply four kinds of wisdom: Practical, theoretical, global, and universal (Targowski 2006, 2007). The universal wisdom is or should be present in every major human activity (business, engineering, science, and so forth), which is reflected in the last column of the Wisdom Matrix. In addition, at the same time, the universal wis-dom should be drawn from practical, theoretical, global, and universal wisdoms (the last row of the Wisdom Matrix).

The wisdom program sketched in the Wisdom Matrix is huge and should be accomplished within the first part of the 21st century, if our advanced civiliza-tion will last so long. It can be done only if all education institutions will engage into this program seriously. Particularly the philosophers, who supposedly “love wisdom”, should lead this kind of transformation of universities, colleges, and schools. In such a way the philosophers “can deliver wisdom” about which they have forgotten in the last 2400 years since the times of their great teachers, So-crates, Plato, and Aristotle.

If the Wisdom Matrix program will be accomplished then the question “Can we teach wisdom?” will be not actual as used to be so far.

The Philosophical Approach Towards Wisdom 39

40 Andrew Targowski

CONCLUSION

1. The idea of wisdom, as a philosopher Czarnocka writes (2006: 155) “has been forgotten, treated as old-fashioned, not suited to the modern humanity”. This study confirms this claim fully.

2. By implication of the Czarnocka’s statement, one can think that if modern humanity is not wise, but is stupid? The population, ecological, and energy

The Philosophical Approach Towards Wisdom 41

crises in the 21st century may support this kind of accusation. Otherwise a more wise humanity could prevent these crises.

3. To develop a more wise humanity it is necessary to trigger the creeping re-volution in education, which should be driven not by knowledge inquiry but by wisdom inquiry. Thus, the latter should foster the avalanche of research and cur-ricula improvements in the area of wisdom of individuals, society, and civiliza-tion. This paradigm shift in education should lead to graduating wise profes-sionals and citizens, who eventually can act wisely in organization, society, and civilization.

A. Further Research Directions— Investigate how you can contribute to the philosophical approach toward

wisdom, since the philosophers are not involved in this quest.— Investigate how you can contribute to the interdisciplinary approach to-

ward wisdom from your specific discipline point of view.— Investigate how the ideas presented in this chapter can be applied in your

discipline.

B. Research Opportunities— The research opportunities are in investigating the issues of wisdom in

disciplines other than philosophy and psychology.

C. Additional Ideas— The research opportunities is in the applying the wisdom versus know-

ledge approach in evaluating the current and future states of civilization.

D. Rational — Today, the civilization is so developed and limited by the decline of stra-

tegic resources that is facing the sustainability question. It is not enough to quote the ancient sages what do they think about wisdom. Knowledge is the mostly mentioned as the tool in solving the current civilization problems, but it is not true, since wisdom is the highest human virtue which decides about well-being of civilization. Hence, the study of wisdom as the ultimate unite of human cognition must be advanced decisively nowadays if civilization could last forever?

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New York: Oxford University Press.Behe, M. (1996). Darwin’s black box: the biochemical challenge to evolution.

New York: The Free Press.

42 Andrew Targowski

Bertalanffy, L. (1968). General system theory. New York: George Braziller.Ciapalo, T. (ed.). (1997). The end of philosophy and the end of physics: a dead

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Copleston, F. S. J. (1946). History of philosophy. Westminister, MD: Newman Bookshop.

Dancy, J. (1985). Introduction to contemporary epistemology. Oxford: Black-well.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR — professor, Western Michigan University; President of the Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations. andrew.targowski@wmich.edu

END NOTES1). These wisdom concepts of meaningful life in different civilizations have been shared with the author by his faculty colleagues from Western Michigan University; Satish Deshpande (Hindu), Anne-Marie Oulai (African), Pairin Katerattanakul (Buddhist), Mushtaq Luqmani (Islamic), Oleg Benesch (Japanese)(ISCSC), Bernard Han (Chinese).