Dear Anand,
There is another way of putting the matter. Academic inquiry as it exists today is what we need in order to acquire wisdom. It was intended for this purpose. In its
modern form, it stems from The Enlightenment; the intention was that natural and social philosophy together would procure enlightenment, progress towards an enlightened world.
The trouble is that, judged from this standpoint, academia as it exists today is flawed. The philosophes of the French Enlightenment, in particular, had the profound idea,
but they made basic mistakes in developing the idea, and these mistakes are still built into academia today.
In order to develop a kind of inquiry rationally designed to help us make progress towards a wiser world, we don’t need to begin from scratch, as it were. What we need
to do is correct the flaws in what we have inherited from the past.
Put right the intellectual blunders inherent in academia today, and we would have what we need: institutions of learning, a kind of inquiry, well-designed from the standpoint
of helping humanity acquire a bit more wisdom.
Best wishes,
Nick
Website:
www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom
Publications online:
http://philpapers.org/profile/17092
http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/view/people/ANMAX22.date.html
Thank you for your comment. Decades ago, around 1974, during the course of writing a book called “The Aims of Science”, that never got published, I came to the conclusion
that academia, dominated by knowledge-inquiry, was an intellectual and humanitarian disaster. I became aware that humanity urgently needed a new kind of inquiry embedded in its universities around the world, which took, as its basic task, to help people realize
(apprehend and create) what is of value in life. But what should I call the basic intellectual aim of this new kind of inquiry, given that it was not (or not just) knowledge? Very reluctantly, I hit upon “wisdom”. And in a book published in 1984 called
“From Knowledge to Wisdom”, I said exactly what I meant by “wisdom”: here is my 1984 characterization of it:-
“The central task of inquiry is to devote
reason to the enhancement of wisdom –
wisdom being understood here as the desire, the active endeavour, and the capacity to discover and achieve what is
desirable and of value in life, both for oneself and for others.
Wisdom includes knowledge and understanding but goes beyond them in also including: the desire and active striving for what is of
value, the ability to see what is of value, actually and potentially,
in the circumstances of life, the ability to experience value, the
capacity to help realize what is of value for oneself and others, the capacity to help solve those problems of living that arise in connection with attempts to realize what is of value, the capacity to use and develop knowledge, technology and understanding
as needed for the realization of value. Wisdom, like knowledge, can
be conceived of, not only in personal terms, but also in
institutional or social terms. We can thus interpret the philosophy
of wisdom as asserting: the basic task of rational inquiry is to help
us develop wiser ways of living, wiser institutions, customs and
social relations, a wiser world.” (ch. 4)
“Wisdom” is used, here, as a technical term for the basic intellectual-social aim of a kind of inquiry rationally devoted to helping people achieve what is of value in life.
And it means “the desire, the active endeavour, and the capacity to discover and achieve what is desirable and of value in life”. Wisdom-inquiry, if it existed, would be rationally designed to promote wisdom, in this sense.
“Wisdom” can, of course, quite legitimately, mean different things for different purposes, and it is foolish to think there is any such thing as
the definition of wisdom. Most notions include the idea, however, that wisdom is something of value: anyone wise in my sense will be able to acquire wisdom in other senses, if they are genuinely of value.
The crucial point, however, is that humanity really does urgently need to learn how to resolve conflicts and problems of living in more cooperatively rational ways – in more
effective, intelligent and humane ways – and it is just that which wisdom-inquiry is designed to help us achieve, and knowledge-inquiry is horribly badly designed for.
Anand, there is a very clear answer to your question. Wisdom as I have characterized it, is very clearly worth having. Wisdom, in that sense, is the proper basic intellectual-personal-social
aim of genuinely rational inquiry – wisdom-inquiry, rather different from what we have at present.
That which is of value in life has a multiplicity of aspects; in order to realize what is of value we need to do a multiplicity of different things in different contexts, in
the pursuit of different aspects of what is of value. Looking after a sick friend is of value; so is creating a work of art; and so is entertaining children, or building a much needed house. The skills and capacities, insights and instincts, emotional responses
and problem-solving capacities, needed to realize what is of value, are all encouraged to grow within the framework of wisdom-inquiry. Of course! That is the fundamental idea. Have a look at “From Knowledge to Wisdom” (or “What’s Wrong With Science?” or
“Is Science Neurotic?” or “Two Great Problems of Learning: Science and Civilization”.
Not everyone who is educated within the framework of wisdom-inquiry will end up equally wise, anymore than everyone who is educated within the framework of knowledge-inquiry
ends up equally knowledgeable. But one thing I feel pretty confident about. If humanity managed to get its wits about it sufficiently to transform knowledge-inquiry into wisdom-inquiry, there would be a lot more wisdom around (in my sense), and we would
come to live in a rather wiser world.
All good wishes,
Nick
Website:
www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom
Publications online: http://philpapers.org/profile/17092
http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/view/people/ANMAX22.date.html
From: Group concerned that academia should seek and promote wisdom
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Ak Awasthi
Sent: 12 July 2017 16:18
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Damaging Irrationality of Knowledge-Inquiry
Dear Nick,
Whatever you propose, has definite merits and can bring results to the tune of accelerating intellectual / technological efficiency but as wisdom is above all this-- it is insight not a faculty to be trained or sharpened-- the net result
may be that we succeed in inspiring someone touch somewhere airy precincts of wisdom, which he/she may use in the hour of need but it is difficult to claim that he /she would surely behave like a wise person always. Let us think over again if wisdom is a
discipline? If it is not then it can't be tought. If it is, then what is its form? Human history does not help us resolve the latter.
Anand Kumar Awasthi
Former Professor of English and Chair, Director, Centre for Canadian
Studies,
Dr Hari Singh Gour Central University, Saugor (MP)-470003
0562-2600368; 09425451181, 08171038448, 09412834899
Home:25 Syndicate Bank Colony, Opp Nirbhay Nagar, Near Asopa Hospital, Gailana Road, AGRA-282007 U.P.
On Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 9:47 AM, Thomas Mengel <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Nicholas et al.,
Further on the question “can wisdom be taught”: The following book has been quite influential on my teaching and writing about wisdom education (e.g., Mengel,
T. (2010). Learning that matters – Discovery of meaning and development of wisdom in undergraduate education. Collected Essays on Learning and Teaching (CELT),
Vol. III, June 2010, p. 119-123. - >Download article<); in case you don’t know this book, it is worth
a read:
2008
Editors: Ferrari, Michel, Potworowski,
Georges (Eds.)
( retrieved from: http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9781402065316 )
THOMAS MENGEL |
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From:
"[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
on behalf of "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wednesday, July 12, 2017 at 7:34 AM
To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Damaging Irrationality of Knowledge-Inquiry
Dear Friends of Wisdom,
I am delighted by the discussion that has broken out amongst us. I do hope we
can find a way of acting together rather more than we have in the past to get our message across – and make some headway towards creating the kind of institutions of learning that humanity so urgently needs.
A comment on the question that has been raised: Can wisdom be taught? This seems
to me the wrong question to ask. The glaring disaster that ought to stare us in the face, it seems to me, is just this: Academic inquiry devoted to the pursuit of knowledge is an intellectual disaster and a human disaster when judged from the standpoint of
the basic aim of helping to promote human welfare.
The successful scientific pursuit of knowledge (and technological know-how) has, of
course, led to a multitude of good things. It has made the modern world possible. But the successful pursuit of knowledge
dissociated from a more fundamental concern to help solve problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways has led to all our current global problems as well: global warming, population growth, habitat destruction and rapid extinction of
species, lethal modern war, gross inequality around the globe, pollution of earth, sea and air, nuclear weapons – even fake news and Trump.
At the root of our world’s problems there is a monumental
intellectual blunder: rationality demands that inquiry pursues knowledge in a way dissociated from human concerns, from problems of living. The scientific community is convinced that this is the proper way to proceed. The idea is never taught; it is
simply implicit in everything that is taught. Academics are, in effect, brainwashed to accept the idea without question. But it is a fallacy – a fallacy built into the institutional/intellectual structure of science, of much of academia, with disastrous
human consequences.
A kind of inquiry that is genuinely devoted, rationally, to helping to promote human
welfare, would give absolute intellectual priority to the basic problems that need to be solved – namely problems of living, problems we encounter in our lives as we strive to achieve what is of value in life.
Solutions to problems of living are not, primarily, facts, theories, items of knowledge:
they are actions, what we do or refrain from doing. A kind of inquiry devoted to helping to promote human welfare in a genuinely intellectually rigorous way, would give intellectual priority to the tasks of:
1.
Articulating, and improving the articulating of, problems of living;
2.
Proposing and critically assessing possible and actual actions – policies, political programmes, ways of living, philosophies of life.
The enterprise of acquiring knowledge and developing technology would emerge out of, and
feed back into, these two intellectually basic activities, 1 and 2.
(And furthermore, natural science would put aim-oriented empiricism into scientific practice
instead of paying lip service to standard empiricism, as at present; and social inquiry and the humanities would seek to help humanity put aim-oriented rationality into practice in personal, social, institutional and political life, to facilitate the realization
of what is of value in life.)
Academia as it exists as present is an intellectual and human disaster. The intellectual
failings of academia have a great deal to do with the failings of the modern world. As I see it, there is hardly any more urgent thing that we need to do than to spread awareness among whoever will listen – but ultimately among the academic community, and
especially among those who have the power to influence its character – that what we have at present really is very, very, very seriously intellectually defective, in a wholesale, structural way, there being an urgent need to put right these glaring intellectual
defects. The future of humanity may depend on this being done.
Academia has been labouring away under the wrong paradigm. We urgently need a new, better
paradigm. We need an academic revolution.
What would this entail? I have tried to make a brief summary of the changes that need to
be made here:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom/whatneedstochange .
But the crucial issue, it seems to me, is to see clearly what is wrong, intellectually, with
the academic status quo, with knowledge-inquiry (insofar as it dominates academia today). Only then does it become apparent what needs to be done to put matters right.
And, incidentally, the whole tendency of wisdom-inquiry, with its encouragement to put heart
and mind in touch with one another, so that we may develop heartfelt minds and mindful hearts, would be to enable us to discover, as we learn and live, how to realize what is of value in life, for ourselves and others – the task of wisdom-inquiry, and a good
aim to bear in mind as one lives!
All good wishes,
Nick
Website:
www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom
Publications online:
http://philpapers.org/profile/17092
http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/view/people/ANMAX22.date.html