The Distinction between Wisdom and Knowledge

Wisdom is insight into moral good and evil, and the proper attitudes to self, and others, in the concrete conduct of life as a whole. A wise man is, thus, not he who is an expert in logic, mathematics, science or other branches of knowledge, but does not know what to do, when he is betrayed by a friend or loved one, or when his son is killed in an accident, or when old age, disease or danger confronts him with impending death. Wisdom is constituted by proper attitudes to the world, knowledge by the accurate awareness of the world. Wisdom and knowledge are, however, related, since the proper attitude or the right response to an object, presupposes accurate awareness or knowledge of its nature or its properties.

In the pre-scientific era, philosophy itself, in the form of speculative ontology and cosmology, provided knowledge. This task is now performed by the different branches of natural and social sciences, separately and jointly. And history, in the broad sense, is the source, par excellence, of such knowledge since every scientific discipline has its own history of development.

Limitations of classical Philosophy

Classical philosophy, as the source of wisdom, suffers from some serious limitations. First, it regards cosmological theories as if they were super scientific hypotheses, meant to explain the nature and functioning of Reality at a higher level than that of science. The philosopher further claims his own theory to be true and all other theories to be false. He mistakenly thinks that his technical terms refer to metaphysical entities or essences, whose nature is truly revealed by their own theories, but falsified by rival theories. Thirdly, classical philosophy employs abstract conceptual analysis or reasoning (which is neither logically coercive nor based on any clear cut rules of language), completely ignoring the historical or situ-ational determinants of the rival conceptual systems, which follow from the decision to identify and label man's experience in a particular way.

The role of hidden value judgments, or attitudes and interests, in shaping philosophical theories, is, thus, concealed from him and from others. In other words, the philosopher is unaware of the influence of linguistic, historical, and psychological factors upon the choice of conceptual schemes, which are mistakenly held to be the result of purely rational or logical thinking. The disagreement of other philosophers does not bother him, since he attributes this falsity to their crooked thinking, instead of taking the trouble to go into the complex causes and reasons for the pervasive and chronic disease of philosophical disagreement, in sharp contrast with the uniform conclusions of science.

Two Complementary approaches

The linguistic approach to philosophy emphasizes the role of linguistic or semantic factors, while the sociological approach that of values or interests of individuals or groups in the shaping of conflicting philosophical theories or ideologies. In the final analysis, both the approaches complement each other. The proper pursuit of wisdom requires both systematic linguistic analysis (to avoid semantic confusions and errors that generate philosophical controversies) and the study of empirical history to identify the values or interests which mould the thinking of a person, of a social group or of an entire age

Let us now come to the wisdom, which history teaches us more abundantly than any other discipline. Only a few main themes can be included in this concluding portion of the essay.

(1) Dialectical Movement

The historical approach to the totality of life gives us a width and depth of vision, to see reality in its total career in space-time, instead of reality at any particular phase or stage in its development. We are, thus, enabled to see things whole and see them steady, instead of being carried away by passing fashions of thought, or by a single perspective which might satisfy a vital but narrow need of the hour, but ignore other needs.