What do you MEAN by wisdom? There is the type of wisdom which is just unsubstatiated assertations of truth, but there is also wisdom, as in the ability to use knowledge. Knowledge, like IQ doesn’t go far unless one has the ability to use it effectively.
Socrates said “I know that I don’t know”, which is something that describes a white way of thinking, an admission that there is more to learn, that we DON’T KNOW enough.
But everywhere else, the ‘wise man’ is the one who knows a lot of facts. He has a lot of knowledge, and that knowledge is passed on word for word, as if an heirloom. The ‘wise man’ doesn’t say he doesn’t know, he KNOWS and teaches what he knows. One does not need to think to do this.
But Aristotle, Socrates and Plato gave tools to obtain knowledge, to analyse information. A means of understanding, and it is this desire to understand which has driven the west.
#1 by Pain on 04/18/2008 - 4:59 pm
Yes.
It occurred to me while reading this that Gylfaginning (in the Prose Edda, which talks about Odin’s eye) begins by describing King Gylfi as a “wise man and cunning in magic.”
But “Gylfi” means gaping fool and “Gylfaginning” means the deluding of Gylfi.
The “wise man” deludes himself…
#2 by shari on 04/18/2008 - 9:00 pm
The highest IQ doesn’t help if it can’t smell bull shit. I think that was Mderpelding. I have used that.
#3 by Prometheus on 04/18/2008 - 9:09 pm
It is no paradox to me at all, that someone who is extremely intelligent, can know very little.