Post #164: Knowledge and Wisdom

18 Dec. 2024

     The need for wisdom, after suffering neglect for some time, may be at risk of becoming an intellectual cliché; but the question of how it relates to knowledge is of such vital importance that it cannot be evaded for long, trope or not. Where the border runs between the two is partly a matter of semantics, and further complicated by considerable overlap: wisdom is a kind of knowledge too. Even so, it’s not hard to find the basic line of demarcation: while knowledge centers on a technical and factual understanding of the world (thus know-how), wisdom is more concerned with what sense to make of the facts, how to employ technical skills, and why any of it matters. Knowledge gives you the data, the givens, while wisdom is about fitting the pieces together and making them relevant to the life well-lived.

     It follows that wisdom cannot be concerned with the rational mind alone, the intellect narrowly understood, but that it must bring along the heart, and the soul too, however one may understand the term. Thus wisdom cannot rest content with the true alone (as knowledge probably can), but needs to refer to the good and the beautiful as well, as the Platonists would put it. Insofar as there is a realm beyond the human, wisdom would be about making what contact we can with it, integrating the world of faith with that of understanding, though a wise faith will be discerning, even discriminating, in ways that a blind or naïve faith may not be. The discernment that is integral to wisdom may also distinguish it from knowledge, which can roam very freely, even indiscriminately, without losing its claim to be real.

     Both wisdom and knowledge gain by becoming aware of their limitations, but while there can be no sagacity where ignorance is not fully recognized (pace Socrates, or Confucius and Laotse), it is quite possible to be knowledgeable, expert even, against the background of great unacknowledged ignorance, because knowledge is never more than an island in the sea and does not cease to be land because the vastness of the waters surrounding it is not fully understood or appreciated. To admit oneself ignorant in crucial respects need not dent one’s wisdom, then, and may even enhance it, whereas to do the same limits by definition the scope of one’s knowledge.

     The near-infinite body of knowledge permits and invites endless divisions into specialized branches and ever finer gradations; hence it is entirely possible, alas, to be unwisely knowledgeable, as when one focuses too exclusively on the technical aspects of an issue, for example, or too narrowly full stop. Wisdom, on the other hand, looks by its very nature to the bigger picture, to the why and not just the how in life (#100). Thus wisdom is all about being able to separate the essential from the inessential, not just as a step towards solving problems, but as a matter of making better sense of what is at stake. Knowledge too is about questions as well as answers, but the emphasis is clearly on the latter, while with wisdom it may well be on the former, though in another sense wisdom can sometimes address questions adequately where knowledge simply capitulates.

     Knowledge can perhaps eschew moral or spiritual questions as not relevant, owing to its specialized compartments; wisdom must answer them, even if it be in the negative or by admitting defeat. Knowledge gives a sense of power and control, and thereby tends to breed pride in one’s mastery over the world of things; wisdom confronts the humbling world of meaning and ultimate truths and demands an appreciation for the tragic, even if tears are not the last word. Knowledge accepts the simple, but thrives on the complex; wisdom accepts the complex, but thrives on the simple. Knowledge may dwell in huts, but aspires to palaces; wisdom may dwell in palaces, but aspires to huts. Knowledge favors the sharp-minded, and youth is no obstacle to it; wisdom requires wealth of experience and seasoned judgment—mature common sense—and thus tends to arrive only with the beginnings of old age, if then. Knowledge imagines that it can be impersonal and unemotional; wisdom seeks to become detached, but understands the extent of its own entanglements and blind spots. Knowledge is ever-expanding and looks with condescension to the benighted ways of the past; wisdom sees folly at home as much in the present as at any time, and often among the most knowledgeable too, and therefore regards ancestral wisdom with respect, though not without critical distance.

     It’s easy to see why the sober-minded and intellectually scrupulous can get so uneasy about wisdom-talk. They worry, not without reason, that such talk is often little more than a high-sounding excuse for smuggling in all manner of sloppy thinking and unverifiable nonsense—old prejudices, superstitions, wild fantasies, the lot. The world runs, and runs rather well, the wisdom-skeptics would say, on scientific thinking and technical know-how, not pretensions to sagacity. And they have a point. What they too easily overlook in their triumph, however, is that science and technique fall short when we confront the deeper currents in life, the mysteries around the natural magnetisms that often guide us whether we are aware of them or not. Knowledge may bring more and more of these mechanisms to light, but whether it always leads to better understanding in the most profound sense is at least very doubtful.

     Wisdom-talk can be as cheap as any other talk; fine words may turn out, often enough, to be posturing and pretension only, whether fraudulent or sincere; but then they are not wisdom proper at all. It’s not fancy footwork that makes the sage; most genuine sages give a deceptively simple impression. It’s the depth of their insight that distinguishes them, and in this they do not depend on anyone else’s approval. Thus the self-reliance of the sage can be a great provocation to others: knowledge, power, wealth, beauty, strength—all such worldly currencies still need to enter into negotiations with others to make themselves properly felt. Only wisdom, if it is true, rests entirely secure within itself. Whether it is true, and how to make sure of it, is indeed a great riddle; but the wise, or those who would be, do not shrink before the Sphynx, and some of their most urgent warnings are directed precisely at our human instinct to dismiss as unimportant whatever gives us too much trouble, whether by way of questioning or answering.

     Knowledge and wisdom come equally from the mind, and they are complimentary, not contrary aspects of our human condition. Where they are properly integrated, the head and the heart speak with one voice, or at least their disagreements remain amicable, as in Plato’s hydra tamed with a friendly hand. Wisdom does not disdain the intellect, then, but it will uphold against all sophisticated reasoning to the contrary that without love even the eloquence of an angel, the ability to fathom all mysteries, or even the power to move mountains with one’s faith, would ring as hollow as a brass gong or a clanging cymbal.

     Knowledge speaks to us, among many other things, of how worldly fortunes and glories may be won; wisdom answers that it would profit a man nothing to gain the whole world if he lost his soul along the way. How to understand the soul—whether as an entity strictly speaking, or a psychological constellation, or a metaphor, or something else altogether—is another one of those profound mysteries that the wise will confront even though they are so much more easily raised than resolved. Nobody ever said that wisdom can be attained without great effort; only that it is worth the attempt.