Love Of Wisdom Research Articles

Cases Journal: The pitfalls to keep in mind

Perhaps the cause of our contemporary pessimism is our tendency to view history as a turbulent stream of conflicts – between individuals in economic life, between groups in politics, between creeds in religion, between states in war. This is the more dramatic side of history; it captures the eye of the historian and the interest of the reader. But if we turn from that Mississippi of strife, hot with hate and dark with blood, to look upon the banks of the stream, we find quieter but more inspiring scenes: women rearing children, men building homes, peasants drawing food from the soil, artisans making the conveniences of life, statesmen sometimes organizing peace instead of war, teachers forming savages into citizens, musicians taming our hearts with harmony and rhythm, scientists patiently accumulating knowledge, philosophers groping for truth, saints suggesting the wisdom of love. History has been too often a picture of the bloody stream. The history of civilization is a record of what happened on the banks. – Will Durant [1]

Old wives’ tales and philosophical delusions: on ‘the problem of women and African philosophy’

abstractThis article represents a response to ‘the problem of women and African philosophy’, which refers mainly to the absence of sRong women’s and feminist voices within the discipline of African philosophy. I investigate the possibility that African women are not so much excluded from the institutionalized discipline of philosophy, as preferring fiction as a genre for intellectual expression. This hypothesis can be supported by some feminists who read the absolute prioritisation of abstraction and generalization over the concrete and the particular as a masculine and western oppressive sRategy. Attention to the concrete and the unique which is made possible by literature more readily than by philosophy, could thus operate as a form of political resistance in certain contexts. If fiction is currently the preferred form of intellectual expression of African women, it is crucial that the community of professional philosophers in a context like South Africa should come to terms with the relevance of such a preference for philosophy’s self-conception, and it should work to make these intellectual contributions philosophically fruitful. In the process, we may entertain the hope that philosophy itself will move closer to its root or source as ‘love of wisdom’.

Augustine, Monica, and the Love of Wisdom

Augustine, Monica, and the Love of Wisdom

For the Love of Wisdom

For the Love of Wisdom

Philosophy, Science and Scientist [Turkish/Türkçe

Philosophy (from Greek, by way of Latin, philosophia, love of wisdom), the critical examination of the grounds for fundamental beliefs and an analysis of the basic concepts employed in the expression of such beliefs. As used originally by the ancient Greeks, the term philosophy meant the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. As special methods and principles were developed in the various areas of knowledge, each area acquired its own philosophical aspect, giving rise the philosophy of art, of science, and of religion. Science (Lat. scientia, from scire, to know), term used in its broadest meaning denote systematized knowledge in any field, but applied usually the organization of objectively verifiable sense experience.

What Price "Natural Law"?

What Price "Natural Law"? Gerhart Niemeyer "Natural" and "law" form a particular symbol pertaining to one mode of discovering the order of goodness, this mode invented by the classical Greek philosophers. They relied on a number of basic experiences and symbolic concepts: (a) the nous (mind, reason); something divine in man participating in the mind of divinity; (b) the distinction between "being" as the immanent order of "things" and "being" as the divine transcendence; (c) the realization that man, possessing language and moral discernment, has an order not merely as a "thing" but also as a participating partner of the transcendence. In modern times these concepts and underlying experiences have been lost. "Mind" and "rationality" to us mean the opposite of what they meant to the Greek philosophers. We have no longer a concept of "man" resembling theirs; the concept of "soul" [End Page 126] has disappeared; all values are completely relativized. We cannot, therefore, bring back "natural law" simply by reading the classical texts. The awareness of the order of goodness must be regained, but we have to pay a price for that. It probably requires the kind of deeply shaking experiences that came to members of Soviet labor camps as described by Solzhenitsyn and his friends. It also would include jettisoning our Enlightenment concept of history. Short of such sacrifices we would do well to use the concept "natural law" reluctantly, if at all. There is an order of goodness in the universe, and human knowledge can attain to it. The proposition is made here as an assertion and an affirmation. In the context of the question raised by this paper it comes as a premise which, if we did not have it, would leave us without anything to talk about. The statement avoids not only the terms "ethical," and "moral," but also "law," and "nature,"—all of these being words containing opinions where and how the order of goodness may be discovered, which is the question to be explored in this paper. That question, in our time, is raised for us politically. The frequent and urgent demand that we "return" to natural law, to which sometimes is added "and to classical philosophy," is felt in the context of politics and cultural crisis. The word "return," I take it, is not meant as "return to something that has passed out of reality," but rather, "return to the lost knowledge of an undoubted and continuing reality." At issue, then, is above all knowability, and that concerning the order of goodness, by way of "natural law." "Natural law" and "the order of goodness in the universe" are not to be taken as synonyms. "Natural law," or, in Aristotle's words, physei dikaion, is a symbolic form of human consciousness which came with classical Greek philosophy. One cannot assume that "before philosophy" people knew nothing about the order of goodness in the universe. At least Aristotle assumes that they did when he observed that philosophy is rooted in men's "wondering,"1 the root of philosophy, but conceded that a "lover of myth" was also in a sense a "lover of wisdom," for "the myth is (also) composed of wonders." Thus the knowledge of goodness through the symbol [End Page 127] of physis (nature) has a specific character, a historical setting, and is attended by certain attitudes. How can one describe these specifics of "natural law"? First, as Aristotle's remark manifests, philosophy, and with it, the symbol of "nature," are historically related to the myth, a complex relationship which includes both a rejection of the myth as mere "opinion" and an attraction to the myth as evidenced by both Plato and Aristotle, the latter being reported to have said, "the older I grow the more I love the myth." At any rate, Eric Voegelin can say without fear of being refuted that both philosophy and myth began with "the primary experience" of the cosmos as a whole, an experience in which the cosmos with the things in it appear to the eye all at once and hence as a whole, which led Xenophanes to exclaim, "the One is God."2 The distinctive character of the symbol "nature," which does play...

Knowledge, Wisdom, and the Philosopher

The overarching thesis of this essay is that despite the etymological relationship between the word ‘philosophy’ and wisdom—the word ‘philosophos’, in Greek, means ‘lover of wisdom’—and irrespective of the longstanding tradition of identifying philosophers with ‘wise men’—mainline philosophy, historically, has had little interest in wisdom and has been preoccupied primarily with knowledge. Philosophy, if we are speaking of the mainline tradition, has had and continues to have more in common with the natural and social sciences than it does with the humanities and liberal arts. In advancing this thesis, I divide the history of philosophy into three competing traditions: the mainline tradition of philosophy and two philosophical ‘countercultures,’ one conservative the other radical. At issue between these rival traditions is precisely the relative significance of knowledge and wisdom and their respective places in inquiry. I also provide an account of the distinction between knowledge and wisdom—which I argue is greater than has perhaps been appreciated—and between the natural and applied sciences, on the one hand, and the humanities and liberal arts on the other.

No Flight of Peace, No Lover of Wisdom? A Reconsideration of Two Phrases in Phoenician and Punic

This paper offers new interpretations of passages in KAI 1: 2 and KAI 121 on the basis of contextual and etymological considerations.

Expressive Truth: An Argument for Literary Philosophy

At present, philosophy appears to be consigned to the role of critic: its skeptical task is to cast doubt on any apparent truism by exposing its vulnerable underbelly. Whether we clarify concepts to excise a purer kernel of truth or deconstruct texts to expose a chasm of complexities, we are experts in the skill of intellectual dis section. While this critical stance is of undoubted value, both in exposing our hidden prejudices and in opening our minds to alternative possibilities, the question remains whether this is all that our field has to offer. Certainly metaphysics and logic have proven to be troublesome bedfellows, but in our efforts to be precise, have we too narrowly drawn the parameters of our discourse? Philosophy is, or should be, the love of wisdom, an ongoing consideration of life's most profound mysteries; and yet we have reason to suspect our ability to address these broader questions. By what methods, then, can we affirm truths about the meaning of life in the wake of our skepticism of the possibility of such truths? It is my claim that philosophy has become trapped by the belief that preci sion is our surest path to knowledge. In our despair of knowing things in them selves, we confine our discourse to subjects that lie within empirical confines. We hope that where we failed to capture the bigger picture we can still master objects closer to hand, or at least be precise about why we cannot master them. I aim to challenge this limitative assumption and to affirm in its place a variety of means by which we may speak philosophically on a wider variety of topics. In doing so, I will reconsider the purported disjunction between poetry and literature,1 on the one hand, and philosophy, on the other, as when Plato aligned poetry with the passions and philosophy with reason (Plato 1992, 522 a-b), or when Carnap distinguished meaningful analysis of philosophical fact from the merely expres sive?read meaningless?poetics of metaphysics.2 In both cases, philosophy's method of securing knowledge depends on distinguishing rational arguments from expressive utterances without a meaningful referent, and poetry is decidedly placed into the latter camp, its role being to arouse our emotions, not to illuminate our intellect. However, we need to turn from Plato's condemnation of the poets and instead investigate poetry's potential for veridical philosophical communication.

Lorenzo Valla and the Traditions and Transmissions of Philosophy

What is "philosophy"? Who is a "philosopher"? These questions underlay much of Salvatore Camporeale's work, and they are deeper than one might suppose. We can begin with one of Camporeale's favorite figures, Lorenzo Valla, and listen to one of the ways he answered these questions. In the introduction to his work reforming Aristotelian logic, the Repastinatio totius dialectice, Valla situates the debate on wisdom by recalling the case of Pythagoras.1 "What a marvelous praise of modesty it was," Valla wrote, when Pythagoras, asked whether he considered himself wise, replied that he was not "wise," but was rather a "lover of wisdom"—not sophos, but philosophos.2 Valla uses here a humanistic trope, found also in Petrarch's advice to Luigi Marsili, to the effect that Marsili should shape the practice of his life in order to become a "verae sapientiae amator," a "lover of true wisdom."3 These citations from Petrarch and Valla alert us to the well-studied fact that, in the view of some humanists, academic "philosophy" had usurped the name "philosophy" and the self-searching meaning behind it. Certain humanists were proposing an alternative notion of what wisdom signified and consequently of what philosophy itself—the "love of wisdom"—represented. It seemed that wisdom needed to be located in a more persuasive way in the world of human beings, history, and language, rather than in one of eternal [End Page 483] suprahuman essences; in short, "philosophy" had to be brought closer to rhetoric and philology. The goal of this paper is to examine this idea in a twofold manner: through the history of terms and concepts as these are refracted by and through the history of institutionalized learning; and through a brief foray into Valla's preface to his great critique of western logic. There has been a lot of challenging and interesting work on this topic in the last few decades. At the same time, there may be cause to wonder whether relatively recent historians have unwittingly become too bogged down in names, failing to see the real conflict. They have tended to assume that the modern, sharp separation of humanistic "disciplines," such as rhetoric and philosophy, existed in the same way and with the same force of conviction in the premodern era. True, there are famous ancient, medieval, and early modern examples of self-defined "philosophers" differentiating themselves from "philologists" and vice versa, most notably Seneca, who—lamenting the professionalization of education in his day—complained in a letter that "what was once philosophy, has become philology" (Ep. 108.23). Yet, the more one investigates this problem, and the more one peers beneath the surface of the seemingly stark divisions between "philosophy" and "philology," the more difficult this strong separation is to maintain. This notion of the possible interpenetrability of "philosophy," and "philology," and "rhetoric" as concepts was probably easier to understand in the Renaissance than it is now. The differences between the Renaissance and our own era lie in institutional context and personal approach, both of which have been, for about six or seven intellectual generations now (but no more than that), supported by a fourfold set of assumptions about what "real" or "professional" philosophy represents: first, that philosophy is primarily about metaphysics and ontology, or rather that there exists a hierarchy in which metaphysics and ontology stand at the top; other things, such as history, language, or rhetoric are "just not philosophy." Second, a retrospectively understood Cartesian split between mind and body is basically true (and that it is legitimate to project that dualistic split back onto thinkers who did not hold the same sort of dualism as axiomatic); and consequently third, that epistemology should be privileged, that is, that knowing and the study of how knowing happens are primarily what philosophy is about. Hence "philosophy" is regulative, a master-discipline that oversees the truth claims of all...

HOW I SEE PHILOSOPHY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AND BEYOND

: This article raises some questions about the relevance and value of philosophy at present and suggests some ways in which philosophy can become relevant again. It challenges philosophers to become more actively engaged in the world and to restore Western philosophy's original vision of “love of wisdom,” a value sorely lacking in the present-day world and abandoned by much of contemporary Western philosophy. The pursuit of wisdom would involve the quest for sound judgment and synoptic insights regarding the ends humankind should strive to realize, including moral visions to help Homo sapiens emerge from the atavistic jungle. It would also involve sound judgment regarding the proper means for the attainment of these desirable ends. For these things to be possible, philosophy would need to draw upon humankind's collective wisdom in philosophy, religion, and myth, and on advances in scientific knowledge, thereby gaining an ever-deeper understanding of ourselves and of our place in the cosmos.

The Apocryphon of John (NHC II, 1) and the Graeco-Egyptian Alchemical Literature

The hermetic science known to us under the modern term of 'alchemy' was practised by Egyptian and Jewish 'lovers of wisdom' in the first centuries of the Christian era, as a sacred and mystical art of transformation, regeneration and ultimately of salvation, applied to the human soul as well as to the material elements, especially metals. The remaining Greek writings of these philosophers were collected and edited in 1888 by M. Berthelot, as the Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs. To the few scholars who, in the first half of the last century, devoted their attention to the study of these challenging texts, it appeared that there were links between the salvific doctrine of the alchemists and that of the so-called Gnostics described by the Church Fathers. The pur pose of the present article is, first, to introduce the reader to the alchemical lit erature and, second, to demonstrate that not only the doctrinal, but also the 'practical' side of alchemy shows significant similarities with the rituals of both 'Valentinians' and 'Sethians' communities, better known to us since the dis covery of the Nag Hammadi Library.

The Wisdom of Love or Negotiating Mythos and Logos with Plato and Levinas

The Wisdom of Love or Negotiating Mythos and Logos with Plato and Levinas

Mythos, Logos and the Love of Wisdom

Mythos, Logos and the Love of Wisdom

Political Philosophy and the Love of Wisdom: Leo Strauss and the “New” Conservatism

Political Philosophy and the Love of Wisdom: Leo Strauss and the “New” Conservatism

An Introduction to the Love of Wisdom: An Essential and Existential Approach to Philosophy by James Harold

An Introduction to the Love of Wisdom: An Essential and Existential Approach to Philosophy by James Harold

Towards a Wisdom of Love. Dialogue between Luce Irigaray and Judith Still around Dialoques and The Way of Love at the ICA 16 December 2002

Towards a Wisdom of Love. Dialogue between Luce Irigaray and Judith Still around <i>Dialoques</i> and <i>The Way of Love</i> at the ICA 16 December 2002

Rhetoric and the Defence of Philosophy in Plato’s Gorgias

In his Gorgias, Plato is not merely concerned with criticizing Sophists, tyrants, or immoral uses of rhetoric. Rather he explores the harmful consequences of living without loving wisdom. A large part of the dialogue is devoted to pointing out the difficulties associated with practicing philosophy as a way of life. These difficulties are so great that the best way of arguing for its practice is to dramatize the harmful consequences inherent in rival ways of life that deny the need for wisdom. Thus the Gorgias explores the harmful effects of Callicles’ denial of his need for wisdom. Socrates shows that Callicles does not know what he wants or needs. Instead of letting his awareness of ignorance blossom in love of wisdom, however, Callicles pursues power. Yet this love of power leads to disharmony and turmoil. In the Gorgias, Plato’s rhetorical defence of philosophy amounts to this: the only thing more difficult than living with the love of wisdom is living without it.

Coleridge and the Question of Female Talents

From February 1796 until May 1797, The Monthly Magazine, the dissenting journal, edited by John Aikin, ran a series of seventeen questions posed by an anonymous ‘The Enquirer’. It is the third of these questions, published with a lengthy answer and appearing in the third issue of the journal in April 1796, that I wish to take up here. The question was this: ‘Are literary and scientific pursuits suited to the female character?’ The Enquirer, defining himself as a ‘lover of wisdom’, first observes

Human Nature and the Love of Wisdom: Rousseau's Hidden (and Modified) Platonism

Book Five of Rousseau's Emile treats the same three themes, in the same order, as Book Five of Plato's Republic, and so can rightly be seen as a response to it. The response appears at first to be largely negative, for Rousseau emphatically rejects the political proposals made by Socrates. Yet Socrates' proposals can also be interpreted nonpolitically, as pertaining to the development of a just or healthy soul. And at this level, there turns out to be surprisingly close agreement and correspondence between the respective Books Five-not just because Rousseau, too, speaks to the development of the healthy soul, but also because the education depicted in Book Five of Emile emerges, on close study, as an education in or toward philosophy. Even as Rousseau embraces a Platonic teaching, though, he modifies it in a way that suggests a certain compatibility between aristocratic and democratic principles.