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The Pursuit of Wisdom: an Enduring Love Affair

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Published: Jun 13, 2024

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Introduction, body paragraph, the significance of wisdom, manifestations in various philosophical traditions, relevance in contemporary society.

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Philosophy—The Love of Wisdom?

Episode #1 of the course What is wisdom: An introduction to philosophy by Will Buckingham

Welcome to this short philosophy course. My name is Will Buckingham. I’m a philosopher and writer who has spent many years thinking about the practical implications of philosophy for everyday life. Over the next 10 days, we’ll be exploring how philosophers both East and West have thought about wisdom and how we might be able to cultivate it. Together, we will be looking at some of the most important and influential thinkers in all of human history, from Plato and Aristotle to Confucius and the Buddha.

Knowledge and Action

But what is wisdom? In an everyday sense, we often have a good idea of what wisdom means. Perhaps you have a friend whom you consider particularly wise, whom you regularly go to for advice. Or perhaps you have a friend who is spectacularly unwise and who, when you go together to the zoo, leaps over the barrier to give the lions a cuddle. We are quite happy to call our 1st friend wise and our 2nd friend unwise. But what do we actually mean by this?

To be wise, it seems that you need to satisfy at least 2 requirements. You need to have knowledge (you need to know that lions are dangerous animals). But you also need to act wisely in the light of this knowledge. In other words, knowing what you know about lions, you still need to resist the mad impulse to cuddle them when you are overwhelmed by their cuteness.

Whatever else wisdom might be, it involves both what we know and what we do .

Philosophy and Wisdom

The word “philosophy” literally means the “love” ( philo in Greek) of “wisdom” ( sophia ). So, a philosopher is somebody who loves wisdom. This, of course, leaves us with 2 important questions: What is wisdom? And what does it mean to love wisdom?

The idea of philosophy goes all the way back to ancient Greece. It is said that the philosopher Pythagoras in the 6th century BCE was the 1st to call himself a philosopher—a philosophos, or “lover of wisdom.” In calling himself this, he was not claiming to be wise. Instead, he was merely saying that he was somebody who valued or cherished wisdom.

Later, the philosopher Plato, who lived in the 5th century BCE, explored these ideas in more depth. In a text called the Symposium , Plato claimed that a philosopher was somebody who was “between the wise and the ignorant.” In other words, a philosopher cared about wisdom but also knew that they were ignorant (we will see tomorrow how Plato was influenced in this by his teacher, Socrates).

Wise Thinking, Wise Living

The philosophers we will be exploring in the coming days have different approaches to the question of what wisdom is and how we might become wise. Some philosophers are more practical, focusing more on what we do . Others are more theoretical and grapple with questions about what we know . In this course, we will explore both kinds of questions. We will look at how we might think more wisely and how we might live more wisely.

A Word of Warning

By the end of this course, you should have a better idea of how some of history’s greatest philosophers have thought about wisdom and why it matters. I can’t, of course, guarantee that you will become wise in 10 days (and as we will see, the philosophers don’t all agree on what “wisdom” means, anyway). But what I can promise you is that through looking at these different philosophers, you will have new ways of asking the question, “what is wisdom?”, new ways of answering the question and perhaps new ways of thinking about what it might mean to live wisely.

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Essay on Wisdom: Top 4 Essays on Wisdom

• Essay on Wisdom

Essay on Relationship Between Wisdom and Knowledge

Essay on wisdom is power, essay on true wisdom come from experience.

Wisdom is one of the highest forms of human characteristics. Through wisdom, virtues can be brought to life. The beauty of wisdom is that it is not dependent on the theories that are written in books, or the curriculum in the schools and colleges. It is not something that can be transferred just by talking about it. Wisdom is how life shapes us. It is about the impacts that we have upon our soul while going through all sorts of pleasant and unpleasant experiences of life.

Various Versions But One

Many philosophers, religious institutions, and educationalists have defined wisdom in their own definite ways. Some try to relate it to the right way of living, some say that wisdom is acknowledging and being answerable to God for all the deeds. It has also been known to associate with decision-making between right and wrong, habits like speaking truth, following the moral values.

Intelligence is Not Always Wisdom

Although, on a more spiritual note, or a generic note, as we may say, wisdom is not confined to some rules or paths. A collection of experiences and virtues shape our wisdom. One may have a wide range and depth of knowledge but that doesn’t necessarily make her/him wise.

Illustrations

There are so many beautiful illustrations reflecting light on the uniqueness and significance of wisdom. It is very simple and possible for almost anybody to learn to fire a gun. But not everybody is capable of making the right decision about when to and when not to fire the gun. This decision-making requires wisdom.

The Importance of Wisdom

But why so much fuss about wisdom? How does it make our life different or change it? Well, wisdom takes us above the loop of feelings, emotions, and the whirlpools of envy, restlessness, and anger. It brings peace to the heart and to the mind as well. It is only through wisdom, that one may realize that forgiving others bad deeds, ignoring their faults, and being kind and accepting to all is the highest and truest virtues of all human beings.

Wisdom is the germination of the seeds of empathy, compassion, and kindness. It is the eruption of unconditional love toward every soul, whether human beings, animals, or trees. Wisdom gives us the ability to see the beauty and real power of nature. In true words, this is the real way of being close to God.

It is only through wisdom that one understands and realizes that religions, rules of worshipping, and confining God to being a particular person or version are nothing but just a human way of interpretation of the power of nature. To a wise person, they look mere concepts to him and he/she is able to go beyond these things. The definition of God, the right path, the understanding of the whole universe changes to him. Wisdom gets us out of the chains of the societal norms and allows us to look past them. It shows us the real purpose of life and gifts us with the power to attain and live with that true purpose.

Many of us may get confused when asked about the difference or relationship between wisdom and knowledge. On the surface level, both look similar, if not the same. But the thing is, wisdom is more abstract in nature and knowledge is somewhat technical.

Knowledge comes from reading, exploring, learning, and educating oneself. In order to increase the knowledge, one can turn toward reading more books or learning and specializing in a skill. In other words, it is measurable up to a certain extent.

Wisdom is what life and its experiences teach us. Being wise is not the same as being intelligent. It is about much more than just the skills and mastery of a subject. In fact, wisdom is about human virtues, that makes us different from other animal species. These virtues are developing empathy, having compassion and kindness, becoming more self-aware of our thoughts, emotions, and feelings.

Wisdom and Knowledge

The difference between the two is very subtle. However, if put into simpler words, it is not that difficult to understand either. One can gain knowledge and know what is right and wrong, what is healthy and what is unhealthy, how to perform a task, how to drive, how to cook. All these things can be learned and specialized in. But, the ability to decide what is right and what is wrong, the capacity to choose the right and skip the wrong, comes from wisdom.

In another way, the ability to use the learned knowledge in the best and most ethical way is called wisdom. Knowing how to use the knowledge is wisdom. Knowledge can be given but wisdom cannot. Knowledge can be learned but wisdom can only be attained.

An example would be the best way to understand the concepts deeply. So, for instance, all kinds of thoughts, whether positive or negative, healthy or toxic, happy or sad come to our mind. We feel them and know that these feelings are a very natural part of human beings. This is knowledge. But understanding, observing, and staying aware and detached of these thoughts requires wisdom. Wisdom takes us to a much higher level and answers the riddle of why we are feeling in a particular way and whether we should act on those feelings or not. That judgment call depends on our wisdom.

There have been many philosophical, religious, and educational versions and definitions of wisdom and knowledge. Nonetheless, all lead to the same conclusion. Everybody knows and has been taught about the right way of living but not all can do it really. That is where a fine demarcation comes between knowledge and wisdom. To be able to apply the knowledge, to be able to think, and acknowledge why things are the way they are, makes us wise.

Thus, it is only through wisdom that we begin to behave beyond the petty attributes like self-obsession, jealousy, anger and instead, learn to grow as a human being filled with compassion, empathy, acceptance, and love for all.

The human race has wondered and marveled for a long time for its distinguished ability to behave and think differently than other animal species. We have highly evolved emotional, mental, and social etiquette. But is that the end of the list? Of course not. There is something very peculiar about us which makes us stand out as a species, which transforms us from Homo Sapiens into human beings. And that is called wisdom.

Seeking Wisdom

There is a reason why people do not find peace in spite of being surrounded by all kinds of materialistic pleasures. There is also a reason why many people living a highly comfortable and rich life, leave it just like that and set out to explore something that is still unknown to them.

In India, such ways of life are not new to us. We have always been surrounded bys saints and celibates. The culture in India has long been enriching. It has always focused less on physical pleasures and more on the seeking nature within us. After a certain point, we all begin to realize that the worldly amusements can only satisfy us on a superficial level but cannot quench our soul. For our spiritual growth, something deeper is needed.

What is not Wisdom

All around us, we see the world burning with feelings of competition, unsparing greed, unforgiveness, jealousy, anger, and what not. And this is not the story of those who lack basic amenities to a dignified life. This is the case of people who have everything in abundance but peace and gratitude.

Wisdom takes us from this path of uncertainty and shallowness and brightens up with the light of truth. And that same truth would liberate us. This is the power of wisdom. Wisdom is not restricted to listening to some discourses or following the religious rites and rituals. It is about realizing the darkness of greed, that the constant need for competing with each other is nothing but just a bottomless pit. A whirlpool of desires.

Wisdom is Empowering

Through our experiences comes a realization that the peace of our mind is in our hands. This is the most empowering thing that can happen to us and no book can teach this to us. It is like reaching and activating the seeds and portals of consciousness which were dormant within us till now. The whole phenomenon enriches us at a much deeper level and calms down the inside chaos. After which, we start to see the beauty in everything and learn to accept life the way it is. Our heart is filled with forgiveness and compassion.

Wisdom frees us from the chains of a limited mind so that we do not remain the slaves of our own desires. Books can teach us what is just and what is unjust. But the power of standing and walking down that just path is provided by our wisdom. This spiritual and emotional advancement is irreplaceable and can only become possible through wisdom.

They say that life changes you and shapes you like nothing else can. That there is a great difference between knowing something and living it. Well, it is quite true in the case of wisdom. True wisdom comes only from experience.

What the Life Phases Teach Us

Let us recall how we felt when we were just a kid. Life looked so uncomplicated and manageable at that time. Then, came teenage. Our own definition of life was metamorphosed a bit. We realized that after all, life is not that simple. It is not confined to having your favorite meals and dresses.

When we crossed teenage and entered into adulthood, even the young age years looked dreamy and we again felt that life is more than just having a relationship. It is more about making yourself independent, taking care of ourselves and our loved ones. Being responsible and accountable for our decisions and choices topped the list of our way of living.

How Experience Shapes Us

We all travel different paths of life. The ups and downs of our lives are unique. It is interesting to observe that same event or experience can be perceived in a completely non-identical way by two different persons. The impacts and effects of a trauma, a joy, or any other major change of events may not be the same for both of them. This is the reason, even after going through the same phases and stages of living in this world, we may end up having dissimilar perceptions of life.

Wisdom is Independent

There is no specific set of rules to becoming wise. What’s more intriguing is that having the same age, gender, or ethnicity does not make two people wise in the same way. Wisdom is independent of these factors. A person may attain wisdom at the age of 20, that doesn’t in any way mean that another person of age 40 would be double wise.

True Wisdom

Truth is, true wisdom can only be attained through experiencing life and that means having experienced it in its fullest form. Understanding that life is not always about being happy, satisfaction, or running for temptations. In fact, sorrow, pain, tragedy, self-restraint are a part of it. True wisdom teaches us that if life has to be embraced, then, the only way to do that is through acceptance, self-observation, and with full consciousness.

With practice, wisdom takes us above the basic instincts. It doesn’t let us be reduced to mere puppets in the hands of our instant gratification. Wisdom gives our mind the power to differentiate between justified and unjustified and act accordingly. Experiencing the bright and dark, both faces of life, are we filled with love, kindness, compassion, and non-judgment toward others and also ourselves. And there is no shortcut to that. Every event in the life has a purpose. It is trying to teach us something. Opening our mind and soul to it fully is what wisdom teaches us.

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Philosophy: love of wisdom.

Wisdom is truth well earned.

We are awash in a sea of knowledge. We are told every day what we want, what we need, and what we should do. Yet without context or connection, knowledge means nothing. Knowledge is not equivalent to wisdom. Wisdom cannot be told to you. It cannot be found on the Internet. It can only be gained through a personal quest to acquire it. Philosophy is that quest.

Others may define it otherwise, but to me, wisdom is the synthesis of knowledge and experiences into insights that deepen our understanding of the meaning of life. Both are required because theories without experiences can prove false, and experiences without theories can fail to be universal. Once you begin to gain wisdom, two remarkable things can occur: 1) you begin to understand your purpose and how to achieve it, and 2) you begin to connect your wisdom to that of other people across space and time. Patterns emerge like stair steps and, as you climb up, you will begin to experience the unity of all things. –Justarius

table of contents

On Philosophy

Understanding – The first step to success in anything is to understand yourself, others, the world, and how everything fits together.

The Machine

Taking Action – Once you understand the world and your place in it, you can accomplish anything you put your mind to.

Oneness – As you gain wisdom, you will begin to make connections between Truth, Love, and Beauty, and to appreciate the richness and diversity of ideas from thinkers across space and time.

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What is love of wisdom in philosophy?

The word “philosophy” comes to us from ancient Greek and means “love of wisdom”.  Someone who pursues philosophy, then, was supposed to be someone who was seeking the attainment of wisdom.  What is wisdom, though, and what is it to love wisdom?

Normally, as a philosophy tutor, I answer questions pertaining to particular philosophical texts or problems.  I don’t often reflect with students about the questions above or ask them whether they think an education in philosophy has brought them closer to gaining wisdom.  I would like to take the time to do some of that in this post.

There is a certain, common image of the person full of wisdom that I’ll call the image of the guru.

I certainly once had it.  According to the image, the wise person is one who has reached a state of profound insight into life, the nature of reality, existence.  This state is reached through deep reflection for extended periods of time.  The wise person is one who has reached a state of equanimity and peace with her surroundings.  Most of all (here’s where the “guru” part really kicks in), the wise person has the answers.  If only you knew one, you could resolve all of life’s quandaries.

There are elements of truth to the image of the guru.

As an ideal, it is difficult to find fault with.  Who doesn’t want the answers?  But the beginnings of wisdom, I submit, come from really being able to see just how difficult, and perhaps impossible, that ideal is.  And the right kind of equanimity or peace to be gained is the kind that comes from reconciling oneself to its unreachability--to not having the answers.  Socrates finally accepted the oracle’s pronouncement of his unparalleled wisdom only when he decided that what set him apart was his awareness of the extent of his ignorance. 

Philosophy, Truth, and the Wisdom of Love

The love of wisdom needs the wisdom of love. Let me say what this means and why it matters. I begin with a poem by Miriam Pederson titled “Hold Your Horses.” [1]

Lasso truth like a run-away steer and you will find its veins running cold.

Approach it like a lover with a ribbon for her hair and truth, in time, will lean in your direction.

Or, as I have put it more prosaically, the love of wisdom needs the wisdom of love.

Since ancient times, philosophy in the West has described itself as pursuing the truth out of love for wisdom. In its origins, Western philosophy is not simply an academic discipline or professional occupation. It is, in the words of Pierre Hadot, a way of life or a spiritual exercise, and it offers a path to truth that challenges other ways in which people love wisdom and pursue truth. [2] This puts philosophy in tension with robust wisdom traditions attached to the world’s religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Islam, and the religions of indigenous peoples. [3]

Christianity, too, includes a wisdom tradition, one that flows from Judaism and does not easily combine with Greco-Roman philosophy. [4] Hence the strong contrast in I Corinthians between Greek wisdom and Christ as “the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:18-25), a theme echoed in the letter to the Colossians, which finds “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” hidden in Christ (Col. 2:2-3). [5] In the early days of Christianity, it was not readily apparent how the wisdom of the Greeks and the wisdom of Christ should relate, no more than it is obvious today how one can honor the Christian wisdom tradition while philosophically pursuing the truth. The very words in which Western philosophy has described its vocation—truth, love, wisdom—are spiritually loaded terms; in the Jewish and Christian scriptures, these terms do not mean what many philosophers have taken them to mean. So Christian philosophers must reconceive the meaning of these terms in line with our religious wisdom tradition and with the scriptures that provide its decisive touchstone.

I want to explore what this might require in our understanding of truth. After commenting on some biblical passages, I shall suggest that a philosophy in line with the Jewish and Christian scriptures should understand truth as a way of life rather than simply a set of assertions, as something enacted rather than merely claimed. [6] Then I shall discuss three endeavors through which we can live (the) truth: by seeking the good, by resisting evil, and by living in hope. I shall conclude by connecting all three endeavors with the call to love.

Wisdom, Truth, and Love

In a remarkable confluence of central biblical concepts, Psalm 85 links truth with love, justice, and peace. Translations often hide these links, for it is hard to render ancient Hebrew in contemporary English. Yet Psalm 85 prominently employs the term “ emeth ,” the central concept of truth in the Jewish scriptures, and it portrays truth as meeting up with steadfast love ( chesed ) in the messianic condition. When God promises peace to God’s people (v. 8), and when God’s glory ( kabod ) comes to dwell on Earth (v. 9), then, says Psalm 85, love and truth will meet; justice and peace will kiss (v. 10). The Hebrew word for peace is shalom . This means much more than concord or an absence of conflict. Shalom is a condition of complete fulfillment where all creatures flourish—a condition I call “interconnected flourishing.” Psalm 85 envisions a glorious day when justice and shalom embrace, when steadfast love and truth converse. In that day truth will spring up from the earth, and justice will shine from the sky (v. 11).

Now, if you have a standard Western philosophical concept of truth, you might well wonder what truth could possibly have to do with love, justice, and shalom . The standard Western concept ties truth to factual accuracy and to the correctness of assertions. On one common construal, a statement is said to be true when it corresponds to the facts. But if that is all truth comes to, then it would seem bizarre to envision a day when love meets truth.

In the Jewish scriptures, however, the primary meaning of truth ( emeth ) is not accuracy or correctness. Instead, emeth means faithfulness, and it pertains both to God and to human beings. To be true, in the first instance, is not simply to be correct but to be faithful in relationship to others. God is true in faithfully carrying out God’s Word of promise for creation, and human beings are true when their dealings are faithful to the conditions of God’s promise. That is why Calvin Seerveld says truth in the scriptures means “God’s blessing presence is in evidence” in human life. [7]

When Psalm 85 imagines truth and love sitting down together, for a koffieklets , so to speak, it points to a society where people, in their everyday dealings, are so faithful to God’s Word of promise that God’s lovingkindness completely envelops them, like gentle mist on the very soil from which their faithfulness springs. [8] In principle, there is no tension between love and truth, nor, as Nicholas Wolterstorff has shown, between love and justice. [9] Without traces of such truth and love, such faithfulness and lovingkindness, there would be neither justice nor shalom ; with truth and love present in their fullness, justice and peace do embrace. In other words, when people are true in response to God’s lovingkindness, they live in justice with one another, and the world they inhabit flourishes. Then, as Psalm 85 says, God “will indeed give what is good,” and Earth “will yield its harvest” (Ps. 85:12, NIV).

To live in this way is to listen to the voice of wisdom, “she who danced when earth was new,” in the words of Ruth Duck’s hymn text “Come and Seek the Ways of Wisdom.” To live in the truth is to “follow closely what [Wisdom] teaches, for her words are right and true. Wisdom clears the path to justice, showing us what love must do.” [10] Here, in one succinct stanza, Dr. Duck crystallizes what the Jewish wisdom tradition [11] has to say about truth and love and wisdom, the central themes in Western philosophy’s self-description. Her hymn text resonates with Proverbs 3, where, as in Psalm 85, love and truth meet. In Proverbs 3, Lady Wisdom urges her child to keep lasting love ( chesed ) and truth ( emeth ) close, to bind them around its neck and inscribe them on its heart (v. 3). And the promise that accompanies such wise instruction points again to justice and shalom : “you will find favor” with God and others (v. 4), follow the right paths (v. 6), and receive bodily refreshment (v. 8).

The brilliant second stanza to Duck’s hymn rightly connects all of this with the prologue to the Gospel of John (John 1:1-18). There Jesus, as God’s Word of promise “made flesh among us,” embodies a Wisdom “full of glory, truth, and grace.” [12] The word “glory” ( doxa ) in John’s gospel recalls the glory ( kabod ) of God come to dwell on Earth in Psalm 85. Moreover, as Hendrik Hart observes, John’s description of Jesus as “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14) is “almost certainly a direct ‘quote’ of the Old Testament pair ‘ chesed and emeth ’”—Psalm 85’s “love and truth”—which together “proclaim God as full of love, compassion, mercy, forgiveness, faithfulness.” [13] Jesus, then, is the very incarnation of God’s blessing in whom love and truth meet, even as Jesus embodies the wisdom that teaches us how to find God’s blessing.

John’s prologue illuminates Jesus’ response to Thomas in John 14. After Jesus tells his disciples he is going to prepare a place for them in his Father’s house, and they know the way there, Thomas exclaims: “We do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” (v. 5) According to John, Jesus replies: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (v. 6). Heard in the echo chamber of the Jewish scriptures and the prologue to John, this reply proclaims Jesus himself as the very incarnation both of God’s blessing and of the wisdom that shows how to find this blessing. To find their way to God’s house of blessing, to God’s glory on earth, to the promised messianic condition, the disciples will need to walk in Jesus’s way. They must follow his teachings. They are to live as he lived. What this way comes to is the life of love: the life of loving God above all and our neighbors as ourselves, in response to a God who creates everything out of love— creatio ex amore , to quote James Olthuis. [14]

In Jesus, then, the decisive themes of Western philosophy—truth, love, and wisdom—intersect. In intersecting there, however, they fundamentally redirect philosophy. [15] For in Jesus, as in the Jewish scriptures, truth is not primarily propositional, and the love of wisdom is not simply an intellectual pursuit. Instead, truth is a way of life to which wisdom points everyone. Our challenge now is to decipher what such redirection means for how philosophers understand the idea of truth.

Seeking the Good

Parmenides, a pre-Socratic poet-philosopher, carved out the channels where the mainstreams of Western truth theory have flowed. [16] Parmenides aligns truth with being that does not change. For Parmenides, to be wise is to know what does not change. Philosophy, as the love of wisdom, is a godlike search for what is “uncreated and indestructible,” what is  “complete, immovable, and without end.” [17] Most people, however, do not seek unchanging truth: Parmenides regards them as swept up in what comes and goes, what lacks immutable being, what, strictly speaking, amounts to nothing. They do not love wisdom but folly; they have opinions without knowledge; they embrace falsehood and the lie. Between these two paths—between a godlike search for immutable being and truth, and all-too-human ignorance amid changing appearances—Parmenides sees no bridge or middle way. [18] Moreover, only the philosopher can follow the esoteric way of unchanging truth.

The Jewish and Christian wisdom traditions turn such an esoteric conception of truth upside down. Affirming that God created everything good, and recognizing temporal change and interconnections as intrinsic to created goodness, [19] they do not align truth with unchanging and self-sufficient being. Nor do they connect wisdom with knowing immutable truth. Instead, Judeo-Christian “truth” has to do with blessed faithfulness within relationships and amid change, and “wisdom” pertains to instruction for faithful living, for lives of loving God and neighbor. All human beings, including philosophers, are called to live in and live out the truth.

This implies in turn that truth and goodness intersect. [20] To live the truth is to try to do what truth requires—to do what contributes to blessed faithfulness. And to do what truth requires is to embrace and promote that which is good. To live the truth, then, we must seek the good.

To resist the truth, by contrast, is to ignore or refuse what truth requires—to block blessed faithfulness. Such ignorance or refusal goes hand in hand with an embrace of that which is evil. Indeed, persistent and deep-seated falsehood feeds into what Seerveld calls “the Lie.” [21] The Lie is much more than a simple fib, much more than intentionally saying something inaccurate or incorrect in order to deceive. [22] The Lie completely and deliberately twists all that is good in order to promote evil. [23]

In 2016 the Oxford Dictionaries chose the term “post-truth” as the International Word of the Year, noting that “use of the word post-truth  … increased by approximately 2,000% over its usage in 2015.” The adjective “post-truth” refers to “circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” It suggests the concept of truth “has become unimportant or irrelevant.” [24]

The Oxford Dictionaries announced their choice just one week after the surprise election of Donald Trump to be president of the United States. Politically, it does seem we are in a time when factual “truth” has become insignificant: a time when Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s senior advisor, can characterize obvious falsehoods as “alternative facts”; when Scott Pruitt, a climate change denier, can be appointed head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; and when the President himself regularly tweets blatant lies, seemingly without serious repercussions. Truth in the standard Western sense of factual accuracy and correct assertions seems to have become politically passé. Anyone who knows what authoritarian and totalitarian regimes are like will find this trend worrisome.

Even more worrisome, however, would be tendencies toward a world that is beyond truth in the scriptural sense of blessed faithfulness. In such a scripturally “post-truth” world, it would not matter whether we seek to live the truth and whether our cultural practices and social institutions enable us to embrace what is good. It would not matter whether we promote justice or pursue oppression, whether we show solidarity toward others or practice hatred, whether we respect or rape the Earth. In fact, the very distinction between good and evil would fade away. This is the larger worry of an allegedly post-truth world, namely, that in dismissing the importance of correctness and accuracy, people will simultaneously lose their desire to seek the good, thereby tolerating societal evil and embracing the Lie. The term “post-truth” signals more than a political quandary. It points to a deeply spiritual crisis in society.

Resisting Societal Evil

Within this crisis, those who want to live the truth by seeking the good must also challenge falsehood by resisting evil. In the first instance, to challenge falsehood in an allegedly post-truth world means not only refusing to give up a distinction between factual truth and factual untruth but also holding everyone accountable to standards of accuracy and correctness. We certainly should not allow politicians, business leaders, or academic administrators get away with regularly dishing out what American philosopher Harry Frankfurt calls bullshit. [25] Rather, we should dispute their duplicity, even as we call out those who ignore the evidence, distort the facts, and deliberately lie; these are egregious offenses, and they unravel the fabric of a democratic society.

In addition to challenging factual untruth, however, to live the truth requires us to resist evil in all of its other manifestations. Here I would distinguish evil for which each of us is individually responsible from evil for which we have collective responsibility. I am especially concerned about collective evil that has become so entrenched in our cultural practices and social institutions that we find it hard both to take responsibility for it and to resist it. I call such entrenched collective malevolence “societal evil.” A society’s ongoing destruction of the Earth, oppression of the poor, and hostility toward so-called aliens are prime examples of societal evil. [26]

The call to live the truth as blessed faithfulness requires us to resist societal evil. But it also requires us to recognize the limits to our own resistance, limits in a double sense: first, individual and organized efforts to resist societal evil can do only so much [27] and, second, viable resistance must embody the spirit of truth, the spirit of blessed faithfulness. This second limitation is crucial. Deeply entrenched societal evil has a pervasive spiritual direction: the direction of the Lie, the direction of what completely and deliberately twists the good. Only in the spirit of blessed faithfulness can the spirit of societal evil be truly resisted, [28] for only as we cling to the good can we stand up to the Lie.

I am not suggesting we should be naïve about the violence we face. Yet, as Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn recognizes, to be true, our resistance must not embody the spirit of what we resist, such that we become “grim travellers”:

Bitter little girls and boys from the Red Army Underground They’d blow away Karl Marx if he had the nerve to come around They’re just grim travellers in dawn skies See the beauty—makes them cry inside Makes them angry and they don’t know why They’re grim travellers in dawn skies [29]

If we put on the opaque mask of grimness, we will not see the dawn sky. We will not see the good that calls us to resist. We do not need grimness. Instead we need an articulate sense of the good we seek, as well as a spirited critique of the evil we resist.

That is where true philosophy, as a hopeful love of comprehensive wisdom, [30] can help. On the one hand, philosophy can help us sort out the diverse goods in our lives and spell out those that matter most for society as a whole. Here I have in mind shared societal principles such as justice, resourcefulness, and solidarity that can guide not only the lives of individuals and communities but also the cultural practices and social institutions in which all of us participate. In a contemporary setting, such principles are what call for human faithfulness; when honored, they carry a Word of promise.

On the other hand, philosophy can also help us take the measure of societal evil by providing a critique of society as a whole, what, following Abraham Kuyper, one can call an architectonic critique. [31] Such a critique is enormously difficult and, to a large extent, it has fallen out of philosophical fashion. Yet it is essential for wise resistance. We need to understand how the current organization of society both blocks and permits blessed faithfulness. We also need to detect the sore spots where suffering gathers and where social transformation can begin. Philosophy that pursues comprehensive wisdom about the contemporary world can help in both respects.

Living in Hope

Earlier I said Psalm 85 portrays truth and love as meeting up “in the messianic condition.” I also suggested that, according to the Gospel of John, Jesus’s disciples would need to walk in his way in order to find a path to “God’s house of blessing.” Such phrases introduce a theme of hope for the future quite foreign to the mainstreams of Western truth theory. [32] Scriptural truth talk contains an ongoing interplay between the current call to blessed faithfulness and the eschatological promise of a faith-fulfilling blessedness still to come—the promise of a new heaven and a new Earth (Rev. 21:1-4) where justice and peace embrace (Ps. 85: 10), where the wolf lies down with the lamb (Isa. 11:6), where God, in love and truth, is “all in all” (Eph. 1:23). [33] This promise means that God, first and foremost, is a God of love, and Jesus is the very embodiment of God’s love. For those who would follow Jesus, to live the truth is to walk along the pathways of love, love for God and neighbor, in hope for God’s future, despite our own fragility and failure, and amid the societal evil that surrounds us. To live in such hope, we must remain ever open to the Spirit of truth, which can take us in surprising new directions.

Hope for a future where love and truth meet has ripple effects in the present, both in our seeking the good and in our resisting evil. Living in such hope, we can neither regard our current dealings and practices and institutions as fully “in the truth” nor despair over the depth and power of societal evil. This implies, in turn, that contemporary philosophy needs to be more than a love of comprehensive wisdom that helps us sort out societal principles and articulates an architectonic critique. For philosophy’s love must be a hopeful love: it must remain open to a promised future whose surprises surpass philosophical comprehension.

That is why, in my own attempt to reconceive the idea of truth, I would insist on the eschatological openness of both societal principles and what I call the “life-giving disclosure of society.” Human beings are called to be faithful to societal principles such as justice and solidarity, and these principles are embedded in human history. Yet societal principles also remain open to a future where, right now, we can scarcely imagine what justice and solidarity will mean and require. So too, human beings, in their fidelity to societal principles, are called to promote a society where “human beings and other creatures come to flourish in their interconnections.” [34] Yet we need to relativize our efforts, recognizing how the society we hope for lies beyond our striving, and how our fidelity to societal principles does not suffice to bring it about.

Hence I would describe truth as a dynamic correlation between human fidelity to societal principles and a life-giving disclosure of society. [35] In light of the Jewish and Christian wisdom traditions, I would also insist that there is more to truth—more to blessed faithfulness—than our current fidelity and disclosure can achieve. And this “more” challenges the prevailing Western concept of truth as a static correspondence between assertions and facts. For there is always more to truth, more even to factual truth, than a static correspondence can capture. Hope for the future must be part of a biblically attuned conception of truth, including factual truth. Although this seriously complicates any attempt to provide a theory of factual truth, such complications deserve philosophical attention. [36]

The Call to Love

I have not tried to provide a theory of factual truth in this essay. Instead I have explored biblical underpinnings for the broader conception of truth within which I intend to offer a theory of factual truth. [37] On this broader conception, truth is to be lived rather than merely asserted, and our assertions of truth need to belong to our living (the) truth. [38] To live the truth is to be faithful in relation to God and others. Such faithfulness is summarized in the call to love God above all and our neighbors as ourselves. [39]

In contemporary society, the contours of this call to love show up in historically embedded and eschatologically open societal principles such as justice and solidarity. When we are faithful to such principles, we experience the blessing of a loving God. This blessing occurs via a life-giving disclosure of society. In contemporary society, then, truth amounts to a dynamic correlation between human fidelity to societal principles and a life-giving disclosure of society, with both the fidelity and the disclosure sustained by hope for God’s future. In the end, there is no such truth without love, for love and truth must meet.

To live (the) truth is to seek the good: solidarity, justice, interconnected flourishing; to resist evil, especially what alienates and oppresses and kills the Earth’s creatures; and to live in hope for a future where justice and peace embrace. There is no place for the Lie in God’s future. But there is a place for everyone who walks along the pathways of love, following God’s Word of promise “made flesh among us,” the way and the truth and the life.

God’s future calls to everyone, in the voice of Wisdom incarnate, inviting them to a feast of love and joy. And, in the sixteenth-century words of George Herbert, truthful responses to Wisdom’s call will sing back their own invitation:

Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life: Such a Way, as gives us breath: Such a Truth, as ends all strife: Such a Life, as killeth death.

Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength: Such a Light, as shows a feast: Such a Feast, as mends in length: Such a Strength, as makes his guest.

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart: Such a Joy, as none can move: Such a Love, as none can part: Such a Heart, as joys in love. [40]

[1] Miriam Pederson, “Hold Your Horses,” one of three poems, accompanied by images of three sculptures by Ron Pederson, in a collaboration titled “Conversations,” in Seeking Stillness or The Sound of Wings: Works on Art, Truth, and Society in Honour of Lambert Zuidervaart , eds. Peter Enneson, Michael DeMoor, and Matthew J. Klaassen, forthcoming, ms. p. 5.

[2] See Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault , trans. Michael Chase (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995); and What Is Ancient Philosophy? , trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002). Robert Sweetman uses Hadot’s notion to help make sense of various traditions of Christian scholarship in Tracing the Lines: Spiritual Exercise and the Gesture of Christian Scholarship (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2016).

[3] For a survey of these traditions, see Huston Smith, The World’s Religions (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), a completely revised and updated edition of Smith’s path-breaking The Religions of Man (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958). Smith emphasizes the notion of “wisdom traditions” in the 1991 version, which presupposes Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), his attempt to see what the world’s religions hold in common and what the modern West is in danger of forgetting. See also Huston Smith, Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), where he tries to address the “spiritual crisis” that has arisen, he claims, from the West’s writing “a blank check for science’s claims concerning what constitutes knowledge and justified belief” (4). I would argue that the deposit on which this scientistic check is drawn stems from a Greek philosophical wisdom tradition at odds with many religious wisdom traditions.

[4] The historical record is more complicated than this suggests, of course. In Philosophy as a Way of Life , for example, Hadot argues both that the Patristics Christianized philosophical spiritual exercises inherited from Greek and Hellenistic philosophy and that medieval Scholasticism, in distinguishing theology from philosophy and privileging theology, “emptied [philosophy] of its spiritual exercises” (107), thereby setting the stage for a predominantly theoretical and systematic emphasis in modern philosophy.

[5] Unless noted otherwise, all Bible translations are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

[6] For an exploration on the relation between the truth of assertions and the truth of actions in the history of Western thought, see Richard Campbell, Truth and Historicity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). Campbell subsequently argues in The Concept of Truth (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) that truth is primarily an attribute of actions rather than of linguistic items; that assertions are primarily actions; and that assertions, like other actions, are true as achievements. Other than reformational scholars such as Hendrik Hart and Calvin Seerveld, Campbell is one of the few contemporary philosophers who highlight the Hebrew concept of truth as relational faithfulness ( emeth ) and consider it a better clue to the nature and value of truth than a Greek concept of truth as unchanging correctness ( aletheia ). See, for example, Campbell, Truth and Historicity , 434-439, and the chapter titled “Acting Truly” in Campbell, The Concept of Truth , 100-124.

[7] Calvin Seerveld, “A Concept of Artistic Truth Prompted by Biblical Wisdom Literature,” in Truth Matters: Knowledge, Politics, Ethics, Religion , eds. Lambert Zuidervaart et al. (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013), 296.

[8] Here I barely hint at a response to Clarence Joldersma’s eloquent call, in “Earth’s Lament: A Friendly Supplement to Zuidervaart’s Societal Principles in an Era of Climate Change,” to let Earth’s lament be heard in its own nonhuman voice, such that the gift of Earth’s “primordial call to responsibility, from a time immemorial,” receives normative weight (ms. p. 15). I find Psalm 85:11 intriguing in this connection—“truth will spring up from the earth”—but right now I do not know quite how to incorporate these matters into a conception of truth. Still, I recognize the need to do so, and thereby to give credence to the strong sense I have had for years that nonhuman creatures have their own integrity out of which they address us and through which God speaks. Janet Wesselius captures this sense in her moving meditation “The Patient Hope of Rosa: Reflections on Dog-Kissed Tears ,” for example: “Animals … show us a different way of being in the world … Given our linguistic and rational abilities, … we sometimes need animals for God to break into our awareness and for us to listen to God’s voice” (ms. p. 9). See also Sue Sinclair’s “Adorno Poems,” where, despite societal evil, beauty on Earth is not simply “false consolation” but a promise that “even loneliness” is “no longer truly lonely” (ms. p. 3). All three contributions are in Seeking Stillness , forthcoming.

[9] Nicholas Wolterstorff, Love in Justice (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011).

[10] Ruth Duck, “Come and Seek the Ways of Wisdom” (©1993), in Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal , the hymnal of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013), # 174, v. 1.

[11] Strictly speaking, one should refer to Jewish wisdom traditions . Even among the wisdom books of the Hebrew Bible known as “Writings”—Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs—one can detect different emphases, historical settings, and literary forms. See Carole R. Fontaine, “Wisdom Traditions in the Hebrew Bible,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 33.1 (2000): 101-117.

[12] Duck, “Come and Seek the Ways of Wisdom,” v. 2.

[13] Hendrik Hart, “Filled with All God’s Fullness,” in Seeking Stillness , forthcoming, ms. p. 3. Hart’s hunch is borne out by Lester J. Kuyper, “Grace and Truth: An Old Testament Description of God, and Its Use in the Johannine Gospel,” Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 18.1 (1964): 3-19. Kuyper argues in lexicographical detail that “full of grace and truth” in John 1:14 translates a Greek rendering of central Old Testament language for God as, for example, “abounding in steadfast love [ chesed ] and faithfulness [ emeth ]” (Exod. 34:6).

[14] James H. Olthuis, “Creatio Ex Amore,” in Transforming Philosophy and Religion: Love’s Wisdom , eds. Norman Wirzba and Bruce Ellis Benson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 155-170. Olthuis shows how a theology that begins with “God as love” is, and must be, dramatically different from one that begins with God as (a) Being—what one could call the pervasive Parmenidean legacy in Western theology. This difference also affects how one thinks about truth, as I hope to show.

[15] Not only philosophy, however, but also such fields as art, science, politics, and education. See, for example, Doug Blomberg’s attempt to work out the implications of such a “wisdom perspective” for schooling in Wisdom and Curriculum: Christian Schooling after Postmodernity (Sioux Center, IA: Dordt College Press, 2007).

[16] On the importance of Parmenides for the entire Western alethic tradition, see chapter 3 (“Truth as Divine Norm”) in Campbell, Truth and Historicity , 18-39. Campbell summarizes the Parmenidean concept of truth as “faithful adherence to the Real” (32) and says it set Western philosophy firmly on the path to both depersonalizing and de-historicizing truth.

[17] Parmenides, Poem of Parmenides , fragment 8, in John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy , 4 th ed. (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1930), 174.

[18] Joshua Lee Harris, “Parmenides’ Challenge and Zuidervaart’s Stereotheticism: A Project both Ancient and Original,” in Seeking Stillness , forthcoming, illuminates this problem of an absent “in-between” (metaxu) as a perennial challenge posed by Parmenides and addressed by holistic alethic pluralism in the reformational tradition. Among the author’s writings that Harris discusses are Artistic Truth: Aesthetics, Discourse, and Imaginative Disclosure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); “Unfinished Business: Toward a Reformational Conception of Truth,” in Lambert Zuidervaart, Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation: Essays in Reformational Philosophy (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016), 277-297; and “Holistic Alethic Pluralism: A Reformational Research Program,” Philosophia Reformata 81.2 (2016): 156-178.

[19] Such recognition of temporality and relationality are built into Franz Rosenzweig’s concept of revelation, it seems to me. See Karin Nisenbaum, “Zuidervaart in Conversation with Rosenzweig: Artistic Truth, Life-Giving Disclosure, and Revelation,” in Seeking Stillness , forthcoming, ms. pp. 10-13.

[20] See Lambert Zuidervaart, “Truth and Goodness Intersect,” ICS Perspective 4.2 (September 2014): 8-9. For a more elaborate account, in response to twentieth-century German philosophy, see chapter 8 (“Conclusion: Truth and Goodness Intersect”) in Lambert Zuidervaart, Truth in Husserl, Heidegger, and the Frankfurt School: Critical Retrieval (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017), 175-185.

[21] Seerveld, “A Concept of Artistic Truth Prompted by Biblical Wisdom Literature,” 297.

[22] Not all fibs are simple, of course, and the question of what counts as a lie is not always easy to settle. See in this connection the illuminating essay by Martin Jay, “Can Photographs Lie? Reflections on a Perennial Anxiety,” in Seeking Stillness , forthcoming.

[23] The Lie is very closely connected to what I call “societal evil.” See, for example, “Earth’s Lament: Suffering, Hope, and Wisdom,” in Zuidervaart, Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation , 319-321. I take up this connection in the next section.

[24] “Post-Truth,” https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/press/news/2016/12/11/WOTY-16; accessed April 19, 2017.

[25] Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), which distinguishes “bullshit” from actual lies. Unlike the liar, who knows a factual truth and tries to deceive someone about it, bullshitters do not care whether what they say is factually true or false: “It is just this lack of … concern with [factual] truth … that I regard as of the essence of bullshit” (33-34). Or, as Frankfurt puts it a little later, “the essence of bullshit is not that it is [factually] false but that it is phony ” (47). Unlike liars, then, bullshitters try to hide their own lack of concern about factual truth. Because of this, says Frankfurt, “bullshit is a greater enemy of the [factual] truth than lies are.” One sees this, I think, in the notion of a “post-truth” world. Harry G. Frankfurt’s sequel On Truth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006) says why, despite the bullshitters, all of us should care about factual truth.

[26] Arnold De Graaff, in The Gods in Whom They Trusted—The Disintegrative Effects of Capitalism: A Foundation for Transitioning to a New Social World (Norwich, UK: Heathwood Press, 2016), argues that, at root, contemporary environmental degradation and societal violence stem from a global economic system and the “neoliberal ideology” that directs it. He shows in great detail how an alternative, holistic understanding of economic life and human knowledge, directed by the vision of love and truth in the Hebrew scriptures, can support a radically different way of living and thereby a transformed society.

[27] Acknowledging limits to our resistance should not encourage passivity. Instead it should spark both focused creativity and long-range vision in our resistance. See in this connection Allyson Carr’s discussion of One Billion Rising’s public choreographed piece “Break the Chain” as a truthful way to challenge sexual violence and gendered oppression, in “Social Philosophy after Trauma: Art for Dialogue in the Public Square,” in Seeking Stillness , forthcoming, ms. pp. 11-18.

[28] To borrow words from the letter to the Ephesians, those who resist societal evil do not simply struggle “against enemies of blood and flesh” but against “cosmic powers of this present darkness” and against “the spiritual forces of evil” (Eph. 6:12). Famously this letter then urges its readers to strap on “the belt of truth,” “the breastplate of righteousness,” and the sandals of the “gospel of peace” (Eph. 6:14-15)—recalling the confluence of truth, justice, and shalom in Psalm 85 and elsewhere.

[29] Bruce Cockburn, “Grim Travellers,” from the album Humans (True North Records, 1980).

[30] See “Earth’s Lament,” where I call for a philosophy that embodies “patient hope for a new Earth, and comprehensive wisdom about the shape of the old” (318).

[31] See “Macrostructures and Societal Principles: An Architectonic Critique,” in Zuidervaart, Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation , 252-276.

[32] I follow Terry Eagleton, Hope without Optimism (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015), in sharply distinguishing genuine hope from “the banality of optimism.” Correctly noting that there is “surprisingly little philosophical reflection on what hope consists in” (38), Eagleton devotes an entire chapter to Ernst Bloch, whom he calls “ the philosopher of hope” (90). Bloch’s too-often neglected three-volume magnum opus on the topic was published in German in the 1950s and did not appear in English translation until 1985. See Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope , trans. Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul Knight (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985). On the importance of a partially Bloch-inspired theme of hope in Theodor W. Adorno’s negative dialectical conception of truth, see Lambert Zuidervaart, Social Philosophy after Adorno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 48-76.

[33] See Hart, “Filled with All God’s Fullness,” which comments on Ephesians 1-3 and explores the importance of openness to spiritual reorientation for both the practice and the theory of truth.

[34] “Unfinished Business: Toward a Reformational Conception of Truth,” in Zuidervaart, Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation , 284.

[35] Given this description of truth, I think recent attempts to derive an ethics from the appeal to personal authenticity in Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time are bound to fail: they cannot do justice to the interrelational character of truth as involving both societal principles and societal disclosure. In this connection, see the illuminating essay by Lauren Bialystok, “Authenticity, Ethics and Truth: Zuidervaart and Heidegger in Reverse,” in Seeking Stillness ,” forthcoming.

[36] I discuss some of these complications in an unpublished paper titled “History and Transcendence in Adorno’s Idea of Truth” (2017).

[37] As is apparent from earlier references, the primary inspiration for reconceiving factual truth within a broader, reformational conception of truth stems from my graduate studies and subsequent teaching at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. I am especially indebted to the pioneering work of Hendrik Hart, who has argued for years that truth and knowledge are “totality concepts” to which narrow conceptions of fact/assertion correspondence and justified true belief cannot do justice. See in particular Chapters VII (“Knowledge”) and VIII (“Theory of Analysis, Thinking and Theory”) in his Draft for Proposed ICS Syllabus for Systematic Philosophy (Toronto: Institute for Christian Studies, 1979), 357-612; “The Articulation of Belief: A Link between Commitment and Rationality,” in Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition , eds. Hendrik Hart, Johan van der Hoeven, and Nicholas Wolterstorff (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983), 209-248; and the brief subsection on “Knowledge and Truth” in Hendrik Hart, Understanding Our World: An Integral Ontology (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984), 355-357.

[38] Although my broader conception is at odds with the standard Western philosophical concept of truth, it is not incompatible with alternatives to this standard concept in the Western tradition. I discuss some of these alternatives in Truth in Husserl, Heidegger, and the Frankfurt School . One can find a similar emphasis on living the truth in Catholic moral theology. See, for example, Josef Pieper, Living the Truth: The Truth of All Things and Reality and the Good (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), and Klaus Demmer, Living the Truth: A Theory of Action , trans. Brian McNeil (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010).

[39] I discuss what this emphasis on the call to love implies for a philosopher’s vocation in “Spirituality, Religion, and the Call to Love: On Being a Christian Philosopher,” in Lambert Zuidervaart, Art, Education, and Cultural Renewal: Essays in Reformational Philosophy (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017), 180-196.

[40] “The Call,” by the metaphysical poet George Herbert (1593-1633), as set to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams in Five Mystical Songs (London: Stainer & Bell, 1911), 21-22.

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Lambert Zuidervaart

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1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Philosophy, One Thousand Words at a Time

What is Philosophy?

Author: Thomas Metcalf Category: Metaphilosophy Word count: 1000

Listen here , video below

If you’ve ever wondered whether God exists, whether life has purpose, whether beauty is in the eye of the beholder, what makes actions right or wrong, or whether a law is fair or just, then you’ve thought about philosophy. And these are just a few philosophical topics.

But what is philosophy? The question is itself a philosophical question. This essay surveys some answers.

1. Defining Philosophy

The most general definition of philosophy is that it is the pursuit of wisdom, truth, and knowledge. [1] Indeed, the word itself means ‘love of wisdom’ in Greek.

Whenever people think about deep, fundamental questions concerning the nature of the universe and ourselves, the limits of human knowledge, their values and the meaning of life, they are thinking about philosophy. Philosophical thinking is found in all parts of the world, present, and past. [2]

In the academic world, philosophy distinguishes a certain area of study from all other areas, such as the sciences and other humanities. Philosophers typically consider questions that are, in some sense, broader and/or more fundamental than other inquirers’ questions: [3] e.g., physicists ask what caused some event; philosophers ask whether causation even exists ; historians study figures who fought for justice; philosophers ask what justice is or whether their causes were in fact just; economists study the allocation of capital; philosophers debate the ethical merits of capital ism .

When a topic becomes amenable to rigorous, empirical study, it tends to be “outsourced” to its own field, and not described in the present day as “philosophy” anymore: e.g., the natural sciences were once called “natural philosophy,” but we don’t now just think about whether matter is composed of atoms or infinitely divisible: we use scientific experiments. [4] And most of the different doctoral degrees are called “Doctor of Philosophy” even when they’re in sociology or chemistry.

Philosophical questions can’t be straightforwardly investigated through purely empirical means: [5] e.g., try to imagine a lab experiment testing whether societies should privilege equality over freedom—not whether people believe we should, but whether we actually should . What does moral importance look like in a microscope?

The main method of academic philosophy is to construct and evaluate arguments (i.e., reasons intended to justify some conclusion). Such conclusions might be that some theory is true or false or might be about the correct analysis or definition of some concept. These arguments generally have at least some conceptual, intellectual, or a priori , i.e., non-empirical, content. And philosophers often incorporate relevant scientific knowledge as premises in arguments. [6]

2. Branches of Philosophy

Philosophy deals with fundamental questions. But which questions, specifically, is philosophy about? Here’s a standard categorization: [7]

Logic : Logicians study good and bad arguments and reasoning, and they study formal, symbolic languages intended to express propositions, sentences, or arguments. [8]

Metaphysics : Metaphysicians study what sorts of entities exist, what the world and its constituents are made of, and how objects or events might cause or explain each other. [9]

Epistemology : Epistemologists study knowledge, evidence, and justified belief. An epistemologist might study whether we can trust our senses and whether science is trustworthy. [10]

Values : In value theory, philosophers study morality, politics, and art, among other topics. For example: What makes wrong actions wrong? How do we identify good people and good lives? What makes a society just or unjust? [11]

There are many sub-branches within these fields. Many other fields— the sciences, art, literature, and religion—have a “philosophy of” attached to them: e.g., philosophers of science might help interpret quantum mechanics; philosophers of religion often consider arguments about the existence of God. [12]

There are also unique and important philosophical discussions about certain populations or communities, such as feminist philosophy and Africana philosophy. [13] People from all cultures contribute to philosophy, more than are typically discussed in Western philosophy courses. [14] Western academic philosophy has often neglected voices from non-Western cultures, and women’s voices. [15]

Philosophers sometimes import tools, knowledge, and language from other fields, such as using the formal tools of statistics in epistemology and the insights from special relativity in the philosophy of time. [16] When your project is understanding all of existence [17] in the broadest and most fundamental way, you need all the help you can get.

3. The Point(s) of Philosophy

Academic philosophy doesn’t present a body of consensus knowledge the way chemistry and physics do. [18] Do philosophical questions have correct answers? Does philosophical progress exist? Does philosophy get closer to the truth over time? [19] These are all matters of philosophical debate. [20] And philosophical debates are rarely resolved with certainty.

So what’s the point? Here are some answers: [21]

• To discover truth, wherever and whatever it is. [22]
• To learn how to better live our lives. [23]
• To understand our own views, including their strengths and weaknesses.
• To examine our own lives and be more conscious of our choices and their implications.
• To learn how to better think and reason. Recall: The main method of philosophy is to present and examine arguments. [24]

And arguably, all of us are already naturally interested in at least some philosophical questions. Many people find that philosophy is a lot of fun. And it’s difficult to dispute that it is very important to find the answers to philosophical questions, if the answers exist. It’s important to know, for instance, that slavery is wrong and whether scientific consensus is generally trustworthy. So as long as it’s at least possible to find the answers to these questions, we should try.

Also, there are strong correlations between studying philosophy and high achievement in other academic areas, such as GRE scores and professional-school admission. [25]

4. Conclusion

We’ve contrasted philosophy with other fields. We’ve looked at the branches of philosophy. And we’ve looked at the purposes or benefits of philosophy. But what is philosophy, really? Given everything we’ve said so far, we can provide at least a partial definition of ‘philosophy’ as follows:

A largely (but not exclusively) non-empirical inquiry that attempts to identify and answer fundamental questions about the world, including about what’s valuable and disvaluable.

Is this a good definition? That’s a philosophical question too.

Acknowledgments

This entry has benefited enormously from the comments and suggestions of Shane Gronholz, Chelsea Haramia, Dan Lowe, and Nathan Nobis.

[1] Berkeley 2003 [1710]: 5; Blackburn 1999: 1.

[2] Some of the oldest formal philosophy writing we have is attributed to a group of ancient Greek philosophers called the ‘Pre-Socratics,’ because they wrote before Socrates and Plato did (cf. Curd 2019). The earliest Upanishads may go back even further (Olivelle 1998: 4 ff.).

[3] This is similar to Encyclopaedia Britannica’s (n.d.) definition: “the rational, abstract, and methodical consideration of reality as a whole or of fundamental dimensions of human existence and experience.”

[4] See e.g., Berryman 2020 on ancient atomism.

[5] Metcalf 2018.

[6] Most philosophers believe that the sciences provide knowledge relevant to traditional philosophical issues. That is, most philosophers endorse the meta-philosophy of ‘naturalism,’ according to which philosophy should be informed by the natural sciences. The usual justification for naturalism is based on the track-record of the natural sciences, including their tending toward consensus. See Bourget and Chalmers 2014: 476; Metcalf 2018; and Papineau 2019. For examples of the relevance of science to traditional philosophical issues, see Ingram and Tallent (2019: § 8); Wilce 2019; and Knobe and Nichols 2019. In these examples, special relativity may be relevant to philosophy of time; quantum mechanics may be relevant to philosophy of logic; and social science may be relevant to ethics.

[7] This is a version of common anthologies’ categorizations. See e.g., Blackburn 1999: vii and Rosen et al. 2015.

[8] Logicians can also study logics about obligation (McNamara 2019), about necessity and possibility (Garson 2019), and whether useful logics can contain sentences that are both true and false simultaneously (Priest et al. 2019).

[9] Van Inwagen and Sullivan 2019.

[10] Steup 2019; Metcalf 2020.

[11] Value theorists also study specific topics, such as our obligations to animals (Gruen 2019) and whether governments can be legitimate (Peter 2019). See also Haramia 2018 (the entry on applied ethics in 1000-Word Philosophy ) for an overview of applied ethics.

[12] Indeed, one area where people see many connections is with religion. So what’s the difference between philosophy and religion? This is not an easy question to answer, but most religious practice proceeds from a shared starting-point consensus body of putative knowledge, and these beliefs are almost all about God or gods, the afterlife, and how to live a pious life. In contrast, in philosophy, everything is constantly open to question, and the topics are much broader than gods and the afterlife.

[13] See e.g., McAfee 2019 and Outlaw 2019.

[14] Van Norden 2017.

[15] See e.g., Van Norden (op. cit.) and Buxton and Whiting 2020.

[16] Indeed, one popular metaphilosophical view is methodological naturalism about philosophy, according to which philosophy should use the methods of the natural sciences. Some naturalists go so far as to say that traditional philosophical methods should be replaced by scientific methods. See Metcalf 2018 and Papineau 2019 for more discussion. As for tools and knowledge from other fields, statistical and probabilistic analysis is common in many areas of philosophy (see, e.g., Weisberg 2019) and special relativity may tell us something important about the philosophy of time (Ingram and Tallant 2019).

[17] And maybe even the objects that don’t exist; see Reicher 2019.

[18] Bourget and Chalmers 2014. Arguably, there is consensus about many philosophical questions, but we don’t consider those questions in academic philosophy, at least not anymore. For example, almost everyone knows that slavery is wrong and that women should be allowed to vote if anyone is. See also Gutting 2009 for a general survey of some apparent philosophical discoveries.

[19] Cf. Chalmers 2015.

[20] See, e.g., Miller 2019.

[21] See Bierce 2008; de Montaigne 1987: 204; Russell 2010: 20 for some other statements about the nature or purpose of philosophy.

[22] Bierce 2008.

[23] De Montaigne 1987: 204.

[24] See e.g., Groarke 2019.

[25] Daily Nous n.d. However, we do not yet know what proportion of this is a ‘selection effect’—people who are already smart major in philosophy—and how much of this is a ‘treatment effect,’ i.e., majoring in philosophy actually makes you smarter.

Berkeley, George. 2003 [1710]. A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge . Mineola, NY: Dover Philosophical Classics.

Berryman, Sylvia. 2019. “Ancient Atomism.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2019 Edition.   

Bierce, Ambrose. 2008. “The Devil’s Dictionary.” In Project Gutenberg (ed.), Project Gutenberg.

Blackburn, Simon. 1999. Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy . Oxford, UK and New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Bourget, David and David J. Chalmers. 2014. “What Do Philosophers Believe?” Philosophical Studies 170(3): 465-500.

Buxton, Rebecca and Lisa Whiting. 2020. The Philosopher Queens: The Lives and Legacies of Philosophy’s Unsung Women. London, UK: Unbound Publishers.

Chalmers, David J. 2015. “Why Isn’t There More Progress in Philosophy?” Philosophy 90(1): 3-31.

Curd, Patricia. 2019. “Presocratic Philosophy.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Daily Nous. n.d. “Value of Philosophy.”

De Montaigne, Michel. 1987. Complete Essays . Tr. M. A. Screech. London, UK: Penguin Books.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. N.d. “Philosophy.” In The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica (eds.), Encyclopaedia Britannica , Online Edition.

Garson, James. 2019. “Modal Logic.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Groarke, Leo. 2019. “Informal Logic.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2019 Edition.

Gruen, Lori. 2019. “The Moral Status of Animals.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Gutting, Gary. 2009. What Philosophers Know: Case Studies in Recent Analytic Philosophy . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Ingram, David and Jonathan Tallant. 2019. “Presentism.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Knobe, Joshua and Shaun Nichols. 2019. “Experimental Philosophy.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2019 Edition.

Markosian, Ned. 2019. “Time.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

McAfee, Noëlle. 2019. “Feminist Philosophy.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2019 Edition.

McNamara, Paul. 2019. “Deontic Logic.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Miller, Alexander. 2019. “Realism.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Olivelle, Patrick (tr. and ed.). 1998. The Early Upaniṣads: Annotated Text and Translation . New York, NY and Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Outlaw, Lucius T. Jr. 2019. “Africana Philosophy.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Papineau, David. 2019. “Naturalism.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Peter, Fabienne. 2019. “Political Legitimacy.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Priest, Graham et al. 2019. “Paraconsistent Logic.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Reicher, Maria. 2019. “Nonexistent Objects.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Rosen, Gideon et al. 2015. The Norton Introduction to Philosophy , Second Edition. New York, NY and London, UK: W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

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THE LOVE OF WISDOM

a (very) brief introduction to philosophy.

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Jason D Swartwood

Practical wisdom (hereafter simply ‘wisdom’), which is the understanding required to make reliably good decisions about how we ought to live, is something we all have reason to care about. The importance of wisdom gives rise to questions about its nature: what kind of state is wisdom, how can we develop it, and what is a wise person like? These questions about the nature of wisdom give rise to further questions about proper methods for studying wisdom. Is the study of wisdom the proper subject of philosophy or psychology? How, exactly, can we determine what wisdom is and how we can get it? In this chapter, we give an overview of some prominent philosophical answers to these questions. We begin by distinguishing practical wisdom from theoretical wisdom and wisdom as epistemic humility. Once we have a clearer sense of the target, we address questions of method and argue that producing a plausible and complete account of wisdom will require the tools of both philosophy and empirical psychology. We also discuss the implications this has for prominent wisdom research methods in empirical psychology. We then survey prominent philosophical accounts of the nature of wisdom and end with reflections on the prospects for further interdisciplinary research.

Charles Blattberg

An account of the three rival conceptions of Western philosophy: "theoretical," "difference," and "practical." Note that a previous version of this paper appears as chapter 13 of my Patriotic Elaborations: Essays in Practical Philosophy (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009.

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This book of wisdom concerns wisdom as practice that is influenced by Pierre Hadot who is a French Scholar of Ancient Philosophy. That wisdom is a practice on how to solve life's problems. This book is a self-help book on how to change one's attitude, but also how how to live a life of self-help and self-care. This book aims at being an scholarly book, but also a self-help book, that aims at using philosophy as a means of self-help. It is not so much an academic book, but a book that should appeal to a common audience. All self-help books aim at the assumption that one's life is in their control, but not only that, but that life's problems is something that can be overcome. This book of wisdom concerns philosophy as an expression of a way of life, as the application of truth in everyday life, instead of wisdom as truth in the traditional Western "philosophical" sense of the word. That some truths are useless and therefore not considered wise. I believed in the Chinese philosophical sense of word and also the Indian sense of the word: wisdom as practice. As an expression of philosophy to deal with problems of everyday life and not necessarily philosophy as the examined life. The Chinese defined philosophy as the: "way", and not necessarily wisdom as: "truth". Some Western philosophy saw philosophy as a way of life, but also a practical exercise that can help people overcome life's problems.

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This is a pre-proofs version of a paper forthcoming in Acta Analytica. I argue that a necessary condition for being wise is understanding how to live well. The condition, by requiring understanding rather than a wide variety of justified beliefs or knowledge, as Ryan and Whitcomb respectively require, yields the desirable result that being wise is compatible with having some false beliefs but not just any false beliefs about how to live well – regardless of whether those beliefs are justified or not. In arguing for understanding how to live well as a necessary condition for wisdom, I reject the view, proposed by both Ryan and Whitcomb, that subjects such as chemistry lie within the domain of wisdom. I show that the argued for condition yields the desirable result that being wise is not a common achievement, but that it is not something that can only plausibly be achieved in the modern era.

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This essay examines the meaning of Wisdom in biblical wisdom literature, including detailed analysis of key passages in Proverbs and Job 28. According to biblical Wisdom literature, humans arrive at fear of God through awareness of human limitations. With this recognition humans can discern their place in creation, not at its center but in its midst. So too humans can see that wisdom is not buried in the deep but permeates all the earth, for she is the way of all creation. Through this awareness God invites humankind into a life of free, artistic, and attentive moral creation in relationship with God and all that God has made. If the sage finds wisdom, the sage will also find God. Wisdom is object and subject, accessible and hidden. It is the praxis by which we seek understanding of God, world, and human life. It is guiding principle. It is creativity and art, participation in God's creating and knowing. In honor of William L. Portier, the essay also places this understanding of wisdom in conversation with Modernism in the American Catholic Church. In 1893 John Ireland declared in Baltimore's Cathedral of the Assumption that the church had a duty "to stimulate the age to deeper researches" and to leave "untouched no particle of matter that may conceal a secret ... no act in the life of humanity, that may solve a problem:' Despite his optimism, then as now, the findings of biblical criticism challenged cherished teachings of the church. The condemnation of modernism in the 1907 encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis included a caricature of so-called modernist biblical scholarship, including textual criticism, source and redaction criticism, and composition history, that was The encyclical paints a sharp dichotomy between objective knowledge, arguments, and articles of faith, on one hand, and subjective reasoning, appeals to experience, and claims to knowing, on the other. Toward the conclusion of his book Divided Friends, Portier writes that the stories of John R. Slattery, Denis J. O'Connell, William L. Sullivan, and Joseph McSorley “show the moral and religious complexities involved in pioneer attempts to deal with the subjective conditions of religious meaning and truth in an ecclesial world normed by one-sided theological objectivity and conceptualism.” For the sages of Israel, wisdom, as object and subject, was the dynamic force that might bridge this divide, even as it forms a bridge between humans and God.

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Essay on Wisdom

Students are often asked to write an essay on Wisdom in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Wisdom

Understanding wisdom.

Wisdom is a special kind of knowledge. It’s not just about knowing facts, but understanding life. Wisdom helps us make good choices and learn from our experiences.

Wisdom and Age

People often link wisdom with age. As we grow older, we experience more, which can lead to greater wisdom. But age doesn’t guarantee wisdom. It’s about learning from experiences.

Wisdom and Education

Education can provide knowledge, but wisdom comes from applying that knowledge in real life. It’s about understanding, not just remembering facts.

Importance of Wisdom

Wisdom is important because it guides us in life. It helps us make good decisions, understand others, and live a meaningful life.

250 Words Essay on Wisdom

Wisdom is often mistakenly conflated with intelligence or knowledge. However, it is a distinct concept, characterized by a deep understanding of life’s complexities, an ability to make sound judgments, and a capacity for empathy and compassion. Unlike intelligence, which is largely innate, wisdom is typically acquired through experience and introspection.

The Components of Wisdom

Wisdom can be broken down into three key components: cognitive, reflective, and affective. The cognitive component involves an understanding of life and its uncertainties. The reflective component pertains to the ability to look inward and understand one’s own behavior and motivations. The affective component is characterized by empathy and compassion for others.

Contrary to popular belief, wisdom is not necessarily tied to age. While age can bring experiences that contribute to wisdom, it is the quality of these experiences, and one’s reflection on them, that truly matters. Young individuals can be wise beyond their years, while some older individuals may lack wisdom.

The Value of Wisdom

In a rapidly changing world, wisdom has never been more valuable. It allows us to navigate life’s complexities with grace and resilience, fostering personal growth and societal progress. Wisdom also promotes empathy and understanding, vital for bridging divides in our increasingly interconnected world.

In conclusion, wisdom is a multifaceted concept that transcends mere intelligence or knowledge. It is a profound understanding of life and humanity, honed through experience and introspection. In a world fraught with uncertainty, the pursuit of wisdom is a worthy endeavor.

500 Words Essay on Wisdom

Introduction, the nature of wisdom.

Wisdom is often associated with age, as it is perceived that life experiences contribute to its development. However, it is not merely a byproduct of time but rather a result of how one processes and learns from experiences. It is the ability to discern and judge which aspects of that knowledge are true, right, lasting, and applicable to one’s life.

Wisdom is also characterized by its universality. It transcends cultural, social, and geographical boundaries. The wisdom of understanding human emotions, for instance, is applicable across cultures and societies. It underlines the shared human experience and our collective struggle to make sense of the world.

Wisdom and Emotional Intelligence

Wisdom, in this context, is not just about intellectual understanding but also about emotional resilience. It involves the ability to navigate through the complexities of our emotions, to learn from our failures and to find meaning in our experiences.

Wisdom in the Digital Age

In the digital age, where information is readily available, the distinction between wisdom and knowledge becomes even more critical. The internet offers an abundance of information, but wisdom is required to sift through this vast sea of data and extract what is truly valuable.

In conclusion, wisdom is a complex and multifaceted concept that encompasses deep understanding, emotional intelligence, and the ability to apply knowledge in a meaningful way. It is a critical skill in our modern world, helping us navigate through an abundance of information and make sense of our experiences. Wisdom is not just about knowing; it’s about understanding. It is not just about facts; it’s about meaning. It is not just about information; it’s about insight. In essence, wisdom is the compass that guides us through the labyrinth of life.

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Love of wisdom.

• B. B. North B. B. North Teachers College, Columbia University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.1476
• Published online: 23 February 2021

Philosophy as the love of wisdom is informative and can be inspiring and generative to students; it opens up possibilities for philosophical thinking to be more relevant for everyday life. Highlighting philosophy as the love of wisdom emphasizes the ancient and deep-rooted value of philosophy and does not restrict philosophy to the use of specific methodologies or to a specific subject matter, but rather expands it to encompassing a way of life. In this way, philosophy is meant to help promote valuable human lives and the public good at large. Philosophy as the love of wisdom is a call to remember that philosophy is not only a discipline to be studied in academia. Plato’s Socrates can be interpreted as a paragon of philosophy as a way of life and as exemplifying a love of wisdom. Contrary to philosophy as the love of wisdom, the popular conception of philosophy—as the paramount use of logic and argumentation—can be alienating. The scholastic or instrumental view of education promotes this popular conception and conceptually segregates the different academic disciplines. When this occurs, education is not seen as continuous with life. To move beyond the narrow and popular conception of philosophy, it is helpful to look at how John Dewey explicitly connects philosophy and education: when considering the many different types of education, one should not forget the ethical value of the given intellectual pursuits. This opens up space for the peripheries of philosophy to be more centralized. Emotion, art, and practical considerations of everyday life are illuminated as the material of philosophic thinking. Philosophy is the lived love of wisdom.

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• Philosophy-Theology

For Love of Wisdom

Essays on the Nature of Philosophy

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Other editions and formats, product details, product overview.

An Ignatius Press Reprint

Ignatius Press Reprints are identical in content with the most recent print edition of the original title. In order to keep important titles available at reasonable prices, we reprint them digitally in small quantities. We use high quality, acid-free paper, but the books are not smyth-sewn as is customary with our offset press print editions.

In these elegant and engaging essays, the internationally acclaimed Thomist, Josef Pieper, defines and defends philosophy as the search for and love of wisdom. True philosophy is not the work of joyless academics pondering over esoteric writings that have no relation to real life. Rather, the philosophical act, in which all reasonable men can participate, begins in wonder at what is, and gratitude for what is given, and ends in love.

In his encyclical letter Fides et Ratio (On the Relationship between Faith and Reason), Pope John Paul II called for a revitalization of true philosophy, for man can find fulfillment “only in choosing to enter the truth, to make a home under the shade of Wisdom and dwell there.” Pieper’s essays make the same ardent and convincing plea.

Josef Pieper is renowned for having popularized the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, a brilliant student of St. Thomas who, in his own voluminous works, has made the deep thought of the "Angelic Doctor"; more accessible and understandable to the modern reader.

Editorial Reviews

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For Love of Wisdom (Digital)

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Wisdom and Wonder

Wisdom and Wonder (Digital)

Wisdom from the Psalms

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Why Study Philosophy?

What is philosophy, and why should i study it.

“Philosophy” comes from Greek words meaning “love of wisdom.”  Philosophy uses the tools of logic and reason to analyze the ways in which humans experience the world.  It teaches critical thinking, close reading, clear writing, and logical analysis; it uses these to understand the language we use to describe the world, and our place within it.  Different areas of philosophy are distinguished by the questions they ask.  Do our senses accurately describe reality?  What makes wrong actions wrong?  How should we live?  These are philosophical questions, and philosophy teaches the ways in which we might begin to answer them.

Students who learn philosophy get a great many benefits from doing so.  The tools taught by philosophy are of great use in further education, and in employment.  Despite the seemingly abstract nature of the questions philosophers ask, the tools philosophy teaches tend to be highly sought-after by employers.  Philosophy students learn how to write clearly, and to read closely, with a critical eye; they are taught to spot bad reasoning, and how to avoid it in their writing and in their work.  It is therefore not surprising that philosophy students have historically scored more highly on tests like the LSAT and GRE, on average, than almost any other discipline.  Many of our students combine studying philosophy with studying other disciplines.

The most important reason to study philosophy is that it is of enormous and enduring interest.  All of us have to answer, for ourselves, the questions asked by philosophers.  In this department, students can learn how to ask the questions well, and how we might begin to develop responses.  Philosophy is important, but it is also enormously enjoyable, and our faculty contains many award-winning teachers who make the process of learning about philosophy fun.  Our faculty are committed to a participatory style of teaching, in which students are provided with the tools and the opportunity to develop and express their own philosophical views.  

Critical Thinking “It was in philosophy where I learned rigorous critical thinking, a skill that is invaluable when creating art.” - Donald Daedalus, BA ‘05, Visual Artist “Philosophy taught me to think critically and was the perfect major for law school, giving me an excellent start to law school and my career.” - Rod Nelson, BA ‘75, Lawyer

Tools for Assessing Ethical Issues “The courses I took for my minor in philosophy ... have provided a valuable framework for my career work in the field of global health and have given me a strong foundation for developing a structured, logical argument in various contexts.” - Aubrey Batchelor, Minor ‘09, Global Health Worker “Bioethics is an everyday part of medicine, and my philosophy degree has helped me to work through real-world patient issues and dilemmas.” - Teresa Lee, BA ‘08 Medical Student “The ability to apply an ethical framework to questions that have developed in my career, in taking care of patients ... has been a gift and something that I highly value.” - Natalie Nunes, BA ‘91, Family Physician Analytic Reasoning “... philosophy provided me with the analytical tools necessary to understand a variety of unconventional problems characteristic of the security environment of the last decade.” - Chris Grubb, BA ‘98, US Marine “Philosophy provides intellectual resources, critical and creative thinking capacity that are indispensable for success in contemporary international security environment “ - Richard Paz, BA ‘87, US Military Officer

Understanding Others’ Perspectives “... philosophy grounds us in an intellectual tradition larger than our own personal opinions. ... *making+ it is easier to be respectful of and accommodating to individual differences in clients (and colleagues)...” - Diane Fructher Strother, BA ‘00, Clinical Psychologist “... comprehensive exposure to numerous alternative world/ethical views has helped me with my daily interaction with all different types of people of ethnic, cultural, and political orientation backgrounds.” - David Prestin, BA ‘07, Engineer

Evaluating Information “Analyzing information and using it to form logical conclusions is a huge part of philosophy and was thus vital to my success in this position.” - Kevin Duchmann, BA ‘07, Inventory Control Analyst

Writing Skills “My philosophy degree has been incredibly important in developing my analytical and writing skills.” - Teresa Lee, BA ‘08, Medical Student

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For Love of Wisdom: Essays on the Nature of Philosophy Paperback – February 7, 2007

An Ignatius Press Reprint

Ignatius Press Reprints are identical in content with the most recent print edition of the original title. In order to keep important titles available at reasonable prices, we reprint them digitally in small quantities. We use high quality, acid-free paper, but the books are not smyth-sewn as is customary with our offset press print editions.

In these elegant and engaging essays, the internationally acclaimed Thomist, Josef Pieper, defines and defends philosophy as the search for and love of wisdom. True philosophy is not the work of joyless academics pondering over esoteric writings that have no relation to real life. Rather, the philosophical act, in which all reasonable men can participate, begins in wonder at what is, and gratitude for what is given, and ends in love.

In his encyclical letter Fides et Ratio (On the Relationship between Faith and Reason), Pope John Paul II called for a revitalization of true philosophy, for man can find fulfillment “only in choosing to enter the truth, to make a home under the shade of Wisdom and dwell there.” Pieper’s essays make the same ardent and convincing plea.

Josef Pieper is renowned for having popularized the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, a brilliant student of St. Thomas who, in his own voluminous works, has made the deep thought of the "Angelic Doctor"; more accessible and understandable to the modern reader.

• Print length 335 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Ignatius Press
• Publication date February 7, 2007
• Dimensions 6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 1586170872
• ISBN-13 978-1586170875
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

About the author.

Josef Pieper , perhaps the most popular Thomist philosopher of the twentieth century, was schooled in the Greek classics and the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. He also studied philosophy, law, and sociology, and he was a professor at the University of Munster, West Germany. His numerous books have been widely praised by both the secular and religious press.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ignatius Press; First Edition (February 7, 2007)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 335 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1586170872
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1586170875
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.25 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
• #627 in Philosophy Criticism (Books)
• #1,971 in Religion & Philosophy (Books)

About the author

Josef pieper.

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