For an opening gambit, I’d like to consider the relative merits of the terms “philantilipsy” and “philosophy”, vis-a-vis the putative purpose of the latter.
“Philantilipsy” was compounded from “philos” - Greek for to ‘love’ or seek the ‘friendship’ of, and “antilipsis” - Greek for ‘understanding’ (αντιληψις).
I had considered the use of “philousia” - the love of essence / isness, but its originator, William S. Haas (The destiny of mind: East and West. 1956, Faber and Faber, London.) clearly had particular metaphysical uses in mind.
“Philosophy” for its part, if taken in the context of “the love of, or search for, wisdom” was, for me, unsatisfactory from the outset, as it is, even in its conception, mired in uncertainty - and thereby, immediately a vehicle for partisan and contrived confabulations. After all, what may be understood by the term ‘wisdom’, and where does it lead? ‘Eudomenia’ and any other proclivity premising the search for and examination of ‘good’, already brings with it a writhing of heuristical hag-fish, each tearing at the substance of actuality in order to feed their subjective dominance.
No, it became all too evident that the ultimate paragon of human endeavour must be the striving for understanding, for αντιληψις. To fully ‘understand’ one must grasp the ‘isness’ - and therein, both the elemental and its integration with the universal. And, to the extent that one understands, ‘wisdom’ and the living of a ‘good’ life may be attributable to ones actions.
wisdom is understanding and vice versa, the difference is symbolic, not quintessential - i think perhaps you’re meaning to contrast philosophy and understanding, not wisdom and understanding.
incidentally, while philosophy can but won’t necessarily bring wisdom into one’s posession, it will necessarily complicate our understanding of that wisdom once it is posessed
if you really think about it, there’s wisdom simply in the way things are - like when an anthill demonstrates it’s own sophisticated logic which the ants themselves have no understanding of (or so we can probably assume)
broader point being that wisdom simply is combined forms of understanding, so there’s no real difference between seeking wisdom and seeking understanding in any mythic Greek sense - or, at least, the difference is purely in name
all of which is to say that involved in the contrast drawn in the OP there are contrasting symbols but not ultimately any contrasting referents, so perhaps it’s better (and more wisely) viewed as non-issue
I was drawn to consider an alternative ‘symbol’ to “philosophy”, after thinking on what seemed to be its principle referent, “wisdom”. It had long been evident to me that, one man’s wisdom was another’s folly (Ralph Waldo Emerson - by way of acknowledgement). Notions of the ‘good’ were and are, clearly wide ranging and, in any event, all to often predicated on value-judgement and subject to changing frames-of-reference. In short it was entirely possible, and all-too-often probable, that behaviour was adjudged to be ‘wise’ when subsequently it became evident it was not underpinned by great ‘understanding’.
Now “understanding” on the other hand, for all that its common use may give cause for confusion, could legitimately be cast as referring to the ‘isness’ or actuality of the Universe. We may for instance say that something is poorly understood, or even completely mis-understood, but that allows that it is, and that we may ‘know’ something (if not everything) about it. I use “know” in common parlance without entering into contention about what it is to know. Such knowledge is conceived of as encompassing all aspects of existence, particularly and most importantly that of relationships between ‘things’ (broadly). AND, it seemed to me that the more one understands - that is to say has knowledge of all aspects of a matter under consideration, the more one’s actions (either in word or deed) are likely to be judged as wise. Thus I sought a symbol that had as its very specific referent, ‘understanding’. “Philantilipsy” is the candidate I propose, but I am by no means attached to it.
If indeed “Philosophy” has come to represent the search for a greater understanding, then let it be.
However, if, as much work pursued under its aegis is claimed to be, philosophy refers particularly to the search for ‘wisdom’, how best to realise the ‘good’ in life, morality, and the like - especially where this involves some notion of Platonic ‘ideals’, Kantian ‘categorical imperatives’ and the like, then I demur.
Ultimately I conclude that wisdom is not necessarily understanding, nor does understanding guarantee wisdom, but understanding of wisdom is most likely to confer the possibility of one’s actions being considered wise. Hence my preference for a symbol other than “Philosophy”, and the rationale behind my suggested alternative.
My thought here is still that wisdom is a form of understanding - perhaps i am using those terms more broadly than you are - i think you’re right to say that wisdom is not always underpinned by great understanding, sometimes the understanding underpinning wisdom is very simple and limited. Common wisdom holds for example, that one should check both ways before crossing the street - that doesn’t require a whole lot of understanding to do, and it’s hardly a philosophical insight, but it’s still a wise action to perform based on the simple understanding that it sucks to get hit by a car - we can then cast that in a philosophical light by pointing out that getting hit by cars (or trampled by horses) tends to impede one’s attempts to live the good life. Again the understanding there is very limited, but it is wise.
Well again, i think wise actions can be (but aren’t always necessarily) based on very simple understandings, and i agree that understanding, but also think that wisdom, do very much refer to the isness of things - there is, as i said, wisdom in the way things are - it’s just a question of arriving at the understanding of how and why those things are that way - philosophy can help us do that, but it can also make that understanding unnecessarily complicated, as in the case of Kant and Plato:
right, which is why i think that it’s more a question of contrasting philosophy and understanding than wisdom and understanding - philosophy is often purported to be the search for wisdom, but that doesn’t mean it always finds it. I have a feeling that renaming the search for understanding will ultimately have the same results, a lot of unnecessarily complicated understandings that aren’t necessarily helpful to the living of the good life. That’s just the nature of the search, not a result of looking for the wrong thing only the result of finding the wrong thing, we should still be pursuing the form of understanding known as wisdom, even if we often get derailed in that search - i suppose however, you could call the search whatever you want:
OK, there are certainly understandings that are not exemplary of wisdom, but wouldn’t those just be flawed understandings?
and an interesting one to be sure, i’m just trying to determine if it is itself a wise gambit. perhaps i’m wrong in my assesment.
OK, but isn’t understanding something we do - isn’t it a goal in itself? wisdom, to my mind, is simply when that goal of understanding is realized - like i try to relay in my response to GridLok, there are good and bad ways of understanding things, so perhaps i need to correct myself that wisdom and understanding are not themselves necessarily the same thing, but that the goal of the search for each is, if that makes sense . . .
Certainly, and I think your term here rings more truthfully of that higher or more refined philosophical instinct, as wisdom of course presupposes the means and methods whereby this wisdom may be aquired and founded upon. Understanding extends beyond knowledge and perspectives-based “wisdom” which rests, as you say, quite often in value judgements, that is to say, in opinion – understanding therefore implies a certain essential correspondence with “truth”, broadly defined, that is, with what is real, what reality consists of and how it is constituted - a perspective which transcends the merely subjective. Understanding is quite more specific and narrow than wisdom, being that it applies across all contexts, or rather in that it is not reversed or counteracted from one context to the next, whereas wisdom is often context-dependent. But also unfortunately, this more noble or honest instinct to genuine understanding is one which is somewhat rare even in philosophy proper. So in this sense, as you later say, the term “philosophy” is probably adequate enough to capture the meaning of what is meant by the writings and works of those individuals who might commonly be called “philosophers”.
Certainly, and the accurate capturing of these relations between things and the capacity to reference and contextualize these to oneself and one’s ideas and knowledge, in a personal and dynamic manner, would constitute a higher calling than the mere scholarly endeavors of the majority of philosophy, which would seek to classify everything into its respective domains, that it might be peered at through a microscope from behind a 5 meter thick wall of glass, walled off and separate, impersonal. Philantilipsy would capture the former motive, philosophy, the latter.
Yes some understanding is certainly a prerequisite for any wisdom, although degrees of wisdom might be obtained with relatively little understanding. But can understanding be obtained without any “wisdom”, commonly understood, at all? It would seem possible. If wisdom is the second-order or subsequent, practical relatability or applicability of knowledge to common situations and contexts, if it has more of this “human element” to it than raw understanding and thus lends itself better to opinion and practical heuristics, then wisdom certainly must make use of understanding in some way or form, but understanding itself, while, as you say, likely engendering the bearer to some amount of wisdom, does not expressely require wisdom in order to be understanding as understanding. Understanding is predicated only upon itself, is what I mean – wisdom, while also being predicated only upon itself, must also, if indeed it might be said to be called “wise” at all, must make use of at least some basic component of understanding, some means by which to relate one’s ‘knowledge’ to the ‘real world’ or to one’s situations or contexts.
Haha yes, I think you make your point quite well here. Any and all forms of idiocy may arise at the behest of philosophy. Genuine understanding, much less the instinct or will to genuine understanding, is hardly a necessary component of philosophy. Rather, philosophers which do possess such a will might be said to arrive at their respective conclusions and ideas at the expense of philosophy proper, even where they make use of the tools and bits of knowledge gathered for them already by those devout scholars and categorizing historians who pose otherwise as genuine philosophers.
Thanks upf, I plan to … but for the time being I’m going to look around and join in other discussions e.g. stellamonika’s "Aren’t your activities limited by the properties of things? "