Good philosophy = wisdom, but the meaning of wisdom has to do with artistic skill with thought and life.
All we can do is be human, so the philosopher tries to be human in the best way he or she can.
This means trying to master life, and as we master some aspects of it, it appears that we have become wise in a certain field of the arts.
I call this the goal of good philosophy because there are some low quality ideas that call themselves philosophical.
with love,
sanjay
I liked the way you differentiated the three terms ‘intelligence’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘wisdom’. Intelligence is apparently inborn, but the other two must be found. Knowledge is easy enough comparably to find, but wisdom is harder. I wonder how you think one finds it, I believe it is best described as being found through another term that I’d like to add to the set; ‘experience’.
The problem is this: The experiences which provide the most wisdom are the dangerous ones, the one’s that one barely gets out from. So to obtain enough wisdom one must have had a lot of initial bad luck (to get into the dangerous situation) and then a lot of subsequent good luck, to get out. Then though the few who do find this wisdom now know how to stay away from such situations, to take fate into their won hands and not be subject to fate. But, in that wisely cautious life they will not find more wisdom.
Good philosophy = relevance.
Many philosophers confuse philosophy with selfish values, and purely entertainment tool.
Sometimes one has to be cynical to see things objectivly as conformatism/group think easily will delude one thoughts.
To be the best philosopher not only knowledge in all science aspect, but one must be mentally prepared. If you don’t have situmlated your brain to have sufficient cognitive abilities, you will never comprehend truth.
Why do these most dangerous things teach us the most wisdom?
In rationalism, we believe we can know that being shot is bad and traumatic without ever personally being shot.
Doesn’t rationalism really work sometimes? Or do we need to be shot before we gain wisdom about it?
In a way they don’t but Zinnat was saying that wisdom leads to virtue. If one doesn’t experience any given type of pain they won’t empathize with others in such types of pain and virtue will be impossible.
That example is too obvious in my opinion. Though still I can work with it: One doesn’t need to be shot to know that they shouldn’t jump in front of someone on a firing range, but one perhaps does need to be shot and survive so they will be less likely to put themselves in situations where there is danger of being shot again.
An example which I find to relevant to my life is actually the experience of trying to live virtuously. At first I only tried a little and therefore was I guess virtuous to others in a small way and I didn’t really suffer much. Then I started being very virtuous and I did suffer much and lost much, that is, it was a very dangerous situation that my selflessness put me in. Now I have the wisdom that thousands of hours of reading and pondering upon the nature of virtue or morality would never have taught me: virtue can (or at least should)only be towards one’s self.
I agree nonetheless that rationalism is very useful. Though we haven’t established where wisdom comes from. All the intelligence and knowledge in the world doesn’t necessarily produce wisdom, though we could define the term ‘wisdom’ so that it does simply come from the other two traits.
You say we should master life, it seems to me that implies experience and not necessarily simply rationalism.
It’s good that you basically say rationalism is useful, even though it isn’t the only tool in the shed.
So now we’re wondering what makes wisdom?
I normally thought it was quite genetic, but also like music.
Capacity is first born, then with conditioning and use of capacity comes ability.
So basically, we need to be born lucky, with wisdom capacity, then later in life we may develop it so that it matures from seed into tree.
Your experience about virtue, I think I am seeing something similar myself.
I thought for some time that virtue towards one’s self is equal to virtue towards other people.
I want to find the true virtue that always works.
The best I’ve got is some form of meritocracy, but it would be difficult to express it to the point where someone would understand.
Allot of humans are basically vile. I don’t want to sound mean but, allot are. There is also the ideology these days, that pain = worth. The more they suffer, the more worthy they are of compensation, donations, charity, spoon feeding knowledge, etc. The sickest people have the highest need, therefor are of the highest merit and worth. Now, that is the basics of it. The wording is neither perfect nor complete, but, I wondered to myself, what if we turned this inside-out, so that resources went to the healthiest people with the least needs and defects? Wouldn’t that be way different? Society is not geared to even ask that question though.
I’m trying to consider what you are saying, but I can’t get passed how people like you and hobz which are basically contrarians inside of threads at ILP. You seem to think you’re scientific or something.
How-ever, it is true that many philosophers confuse philosophy with selfish values, and entertainment.
Some of the truest things are non-entertaining. If we want an “interesting” form of truth, that might not be the actual truth.
Despite this, people persist with their ideas that things must be interesting before they will personally learn about them.
I think that settles that then; wisdom is a potential some are born with and some aren’t. I guess by default to be born with that potential one must be born with intelligence, then with knowledge and conditioning that potential is full filled.
Let me remind you that I was only speaking in terms of what Zinnat said, that wisdom must lead to virtue, and then I did my best to make a plausible explanation as to how that would work, but I really only can speak of the term ‘virtue’ in a hypothetical way.
The idea that pain equals worth doesn’t seem to be as common as you make it sound. Those who are successful are praised, that is told they have worth, and if they supposedly suffered a little to get that success then maybe they will average maybe 10% more praise: What sounds better to most people; ‘You overcame incredible odds through tremendous effort and pain and you got second place, impressive.’ or ‘You got first place, need I say more?!’
And in while it is true that people in need get welfare and there is much discussion about that, the fact is that people who aren’t in need are the one’s who actual get more, the opposite of the vicious cycle. But, for me, the reason it seems at times that we have this type of morality where weakness is a virtue is that as thinkers we have actually thought the issue of virtue over for ourselves. I don’t think one can do that with out running into problems. It’s a struggle to isolate what virtue is and in one’s quest to do that I think pain = virtue is that last stepping stone before moral nihilism. And then again anyone who believes in and has actually read the new testament already ‘knows’ that pain equals virtue, but then I’ve never heard of any contemporary person such as that…
Sorry 523,
I missed you reply and i apologize for that.
I will try to reply tomorrow.
with love,
sanjay
Why so few will be actual philosophers and find truth.
523,
Fortunately got some time.
Before saying anything, i must admit that your observations and conclusions are crystal clear and almost perfect…
523, i will take up your last post tomorrow.
with love,
sanjay
The way you characterize the dynamic between self preservation and virtue towards others seems as if you’re threading a thin line, I’m not very coordinated but I’ll try to keep up.
The problem is that nothing has a value in itself and that the goal must be reinvented each time when the former has been achieved.
If that doesn’t happen, nihilism and decadence occur, entire nations and populations perish. Maybe even humanity could perish if we don’t set a new goal to it.
The creation of nations, races and species depends probably on this goal-setting-and-achieving.
Life is will to power and will to a goal. Do we have a goal now or is our will wanting Nothing?
We have allot of small goals in life.
Goals naturally appear, one after the other.
Sadly there isn’t much purpose as a nation in canada at least.
This seems grabbed out of thin air, could you provide some examples?
Without great goals, small goals turn into war of all against all, also called socialism.
This seem grabbed out of thin air! It’s nothing but random rethorics put together.
We do have great universal goals: the silent march toward colonization of other planets goes on. The international space stations is an immense achievement, that people already forgot, and space X the man landing on Mars, is already in development,and the cold war being over, international cooperation looks better then ever. Women are at par with men, and gays can marry and even adopt kids. The former soviet union with it’s grand design and five year plans is long gone, and the end of the world scenario through mutually assured destruction is a thing of the past. If these are not great achievement achieved through grand plans, what is?
Thats not a great goal, its many small asocial goals.
There is an order of rank of the sense for society by Vollgraff:
The first is called “brutal egoism” and for the last “the highest morals skills” are needed.
Also their goals and achievements must be different, since the first few are barbaric.
The fact that most of the countries are ruled by kings or written laws and none of them is based on habit and is organized as a republic, tells us that those people have lost their morals and customs and are now like a mummy conserved through the force from outside. A dead bodies so to say.