Wisdom-Centered Life

This page identifies some research and resources that will be helpful for progressing with the mission, to help humans and their institutions become wise. Wisdom is defined as perceiving reality and doing what is best. Both conditions do not, in principle, admit of attainment; the problem is not with the definition of wisdom, but human limitations. The definition could be rephrased as "profound insight into the nature of reality, or the significance of phenomena, and making the best possible choice." Humans can become wiser.

 

The study of exemplars. This could be carried out using the sort of procedure followed by Anne Colby & William Damon, 1992, Some Do Care: Contemporary Lives of Moral Commitment, New York: Macmillan—The Free Press.

--Since this was written, a doctoral student has taken up the challenge to study exemplars of wise people for his dissertation. The results are awaited. I am privileged to be a member of his committee. He is not following the procedure of Colby & Damon.

 

 

Texts. Amazingly (but see Alisdair MacIntyre's "disquieting suggestion" at the beginning of After Virtue) many Western classics of wisdom have not been in print for centuries, or have not been translated into English for centuries, if ever. For example, Pierre Charron's De la Sagesse, "the most important Renaissance treatise on wisdom” (Rice 1958:179), has not received an English translation for almost 300 years. Here are some other works (which will be added to--and hopefully subtracted from--from time to time) that appear to be important in order for an adequate picture of humans' insights into wisdom. These texts should be available on the web.

 

Agostino Steucho (1497/8-1548).  De philosophia perenni. (Aug 16, 2008).   Online as of March 2010.

 

Justus Lipsius (1547-1606). Manuductionis ad Stoicam philosophiam libri tres, L. Annaeo Senecae, aliisque scriptoribus illustrandis (Originally published 1604. Revised edition Antwerp, J. Moretus, 1610.

This is available except for the first 9 chapters on the web in Seneca, Opera Omnia, Vol. 1, Paris, 1824.

[A few chapters have been translated into English by Robert V. Young in J. Kraye, ed., Cambridge Translations of Renaissance Philosophical Texts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, I: Moral Philosophy: pp. 200-209; and into French in J. Lagrée, Juste Lipse et la restauration du stoïcisme: étude et traduction des traités stoïciens De la Constance, Manuel de philosophie stoïcienne, Physique des stoïciens (extraits) (Paris: Vrin, 1994).