Online research in philosophy

Prologue -- The Greek stones speak : toward an archaeology of consciousness -- Singing the muses' song : myth, wisdom, and speech -- Physis, kosmos, logos : presocratic thought and the emergence of nature-consciousness -- Sophistical wisdom, Socratic wisdom, and the political life -- Civic wisdom, divine wisdom : Socrates, Plato, and two visions for the Athenian citizen -- Speculative wisdom, practical wisdom : Aristotle and the culmination of Hellenic thought -- Epilogue.

The word “philosophy” comes from the Greek “philos” (meaning love) and “sophia” (meaning wisdom); thus philosophy literally is the “love of wisdom.” Whatever else philosophy may be, most people agree that it still retains this spirit of its etymological roots, and that when we are engaged in philosophy we are pursuing wisdom for the sake of itself. Wisdom, however, is not the same thing as knowledge or information. We aren’t merely trying to amass list of interesting ideas, or believe anything that sounds good. Wisdom is, at least in part, the reflection on and critical evaluation of what we ourselves and others around us believe about some very heady topics.

Practical wisdom has received scant attention in business ethics. Defined as a disposition toward cleverness in crafting morally excellent responses to, or in anticipation of, challenging particularities, practical wisdom has four psychological components: knowledge, emotion, thinking, and motivation. People’s experience, reflection, and inspiration are theorized to determine their capacity for practical wisdom-related performance. Enhanced by their abilities to engage in moral imagination, systems thinking, and ethical reframing, this capacity is realized in the form of wisdom-related performance. This can be manifested either in wise business decisions or through their performance as mentors, advice givers, or dispute handlers.

Wisdom defined (sort of) What is wisdom? ; The wisest man in the world : the philosophical roots of wisdom ; Heart and mind : the psychological roots of wisdom -- Eight neural pillars of wisdom. Emotional regulation : the art of coping ; Knowing what's important : the neural mechanism of establishing value and making a judgment ; Moral reasoning : the biology of judging right from wrong ; Compassion : the biology of loving-kindness and empathy ; Humility : the gift of perspective ; Altruism : social justice, fairness, and the wisdom of punishment ; Patience : temptation, delayed gratification, and the biology of learning to wait for larger rewards ; Dealing with uncertainty : change, "meta-wisdom," and the vulcanization of the human brain -- Becoming wise. Youth, adversity, and resilience : the seeds of wisdom ; Older and wiser : the wisdom of aging ; Classroom, board room, bedroom, back room : everyday wisdom in our everyday world ; Dare to be wise : does wisdom have a future?

If our concern is to help wisdom to flourish in the world, then the central task before us is to transform academia so that it takes up its proper task of seeking and promoting wisdom instead of just acquiring knowledge. Improving knowledge about wisdom is no substitute; nor is the endeavour of searching for the correct definition of wisdom.

This article argues that Platonism provides a plausible account of wisdom, one that is especially attractive for Christians. Christian Platonism sees wisdom as conceptual understanding; it is a “knowledge of the Forms.” To be convincing this view requires us to see understanding as including an appreciation of the relations between concepts as well as the value of the possible ways of being that concepts disclose. If the Forms are Divine Ideas, then we can see why God is both supremely wise and the source of all human wisdom. The account of wisdom provided helps explain the relation between wisdom and knowledge, the connection between wisdom and emotion, and much about how wisdom is acquired. The view also helps explain why someone who lacks extensive propositional knowledge can still be wise, and it helps us see why an understanding of the Biblical narrative and participation in the life of the Church can be important aids in the development of wisdom.

Dialectics has to do with how the "bigger picture", both spatially and temporally (past and future), enters into and affects whatever we perceive directly and immediately. All the categories associated with dialectical thinking help bring some part of this bigger picture, to which we all belong, into focus. Special attention is given here to how to study the socialist/communist future that lies "concealed" inside the capitalist present as a necessary part of the dialectical analysis of capitalism.

This anthology contains some of the more important Marxist thinkers now working on dialectics. As a whole the book is an unusual 'Introduction to Dialectics', a systematic restatement of what it is and how to use it, a survey of most of the main debates in the field, and a good picture of the current state of the art of dialectics.

Dialectics is essentially the method or logos in which categories of forms are combined to explain things. Dialectics was developed because reason faces difficulties in grasping the sensible world. Practical wisdom is knowledge about some things or certain person or persons because of its variable objects. But it is not entirely specific or only about a particular thing and without universality in any sense. As one kind of dialectics, it combines various elements to accord with the right logos, similar to the way in which various forms are combined in theory. Therefore practical wisdom as a combination or polymerization of elements can be regarded as another kind of logic, namely practical logic or dialectics.

The word “philosophy” stems from “philo” and “sophia”, Greek terms often translated as “love” and “wisdom” respectively. Yet there is very little contemporary philosophical work on wisdom. There is plenty of historical work on the matter, and as it happens, there is a large body of work on wisdom in contemporary cognitive psychology. As far as contemporary philosophy goes, the work on wisdom is confined mainly to ethicists and epistemologists attempting to broaden their domains of theorizing. Interestingly, this work is growing rapidly and for good reason: wisdom is intimately associated with numerous issues epistemologists and ethicists have been interested in and working on for a long time. Work on wisdom outside of philosophy is rapidly growing as well. As one testament to all this growth, it is worth noting that the University of Chicago is currently implementing a $2 million research grant for an interdisciplinary project titled “Defining Wisdom”.