Peter Starr on Wisdom and Culture
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Continue reading “Wisdom Matters: Reading Literature for a Wiser World”Some moments in human history are clearly wiser than others. In politics, and in social life more generally, ours seems strikingly unwise.
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Continue reading “Epilogue: AI Reads Me”You are an academic writing a critique of the conception of wisdom outlined in Peter Starr’s blog at Wiscult.com. What are the principal shortcoming of this conception and how would you suggest rectifying them?
Portions of this post first appeared in Inside Higher Ed and are reprinted here with permission
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Continue reading “Reading for Wisdom Today”Cultivating intellectual humility initiates a virtuous circle, the result of which is a greater capacity for wisdom in all its dimensions.
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Continue reading “Journeys to Wisdom”The early history of wisdom unfolded on the road.
Stephen Hall, Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience
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Continue reading “Who’s Afraid of Wisdom?”Before moving on, I would like to address five ways in which contemporary readers—and academic readers most especially—might be uncomfortable with wisdom as an optic for literary analysis.
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Continue reading “What is Wisdom?”Wisdom as I understand it is a capacity for sound judgment with a view to pragmatic action. Wise judgment is attuned to cognitive complexities in the world and to the ways in which historical and cultural contexts inform diverse systems of value. Whatever their domain of action, wise practitioners evince high degrees of intellectual humility and empathy, together with a thoroughgoing commitment to fostering the well-being of both one’s self and one’s community.