Continue reading “Does Wisdom Lean Left?”Wisdom does not “lean left” so much as “lean liberal.” If wisdom has a party, it is the party of philosophical liberalism and its historic fellow traveler, liberal education.
Does Wisdom Lean Left?
Tag: empathy
Who’s Afraid of Wisdom?
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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.
What is Wisdom?
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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.
A.Ham in the Age of Trump
Continue reading “A.Ham in the Age of Trump”Hamilton continues to resonate because it speaks, consistently and profoundly, to a deep hunger for wisdom in American society today.
Reading Literature for a Wiser World
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Continue reading “Reading Literature for a Wiser World”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.
Giving Up on Paranoia
Continue reading “Giving Up on Paranoia”Wisdom is a perfect antidote to the paranoid style of American political culture today.
Why Wisdom? Why Now?
Portions of this post first appeared in Inside Higher Ed and are reprinted here with permission
Continue reading “Why Wisdom? Why Now?”“I am wiser than he is to this small extent that I do not think that I know what I do not know.”
Socrates, in Plato, The Apology of Socrates