Peter Starr on Wisdom and Culture
Photo: She Counseling
Continue reading “Trauma and Community”Certain kinds of trauma visited on peoples are so deep, so stupefyingly cruel, that—unlike money, unlike vengeance, even unlike justice, rights, or the good will of others—art alone can translate such trauma and turn sorrow into meaning, sharpening the moral imagination.
Toni Morrison, Roundtable on the Future of the Humanities in a Fragmented World
Photo: The Times of India
Continue reading “Journeys to Wisdom”The early history of wisdom unfolded on the road.
Stephen Hall, Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience
Photos: The New Yorker, Penguin Books
Continue reading “The Death of Old Goriot”Rastignac gives up on his chance for wisdom, but Balzac clearly holds out hope, against considerable odds, for his implied reader.
Continue reading “The Many Ages of Wisdom”Picture in your mind a wise man or wise woman. Chances are you imagined someone of advanced age—Dumbledore not Harry Potter, The Matrix’s Oracle not Trinity.
Photo: ChatGPT 5.2
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.