Peter Starr on Wisdom and Culture
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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?
Continue reading “Wisdom in Community”In short, what Alison Bechdel says of the essentialist/anti-essentialist debate applies to wisdom as well: “Clearly, [we] need to rethink this thing.”
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Continue reading “Simply Human”It is only by seeing ourselves as fundamentally other—the contingent product of a culture that has no particular monopoly on truth—that we can come into our wisest possible, most “utterly human” selves.
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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.
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Continue reading “Rethinking Liberal Education”Narrative imagination is an essential preparation for moral interaction. Habits of empathy and conjecture conduce to a certain type of citizenship and a certain form of community: one that cultivates a sympathetic responsiveness to another’s needs, and understands the way circumstances shape those needs, while respecting separateness and privacy.
Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity
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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.