Australasian Journal of Philosophy

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Wisdom

Stephen R. Grimm

To cite this article: Stephen R. Grimm (2015) Wisdom, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 93:1,
139-154, DOI: 10.1080/00048402.2014.937449

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Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2015
Vol. 93, No. 1, 139 154, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2014.937449

Wisdom
Stephen R. Grimm

What is it that makes someone wise, or one person wiser than another? I argue
that wisdom consists in knowledge of how to live well, and that this knowledge
of how to live well is constituted by various further kinds of knowledge. One
concern for this view is that knowledge is not needed for wisdom but rather
some state short of knowledge, such as having rational or justified beliefs
about various topics. Another concern is that the emphasis on knowing how
to live well fails to do justice to the ancient tradition of ‘theoretical wisdom’. I
address both of these concerns in filling out the account.

Keywords: wisdom, epistemology, well-being

Some people are wise in domain-specific ways. For instance, someone could
be a wise gardener, or a wise stock analyst, or a wise mechanic. But there
also seem to be people who are wise in a more general sense. Thus it is no
paradox to say of someone that while he might be a wise stock analyst he is
not wise ‘overall’—where this latter description is supposed to pick out a
more pervasive, more holistic, property of a person.
But what does it mean to be wise overall or in general? Or, perhaps better,
what is it that makes one person wiser than another in this general sense? In
this paper I will argue that wisdom in this more general sense is constituted
by knowledge of how to live well, and that one person is wiser than another
(in part) to the extent that she has more of this knowledge. Although this
view has its defenders,1 it goes against current trends in epistemology in a
few different ways. First, in contrast to Sharon Ryan’s recent arguments
[Ryan 2012, 2013], it insists that what is required for wisdom is indeed
knowledge of how to live well, as opposed to some epistemic standing short
of knowledge, such as having rational (though perhaps mistaken) beliefs
about how to live well. Second, and against not just recent claims by Dennis
Whitcomb [2011] and Jason Baehr [2014, ms.] but a long tradition dating
back to Aristotle, I will argue that there is no independent kind of wisdom—
‘theoretical wisdom’—that can be understood apart from its connection to
knowing how to live well. Put another way, I reject the ancient tradition that
there are two distinct kinds of wisdom, practical and theoretical, and that it
is possible to give self-contained accounts of each. If I am right, the sort of
theoretical knowledge that is sometimes classified as ‘wisdom’ only qualifies
as such if it is appropriately connected to knowing how to live well.
But what does it mean, exactly, to say that wisdom requires knowledge of
how to live well? What sort of knowledge is that? On my view, knowledge of
how to live well is a complex state that can be broken down into various
components. In particular, knowing how to live well is constituted by the

1
See, e.g., Nozick [1989], Garrett [1996], and Kupperman [2005].

Ó 2014 Australasian Association of Philosophy

140 S. R. Grimm

following further types of knowledge, all of which, I believe, are individually

necessary for wisdom:

(1) Knowledge of what is good or important for well-being.

(2) Knowledge of one’s standing, relative to what is good or important

for well-being.

(3) Knowledge of a strategy for obtaining what is good or important for

well-being.

Most of this paper will be dedicated to fleshing out and elaborating these
further sorts of knowledge. And one thing for which I will argue is that these
conditions not only shed light on the epistemology of wisdom but also cap-
ture many of the core properties that psychologists and others typically asso-
ciate with the wise person: for example, that the wise person is experienced,
concerned for others, self-aware, and open to new ideas.2
A further attractive feature of the view is that it helps to shed light on why
academic interest in wisdom has waxed and waned over the centuries—from
being a central concern of ancient and mediaeval thinkers to nearly an after-
thought for much of the twentieth century. Although there has recently been
a revival of interest in wisdom among psychologists and philosophers, a sat-
isfying theory of wisdom should provide insight into its varied reception
over the years.

1. Two Distinctions

It will help to begin with two distinctions. First, I have been speaking so far
of the wise person and of wisdom in a way that requires clarification. For on
the one hand, there is a tradition of thinking that someone is wise only if she
is fully or completely wise. On the other hand, we sometimes call people wise
who fall short of full or complete wisdom but who are nevertheless ‘on the
path’ towards complete wisdom. These later people are, as it were, incipi-
ently wise; they are pointed in the direction of wisdom and seem equipped to
make progress on the path.
Adding further detail, we can say that someone is fully wise if she not only
knows what is good or important for well-being, but if she has actually
attained those goods. Suppose with Socrates that we take knowledge of
things like justice, goodness, and beauty to be crucial to well-being. Then
the ideally wise person would not just know that this sort of knowledge is
crucial to well-being but would actually have achieved it: that is, she would
actually know the true nature of justice, goodness, and beauty. Or suppose
with the Stoics that we take tranquility (or ataraxia) to be central to well-
being. Then the ideally wise person would not just be aware of the impor-
tance of ataraxia but would actually have achieved it.
2
For some of the empirical studies see Jeste et al. [2010] and Staudinger and Gl€
uck [2011].
 Wisdom 141

Now, who is ideally wise in this way? Arguably, no one. Or, at least, the
fully wise person would be extraordinarily rare. For the Stoics, the ideally
wise person would be the sage, and according to many Stoics a true sage has
never existed. This rarity is also reflected in the Abrahamic claim that ‘God
alone is wise.’ It would seem that when Socrates disavowed any sort of seri-
ous wisdom, it was therefore ideal wisdom (what he sometimes called ‘divine
wisdom’) that he had in mind.
But in addition to this ideal state we also think of people as wise, in some
sense, when they are appropriately oriented towards complete wisdom. As
Katja Vogt points out [2011: sec. 4.3], according to some Stoics this change
in orientation occurred when a person acquired knowledge about what was
good or important:

The transitional moment in which a human being finally and fully recognizes
that only virtue (consistency) is good is momentous: this is the moment in
which a fool becomes a wise person [Cicero, De fin. 3.20 22]. At that point, a
human being acquires what we might call the scientific concept of the good.
She now masters a concept of the good that gets things right—once one has
this concept, one is not going to fall back on misguided ideas such as ‘money
brings happiness’.

Surely, if they are to be consistent here, the Stoics must mean that in
acquiring the knowledge that virtue alone is good a person becomes only
incipiently wise—on the path or progressing towards wisdom, but not per-
fectly or ideally wise as the sage is wise. Seneca indeed had his own name
for people in this state: he called them ‘progressors’ (proficiens), people
who were not ideally wise but who were nevertheless pointed in the right
direction.
Properly speaking, the account I offer here is therefore an account of
incipient wisdom: a state that involves knowledge of what is good or impor-
tant for well-being, an accurate sense of where one stands with respect to
those goods, and a strategy for realizing them. One advantage of thinking of
wisdom in this way is that it naturally captures the sense in which wisdom
comes in degrees. Someone could therefore be much wiser than she was five
years ago in virtue of having, e.g., more detailed, particular, knowledge of
what is good or important for well-being, or of more specific strategies for
realizing those goods.3
Socrates is perhaps the premier example of someone who was wise in this
incipient sense. Although he flatly denied that he was wise in the sense of
possessing complete knowledge of justice, goodness, and beauty, he never-
theless took himself to be wise ‘perhaps in this alone’—that he knew what
was good (to have this knowledge), knew himself to lack these goods, and
had a strategy for trying to achieve them (dialectic, or conversing with every-
one he could find).
Wisdom therefore seems to be essentially an in-process state for human
beings at least—more like a way (a Dao) than a settled destination. Perhaps
3
She might also have made advances in the attainment of these goods: perhaps a good is ‘having a mind like
unto the world’ and through her studies of science she had made some advances there.
142 S. R. Grimm

‘incipient’ then is not the best description for this state, because it suggests
only the early or initial stages of wisdom and it seems to leave out someone,
such as Socrates, who has been on the path for quite some time. Neverthe-
less, because it appears better than the alternatives,4 I will continue to use it,
bearing in mind that the ‘incipiently wise’ are all of those on the path
towards complete wisdom, not just the beginners.5
The second preliminary distinction I want to make is not between types of
wise people but rather between theories of wisdom. Let us call a theory of
wisdom fully articulated if it not only invokes notions like ‘what is important
for well-being’ but also tells us what is important for well-being. My theory
is not like that, because I will not opt for any particular view about what is
more or less important for well-being, or about what is most important, or
about how broadly the notion of well-being should be understood. We can
therefore think of it as a partially articulated theory instead. Just as reliabilist
theories in epistemology hold that reliability is necessary for knowledge but
leave it up to others to determine which cognitive processes actually are reli-
able, so my claim is simply that knowledge of things like ‘what is good or
important for well being’ is necessary for wisdom. I leave it to others, wiser
than me, to determine what actually is good or important for well-being,
and to spell out effective strategies for achieving those goods.

2. Knowledge of What Is Good or Important

One of the most common claims about the wise person is that she has wide
experience of life. This is the sense in which wisdom and age are often
thought to go hand in hand. Nevertheless, it seems clear that experience
alone is not sufficient for wisdom, even in an incipient sense. Virtually every-
one who reaches old age has a wide experience of life, but a much smaller
percentage of these people are regarded as wise.
So, what is it that certain people learn from experience that sets them on
the right path? What sort of knowledge do they acquire? In keeping with the
first condition on wisdom outlined above, what I want to say is this: They
learn from experience what is good or important for well-being. More
exactly, they learn what is more or less important for well-being. As Joel
Kupperman [2005: 250] puts it, experience offers ‘knowledge of what has
high, low, or negative value’, both at the general level and, especially, in par-
ticular situations.
For example, suppose I think that losing my job is one of the worst things
that could possibly happen to me. But then it happens, and I realize that I
can struggle through—it is not really as devastating as I had thought it
would be. I also come to see that there are much worse things I could have
4
Developing? Evolving? Progressing? I have tried all of these alternatives at various times, without much
happiness.
5
The distinction between complete and incipient wisdom also helps to explain the well-known dispute
between Paul Baltes and Monika Ardelt in the psychological literature on wisdom. In his article with Ute
Kunzmann, Baltes makes it clear that he considers wisdom ‘a utopia of mind and virtue’ [Baltes and Kunz-
mann 2004: 292], one that does not seem achievable by human beings. Ardelt [2004], by contrast, seems much
more concerned with studying the sort of wisdom that real human beings sometimes possess.
 Wisdom 143

lost than my job, such as my integrity, or my friendships, or my health. Or,

to take a more trivial case, suppose I think that going on a long road trip
with my three children in the backseat ‘won’t be that bad’. But then I try it
and after a brief period of peace it becomes a prolonged agony of squabbling
and complaining. Now I know the true measure of the thing.
One thing that experience can therefore teach us is what different possibil-
ities are like and thus how to weigh or value them appropriately.6 In this
sense the elderly, wise or not, are important repositories of wisdom because
they can help to provide evidence about what different alternatives are like
and can thereby help us to assign different values to those alternatives.
Of course there is some variability here, both across the lifespan of a single
person and across different people. What was very important to me at 14
might not be very important to me at 64. But there does appear to be an
implicit objectivity even across this variability. When we are looking for
advice about life, we do not turn to people who seem to have flawed (or
‘screwed-up’) priorities—that is to say, people who apparently overvalue
some things and undervalue others. Instead, we turn to people who seem to
have the ‘right priorities’ and who can discern how to respect properly these
priorities in our particular situation.
What cases like this reveal is that our estimation of whether someone is
wise turns on our more basic estimation of whether we think the person
knows what is good or important for well-being, or whether she has the right
kind of well-being in her sights. If we think that someone has false beliefs
about what is important for well-being, or about the relative weights of differ-
ent goods, we do not think that the person is wise. Or again, if we think that
someone has not properly appreciated the sort of well-being that really mat-
ters, we do not think of the person as wise.7 On a more positive note, we also
seem to judge that a person is wiser to the extent that we think she knows
more about what is good or important for well-being, and in particular to the
extent that we think she appreciates the relative weights of these goods.
Note that I have been speaking so far about what is good or important for
well-being, but I have left undiscussed the question of exactly whose well-
being matters. Is it the well-being of the individual, or of the community, or
of some larger group still? In order to see the force of this question more
clearly, consider the following passage from Jane Goodall, the renowned
naturalist and conservationist [quoted in Zuckerman 2008: 83]:

It is awfully sad that with our clever brains, capable of taking us to the moon
and developing all these sophisticated ways of communicating around the
planet, that we seem to have lost wisdom; and that’s the wisdom of indigenous
people who would make a major decision based on how that decision would
affect people seven generations ahead. We’re making decisions now based on
the bottom line. How will this affect me now? Me and my family, now? How
will this huge decision affect the next shareholders’ meeting three months
6
Why ‘can’ teach rather than ‘does’ teach? Because sometimes people can take the wrong lesson from experi-
ence. Suppose that someone claims to have learned from a bad break-up that he ‘should never trust any one
again’. Arguably, experience has taught him no such thing.
7
For an illustration of our negative judgments on this score, see John Kekes’s [1983, 1995] interesting discus-
sion of Tolstoy’s character, Ivan Ilyich.
144 S. R. Grimm

ahead? How will this decision I make today affect my election campaign?
Something like that. So although we think we’re caring about our children and
grandchildren, we’re actually stealing their future.

According to Goodall, the sort of well-being that is of interest to the wise

person is therefore quite broad, much broader than we often suppose. In
particular, the truly wise person is concerned not just with her own well-
being, or with the well-being of her contemporaries; she is concerned also
with the well-being of future generations. If Goodall is right, the vast major-
ity of us lack wisdom because we are ignorant about the sort of well-being
that really matters.8
Is Goodall right about this? I will not try to settle that question here
(again, that would be a task for a fully articulated theory of wisdom), but I
will simply add three further observations. (1) Just as our judgment about
whether someone is wise turns on our more basic judgment about whether
we think the person has a correct grasp of what is good or important for
well-being, so too it apparently turns on whether we think the person has
the right sort of well-being in mind. (2) If one thinks that the wise person is
concerned primarily with the well-being of the group or of the community,
then our original formula—that the wise person ‘knows how to live well’—
will have to be understood in a new light. Rather than supposing that the
formula tells us just that the wise person knows what it takes for herself to
live well, the formula should instead be taken to mean that she knows what
it takes for the group, or for the community, to live well or to flourish. (3) It
seems central to our concept of wisdom that human well-being is importantly
involved in some way. For suppose that someone only knew what was good
or important for the well-being of something non-human: daffodils, say, or
snails. Then while we might say that such a person was wise in some
domain-specific sense—wise-with-respect-to-daffodils or wise-with-respect-
to-snails—it seems clear that such a person would not be considered wise in
general or ‘simply’ wise. For good or for ill, there thus seems to be an
anthropocentric slant to our concept of wisdom.9

3. Knowledge of One’s Standing Relative to Goods

Knowledge of what is good or important for well-being therefore appears to

be necessary for wisdom; but is it sufficient? It seems not. One also needs to
8
Interestingly, this way of thinking about wisdom also helps to shed light on recent claims, among psycholo-
gists working on wisdom, that would otherwise appear peculiar. According to Robert Sternberg [1998: 353],
for instance, wisdom is ‘defined as the application of tacit knowledge as mediated by values towards the goal
of achieving a common good’; and according to Ursula Staudinger and Judith Gl€ uck [2011: 221], ‘people in
Western and Eastern societies have clear conceptions of what wisdom is’, viz., ‘the perfect integration of
mind and character for the greater good.’ What is initially puzzling about both views, I think, is the reference
to the greater good or the common good—an element that in both cases is simply asserted (as a descriptive
truth) rather than explained, and which to my mind at least does not obviously leap to mind when one thinks
about wisdom. If our theory is correct, however, there is something importantly right about these references
to a common good, because they naturally flow out of the wise person’s concern for what is good and
important.
9
Of course, sometimes we do speak of animals as possessing wisdom: the wise fox, say. But we might mean
this simply in the sense of being clever, which is different to being ‘really’ or ‘simply’ wise. In any case, I offer
my third observation here in a more speculative vein.
 Wisdom 145

know where one stands in relation to what is good or important, in order to

set out on the right path towards these ends.
Suppose Smith believes—correctly, let us assume—that having a loving
respectful relationship with his spouse is important to his well-being. But he
also believes—incorrectly—that he already possesses this good, unaware
that his selfish behaviour has been eroding his marriage for years. He there-
fore makes no effort to improve his relationship and he continues to move
farther away from, rather than closer to, what he acknowledges as impor-
tant. When we learn this, then—far from being wise—Smith begins to seem
like a clear case of a fool.
A more historically prominent example along these lines can be found in
Plato’s Apology, in his discussion of the craftsmen. Recall that, while Socra-
tes takes the craftsmen to be admirable in virtue of the knowledge they do
possess (viz., of their trades), he also criticizes them for thinking they possess
genuine knowledge of what is just, beautiful, good, and so on, when in fact
all they have are poorly supported opinions. They therefore come across as
foolish in virtue of their (misguided) self-satisfaction and lack of self-
awareness. Although they know that knowledge of these things is important
to well-being, they incorrectly take themselves to have achieved these goods,
shutting off the possibility of growth.10
This second condition on wisdom also helps to explain the significance of
the Delphic admonition to ‘Know Thyself’. Unless one properly under-
stands how far or near one is to what is good or important—what sorts of
psychological or historical or natural impediments stand in the way of the
good—one will not know where to start in one’s path. And it is not surpris-
ing that the same holds for the ‘broader’ sorts of well-being considered in
the previous section: if one cannot properly assess how near or far one’s
community is from flourishing or doing well, then one cannot offer effective
advice on how to realize that goal. A wise person therefore needs to be
rooted in reality, if he or she is to make genuine progress towards the good.

4. Knowledge of a Strategy for Obtaining Goods

We now seem to have two necessary conditions for wisdom: (1) knowledge
of what is good or important for well being, and (2) knowledge of where one
stands relative to these things. So once again we can ask: Is that sufficient?
And again the answer seems to be ‘No.’
As we mentioned earlier, a wise person knows, not just which possibilities
are especially good or valuable, but also how to realize these possibilities.11
A wise person has effective strategies, at least of a general kind, for achieving
his or her ends.
10
For more on the Socratic view of wisdom, along with how other ancient philosophers conceived of
‘philosophy as a way of life’, see Cooper [2012]. For more on Aristotle’s view of practical wisdom, see Nuss-
baum [1986: ch. 10]; and for Plato’s, see Annas [1981: ch. 5].
11
Note that I mean to be agnostic in this paper about whether wisdom is a kind of irreducible ‘know how’ or
whether instead it can be reduced to items of ‘know that’. My inclination is to say that many types of ‘know
how’ cannot be reduced to ‘know that’, and that cases of wisdom are probably an instance of this. A referee
for this Journal, however, notes that my account here could also be construed in terms of ‘know that’. If I
opt for that view in the future, I am glad to see there is some flexibility here.
146 S. R. Grimm

Virtually every wisdom tradition offers strategic advice along these lines.
Recall that for the Stoics ataraxia or contentment was at the core of well-
being. But how does one achieve this good? By not desiring things beyond
one’s control. And how does one do that? By visualizing and reminding one-
self of the impermanence of things beyond one’s control: of one’s health,
one’s loved ones, one’s reputation, and so on. So there are not just goods at
which to aim, but also recommended strategies and sub-strategies.
Similarly, in Buddhism the aim is to empty the self. But how does one do
that? Among other things, by using breathing methods to bring one’s mind
away from the insistent demands of the self and to focus one’s attention on
the oneness of all things. In Christianity, the goal is to love God and to serve
others in love. But how does one do that? Through prayer, reminding one-
self what Jesus would do in the same situation, and so on.
There are also many more strategies for well-being that have found their
way into everyday ‘sayings’: Don’t sweat the small stuff; Keep calm and carry
on; Develop an attitude of gratitude; etc. Sayings of this sort seem to have a
common goal, of helping to keep us focused on what is ‘really important’, and
helping us to avoid getting preoccupied with things that are less important.
Needless to say, my goal in this section is not to write a (bad) self-help
book. My point instead is that a hypothetical person who knew what was
important for well-being, who knew that she was far away from achieving
these goods, but who had no inkling at all about how to make progress
towards these goods would not, I think, be considered wise. The wise person,
after all, is someone we think we can turn to for advice about how to live
well; knowing strategies along these lines therefore seems essential to wisdom.

5. Knowledge or Rationality?

I have been arguing that the three different sorts of knowledge canvassed
above are all necessary for wisdom. Later on, I will also ask briefly whether
they are sufficient; but in this section I will consider an important challenge
posed by Sharon Ryan [2012, 2013] to the effect that what is required for wis-
dom is not knowledge but rather rationality. On Ryan’s view, what is prob-
lematic about knowledge is that it requires truth; but if she is right it is
possible to be wise in the absence of truth. So long as someone has rational
beliefs about ‘a wide variety of valuable academic subjects’ and about ‘how to
live rationally (epistemically, morally, and practically)’ [2013: sec. 5], then the
person can qualify as wise, even if his or her beliefs end up being mistaken.12
Consider a great thinker such as Ptolemy. According to Ryan, even
though he might have been mistaken about many natural facts, surely he
could still qualify as wise in virtue of the rationality of his beliefs. Or sup-
pose, more provocatively, that a sage such as Confucius were to be trapped
in the Matrix. Surely Confucius would still count as wise, Matrix or not, in
12
By ‘can qualify’, I do not mean that these are sufficient conditions for Ryan, just that they are necessary.
She adds two other conditions [2013: sec. 5] that I will not discuss here. Given its affinity with Hume’s dictum
that ‘a wise man proportions his belief to the evidence’, we might think of Ryan’s view as a broadly Humean
view of wisdom.
 Wisdom 147

virtue of how carefully (rationally) he formed his beliefs about the world.
Ryan’s argument for these views is worth quoting in detail [2012: 107]:

I will assume that, given how intelligent [Ptolemy] was, he had a lot of episte-
mically justified beliefs about a wide variety of subjects. He discussed his ideas
and experiments with the best scientists of his time. As it turned out, most of
Ptolemy’s justified beliefs about the solar system were false . . . If he had a lot
of false, but highly justified beliefs about a wide variety of subjects, he should
not, on that basis alone, be excluded from the honor of being a genuinely wise
person. Since so much of what was considered knowledge has been abandoned,
or has evolved over time, a theory that requires truth (through a knowledge
condition) would exclude almost all people who are now long dead, including
Hypatia, Socrates, Aristotle, Homer, Lao Tzu, etc., from the list of the wise.
Bad epistemic luck should not count against being wise . . . What matters, as
far as being wise goes, is not that a wise person has knowledge, but that she
has highly justified and rational beliefs about a wide variety of subjects, includ-
ing knowing how to live well, science, philosophy, mathematics, history, geog-
raphy, art, literature, psychology, and so on . . . Another way of developing
this same point is to imagine a person with highly justified beliefs about a wide
variety of subjects, but who is unaware that she is trapped in the Matrix or
some other skeptical scenario. Such a person could be wise even if she is sorely
lacking in knowledge.

In short, what all these cases seem to show is that something short of
knowledge, particularly rational belief, is all that is needed for wisdom.
Is Ryan right? We can start with the Matrix question because it helps to
clarify the others. The first point worth making is that it is not at all clear
that someone in the Matrix would be as bereft of wisdom-relevant knowl-
edge as Ryan claims. Living in the Matrix would presumably not rob Confu-
cius of his knowledge that things like friendship, fairness, and respect for
others are important for well-being. It would not, for that matter, rob him
of his knowledge that knowledge itself is important for well-being! We can
also imagine that he knows some effective strategies for achieving these
ends. Because he takes having true beliefs to be a good thing and false beliefs
a bad thing, he updates his beliefs in the face of counter-evidence, and so on.
At the very least, he is therefore doing well with respect to some of the key
dimensions of wisdom articulated above—so on our theory we can recog-
nize, along with Ryan, the pull of thinking of him as wise.
That said, our theory can also explain why it seems best on the whole to
say that Matrix-Confucius, unlike the real Confucius, falls short of wisdom.
For instance, even though he knows that friendship is good, he also thinks
that he has real friends, as opposed to just strings of computer code. And
even though he might know that knowledge of the external world is good,
he also thinks that he has a great deal of this knowledge. He takes himself to
know, for example, that a tree is in front of him, or that there are three disci-
ples by his side. But in all this he is mistaken; indeed, massively deluded.
Since his sense of his distance from what he takes to be good is pervasively
compromised by the Matrix he fails to be wise, because he fails the second
condition described above.
148 S. R. Grimm

For what it is worth, on this way of thinking Ptolemy and other past
greats actually seem to be better candidates for wisdom than sages in the
Matrix. Even though their physics was mistaken, we can charitably suppose
that their beliefs about their standing with respect to other goods—such as
virtue, love, and friendship—were much more accurate.
Note that I am not claiming that our judgments about whether a sage in
the Matrix is wise, or about whether Ptolemy is wise, are beautifully clear.
My claim is instead that even though there is a temptation to think of them
as wise, there is also a temptation—often a stronger one, especially in
Matrix-like cases—to think of them as unwise. The theory here can make
sense of this tension because, while a person might be doing well along some
of the dimensions of knowledge essential to wisdom, he or she might be
doing poorly on others. Just as a person who satisfies some but not all of the
conditions on knowledge is ‘closer’ to knowledge than someone who satisfies
none, so too a person who satisfies some of the dimensions of wisdom is
closer than someone who satisfies none. Since ‘deep rationality’ theories of
wisdom such as Ryan’s judge such people to be unequivocally wise, I think
it is a mark against her view that it fails to account for the tension in our
judgments.

6. Theoretical Wisdom and Practical Wisdom

We are now in a position to say more about the ancient distinction between
theoretical wisdom and practical wisdom. For while I have been claiming
that someone is wise ‘overall’ in virtue of knowing how to live well, there is
of course a long tradition of claiming that knowing how to live well is only
one part or species of wisdom, and that there is another species of wisdom,
theoretical wisdom, that can be understood or defined apart from its connec-
tion to knowing how to live well.
Aristotle is the most influential classical source of this idea, but it has also
been defended more recently by Dennis Whitcomb and Jason Baehr. In par-
ticular, according to Whitcomb and Baehr there is a kind of wisdom that
comes simply from having deep knowledge or understanding of a subject
area. Thus, Whitcomb [2011: 100] claims that a person can be theoretically
wise through deep knowledge of physics or metaphysics, and, according to
Baehr [ms.: sec. 2.1], someone can be theoretically wise in virtue of having
‘deep explanatory understanding of epistemically significant subject
matters’, where for Baehr ‘epistemically significant subject matters’ include
topics such as physics, or metaphysics, or economics, or history.13
According to Baehr and Whitcomb, what this implies is that wisdom is
essentially a domain-relative phenomenon. There is wisdom with respect to
13
For simplicity, suppose for a moment that the relevant ‘epistemically significant subject matter’ is physics.
Why think that someone with a deep knowledge or understanding of physics would be wise in a distinct
sense—theoretically wise? Because, as Whitcomb argues and as Baehr concurs, if you took two people, A and
B, and supposed them equal in terms of ‘the best practical knowledge’ but added that A had more of ‘the best
non-practical knowledge’—physics, metaphysics, etc.—then it is natural to think that A would be wiser than
B [Whitcomb 2011: 99; Baehr ms.]. Hence there must be some dimension of wisdom that is distinct from
knowing how to live well, a dimension that a person might satisfy simply in virtue of possessing deep knowl-
edge or understanding of some area.
 Wisdom 149

living well, wisdom with respect to physics, wisdom with respect to chemis-
try, and so on, but there is no such thing as ‘being wise in general’. As Baehr
describes the framework [ms: 15]:

To be wise relative to a given domain D is (1) to know what is basic or funda-

mental in D, (2) to understand how the other elements of D stand in relation to
the more basic elements, (3) to be competent at applying this cognitive perspec-
tive to new or particular contexts or questions proper to D, and (4) to be dis-
posed to respond appropriately to judgments resulting from these applications.

The generic notion of wisdom therefore needs to be relativized to a

domain—made specific—before it has any reality.
Let us call this the genus-species view of wisdom, where there is no such
thing as being wise in general, where there is only being wise with respect to
particular domains, and hence where the element of knowing how to live
well enjoys no special privilege. While appealing in many ways, thinking of
wisdom in genus-species terms seems flawed, for at least three reasons.
First, when people are asked for paradigms of wisdom (or asked, ‘Who is
wise?’), virtually everyone gravitates towards examples of people who know
how to live well, and in particular towards people renowned for their moral
excellence (Ghandi, Confucius, Jesus, Martin Luther King, Socrates, etc.).
People do not gravitate towards paradigms of exceptional understanding in
the sciences, such as Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking.14 If the genus-spe-
cies view were correct, however, this would be puzzling: when asked for
paradigms of wisdom, people would presumably either attempt to clarify
the question (‘Do you mean with respect to living well? Or with respect to
physics?’, etc.), or they would choose exceptional examples more or less ran-
domly from among a range of domains (living well, physics, etc.), in the way
that someone who is asked to give an example of a colour might choose
more or less randomly among various species of that genus (yellow, red,
blue, etc.). Since no attempts at clarification seem needed when we ask about
wisdom, and since the spread of people nominated as wise is far from ran-
dom, this seems to be a strike against the genus-species view.
Second, the genus-species view implies that one can properly attribute wis-
dom where there is deep understanding of any epistemically significant sub-
ject matter. But our concept of wisdom does not seem that flexible or wide-
ranging. Presumably, logic and mathematics are epistemically significant
subject matters, but it seem like a mistake to say that someone could be wise
with respect to mathematics or logic,15 whereas it does not seem mistaken in
that way to say that one can be wise with respect to areas like gardening or
stock picking or baseball managing. What seems needed for deep
14
When students and adults across a wide range of North American contexts were asked to name exemplars
of intelligence on the one hand and wisdom on the other, only one person made it onto both lists: Oprah Win-
frey [Paulhus et al. 2002]. By and large, the people who were selected as paradigms of intelligence were scien-
tists, politicians, and inventors: e.g. Einstein, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and Thomas
Edison. The exemplars of wisdom, by contrast, were entirely well-known moral or spiritual leaders: in addi-
tion to those listed above, we find Mother Theresa, Solomon, and the Buddha, for example.
15
Note that this is not to say that one cannot be wise in things related to mathematics, such as figuring out
how to apply it to other domains (e.g., engineering, perhaps). My claim is that it sounds inappropriate to say
one could be wise with respect to the body of knowledge we think of as mathematics.
150 S. R. Grimm

understanding of mathematics or logic is superior intelligence, or perhaps

insight, but not wisdom—contrary to what the genus-species view predicts.
(More on this in a moment.)
The final argument against the genus-species view is perhaps the most
straightforward: namely, that we have no problem in making judgments of
the sort featured at the beginning of this paper, e.g., that someone might be
wise with respect to some domain (stock analysis, etc.) but not wise in gen-
eral or not ‘really’ wise. On the genus-species view, these judgments make no
sense, because there are only domain-specific varieties of wisdom, and there
is no content to the notion of being wise in general or simply wise. It would
be as if one were to say, ‘Well, Barbara might be a history professor, but she
is not really a professor.’ That judgment makes no sense, because there is no
such thing as being ‘really’ a professor or being a professor ‘in general’;
instead, there are only particular species of professors. The fact that claims
like this do make sense with respect to wisdom suggests that we need a new
framework for thinking about the nature of wisdom, distinct from the
genus-species view.
What I propose is this: Knowing how to live well is what we might call the
‘focal meaning’ of the concept wisdom,16 with other uses of the concept
counting as analogical extensions thereof. Similarly, and to borrow an
example from Aristotle, although we use the term ‘healthy’ in many ways—
we speak not only of ‘healthy bodies’ but also of ‘healthy soup’ and ‘healthy
exercise’—these different uses of ‘healthy’ are not all on the same footing.
‘Healthy’ applies in a primary or focal way to bodies and only in a secondary
or derivative way to soup and exercise, because soup and exercise are only
healthy to the extent that they contribute to bodily health.
The comparison is not exact,17 but I want to claim that a similar dynamic
holds with respect to our concept of wisdom. Namely, that the focal mean-
ing of wisdom has to do with knowing how to live well, and that this concept
can only be extended to other domains (gardening, stock picking etc.), to the
extent that these domains fit the model of knowing how to live well.
What are the important elements of this fit? The primary one is the ability
to discern what is important in a domain, and especially what things are
more or less or most important—i.e., how the different elements of the
domain rank relative to one another. Just as the wise person (simpliciter)
knows what is important for well-being, so too the wise stock analyst knows
what is important for good stock performance, the wise gardener what is
important for healthy plants, and so on. But there needs to be more to it
than that. The reason why wisdom is required in these domains is because
there is a notable lack of certainty, or perhaps lack of ready information, in
the domain—either with respect to what is important or how to achieve
what is important. The more that these facts are obvious or are decidable by
a formula, the less that discernment will be required and the less apt the con-
cept of wisdom will be to the given domain. This is the main reason, to my

16
Following G.E.L. Owen [1960].
17
Why? Because one cannot, in a similar way, claim that someone is a wise stock analyst in virtue of this wis-
dom contributing to his knowledge how to live well. It might not. The idea in this case is that the domain-spe-
cific varieties of wisdom count as wisdom in virtue of their similarity to the primary or focal sense.
 Wisdom 151

mind, why it sounds awkward or inappropriate to say that someone is ‘wise

with respect to mathematics’ or ‘wise with respect to logic’. Given the possi-
bility of decidability or certainty in these areas, what seems required for mas-
tering the domains is intelligence or insight, but not wisdom.
All of this makes sense on a scheme in which the focal sense of wisdom
relates to knowing how to live well, because there is, by and large, significant
uncertainty with respect to what is important for living well, or for bringing
about well-being, especially in particular cases. Other domains will therefore
be wisdom-apt to the extent that they share in this lack of certainty. Finally,
just as the ‘focal meaning’ account in Aristotle allows us to say things like
‘Tony might have a healthy diet but he is not healthy,’ so too when applied
to wisdom it allows us to say things like, ‘Tony might be wise with respect to
gardening but is not wise (in general).’ In both cases, the latter use of the
word is the focal one, and controls our judgments about how the word is
applied in its analogical extensions.
Even though wisdom therefore seems to be fundamentally practical in ori-
entation, it would be good if we could make sense of the ancient idea that
the wise person is somehow especially concerned with knowing what the
world is like at a fundamental level, and hence especially concerned with
topics such as physics and metaphysics. It would also be good if we could
make sense of the idea that the person who conjoins this sort of theoretical
knowledge with the best practical knowledge is in some sense wiser than the
person who ‘merely’ has the best practical knowledge.18 In my view, the way
to accommodate both of these ideas is as follows.
To begin with, note that one of the things that wise people typically take
to be important is having a deep understanding of the world. In so far as wis-
dom increases with the possession of things that are important for well-
being, wisdom will therefore increase along with gains in understanding,
including the understanding that comes from things like physics. Another
plausible reason why theoretical knowledge was traditionally thought to be
central to wisdom is that, according to many traditions, a good life is a life
lived in harmony with nature or with the universe. This is an idea we find
not just in Stoicism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, but also in Egyptian tra-
ditions according to which the gods planted order in the universe and ‘the
sages studied nature to ascertain this principle of justice, order, and truth’
[Crenshaw 2010: 7]. Pierre Hadot’s account of wisdom, influenced by the
Stoic tradition in particular, clearly brings out this connection [1995: 58]:

Wisdom is nothing more than a vision of things as they are, the vision of the
cosmos as it is in the light of reason, and wisdom is also nothing more than
mode of being and living that should correspond to this vision.

Since on this view a good life is a life that ‘corresponds’ with nature, or is in
harmony with naturet, it is not hard to see why acquiring knowledge of
what nature is like would be crucial to wisdom, and would thus merit a spe-
cial appellation (‘theoretical wisdom’) or status.
18
As Whitcomb [2011: 99] and Baehr [ms.] both claim.
152 S. R. Grimm

For our purposes, the important point is that there seems to be a variety
of ways in which theoretical wisdom can be given special prominence within
a focal-meaning or ‘practical-wisdom-first’ framework—thus acknowledg-
ing its importance while avoiding the view that the practical and theoretical
dimensions of wisdom are somehow on par with one another.

7. Summary

I would like to note one final strength of the account of wisdom offered here,
and to point out a significant way in which the view remains incomplete.
The strength is that the view provides a plausible account of why scholarly
interest in wisdom has waxed and waned over the years. For notice: because
on our view wisdom requires knowledge of what is good or important for
well-being, presumably this entails that there are objective facts about well-
being to be known by the wise person. But then the more a society or culture
doubts that there are objective facts about well-being, or that these facts can
be known, the more the concept of wisdom will—by hypothesis—lose prom-
inence in that society or culture.
Although serious historical work would need to be done to test this
hypothesis, my preliminary sense is that in periods where philosophers at
least (who form their own kind of society or culture) have lost faith in an
objective notion of well-being, wisdom has indeed been given little attention.
The era of logical positivism would be an example. In our own time, more-
over, which seems willing to take objective notions of well-being more seri-
ously [see, e.g., Tiberius and Plakias 2012], philosophical interest in wisdom
has likewise enjoyed a revival.
In any case, I disagree with Whitcomb’s claim that the lack of attention to
wisdom among twentieth-century scholars, and among epistemologists in
particular, was essentially arbitrary [2011: 95]:

It is as if twentieth-century epistemologists inherited a big set of interconnected

issues from the ancients and their followers, and arbitrarily chose to theorize
about some of those issues much more than others. Wisdom falls into the
neglected category, so our theorizing about it has some catching up to do.

If the account here is correct, the fading of wisdom was not arbitrary,
because the notion of wisdom brings with it significant ethical and meta-
physical commitments that other epistemic concepts, such as knowledge,
seem to lack. In periods where there is wariness about these commitments,
interest in wisdom will decline accordingly.
Turning to ways in which the account is incomplete, I will focus on just
one issue. Notice that I have claimed only that our conditions on wisdom
are individually necessary, not jointly sufficient; so it remains to be deter-
mined what else needs to be added in order to complete or round out the
view. By my lights, the main obvious contender is some sort of application
condition: that the wise person not only knows what is good or important
for well-being and has effective strategies for achieving these goods, but
 Wisdom 153

actually does achieve these goods. In other words, she is able to employ these
strategies in real life and hence she ends up actually living well. This all
seems very important to wisdom, because the person whose actions are not
informed by what she takes to be good or important does not seem like a
good candidate for wisdom. Put another way, the point is that there is a
kind of integration between thought and action that seems characteristic of
wisdom, and that an adequate theory should try to capture.
While I think all this is right, and in particular that an integration of
thought and action is crucial for wisdom, what I am less sure about is
whether it is really possible to satisfy the three conditions spelled out here
and yet fail to apply this knowledge in one’s actions—in other words, I am
unsure whether it is possible for something like akrasia to stand in the way
of the knowledge being implemented in one’s life. I will not try to settle this
question here; I will simply flag that where one stands on this issue will affect
whether one thinks additional conditions need to be added to the account.19

Fordham University

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19
Thanks to Jason Baehr, Nathan Ballantyne, Anne Baril, Bryan Frances, Peter Graham, Judith Green,
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