What is wisdom? I feel like a droplet of spray which proudly poised for a moment on the crest of a wave, undertakes to analyze the sea.

What is Wisdom?

by Will Durant

To the philosopher, all things are friendly and sacred, 

all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine

Emerson

Ideally, wisdom is total perspective — seeing an object, event, or idea in all its pertinent relationships. Spinoza defined wisdom as seeing things sub specie eternitatis, in view of eternity; I suggest defining it as seeing things sub specie totius, in view of the whole.


Obviously we can only approach such total perspective; to possess it would be to be God. The first lesson of philosophy is that philosophy is the study of any part of experience in the light of our whole experience; the second lesson is that the philosopher is a very small part in a very large whole. Just as philosopher means not a “possessor” but a “lover” of wisdom, so we can only seek wisdom devotedly, like a lover fated, as on Keats’ Grecian urn, never to possess, but only to desire. Perhaps it is more blessed to desire than to possess.

Shall we have examples? Rain falls; you mourn that your tennis games must be postponed; you are not a philosopher. But you console yourself with the thought, “How grateful the parched earth will be for the rain!” You have seen the event in a larger perspective, and you are beginning to approach wisdom.

You may be a young radical, or an old businessman crying out for limitless liberty, and as such you may be a useful ferment in a lethargic mass; but if you think of yourself as part of a group, and recognize morality as the cooperation of the part with the whole, you are approaching perspective and wisdom. You may be a politician just elected to Congress for a term of two years; you spend half your time planning re-election; the situation encourages a myopic perspective, contracepting wisdom. Or you may be a secretary of state, or a president, seeking a policy that will protect and improve your country for generations; this is the larger perspective that distinguishes the statesmen.

Or you may be an Ashoka, a Marcus Aurelius, or a Charlemange planning to help humanity rather than merely your own country; you will then be a philosopher-king.

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