Teaching for Wisdom: Cross-cultural Perspectives on Fostering Wisdom

Teaching for Wisdom

Teaching for Wisdom Cross-cultural Perspectives on Fostering Wisdom Michel Ferrari Editor Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto, ON, Canada

Georges Potworowski Editor University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Georges Potworowski University of Michigan Ann Arbor MI, USA [email protected]

Michel Ferrari Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto ON, Canada [email protected]

ISBN: 978-1-4020-6531-6

e-ISBN: 978-1-4020-6532-3

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Preface

The chapters in this volume are all devoted to a single question: Can wisdom be taught, or at least fostered? They span many different traditions and times, which generates both problems and opportunities. The most obvious problem is that of translation. As Curnow points out in the opening chapter, the word ‘wisdom’ is used to translate a variety of terms from antiquity that have only a partial overlap with modern work. It is interesting to consider that the Egyptian word ‘seboyet’ translates as either wisdom or instruction. The same is true of terms from Buddhism or Confucianism, or even the Ancient Greek tradition acknowledged as a source of most current views of wisdom in the West; all the terms drawn from other languages and traditions have only partially overlapping meaning. With this in mind, each chapter can be read independently of the others. However, we have also arranged them in an order that reflects common themes that emerge despite this diversity. We have not arranged them by geographical region, or historical time, but rather by the sort of educational strategy they advocate to foster wisdom. The first chapter by Curnow provides a basic overview of approaches to teaching for wisdom in the West. This is already a very ambitious undertaking, spanning ancient Egypt and Mespotamia to the renaissance and the dawn of the modem world, where the term wisdom has fallen largely out of fashion until very recently. Curnow is able to identify very different strands of what is considered wisdom, echoed by others in later chapters. It is possible to see similarities even to Eastern and African traditions that he does not address. In particular, he notes a tension between wisdom as knowledge or insight about the world and wisdom as insight about how to live a good life. In some traditions, like the Stoics, an effort is made to unite these two strands. We also find a range of approaches to teachng for wisdom that are echoed and amplified in the following chapters. The second chapter by Stange and Kunzmann presents a scientific approach to investigating this rich and varied tradition, attempting to assess wisdom (or ‘wisdom-related knowledge’) using experimental methods. In particular, they present an explicit theory of wisdom, the Berlin Paradigm, and empirical work showing that this model can identify people (not always older) who are wiser, and can explain what distinguishes those nominated as wiser from others. Studies of ‘the seeds of wisdom’ have important implications for teaching for wisdom developed in the chapter; In particular, that wisdom in adolescence is related to openness to experience and general knowledge. The social aspect of wisdom is emphasized, with v

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studies showing that people who can talk things over with others, or even with themselves, do better on tasks (problem vignettes) that according to this model assess for ‘wisdom-related knowledge’, suggesting that such activity allows them to better access wisdom-relevant knowledge. Sternberg, Jarvin and Reznitskaya, describe a middle school curriculum designed to teach for wisdom based on Sternberg’s ‘balance theory of wisdom’. Sternberg’s theory shares many of the same intuitions about wisdom as the Berlin model. Indeed, both seem to be modern instances of the Greek view that wisdom is a marriage of knowledge and virtue—that folly is a product of ignorance about what matters in life and how to solve life’s problems. Using modern cognitive science findings about curriculum design, Sternberg proposes an infused curriculum that adapts history units to encourage students to learn to live a more just and engaged life today. Park and Peterson take a very different tack, emphasizing a second aspect of wisdom—character development. In some ways, this is implicit in the previous approaches that try to engage students in ways that will promote the virtues that Park and Peterson advocate, but they make a critical point that it may be better to teach the components of wisdom by fostering Values In Action, rather than teaching wisdom itself. And those components have less to do with (or not just to do with) depth of knowledge, but also with developing the sorts of personalities that allow people to live a happy and satisfied life. Reeve, Messina, and Scardamalia have a very similar aim to Sternberg’s Balanced Curriculum, but adopt a very different approach. Scardamalia’s contention is that wisdom refers to a very deep and personally meaningful understanding of a particular knowledge domain. She and her colleagues believe that such deep understanding is not best fostered through set exercises like those proposed by Sternberg or Peterson, or by most other school curricula, which are centered around tasks. Rather, it requires students to focus on improving their understanding of ideas by generating their own tasks and methods for improving ideas. This knowledge building is not a simple matter of letting children run free, but rather involves scaffolding them to understand that knowledge is developed within communities in answer to questions that matter to them, based on a careful examination of the evidence for and against ideas. Importantly, this chapter shows that computer supported collaborative learning is not merely old curricular activity in a new medium, it is a very exciting new way to educate for wisdom in children as early as the first grade. Scardamalia hopes to transform public education in North America. Berthrong’s chapter focuses on the life and thought of one of the great educational reformers of all time: Zhu Xi. Master Zhu, as he was later known, made a concerted effort throughout his lifetime to arrange the teachings of Chinese Confucianism and comment on them, so as to make these teachings for wisdom available to everyone, even those far from centers of learning with no access to teachers. His commentaries were so influential they became required reading for state exams in China for centuries. In this tradition, wisdom was only one of the important virtues to be cultivated in order to become an exemplary person. Zhu Xi developed his approach to teaching Confucianism partly in response to the rival traditions of Taoism and Buddhism. However, Shen’s chapter shows that

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talk of ‘Buddhism’ is very misleading, in that at any given historical time we find many competing schools even within a single current of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism, itself but one branch of Buddhst philosophy worldwide. In particular, Shen focuses on three competing schools: the ‘consciousness-only’ School (Weishi— faithful to the Indian Yogacara tradition), the three-treatises school (Sanlun), and the Chan School (later inspiring Japanese Zen)—each increasingly hospitable to the Chinese mind and each with its own methods of promoting wisdom. This diversity in teaching for wisdom is still true of Buddhist schools and those of other traditions today, including modern science. While this diversity is true, according to Rosch, it is important to consider the deep underlying similarities that unite these schools not only within Buddhism but even across religious and philosophical traditions. An important unifying theme is that developing wisdom requires a radical transformation of lived experience, one that occurs in identifiable stages. Rosch shows how both Tibetan Buddhism and Sufism require practitioners to overcome preconceived notions and expertise and return to a ‘beginner’s mind’. Only then can people enter on a path that will lead to wisdom, a path that is in many ways self-secret, because only the mind that is prepared can appreciate the teachings that advance one along that path. In her chapter, Bright shows that the notion of beginner’s mind and stages of personal transformation is very much a part of the Christian tradition as well. But Christianity has an additional dimension—obedience, or giving up our own will in the service of God. We see that within the Christian tradition, it is not a matter of ‘learning’ or mastery of some set of skills, or of shaping the personality in a certain way, but of stripping away layers of personality to arrive at a more profound and basic connection to the universe and the spirit of God through emulating Jesus Christ. Bright focuses on specific techniques and exercises within the Christian monastic tradition that foster wisdom, especially as inspired by Augustine. Roochnik’s chapter provides an in-depth look at one of Plato’s dialogues, another of the main sources of contemporary ideas about Wisdom in the West, whose ideas were often integrated into Christian traditions like that of the Augustinians. Roochnik shows how these Platonic dialogues need to be read not just for their surface information or philosophical ideas, but in light of their dramatic context. The point is that Plato thought wisdom must be taught through conversations with particular others that engage them according to their most profound beliefs. And such conversations are deeply contextualized creations, not windows onto some mystical realm of ideas, as Neo-Platonists and Christian scholars often believe. Kresse looks at living traditions today that rely on wise advice through conversations very much like those of the historical Socrates. We see from his examples how deeply woven wisdom is into the very fabric of African Society. Something very similar to a Confucian approach is thus also seen in the African sages, in that social engagement is considered essential to wisdom. It is not enough to achieve some superior insight that is of personal benefit; one must also find a way to engage others and lead them to wisdom. We end the volume with the reminder that what matters for all these approaches is their pragmatic effect on people’s lives. Finally, Ferrari discusses some of the themes that emerged in the volume. In particular, he emphasizes the difference between expert problem-solving views of

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wisdom and those based on personal transformation. In particular, Ferrari proposes that developmental theories, if they allow for a dual systems view of the human mind, can capture many important points raised by the expertise and transformative views and can provide a possible bridge between them. He ends with a consideration of whether any of these sorts of wisdom can be taught or fostered in public schools. Michel Ferrari Georges Potworowski

From George Wither (1635). A collection of emblems, ancient and modern. (Book I, Illustration 31.) London: John Grismond

Contents

Introduction Sophia’s World: Episodes from the History of Wisdom Trevor Curnow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Part I

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Fostering Wisdom as Expertise

Fostering Wisdom: A Psychological Perspective Antje Stange and Ute Kunzmann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Teaching for Wisdom Through History: Infusing Wise Thinking Skills in the School Curriculum Robert J. Sternberg, Linda Jarvin and Alina Reznitskaya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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The Cultivation of Character Strengths Nansook Park and Christopher Peterson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Wisdom in Elementary School Richard Reeve, Richard Messina and Marlene Scardamalia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Master Zhu’s Wisdom John Berthrong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Part II

Teaching for Wisdom as Personal Transformation

Wisdom and Learning to Be Wise in Chinese Mahayana Buddhism Vincent Shen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Beginner’s Mind: Paths to the Wisdom that is Not Learned Eleanor Rosch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Ascending to Wisdom: A Christian Pedagogy Pamela Bright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 xi

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Part III Learning from Wise People The Wisdom of Plato’s Phaedo David Roochnik . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Can Wisdom Be Taught? Kant, Sage Philosophy, and Ethnographic Reflections from the Swahili Coast Kai Kresse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Part IV Conclusion Developing Expert and Transformative Wisdom: Can Either Be Taught in Public Schools? Michel Ferrari . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

Introduction Sophia’s World: Episodes from the History of Wisdom Trevor Curnow

Introduction Can wisdom be taught? Perhaps, in the cautionary words of Effi Briest’s father, ‘That is too big a subject’ (Fontane, 1967, p. 267). Nevertheless, this historical introduction will attempt to say something about how this ‘too big a subject’ was thought about and approached in the past. When the subject is wisdom, the past goes back a very long way, and in order to make the task manageable it has been necessary to restrict its scope in a variety of ways. Because non-western and modern approaches to wisdom are covered elsewhere in this book, I have limited myself to what can very loosely be called the Western history of wisdom, and shall have little to say about it after the modern period begins. I have further limited myself to a number of selected and illustrative episodes from this history, although I hope that they are sufficient to give some sense of continuity and coherence. There is a further serious problem to be confronted: what is wisdom? In the historical context, one possible answer is that it is what the people of the different periods and places called wisdom. While translation is always going to be an imperfect science, there are many terms from the languages of the past that are often translated as ‘wisdom’. These include sophia (Greek), sapientia (Latin), hokhmah (Hebrew), nebequ (Akkadian) and seboyet (Egyptian). However, while these may point to a central core of relevant material, they cannot be taken as conclusively determining the limits of the subject. History always enjoys the benefit of hindsight and it would be foolish not to take advantage of it. Consequently another possible answer to the question is that it is what we call wisdom, and it is possible to confuse the different answers. As Gerhard von Rad points out, the identification of a text from the distant past as a work of wisdom literature is often a matter of judgement rather than one of internal textual evidence (von Rad, 1972, p. 7), but this is easily forgotten. In what follows it will be my aim as far as possible both to allow the sources to speak for themselves and to critically engage with them so that some kind of reflective overview of wisdom may emerge from them. Trevor Curnow Reader in Philosophy, University of Cumbria, Lancaster, LA1 3JD, England, UK

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The Beginnings: Egypt and Mesopotamia History begins with the advent of writing (in about 3000 BC), but there is no reason to suppose that wisdom does. Although wisdom came to be associated with certain literary genres, they do not exhaust it. Indeed, some well-known figures from wisdom’s history, such as Pythagoras and Socrates, conspicuously avoided the written word altogether. The duration of wisdom’s prehistory can only be a matter for speculation. The allocation of precise and secure dates to early historical developments is also problematic, making it difficult to establish either sequences or contemporaneities. This problem is further compounded in the study of wisdom by the fact that texts are sometimes internally attributed to authors long dead. Whether this reflects the preservation of a genuine tradition or an attempt to create a false one is not always easy or possible to establish. I do not therefore propose to take a narrative approach to how wisdom unfolds during the third and second millennia BC. However, if a precise chronology is elusive, at least some indications can be given of how wisdom was regarded and written about. An obvious figure to begin with is Imhotep, thought to have been the vizier of Djoser (who ruled Egypt from 2668 to 2649 BC, or thereabouts) and the architect of the step pyramid at Saqqara. Centuries later he was identified with Asclepius, the Greek god of healing. Writers of a later period mention a book of wisdom by him, but it does not survive and its contents are unknown. Books attributed to Kagemni and Ptahhotep, said to be viziers to other third millennium BC rulers, do survive, although the actual texts are dated to no earlier than the second millennium BC. They are often referred to as books of ‘instruction’ rather than ‘wisdom’ (both of which are possible translations of seboyet) for two reasons. First, their contents are varied and not everything in them is easy to justify as wisdom, and secondly they typically take the form of a father’s attempt to instruct his offspring on how to live. The Instruction of Kagemni, designed to educate his children in ‘the ways of mankind’ (Kaster, 1970, p. 175) begins: The humble man flourishes, and he who deals uprightly is praised. The innermost chamber is opened to the man of silence. Wide is the seat of the man cautious of speech, but the knife is sharp against [the one] who forces a path, that he advance not, save in due season. (Kaster, 1970, p. 174)

At the beginning of his book of instruction, Ptahhotep indicates his wish to be released from his onerous duties because of his advancing age. His aim was to make his son fit to take his place, and he wanted to ‘instruct him in the discourse of those who hearken, and in the thoughts of those who have gone before, those who have served the ancestors in times past’ (Kaster, 1970, p. 166). Egyptian books of instruction are eminently practical in their contents. They aim to equip their readers for success in the world. The writers seek to pass on what they have learnt both from others and from their own experience. While some of their advice is limited in its application to the elevated social circles in which they move, they also have observations to make on life and the world in general. Sometimes the two overlap. When Ptahhotep says, ‘One ought to say plainly what one knows and what one knows not’ (Kaster, 1970, p. 169), the comment is made

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in the specific context of a vizier giving advice to his ruler, but it clearly also has broader applications. Although relatively little is known about education in ancient Egypt, some think that books of instruction were widely used in the upbringing of the social elite, preparing them for life and their role in society. The very ability to read them would already set such individuals aside from the masses. The perceived connection between writing and wisdom was also embodied in the god Thoth who was closely associated with both. However, the books are pre-philosophical in that they do not attempt or pretend to be systematic. They present themselves more as collected scraps of advice than as articulations of coherent world-views. This is perhaps most apparent in one of the latest and longest of the surviving books, The Instructions of Amenemope. These instructions aim ‘to set one right on the ways of life and to cause him to prosper in the world’ (Kaster, 1970, p. 179) through a list of proverbs. The extent to which proverbs were a common currency, a kind of sapiential lingua franca, in the ancient world is a matter of some debate. On the one hand there are clear similarities that appear to go beyond the coincidental (for example between some of the sayings of Amenemope and sections of the biblical book of Proverbs). On the other, there is no obvious reason why similar insights into ‘the ways of mankind’ could not have emerged independently in different places. When Amenemope advises, ‘Keep your tongue free from evil words, and you will be liked by men’ (Kaster, 1970, p. 184), he is saying something that might well have independently occurred to other people in other places at other times. What is clear, however, is that proverbs enjoyed a considerable popularity across broad swathes of the ancient world, whether they were internationally traded or not. As vehicles for the transmission and teaching of wisdom, however, proverbs have their limitations. They may constitute distillations of wisdom, but there is more to becoming wise than consuming vast amounts of them. Without a unifying structure or context, proverbs may offer no more than fragments or glimpses of wisdom. Worse, they may contradict each other. Ptahhotep advises his son to say what he does and does not know, but later advises him not to speak unless he has something helpful to say (Kaster, 1970, p. 171). Proverbs are also to be found in the early literature of Mesopotamia, as are books of instruction (Pritchard, 1969). However, the Sumerians additionally produced something very different, the so-called ‘word list’. A word list was a kind of inventory in which words or signs, and, by implication the things they represented, were put into a particular order. As such, they can be understood as early science as much as early literature (Soden, 1994). The desire to understand the order of things appears to have been a powerful motivating force in the civilisations of ancient Mesopotamia. The Babylonians, in particular, made significant advances in both mathematics and astronomy. They were also deeply interested in the study of omens, understood as another way in which the order of the world manifested itself and could be observed. The connections between these developments in Mesopotamia and wisdom may not appear obvious, but I believe they are important. The study of order, of ‘the big picture’, complements the fragmentary insights of proverbs by providing a framework into which they can be coherently integrated. What was learnt about order formed a body of knowledge that, as with proverbs, could be passed down from

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generation to generation. Order could also be understood in a political sense and it is noticeable that in Mesopotamia there was an early association of wisdom with rulership. The study of order seems to have been carried significantly further in Mesopotamia than in Egypt. This was not because the Egyptians were indifferent to the subject. Indeed, they had a goddess, Maat, who personified order, as well as truth and justice. There are also some Egyptian texts dating from the late third and early second millennium BC in which the lack of order and justice in the world is a common theme, and some see these as constituting another kind of wisdom literature. The tone is pessimistic: for example, The Admonitions of Ipuwer bemoans the fact that ‘women are barren and there is no conception’ and ‘paupers now possess fine things. He who once made for himself no sandals now possess riches’ (Kaster, 1970, p. 206). However, it is difficult to tell whether such complaints express some kind of grasp of ‘the big picture’ or simply constitute the outpourings of a bitter displaced class. We have the text but lack an adequate knowledge of the context. The limited surviving materials from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, coupled with our inadequate knowledge of how their societies worked, make it difficult to draw many firm conclusions about their approaches to and understanding of wisdom. However, I think two general trends can be seen, one of which leads in the direction of ethics and the other in the direction of science, both broadly understood. One is concerned with how to live and the other with how the world works. In both cases, perhaps, wisdom could be seen as a special, and particularly elevated, kind of knowledge. However understood, it was clearly prized in both societies. It is no accident that Imhotep became identified with a god or that his tomb became the site of an oracle.

Israel The Bible preserves a number of important works relating to wisdom. Because they form a substantial body of literature in their own right and because, unlike the rediscovered works of Egypt and Mesopotamia, they have long occupied a place in Western culture, I will deal with them separately. Chronologically, they belong to the first millennium BC; geographically, they derive from the region between Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Old Testament contains three books that are generally regarded as works of wisdom literature: Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. In the apocrypha are two more, Ecclesiasticus (sometimes known as The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, or Ben Sira) and The Wisdom of Solomon. They were produced over a long period: the latest, The Wisdom of Solomon, perhaps dates to the first century BC while Proverbs and Job may have attained their final forms during the fifth century BC, although both drew on older materials. It is not clear when these texts first became identified as a group or the extent to which modern critical judgement is based on an older understanding. Traditionally the Old Testament books fell, along with eight others, into the category known as ‘the Writings’, negatively defined by being neither ‘the

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Law’ nor ‘the Prophets’. I do not propose to add anything more to the discussion of proverbs. Neither do I intend to deal with developments traceable within these texts (in particular Ecclesiasticus) towards the conception of wisdom as a person. The more wisdom is personified, the more problematic the idea of its teaching and nurturing becomes. Job and Ecclesiastes are in many ways very different from each other, but there are important similarities as well. Job tells of a righteous man subjected to hideous suffering. The theme of the righteous sufferer stands as a recurrent challenge to human optimism and appears elsewhere in wisdom literature (Pritchard, 1969, pp. 434–7). Job himself is a wise man (‘you have instructed many’, ch. 4, v. 3), and he is visited by three friends who also have a reputation for wisdom. His friends believe that the order of the world is just. If Job is being punished, he must have done something wrong. But Job knows that this is not the case, as does the reader. Matters are resolved when God answers Job ‘out of the whirlwind’, pointing out to him the limitations of human wisdom and its insignificance compared to the divine variety. Ecclesiastes comes to a similar conclusion. Again the gulf between the human and the divine is emphasised, as is the unfathomable nature of the world. The solution is to ‘Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man’ (ch. 12, v. 13). Human wisdom is no match for divine revelation. Ecclesiasticus takes this position a step further, identifying wisdom with the law, thus combining belief in a just order with the duty of obedience. The theme of the just order also appears in the Wisdom of Solomon. (The book has no connection whatsoever with Solomon, but stands as a good example of wisdom writings being attributed to earlier figures with a reputation for being wise.) The idea that the righteous prosper and the wicked suffer is repeatedly illustrated, but righteousness is given more of a moral and less of a narrowly legal interpretation. To the extent to which it required absolute faith in God, strict obedience to a particular set of laws, or divine revelation, wisdom came to a variety of dead ends in the literature of ancient Israel. Wisdom became doing what one was told and so ceased to be either critical or imaginative. This is surprising given the elevated position accorded to Solomon in Israel. Surely one of the things that made Solomon’s proposed solution to the problem of two women competing for the custody of one child wise (I Kings, ch. 3, vv. 16–28), namely cutting it in half, was precisely its imaginative leap? More than that, on the basis of just this one episode from the life of Solomon it is said (v. 28) that the people ‘stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him, to render justice,’ and I think the reason for this is clear. One could absorb all the instructions of Kagemni, Ptahhotep, Amenemope and the rest and still not be able to come up with such an idea. Despite all the associations of wisdom with proverbs, the wisdom of Solomon here seems to consist of a profound insight into, or grasp of, the essence of a situation that resists any reduction to a formula. If this is true, and I believe it is, it constitutes at the very least a challenge that any attempt to nurture wisdom must confront: Even if intuition and creativity can be taught, it is not at all obvious that they can be taught in the same way that factual knowledge can.

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It may be noted that this famous story about Solomon comes from outside the recognised body of wisdom literature, and that although his name features in some of that literature, his real connection with it is at best extremely tenuous. This points to a problematic (or at least complex) relationship between wise people and wisdom literature. There has been a considerable scholarly debate as to who produced and consumed these writings on wisdom and how they were used (von Rad, 1972; Golka, 1993; Westermann, 1995). In particular, there have been lively exchanges of opinion about whether or not ancient Israel had some kind of ‘sagely’ class with schools in which they taught, although there is no direct evidence for either. One of the dimensions of this discussion concerns whether proverbs in particular should be thought of as emanating from some kind of social or intellectual elite, or whether they reflect a more popular kind of folk wisdom (Golka, 1993). However, the implication of Job is of the existence of a number (although not necessarily a class) of people, such as his friends, commonly acknowledged to be wise. Were these people the book’s target audience as well as its subject matter? Were such books designed to be used in the actual teaching of wisdom? Were the teachers members of an hereditary profession? In the absence of any new evidence, we may never know for sure.

Greece and Rome The earliest wisdom figures in ancient Greece were the poets, such as Homer and Hesiod. There was also a disparate collection of individuals known as the Seven Sages who were felt to embody wisdom in a variety of ways. The oldest surviving list of them appears in the Protagoras (343A) of Plato. There he identifies them as Thales of Miletus, Pittacus of Mitylene, Bias of Priene, Solon of Athens, Cleobolus of Lindos, Myson of Chen and Chilon of Sparta (Plato, 1956, p. 77). Their reputation was said to rest on their admiration of Spartan culture and their coining of pithy phrases (an interesting echo of the proverbs of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Israel). The most famous of these phrases, ‘Know thyself!’ was attributed to Thales and inscribed on the temple of Apollo, the Greek god of wisdom, at Delphi. Usually regarded as the founder of Western philosophy, Thales took a profound interest in the order of things. Like the Mesopotamians (with whose work he may have been familiar), he was interested in mathematics and astronomy, and is said to have predicted a solar eclipse in 585 BC. Exactly when the idea of the Seven Sages developed in ancient Greece is unclear, but the inspiration may have come from Mesopotamia: both Akkadian and Babylonian traditions told of seven sages, but they were figures of legend rather than history. There was also no unanimity as to who the seven were. Thales, Pittacus, Bion and Solon were constant presences but eighteen other names found their way onto one list or another. There was not even unanimity that they were sages: Dicaearchus of Messene, a pupil of Aristotle, dismissed them as merely shrewd. But for a long time historians of philosophy felt the need to begin with them (Diogenes Laertius, 1959). It is not clear whether the different lists reflected

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different understandings of what wisdom was or different opinions as to who the wise people were. A little younger than Thales, perhaps born in 570 BC, was Pythagoras, who also counted as one of the seven sages according to some. Tradition has it that it was he who coined the term philosophos, meaning ‘lover of wisdom’. Indeed, there is little more than tradition to go on since he wrote nothing and his sect was notoriously secretive—although members of it were recognisable because they practised a distinctive way of life which involved, amongst other things, a number of special dietary demands such as abstaining from eating beans. The celebrated theorem of geometry associated with his name may or may not be his, but the sect had a reputation for mathematical knowledge and made great use of numbers in their attempts to understand the world (Kahn, 2001). This combination of ethics and what came to be known as physics (which included what we would now call metaphysics and the natural sciences) formed the two pillars of philosophy, subsequently spanned by logic which governed the ways of arguing, from how the world was to how one should live in it. Physics and (how the world works) and ethics (how to live), were also the directions in which how the study of wisdom developed in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and according to tradition Pythagoras studied in Egypt. While the earliest Greek philosophers remain shadowy figures because we know so little about them, the situation changes with Socrates (c 470–399 BC). On hearing that the Delphic oracle had pronounced that no one was wiser than him, he concluded that, ‘the truth of the matter . . . is pretty certainly this: that real wisdom is the property of God, and this oracle is his way of telling us that human wisdom has little or no value’ (Plato, 1969, p. 52). In this respect, Socrates and Job appear as kindred spirits, regarding human wisdom, such as it is, as far inferior to the divine variety. Like Pythagoras, Socrates was a charismatic figure who wrote nothing. Unlike Pythagoras he did not establish his own sect, but an informal group of followers gathered around him. After his death, some of them founded their own philosophical schools, each of which, in one way or another, claimed to be the true heir to the tradition of Socrates. By far the best known was the Academy of Plato (c 428–c 348 BC). Some of these in turn gave rise to others. Socrates was the philosophical father or grandfather of most of the schools in existence a century after his death. These included the Lyceum of Aristotle (384–322 BC), the Stoa of Zeno (c 334–362 BC) and the Garden of Epicurus (341–270 BC). Each claimed to teach wisdom in one way or another. However, while they all managed to agree that wisdom was something important, they disagreed on what it was and how it was to be acquired. They also distinguished, though often in a confused way, between wisdom (sophia) and practical wisdom (phronesis). Although an over-simplification, it might be said that wisdom as such was more concerned with understanding the order of things, and practical wisdom with leading a way of life based on that understanding. The difference between them is illustrated by an anecdote preserved by Plato in his Theaetetus, where Thales is said to have fallen down a well while star-gazing (McKirahan, 1994, p. 23). The implication is that sophia by itself is not enough. Wise men do not fall down wells. The two dimensions are brought into harmony in Stoicism with its ideal of ‘life in agreement with nature’ (Diogenes Laertius, 1958, p. 195). This deceptively simple

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slogan was not unique to the Stoics and may have originated with the Cynics, but it encapsulated their notion of wisdom. Although wisdom was to some extent a human excellence that, like virtue, was its own reward, the Stoics also emphasised that it led to, or brought with it, tranquillity, a kind of immunisation against the trials of life. A proper understanding of the world revealed what had value and what did not, and what one could achieve and what one could not. Furthermore, the better one understood the world, the less likely it was to throw up the kind of unpleasant surprise that could disrupt tranquillity. Consequently, the wise man, the Stoic ideal person, had an encyclopaedic knowledge. Knowledge of everything plus flawless reasoning led to life in agreement with nature and so to tranquillity. Compared with Egypt, Mesopotamia and Israel, we know rather more about how wisdom was taught in ancient Greece and Rome (Snyder, 2000). One distinctive feature of Stoicism and Epicureanism was the use of brief summaries of the school’s doctrines. One of the most celebrated survivors of this genre is the Handbook of the Stoic Epictetus compiled by Arrian (Epictetus, 1995), where a much longer work is distilled into a few pages. An extreme example of summarisation can be found in the lines written by Philodemus of Gadara (c 110–c 40 BC) which contain the essence of Epicurean philosophy: Concerns about god and death, you must scorn. The good can be had, the bad can be borne. (Curnow, 2001)

The educational point of such compression appears to have been to make the teachings easy to memorise and meditate on. It was thought that this would help students literally to absorb them so that they became second nature. This was important since the aim was not simply to remember and understand them but also to act in accordance with them. The objective was always a practical one, to live wisely. For those who were based outside the schools, other methods were available. The examples we know best were both Stoics, Seneca (4 BC–AD 65) and Marcus Aurelius (121–180). Seneca frequently composed letters to his friend Lucilius, encouraging him in his philosophical efforts, helping him guard against his weaknesses and develop his strengths (Seneca, 1917, 1920, 1925). Marcus Aurelius kept a personal journal, which could be seen as simply writing letters to himself. In fact ‘to himself’ is the correct title of the book usually known as Meditations (Marcus Aurelius, 1964) that was the result of this exercise. In both cases, what was important was to be constantly reminded of the teachings of the school so that one’s everyday life could be constantly guided by them and become a concrete embodiment of them. Although they differed significantly on many things, both the Stoics and the Epicureans at bottom held the fundamental belief that unhappiness was the consequence of ignorance and that happiness was the great prize that wisdom could deliver. As Epicurus memorably expressed it, even while being tortured the wise man could be happy (Diogenes Laertius, 1958, p. 645). Because ignorance included not only an absence of knowledge but also believing what should not be believed, its eradication had a subjective as well as an objective dimension. Because the result

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of ignorance was unwanted or unfounded emotion, it was a psychological as well as an epistemological problem. Psychology and epistemology meet in self-knowledge and the Stoics in particular took the inscription on the temple of Apollo at Delphi seriously since ‘life in agreement with nature’ included life in agreement with human nature. However, there was a normative element to the understanding of human nature as well as a descriptive one such that there was no clear distinction between how human beings ‘really’ were and how they should be, or between selfknowledge and self-improvement. The same methods for pursuing self-knowledge could lead to different results in different schools because they were guided by different assumptions. The methods practised by Seneca and Marcus Aurelius were neither unique to the Stoics nor devised by them (Hadot, 2002). Unfortunately sufficient evidence is lacking to reconstruct their earlier history. The methods for pursuing self-knowledge formed part of a broader group of practices found in the schools and known collectively as ‘training’ (askesis). Many of these had as their aim not the pursuit of wisdom or self-knowledge as such, but making the student fit for their pursuit. The philosophical schools were organised institutions. While each held to its own orthodoxy, that orthodoxy might change over time. However, most of the schools seem to have practised a kind of succession such that continuity with the founder could be claimed. Personal communications complemented formal texts, leading some to believe that esoteric teachings ran parallel to the exoteric ones (Lloyd, 1970). Proclus (c 410–c 485) claimed that this was true of the Academy which, with the advent of what came to be known as Neoplatonism, took a distinctly mystical turn. This was principally the work of Plotinus (c 205–270), who took seriously Plato’s declaration in the Theaetetus that we should become god-like (Plotinus, 1991, p. 15). While Socrates denied he possessed wisdom because he believed it to be divine, others did not allow this belief to fetter their ambitions. Indeed, Lucretius (Lucretius, 2001, pp. 136–7) explicitly declared that Epicurus was a god. Wisdom was both divine and within human reach. For Plotinus, the path to wisdom involved the soul freeing itself from its material constraints. In order to achieve this, a process of purification was required, which was both moral and spiritual. Although Plotinus does not go into practical details, the path clearly leads inward, away from the physical world. What seems clear is that while the path to wisdom could be shown, what lay at the end of it could only be fully understood through personal experience of it. After Plotinus, Neoplatonism moved in an even more mystical direction. Iamblichus (c 250–c 338) admired not only Plotinus and Plato but also Pythagoras who, he believed, had studied in both Egypt and Mesopotamia (Iamblichus, 1989 pp. 6–8). For Iamblichus, the end was still to become god-like, but the means were different. In his hands, Neoplatonism became more like a religion, laying greater stress on ritual and magic than contemplation (Gregory, 1991). In this, whether he knew it or not, he may well have been true to the Mesopotamian influences he claimed to identify (Crenshaw, 1987, p. 402). In the view of Iamblichus, the way to wisdom could be taught by training people in ‘the performance of mysterious acts which surpass all understanding’ (Gregory, 1991, p. 218). The last great figure in the history of Neoplatonism is Proclus. His aim was to construct a single coherent system into which all the important insights of his great

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predecessors could be integrated. His own particular vision of ‘the big picture’, articulated in such works as The Elements of Theology (Proclus, 1963), was virtually the last fling of ancient philosophy, with its complex network of interlocking triads that sought to reproduce the intrinsic structure of the whole of reality. We know very little about the earliest philosophers, but at least from the time of Plato onwards philosophy identified itself with the search for wisdom, and the study of philosophy overwhelmingly took place within the formal institutions of the schools. While the original schools of Plato, Aristotle, Zeno and Epicurus had all been based in Athens, it was not too long before their offshoots sprang up elsewhere and places like Rhodes, Alexandria and Rome also became known as places where the wisdom of the philosophers could be sought. It may be noted that while wisdom was widely acknowledged as desirable in its own right in the world of Greece and Rome, its perceived associations changed over time. At least some of the Seven Sages and early philosophers could be seen as having scientific interests. Later, some of the philosophical schools, and in particular the Stoics and the Epicureans, came to emphasise the tranquillity that wisdom brought. With the Neoplatonists, the search for wisdom took a decisive turn in a mystical direction.

Christianity Christianity inherited the wisdom literature of Israel and, in due course and in a number of stages, much of the philosophy of Greece and Rome. The precise contribution of these to the shaping of Christian thought has been a matter of much debate. Some argue that the influence of Israel’s wisdom tradition has been much under-rated (Clements, 1992), and some go as far as to identify Jesus himself as a sage in that tradition, although at the same time drawing attention to significant similarities to the Cynics (Witherington, 1994). The gospels of Matthew and Luke in particular make some reference to the wisdom of Jesus, drawing comparisons with Solomon, but it remains a very minor theme. There are extracanonical sayings such as those found in the Gospel of Thomas that can be seen to belong to the wisdom tradition (Stroker, 1989), but it is difficult to assess their significance. In any event, the exclusion of the Gospel of Thomas and similar works from the Christian canon means that their influence has been negligible whatever their authenticity. Elsewhere in the New Testament, Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians declares that God has ‘made foolish the wisdom of the world’ and that Christ is ‘the wisdom of God’ (ch. 1, vv. 20, 24). This seems tantamount to a restatement of the position of Job, but with a Christian twist. The Letter of James also affirms the belief that wisdom comes only from God, and is given only to the faithful (ch. 1, vv. 5–8), but makes the further point that it is manifested above all in character and conduct: ‘the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, without uncertainty or insincerity’ (ch. 3, v. 17). It may be noted that the envisaged conduct goes well beyond a minimal keeping of the commandments and obedience to the law, and so there is some distance between

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James and the more legalistic understandings of Ecclesiastes and Ecclesiasticus. Furthermore, while Paul seems to think wisdom comes only through revelation, James seems to think that it may also be attained through prayer. God may speak in ways other than ‘out of the whirlwind’. On the other hand, it is not clear why James needs God to speak at all. Is the moral life really unattainable without divine assistance? Might not human wisdom be adequate to the task? In moving from the apostles to the theologians, the vast vista of late-classical and medieval philosophy looms into view. Wisdom was a theme that occupied the minds of many, although sometimes in too narrowly theological contexts to be of relevance here. Origen (c 185–c 254), for example, identified Jesus with the personification of wisdom. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) developed an understanding of wisdom that drew on both Plato and Job, having studied philosophy before his conversion to Christianity. From Plato (via Neoplatonism) he took the view that human wisdom involved the intellectual contemplation of the eternal, from Job the idea that it involved the worship of God (Augustine, 2002). The precise connection between the two elements is unclear, and they are certainly not identical. A different strand again can be found in John Scotus Eriugena (c 810–c 877). In his major work On the Division of Nature he expounds an apophatic (or negative) theology according to which language is unable to grasp the essence of God, making everything said about God technically false (Hyman and Walsh, 1983, p. 143). Therefore it is wrong to call God wise, (although acceptable to call him ‘superwise’), and human wisdom involves understanding that. In this can be heard echoes of the declaration of Socrates that his wisdom was his recognition of his ignorance, and learning to know one’s limits is a recurrent theme in accounts of human wisdom. Little is known about the life of Eriugena himself, but by the ninth century the monastery had become the primary place of learning in Christendom and the institution through which Christian wisdom was transmitted. The earliest phases of monasticism associated with Antony of Egypt (d. 356) and Pachomius (c 290–346) emphasised the ascetic dimension of the Christian life. The monk was a spiritual athlete, and various kinds of ‘training’ previously practised by the philosophical schools were incorporated into the monastic life. However, a more scholarly aspect was introduced to supplement the ascetic side of monasticism from the late sixth century onwards. Consequently the pursuit of wisdom and withdrawal from the world of everyday life were closely associated with each other at this time. This began to change from the eleventh century onwards when new schools were established in the growing towns and cities and these soon attracted the most talented teachers. Three thinkers from the thirteenth century are worthy of mention, two wellknown, one relatively obscure. Jean de la Rochelle (c 1195–1245) saw wisdom and theology as essentially the same thing (Sondag, 2003, p. 334). For him, being a theologian clearly involved living in a morally acceptable way, and he believed that the study of philosophy could be a helpful adjunct to this. Theology, like wisdom, implied a way of life when properly understood. For Bonaventure (1217–1274) philosophy also had its uses, but it was unable to deliver wisdom, although it might be a useful preparation. Wisdom is to be found in ‘The supreme power, wisdom and goodness of God [that] shine forth in created things’ (Bonaventure, 1993, p. 8).

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Human wisdom is the apprehension of divine wisdom as it is manifested in the world. Roger Bacon (c 1214–1292) rejected the distinction between philosophy and wisdom because he believed that all true philosophy originated from wisdom and all genuine wisdom came from revelation. ‘For . . . all wisdom was given by one God and to one world and for one end. . .; wisdom is the way to salvation’ (McKeon, 1930, p. 18). If studying philosophy was not the only way to gain wisdom, it was as good as any. What is evident is that although these three disagreed on just what wisdom was, they all believed in their own different ways that human beings could acquire it. By identifying wisdom with theology or philosophy, de la Rochelle and Bacon believed it could be taught. It is not at all clear that Bonaventure did. For him, the seeker after wisdom had to learn to see the world in a different way. People could be helped to discover wisdom, but they could not be shown it. Before ending this section, it should be pointed out that although it has focused on Christian thought, medieval philosophy was far from exclusively Christian, and Muslims and Jews also had their contributions to make to this debate.

The Renaissance To devote a separate section in a survey of this kind to the relatively short historical period known as the Renaissance may appear to be an unwarranted indulgence. However, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries do not easily belong either to what went before or what came after. There is a certain exuberance to the period that makes it distinctive, but more than that, for present purposes at least, it marks the end of wisdom as a commonly shared cultural ideal and aspiration. After the Renaissance, knowledge rather than wisdom would come to occupy the central stage in Western intellectual life. Furthermore, the Renaissance happily celebrated all that had gone before, drawing openly on Christian and pre-Christian sources. In a letter to his patron Cosimo de Medici, Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) succinctly sets out the case for wisdom: Thus with all her strength wisdom gives us mastery of every human activity according to our desire. . . . Of everything that is ours, wisdom alone is good in itself. . . . [We] should leave all else aside and strive with the full support of philosophy and religion to become as wise as possible. For thus our soul becomes most like to God, who is wisdom itself’ (Ficino, 1996).

It would hardly be possible to offer a stronger recommendation. Ficino’s younger contemporary, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) makes it clear that wisdom may reasonably, and profitably, be sought in any number of places such as ‘the ancient theology of Hermes Trismegistus, . . . the doctrines of the Chaldaeans and of Pythagoras, and . . . the occult mysteries of the Hebrews’ (Pico della Mirandola, 1948, p. 245). This is because wisdom is one, therefore contradictions between the wisdom of different schools or different cultures are only apparent. One of the things that is noticeable about the Renaissance is that people wrote works explicitly about wisdom. Medieval philosophy had taken an interest in it, but

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it had rarely been accorded centre stage in this way. Three notable examples may be mentioned. The Book of the Wise Man by Charles de Bovelles (1479–1553) was published in 1511. He seems to have identified wisdom with a kind of universal knowledge, but it is not entirely clear whether this universality consisted of encyclopaedic scope or the grasp of first principles, or a combination of both (Victor, 1978). He regarded the acquisition of knowledge as literally a process of absorption that transformed the person who acquired it. Introduction to Wisdom by Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540) appeared in 1524. Although he recognised the importance of the intellectual side of wisdom, the most important kind of knowledge concerned ethics. This kind of knowledge was not just theoretical, and, once acquired, it had to be put into practice (Rice, 1958). The Wisdom of Pierre Charron (1541–1603) was published in 1601. He distinguished between three kinds of wisdom—worldly, human and divine (Charron, 1961). Worldly wisdom was concerned with material and social success; human wisdom was the domain of philosophy; and divine wisdom was a gift of God that brought a higher metaphysical knowledge. His book was principally concerned with human wisdom, which had a strong ethical dimension. These examples might suggest that there was a trend during the Renaissance away from a more mystical understanding of wisdom towards a more secular one, towards something more readily identifiable as humanism, towards something more recognisably modern. There may be a degree of truth in this, but the story is far more complicated and untidy than it has been possible to show. Pico della Mirandola was only one of the thinkers of the time who delved into ‘the occult mysteries of the Hebrews, and of others, in the belief that wisdom could be found there (Wind, 1967); and there is a strong arcane streak in the works of many who came after Charron, such as Robert Fludd (1574–1637), who believed that ‘the Elixir is the temple of wisdom’ (Fludd, 1992, p. 151). The immediate influence of these thinkers and their kindred spirits was relatively modest. They generally had little or nothing to do with the developing universities, which were the educational power houses of the period. They were more likely to be found engaged as private tutors by wealthy families. In some ways, they were almost an irrelevance to the times in which they lived. When Eugene F. Rice describes wisdom as ‘an ideal of twenty two centuries’ (Rice, 1958, p. 2), it is in the context of portraying the Renaissance interest in wisdom as coming at the end of a long tradition. In the modern period, wisdom would take a back seat for centuries. At least in part, the difference between the Renaissance and modern periods can be understood in terms of two different approaches to nature. There was a general shift away from looking for meaning in the world around us to looking for facts in it. The work of people like Johann Kepler (1571–1630) helped to make the universe comprehensible by identifying the scientific laws it obeyed, and ‘the big picture’ increasingly came to be expressed in terms of mathematical formulae culminating in the e = mc2 of Albert Einstein (1879–1955). At the same time, the technological application of these laws and formulae meant that they could be used increasingly to control the world. Where the ancient world had preached ‘life in accordance with nature’, with humanity having to adapt to the demands of nature, the modern world seemed to promise that, given time, nature could be reshaped to suit the demands of humanity.

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The difference between Renaissance and modern approaches to wisdom was illustrated by the lack of mutual understanding that was apparent when Jan Amos Comenius (1592–1670) met René Descartes (1596–1650) near Leiden in 1642. Although close contemporaries, in many ways Comenius belonged to the Renaissance more than to the modern period Descartes helped to shape (Panek, 1991). He was passionately interested in both wisdom and teaching, and his project of ‘pansophy’ was as ambitious as any ever conceived. He believed that wisdom was essential for global peace and prosperity, and that its promotion depended on four factors. First, there should be unquestionably authoritative books containing all kinds of knowledge. Secondly, there should be schools where all young people would be taught. Thirdly, there should be some kind of international college of scholars able to act in an advisory capacity. Fourthly, there should be a universal language, exemplary in its clarity and logic. It is scarcely surprising that Comenius died a disappointed man and became largely forgotten. On the other hand the philosophy of Descartes ushered in a new age of philosophical scepticism. Knowledge became not only a philosophical problem in its own right but also the pre-eminent one, and Descartes became recognised as the founder of modern philosophy. But the picture is perhaps not quite as clearcut as it might at first appear. Descartes entitled one of his works Meditations and some see in it a conscious emulation, if not actual reproduction, of philosophical exercises practised by the schools of antiquity (Hadot, 2002, pp. 264–5). And although there may be little interest in Comenius’ views on wisdom, the pedagogical dimension of his thought has had a significant influence.

Conclusion Most historical surveys become more detailed the closer they get to the present. This one has taken the opposite course, reflecting the decline in interest in wisdom in recent centuries. However, while the present situation with regard to wisdom may be serious, it is not hopeless. I have argued elsewhere (Curnow, 1999) that developments in humanistic and transpersonal psychology, for example, whether or not they use the terminology of wisdom, nevertheless have something relevant to say about it. Other areas of psychology have also increasingly found room for it. But I will leave it to other contributors to this volume to deal with contemporary issues. Instead, I will restrict myself to some personal concluding reflections. A number of very different understandings of wisdom have appeared in the preceding pages; proverbs, encyclopaedic knowledge, life in accordance with nature, divine revelation, obedience to the law, the moral life, becoming god-like, and so on. The impression is one of variety rather than unity, and none but the most determined eclecticist could reasonably maintain that they all amount to the same thing, so just because someone calls something wisdom does not mean that it is wisdom. There is ample room for disagreement and critical engagement. On the other hand, variety need not be a problem if we are thinking about approaches to wisdom rather than wisdom itself. When all roads were said to lead to Rome, no one ever assumed that

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all the roads were the same. The approaches were many but the destination was one. It is clearly important to distinguish between what wisdom is and how it is reached. However, even if wisdom can be approached in more than one way, that does not mean that there is nothing to choose between the different ways. Some may be easier than others, some may be more effective than others, some may be more practical than others. For example, the ‘mysterious acts’ of Iamblichus would appear to present a less daunting challenge than the encyclopaedic knowledge of the Stoics. It is also possible that different approaches suit different temperaments (which perhaps Augustine had in mind when he talked of wisdom in terms of both intellectual contemplation and worship). If this is the case, then it is a point of which would-be teachers of wisdom should take note. Some approaches may also be more complete than others. I have suggested that proverbs are limited vehicles for the transmission of wisdom, but that is not to say that they have no value at all. Just as there may be alternative approaches, so there may also be complementary ones. Proverbs in combination with something else may be able to achieve what they cannot do alone. It is possible that something else actually was provided by ancient teachers of wisdom when (or if) they discussed written texts with their students, as Proclus says happened in Plato’s Academy. One of the possible contenders for that ‘something else’ is a conception of order, or what I have called ‘the big picture’, within which more limited insights can be located and contextualised. The big picture can be understood in more than one way, including encyclopaedic knowledge. It was their belief in the necessity of encyclopaedic knowledge that led the Stoics to despair about the possibility of anyone ever achieving wisdom. However, it is not necessary to know everything in order to see the big picture. As I have argued elsewhere (Curnow, 1999), I believe there are strong connections between wisdom and intuition, and between intuition and perception. For this reason, I would suggest that scope of awareness is more important than breadth of knowledge—and seeing the big picture more important than being able to account for every detail of it. The difference between the two is reflected in the helpful distinction Roger T. Ames makes between logical and aesthetic order (Ames 1989): The logical sense of order is rigid and fixed; the aesthetic sense is creative and flexible. Had Solomon been guided by a logical sense of order, he might have cut the baby in half with mathematical precision. As it was, he grasped the situation, came to a creative conclusion, and gained a reputation for wisdom by doing so. Different ways of thinking about wisdom point to different ways of approaching the teaching and nurturing of it. If we associate wisdom with perception and an aesthetic sense of order, this has implications for whether and how wisdom can be taught. Can perception be taught? Can creativity? To what extent can we, or must we, teach ourselves? What seems certain is that people do not become creative simply by being shown a work of art. In the same way, people do not become wise simply by reading a book by a wise person. Books of wisdom may be the fruits of wise people, but eating fruit is not the same thing as becoming a fruit-tree. Even making sense of those fruits may be problematic. In the case of many texts relating to wisdom, the contexts in which they were produced consist of traditions that have long since been broken and lost. A tradition once lost is not easily regained, and putting together the surviving fragments involves a lot of guesswork. This is

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why many so-called revivals lack authenticity and why so much of what goes on under the aegis of New Ageism is spurious where it is not plain silly. On the other hand, all traditions have to begin somewhere, and there is no reason why new ones should not be inaugurated now. They might even emerge from creative misunderstandings of old ones. But, tradition is essentially a retrospective notion, and so it will take some time before any tradition with its origins in the twenty-first century can be recognised as such. If wisdom could easily be taught I suspect that there would be rather more of it around today than appears to be the case. Fortunately, difficult is not the same as impossible and just because something cannot be taught directly does not mean that it cannot be nurtured indirectly. The prevalent educational model in the Western world for centuries has been an additive one. People learn by acquiring something. However, in the Meno (Plato, 1956) Plato puts forward a rather different model according to which learning is a process of unforgetting. Similarly, in the philosophical practices of the Stoics, the aim was not that people would make themselves happy, but stop making themselves unhappy. It may be that the question that should be asked is not ‘Can wisdom be taught?’ but rather ‘How can we stop making ourselves unwise?’ Finally, a recurrent theme in this chapter is that wisdom is divine and that humans need to acknowledge that. Here I am sympathetic to the position of Charron. Human wisdom should be distinguished from divine wisdom, and our energies should be directed to the former. The ‘Know thyself!’ inscribed on the temple of Apollo at Delphi remains sound advice. Whether divine wisdom exists or not, if it is unattainable it does not concern us. There is enough to do without trying to become gods.

References Ames, Roger T. (1989) ‘Putting the Te back into Taoism’ in J. Baird Callicott and Roger T. Ames (eds), Nature in asian traditions of thought, pp. 113–43. Albany: SUNY. Augustine (2002). On the trinity (ed. G.B. Matthews, trans. S. McKenna). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bonaventure (1993). The journey of the mind to God (ed. S.F. Brown, trans. P. Boehner). Indianapolis: Hackett. Charron, J. (1961). The ‘wisdom’ of Pierre Charron. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Clements, R.E. (1992). Wisdom in theology. Carlisle: Paternoster Press. Collingwood, R.G. (1965). The idea of nature, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Crenshaw, J.L. (1987). ‘Wisdom literature: Biblical books’ in M. Eliade (ed.) The encyclopaedia of religion, vol. 15. New York: Macmillan. Crenshaw, J.L. (1998). Old testament wisdom: An introduction (revised and enlarged edition). Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Curnow, T. (1999). Wisdom, intuition and ethics. Aldershot: Ashgate. Curnow, T. (2001) ‘Haikiew’ in Practical philosophy, vol. 4 no. 2. Diogenes Laertius (1958). Lives of eminent philosophers, vol. 2 (trans. R.D. Hick). London: Heinemann. Diogenes Laertius (1959). Lives of eminent philosophers, vol. 1 (trans. R.D. Hick). London: Heinemann. Epictetus (1995). The discourses, the handbook, fragments (ed. C. Gill, trans. E. Carter, revised R. Hard). London: Dent.

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Ficino, M. (1996). Meditations on the soul: Selected letters of Marsilio Ficino. Rochester: Inner Traditions. Fludd, Robert (1995). Essential writings (ed. William H. Huffman). London: Aquarian Press. Fontane, Theodor (1967), Effi Briest (trans. D. Parmée). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Golka, F.W. (1993). The leopard’s spots: Biblical and African wisdom in proverbs. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. Gregory, J. (191). The Neoplatonists. London: Kyle Cathie. Hadot, Pierre (1998). The inner citadel: The meditations of Marcus Aurelius (trans. M. Chase). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hadot, Pierre (2002). What is ancient philosophy? (trans. M. Chase). Cambridge: Belknap Press. Hyman, A. and Walsh, J.J. (eds) (1973). Philosophy in the middle ages. Indianapolis: Hackett. Iamblichus (1989). On the Pythagorean life (trans. G. Clark). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Kahn, C.H. (2001). Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: A brief history. Indianapolis: Hackett. Kaster, J. (1970). The literature and mythology of ancient Egypt. London: Allen Lane. Kumar, K. (1987). Utopia and anti-Utopia in Modern Times. Oxford: Blackwell. Lloyd, A.C. (1970) ‘The Later Neoplatonists’ in A.H. Armstrong (ed.) The Cambridge history of later Greek and early medieval philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lucretius (2001). On the nature of things (trans. M.F. Smith). Indianapolis: Hackett. Marcus Aurelius (1964). Meditations (trans. M. Staniforth). Harmondsworth: Penguin. McKeon, R. (1930). Selections from medieval philosophers, vol. II. New York: Scribners McKirahan, Richard D. jr. (1994) Philosophy before Socrates: An introduction with texts and commentary. Indianapolis: Hackett. Panek, J. (1991) Comenius: Teacher of nations. Prague: Orbis. Pico della Mirandola, G. (1948). ‘Oration on the Dignity of Man’ (trans. E.L. Forbes) in E. Cassirer, P.O. Kristeller and J.H. Randall (eds) The Renaissance philosophy of man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Plato (1956). Protagoras and meno (trans. W.K.C. Guthrie). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Plato (1969). The last days of Socrates (trans. H. Tredennick). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Plotinus (1991). Enneads (trans. S MacKenna). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Proclus (1963). The elements of theology (transd. E.R. Dodds), second edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pritchard, James B. (ed.) (1969) Ancient near eastern texts relating to the Old Testament. Third edition with supplement. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rad, Gerhard von (1972). Wisdom in Israel. London: SCM Press. Rice, E.F. (1958). The renaissance idea of wisdom. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Seneca (1917, 1920, 1925). Moral epistles (three vols, trans. R.M. Gummere). London: Heinemann (Loeb Library). Shaw, Ian and Nicholson, Paul (2003). The dictionary of ancient Egypt. New York: Harry N. Abrams. Snyder, H. Gregory (2000). Teachers and texts in the ancient world: Philosophers, Jews and Christians. London: Routledge. Soden, W. von (1994). The ancient Orient: An introduction to the study of the ancient Near East (trans. D. G. Schley). Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Sondag, G. (2003). ‘Jean de la Rochelle’ in J.J.E. Garcia and T.B. Noone (eds) A companion to philosophy in the middle ages. Oxford: Blackwell. Stroker, W.D. (1989). Extracanonical sayings of Jesus. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Valliere, P. (2000). Modern Russian theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov. Orthodox theology in a new key. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. Victor, J. (1978). Charles de Bovelles 1479–1553: An intellectual biography. Geneva: Droz. Westermann, Claus (1995). Roots of wisdom: The oldest proverbs of Israel and other peoples. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. Wind, Edgar (1967). Pagan mysteries in the Renaissance. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Witherington III, B. (1994). Jesus the sage: The pilgrimage of wisdom. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. Wood, D. (1967). Wisdom literature. London: Duckworth.

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Léonard Gaultier’s frontispiece to the 2nd edition of Pierre Charron’s de la Sagesse first appearing in 1604

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As Charron explains in the preface to 2nd edition of de la Sagesse, Wisdom is represented as a beautiful woman—naked, because she needs no additional beauties or art to perfect her, but is simple, natural and plain, yet still modest. Her continence is healthy and “masculine”, smiling and cheerful, strong and authoritative; her body straight and standing on a cube that denotes justice and firmness. Her arms crossed as if embracing herself—suggesting that she is happy and satisfied with herself. Her head bears a crown of laurel and olive denoting victory and peace; the space around her denotes freedom. A hand from a cloud shows her own reflection in a mirror—because wisdom is used for knowledge and contemplation of oneself. On her right, is written “I know not”—not to allow constant doubt and skepticism, but to show that she is cautious in arguing and deliberating, not quick to make summative judgments, but with an ear open to fresh reasons and not ashamed to admit that the best human reasons are still dark and imperfect. On the left side is written, “Peace, and a little”, Charron’s own contribution, represented by an impaled root, wound around with olive-branch and circled with two laurel branches in an oval—implying that competence is sufficient and that people have in their own power to be at ease and contented. Below on each side of the title are four wretched and deformed old women, chained to the end of the pedestal of wisdom—who despises, condemns and tramples them underfoot. The two on the right are passion and opinion (who is supported by several people, showing the extravagance and infectiousness of common error). The two on the left are superstition and learning (a counterfeit, superficial, acquired and pedantic virtue; a slave to laws and customs and forms) who reads a book in which is written “yea” “nay”—denoting the vanity of learned men and their continuous disputes and wide disagreements. Lastly, the chains that end at the foot of wisdom show that captivity of the mind which all these qualities bring men under, and which people who study wisdom strive to rise above. And those who attain it break those fetters and are completely free from their miserable bondage.

Part I

Fostering Wisdom as Expertise

Fostering Wisdom: A Psychological Perspective Antje Stange and Ute Kunzmann

Wisdom is assumed to be one of the highest qualities of humankind and as such it is an important resource for a good life (see Baltes & Staudinger, 2000; Clayton & Birren, 1990; Heckhausen, Dixon, & Baltes, 1989). It provides insights and guidance in fundamental questions of life, such as how to lead a meaningful and happy life (Baltes & Staudinger, 2000; Kunzmann & Baltes, 2003a; Staudinger, 1999). The specific qualities that are believed to constitute wisdom may have changed across historical times as societal values of desirable human qualities change (see Rice, 1958). However, wisdom has always been valued and considered a highly desirable attribute. Definitions of wisdom suggest that wisdom involves an orientation towards the common good and as such contributes to the benefit of others as well as to the personal growth of the individual (Baltes & Staudinger, 2000; Kunzmann & Baltes, 2003a; Sternberg, 1998). Wisdom serves important social functions such as mentoring others, managing social institutions, and governing countries (Kramer, 1990, 2000). Given these positive qualities, it seems worthwhile to support the growth of wisdom in both individuals and societies (see also Reznitskaya & Sternberg, 2004; Sternberg, 2001). In this chapter, we present psychological work on wisdom. From our point of view, psychological conceptualizations of wisdom should be sufficiently consistent with cultural-historical work on wisdom (see also Baltes, 2004; Baltes & Kunzmann, 2004). On the other hand, psychological researchers are interested in testing whether philosophical theories on wisdom and wise persons are consistent with empirical data. In doing so, psychologists have developed definitions of wisdom that allow the operationalization and measurement of wisdom-related performance, at least in an approximate sense (e.g., Ardelt, 2004; Baltes & Smith, 1990; Baltes & Staudinger, 2000; Sternberg, 1998). We will focus on one such approach to the definition and measurement of wisdom. This approach has been suggested by Baltes and his colleagues and is known as the Berlin Wisdom Model (Baltes & Kunzmann, in press; Baltes & Smith, 1990; Baltes & Staudinger, 2000;

Antje Stange Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA Ute Kunzmann University Leipzig, Department of Psychology I, Life-Span Development Psychology Lab, Seeburgstraβe 14–20, 04103 Leipzig

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Dittmann-Kohli & Baltes, 1990; Dixon & Baltes, 1986; Kunzmann & Stange, 2007; Staudinger & Baltes, 1994; Sowarka, 1989). First, we will describe the Berlin Wisdom Model and discuss how it relates to alternative psychological approaches to wisdom. Second, we review empirical work on the conditions that facilitate or hinder the acquisition of wisdom during ontogenesis, and its access and expression when called upon. We hope to be able to convince the reader that the evidence from this work provides insight into some of the ways in which wisdom may be enhanced on the levels of individuals, groups, and even societies.

Psychological Approaches to Wisdom Wisdom is a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon. At the most general level, wisdom can be defined as exceptional insight into the human condition and the meaning of life (e.g., Baltes, 2004). From a psychological point of view, wisdom involves the interplay of different cognitive, emotional, and social factors. One way to conceptualize wisdom is to identify those characteristics that help distinguish wise persons from others, for example, highly creative, intelligent, or foolish people (Clayton & Birren, 1980; Holliday & Chandler, 1986; Sternberg, 1985, 1990). This line of research has suggested that wise people are typically perceived to demonstrate exceptional levels of intrapersonal and interpersonal competence, including deep understanding and reflection, excellent judgment and communication skills, as well as empathic concern for others (Clayton & Birren, 1980; Holliday & Chandler, 1986; Sternberg, 1985). An alternative way of conceptualizing wisdom focuses on the concept of wisdom as a knowledge system. Philosophical and historical writings are a rich source of this approach to wisdom (e.g., Baltes, 2004; Baltes & Kunzmann, 2004). Wisdomrelated thinking and knowledge has been described in several ways. Some approaches emphasize specific characteristics of wisdom-related thinking such as the ability to identify the problem: that is, the ability to select the “right” information from a variety of available information (Arlin, 1990); or the awareness of the limits of one’s knowledge as prototypically expressed in Socrates’ insight of only knowing that he does not know anything (Kekes, 1983; Meacham, 1983, 1990; McKee & Barber, 1999). Other approaches have conceptualized wisdom in a broader sense and suggest that wisdom involves the acceptance of contradiction and unpredictability and a deep understanding of the dialectical nature of life-problems (Alexander & Langer, 1990; Kramer, 1990, 2000; Labouvie-Vief, 1990; Riegel, 1973; Sinnott, 1998). Sternberg’s balance theory is another promising approach to defining wisdom as a knowledge system. Proceeding from his triarchic theory of intelligence, Sternberg (1998) viewed tacit knowledge—a component of practical intelligence—as the core feature of wisdom. Tacit knowledge is action oriented, it helps individuals to achieve goals they personally value, and it can be acquired only through learning from one’s own experiences rather than “vicariously” through reading books or through others’ instructions. Importantly, wisdom is not tacit knowledge per se. Wisdom is involved when practical intelligence (i.e., tacit knowledge) is applied to maximizing not just one’s own or someone else’s self-interests, but rather a balance

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of various self-interests (intrapersonal) with the interests of others (interpersonal) and of other aspects of the context in which one lives (extrapersonal), such as one’s city or country or environment (Sternberg, 1998, p. 354). Thus, what sets wisdom apart from (practical) intelligence is its orientation toward the maximization of a common good rather than individual well-being.

The Berlin Wisdom Model In the remainder of this chapter, we will focus on discussing the Berlin Wisdom Model, which resulted in the most comprehensive research program on wisdom to date (see Baltes & Staudinger, 2000; Kunzmann & Baltes, 2005 for reviews). In this line of research, and on the most general level of description, wisdom has been defined as knowledge that requires and reflects an integration of mind and virtue, character and intellect (e.g., Baltes, 2004; Baltes & Staudinger, 2000; Kunzmann & Baltes, 2005). This definition suggests that having wisdom-related knowledge available supports an integrative and holistic approach toward life’s challenges and problems—an approach that emphasizes value tolerance and the use of one’s intellectual resources for the “right” purposes, that is, to strive for personal growth and help others develop their own potential (e.g., Baltes et al., 2002; Baltes & Staudinger, 2000; Kunzmann & Baltes, 2005). According to the Berlin Wisdom Model, wisdom deals with fundamental questions of the meaning and conduct of life, such as difficult and important issues related to life-planning, life-management, and life-review (Baltes & Smith, 1990; Baltes & Staudinger, 2000; Dittmann-Kohli & Baltes, 1990; Dixon & Baltes, 1986; Staudinger & Baltes, 1994). Baltes and colleagues developed a family of five criteria to describe the knowledge system that constitutes wisdom (Baltes & Smith, 1990; Staudinger, Smith, & Baltes, 1994). Table 1 illustrates how these criteria can be translated into a wise piece of advice. The two criteria rich factual knowledge and rich procedural knowledge are seen as basic criteria because they are typical for any expert knowledge system (see Ericsson & Charness, 1994; Ericsson & Smith, 1991). In addition, the three meta-criteria of wisdom-related knowledge—lifespan contextualism, valuerelativism/tolerance, and awareness and management of uncertainty—are assumed to be unique to wisdom (Baltes & Smith, 1990; Baltes & Staudinger, 2000; Kunzmann & Baltes, 2003a). Factual knowledge involves broad and deep general knowledge about human nature and life conditions (including emotions, motives, and the dynamic interaction of personal, interpersonal, and societal conditions) and rich specific knowledge about life events, institutions, and societal norms. Procedural knowledge refers to ways of dealing with fundamental life issues, including strategies and heuristics of the interpretation and management of life. Specifically, it includes insightful decisionmaking (i.e., using and assessing the relevance of available information, listening to advice, flexible planning, cost-benefit-analysis), the application of knowledge from past experiences, strategies of goal-setting and attainment, consultation with helpful others, and strategies of giving advice in difficult life matters.

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Table 1 Examples of wise advice according to the Berlin Wisdom Model (adopted from Baltes & Smith, 1990) Criterion Instantiation in verbal response Factual Knowledge

Who, when, where? Specific knowledge, examples, variations General knowledge of emotions, vulnerability, and multiple options

Procedural Knowledge

Strategies of information search, decision making, and advice-giving Timing of advice Monitoring of emotional reactions

Life-Span Contextualism

Likely age sequence of events Socio-historical and idiosyncratic context Coordination of life themes and temporal changes Contextual conflicts and tensions

Value-Relativism/Tolerance

Religious and personal preferences Current/future values, goals, motives Cultural relativism

Uncertainty

No perfect solution Optimization of gain/loss Future not fully predictable Back-up solutions

The meta-criterion of lifespan contextualism is unique to wisdom in that it involves the acknowledgement that critical life events are always embedded in various contexts (age-related, cultural, biographical) that have to be integrated into sound judgment and advice. The second meta-criterion of value-relativism and tolerance describes a perspective on life problems that acknowledges and respects individual differences in values and life goals that may be due to individual differences in personal, social, and cultural backgrounds. At the same time, this perspective acknowledges the universality of certain values (e.g., “Thou shall not kill.”). Finally, the third meta-criterion is to accept and manage the unpredictability and relative uncertainty of life. Included in this perspective is an acknowledgement of the limitations of knowledge given that sources of knowledge are always incomplete and the contexts of life-problems and their interpretation may change. These five criteria can be used to describe wisdom-related knowledge in individuals as well as in cultural-historic products, such as wisdom writings, religious texts, and constitutions (e.g., Baltes & Smith, 1990; Baltes & Staudinger, 2000; Staudinger et al., 1994). A specific text is considered wise only if it reflects all five criteria to a high degree.

Measuring Wisdom: The Berlin Wisdom Paradigm When discussing the potential opportunities to foster wisdom on the levels of individuals, groups, or societies, it is important to identify criteria that can demonstrate the effectiveness of certain interventions. The Berlin Wisdom Model has

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developed an extensive procedure to reliably measure wisdom-related performance in both individuals and writings (Baltes & Smith, 1990; Baltes & Staudinger, 2000; Micklr & Staudinger, 2005 Staudinger et al., 1994). To assess wisdom-related performance on the individual level, the Berlin group has developed vignettes describing difficult life problems related to lifemanagement, life-planning, or life-review. For example, a wisdom-related problem of life-management reads: Somebody receives a phone call from a friend who wants to commit suicide. What should one consider and do?. Study participants are asked to think aloud about these problems. The think-aloud technique was originally developed and used by Ericsson and colleagues for the investigation of expert performance in cognitive processes (Ericcson & Simon, 1984). It requires participants to say everything that comes to their mind while working on a specific task. In the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm answers of the participants to the life problems are recorded. Well-trained raters code these written protocols according to the five wisdom criteria that we have described above. In doing so, they specify on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 7 (extremely) the degree to which a protocol reflects the ideal description of a wisdom criterion. Because wisdom is a very rare phenomenon, Baltes and his colleagues reserve the term “wise” for protocols with ratings greater than 5 on all five wisdom criteria. This approach implies that higher levels of wisdom differ from lower levels of wisdom quantitatively but not necessarily qualitatively.

The Development of Wisdom: A Theoretical Model and Empirical Evidence The Berlin Wisdom Paradigm has been used in many empirical studies investigating the antecedents, correlates, and consequences of wisdom-related knowledge. The empirical research was guided by the theoretical working model depicted in Fig. 1 (Baltes & Smith, 1990; Baltes & Staudinger, 2000). The model illustrates the conditions that lead to the acquisition of wisdom-related knowledge. Wisdom is understood as both process, i.e. the orchestration of intellect and character, or mind and virtue, and as a result, namely wisdom as an expertise, characterized by the five wisdom criteria. As seen, three different antecedent conditions were identified and empirically investigated that interact in different contexts of developmental regulation (i.e., fundamental questions of life-planning, life-management, and life-review) and are assumed to influence the development of wisdom: General person factors, expertise-specific factors, and facilitative experiential contexts. General person-related factors include basic cognitive abilities, creativity, and thinking styles as well as personality factors, such as openness to experience and ego-strength. Expertise-related factors refer to a person’s life experience, the availability of mentorship or tutelage, as well as professional training. Context-related factors include education, experience of particular historical periods and social contexts, as well as a person’s chronological age. These different types of antecedent conditions interact with each other and different combinations of these factors can yield similar results. Moreover, although conceptualized as antecedent conditions,

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general person factors, experiential contexts, and expertise-related factors can also be seen as correlates and consequences of wisdom-related knowledge. In other words, the relations among the components of the theoretical working model have been thought to be bi-directional and accumulative over the life course (Baltes & Staudinger, 2000; Baltes et al., 2002; Kunzmann & Baltes, 2005). Different factors in the model have been investigated as predictors of wisdomrelated performance. To investigate person-related factors, Staudinger, Lopez, and Baltes (1997) conducted a study that addressed the associations between wisdomrelated performance and 33 different psychometric variables. The sample was diverse with respect to age and education (19–87 years, M = 45.4 years). Wisdomrelated performance was associated with 10 of the 33 variables. These variables were psychometric intelligence (e.g., fluid and crystallized intelligence), personality traits (e.g., openness for experience, personal growth, psychological-mindedness), and measures that were seen as representing the interface between personality and intelligence (e.g., creativity, thinking styles). In fact, the largest unique portion of the variance in wisdom-related knowledge was explained by indicators that belonged to the interface of personality and cognition (15%). This evidence is consistent with the idea that wisdom-related knowledge requires not just certain desirable personality factors or certain academic abilities, but rather an orchestration of these factors. Staudinger and Pasupathi (2003) have provided evidence for the idea that the contribution of person-factors in predicting wisdom-related knowledge may change across the life-span. They investigated a sample of adolescents, aged 14 to 20 years, and adults, aged 35 to 75 years. In both adolescents and adults, higher performance in wisdom-related tasks is associated with higher levels of crystallized intelligence, greater openness for experience, and greater creativity. However, the relationships between these person-factors and wisdom-related knowledge were higher in adolescents than in adults. Staudinger and Pasupathi (2003) suggest that openness to experience and crystallized intelligence may possibly function as “gatekeepers” (p. 258) for the acquisition of wisdom-related knowledge in adolescence. However, it may also be that another factor, such as life experience, influences both the level of wisdom-related knowledge as well as crystallized knowledge and openness to experience. Given that the evidence is cross-sectional, causal relationships between these predictors and wisdom-related performance cannot be inferred. Future longitudinal studies should investigate whether person-factors such as openness to experience influence intraindividual changes in wisdom-related knowledge over time. The study also showed that less variance in wisdom-related performance can be explained by measures of intelligence and personality in adults, compared to adolescents. This suggests that stable personality traits and intelligence become less important for the level of wisdom-related performance as people get older. Rather, specific experiences seem to become more important for the development of wisdom. Kunzmann and Baltes (2003b) investigated the idea that wisdom-related knowledge requires and reflects a joint concern for developing one’s own and others’ potential (see also Sternberg, 1998). In contrast, a predominant search for selfcentered pleasure and comfort should not be associated with wisdom. Consistent with the predictions, people high on wisdom-related knowledge reported less

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preference for values revolving around a pleasurable and comfortable life. Instead, they reported preferring self-oriented values such as personal growth and insight, as well as a preference for other-oriented values related to environmental protection, societal engagement, and the well-being of friends. People with high levels of wisdom-related knowledge also showed less preference for conflict management strategies that reflect either a one-sided concern with one’s own interests (i.e., dominance), a one-sided concern with others’ interests (i.e., submission), or no concern at all (i.e., avoidance). Rather, they preferred a cooperative approach reflecting a joint concern for one’s own and the opponent’s interests. Finally, people with high levels of wisdom-related knowledge reported that they less frequently experience self-centered pleasant feelings (e.g., happiness, amusement), but more frequently process-oriented and environment-centered positive emotions (e.g., interest, inspiration). As an expertise-related factor Smith, Staudinger, and Baltes (1994) examined training and professional expertise in clinical psychology. Younger and older clinical psychologists’ wisdom-related performance was compared with that of equally well educated professionals who pursued careers that did not involve dealing with fundamental problems related to the meaning and conduct of life. As predicted, the clinical psychologists demonstrated higher levels of wisdom-related knowledge than the control professionals. In addition, younger and older adults did not differ in their wisdom-related performance. Because the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm was developed by psychologists, a performance advantage of clinical psychologists may be reflective of expertise in psychology, rather than wisdom. To address this question, Baltes, Staudinger, Maercker, and Smith (1995) conducted a study in which they asked journalists to nominate people whom they considered to be wise. These nominees were contacted and tested for their wisdom-related performance. Interestingly, most of these 22 nominees were older persons, the youngest nominee being 41 years and 8 of the nominees being older than 80 years old. Only nominees who were younger than 80 years old were included in the study. Although wisdom refers to pragmatic knowledge, it requires a certain level of fluid intelligence. In very old age and due to age-related decline in the cognitive mechanics, wisdom may be compromised as well, at least to a certain degree. As a first step, the authors decided to focus on the so-called young old. In the long run, research should be extended to also include very old people. The wisdom-related performance of the wisdom nominees was compared with the performance of younger and older clinical psychologists and younger and older professionals whose professions did not primarily involve work with people. Results indicated that wisdom nominees indeed showed top-performances in wisdomrelated knowledge. However, their performance was not superior to the performance of clinical psychologists. This study suggests that persons who are perceived as being wise, indeed show comparatively high wisdom-related performance. Wisdom as an expert knowledge system is assumed to take time and structured life-experiences to develop. Several studies investigated the relationship between wisdom-related knowledge and chronological age as one context-related factor (see Baltes & Kunzmann, in press; Kunzmann, in press; Staudinger, 1999 for reviews). Pasupathi, Staudinger, and Baltes (2001) found that in adolescence, chronological

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age and wisdom-related knowledge are highly correlated. In adulthood, however, wisdom and age are not significantly associated (Baltes & Staudinger, 2000; Smith et al., 1994; Staudinger, 1999). Both younger and older persons are among the top-performers in wisdom-related knowledge. This finding is consistent with the developmental model proposed by Baltes and his colleagues that suggests that just growing older is insufficient for the development of wisdom. Rather, certain constellations of general personal factors, expertise-specific factors, and facilitative experiential contexts influence the development of wisdom-related knowledge. The studies reviewed above demonstrate that the experiential contexts and processes that facilitate the development of wisdom are diverse and interact with person-specific characteristics and processes. Wisdom is related to stable personal characteristics, such as intelligence and personality. However, a large proportion of the variance cannot be explained by these relatively de-contextualized measures. Factors, such as specific life experiences (wisdom nominees) and expertise gained through professional specialization, also play an important role in the acquisition of wisdom-related knowledge. This implies that the actions and behaviors of people, rather than their static traits, influence their level of wisdom-related knowledge. Therefore, it should be possible to create contexts which can provide learning opportunities that may facilitate the development of wisdom-related knowledge as discussed later.

The Potential of Wisdom-Related Knowledge: How to Activate Wisdom-Related Knowledge There are several ways in which adults may enhance their levels of wisdom-related knowledge. One strategy is to organize one’s life around the factors that we have discussed. There is another strategy that has more immediate success and focuses on different ways of activating those bodies of wisdom-related knowledge that are already part of an individual’s repertoire, but are not easily accessible. Research within the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm suggests two methods that help people to activate their wisdom-related knowledge in a given situation. Human thinking is embedded in context, often of a social nature. Staudinger and Baltes (1996) investigated the influence of social context on wisdom-related performance. They differentiated between two basic forms of “interactive minds” contexts: External dialogue and internal or virtual dialogue. External dialogue involves two persons who are engaging in an actual dialogue. Staudinger and Baltes (1996) created two different conditions representing external dialogue: one in which two persons just discussed the wisdom-related problems and afterwards immediately gave their response (external dialogue); and another condition in which both participants got additional time to think about the conversation they had before providing an answer (external dialogue plus). Internal dialogue, in contrast, is an imagined

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discussion with another person. Staudinger and Baltes (1996) included two control conditions: the standard condition which asks participants to give their response to the wisdom-related problem immediately; and a condition in which participants have the chance to think about the problem without any further instruction (individual thinking time). They found that participants in the external plus internal dialogue conditions demonstrated higher wisdom-related performance than did participants in the other three conditions. Therefore it can be concluded that social collaboration increases wisdom-related performance if participants also have the chance to think individually. Staudinger and Baltes (1996) conclude that wisdom-related performance potential may be underestimated when restricting research to isolated individuals. Social context is however, just one way to help people to access their knowledge systems (see Dixon & Gould, 1996). Knowledge is semantically organized. Other strategies of knowledge activation focus on facilitating the recall of knowledge by providing strategies of knowledge recall. In her dissertation Böhmig-Krumhaar (Böhmig-Krumhaar, Staudinger, & Baltes, 2002) used a mnemonic technique, the method of loci, as a strategy for participants to access their knowledge systems. The method of loci provides participants with a mental map in which knowledge is represented through images that are connected with a set of cues. Younger (20–30 years) and older adults (60–70 years) participated in this study. Participants in the experimental group were asked to imagine a cloud travel around the world. They were instructed to imagine visiting four different regions of the world with different customs and cultural practices: Germany, Italy, Egypt, and China. It was expected that the use of the method of loci would cue participants to activate their knowledge about these regions and use this knowledge in responding to the wisdom tasks. Specifically, it was expected that the cloud travel would help participants to distance themselves from their own values and to broaden their perspective which would result in higher value relativism scores. It was found that both older and younger participants in the experimental group increased in their value relativism, life-span contextualism, and factual knowledge. The cloud-travel instruction was designed to specifically influence value-relativism and life-span contextualism. No transfer for procedural knowledge and awareness and management of uncertainty was expected and found. However, the experimental group had higher average wisdom-related knowledge scores than did the control group. This study illustrates that most people seem to have more wisdom-related knowledge than they typically use. However, if taught a knowledge activation strategy, such as the cloud travel, people can access their knowledge and improve their wisdom-related performance. Together these studies imply that wisdom-related performance can be increased by giving participants specific instructions that help them to activate their wisdomrelated knowledge. This suggests that one way of fostering wisdom may be to encourage people to access their wisdom-related knowledge by teaching them strategies of when and how to use their knowledge. For instance, when confronted with a serious problem, one such strategy may be to imagine a conversation about this problem with a person whom one considers to be wise.

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The Enhancement of Wisdom-Related Knowledge The final part of this chapter is devoted to some suggestions on how to enhance wisdom-related knowledge based on current empirical evidence. It should be noted that no studies have been conducted that tried to apply the Berlin Wisdom Model to educational settings. However, the studies that have investigated antecedents, correlates, and consequences of wisdom-related knowledge can be used to identify factors that may be relevant to the acquisition of wisdom and serve as starting points for potential wisdom interventions. Wisdom is assumed to develop through extensive and structured interactions with the world. Empirical studies on wisdom-related knowledge have identified experiential contexts that are associated with higher levels of wisdom-related knowledge in individuals. For instance, clinical psychologists performed better on wisdom-related knowledge tasks than equally well educated professionals. The Berlin Wisdom Model suggests that experiential contexts, person-specific factors, and expertisespecific factors may be antecedents to the development of wisdom. Persons with certain personality traits, such as openness to experience or intelligence, demonstrate higher levels of wisdom-related knowledge than people who show lower expression of these traits (Staudinger & Pasupathi, 2003). The causal relationships between openness and wisdom cannot be disentangled at the present time. As much as openness to experience may facilitate the acquisition of wisdomrelated knowledge wisdom-related knowledge may “cause” people to be more open to experience. If a person is able to tolerate different customs and values, this person may be more likely to be open to people of other cultures and learn more about other cultures. Personality traits and intelligence are, however, by definition relatively stable characteristics. The intervention potential of these variables is yet to be determined. Empirical studies are needed to investigate whether it is possible to increase openness to experience and, if yes, whether that may facilitate the development of wisdom-related knowledge. In the case of crystallized knowledge, another predictor of higher levels of wisdom-related knowledge in adolescence, it seems obvious that knowledge can be increased through formal training. However, it has yet to be determined how wisdom-related knowledge can be taught most effectively. Recently, Linden and his colleagues developed a therapeutic approach based on the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm (Schippan, Baumann, & Linden, 2004). They suggest that wisdom-therapy may be especially beneficial for clients with a post-traumatic embitterment disorder, that is, clients who suffer from a severe violation of long-held beliefs in the face of unsolvable problems. Linden and colleagues argue that the clients’ wisdom can be enhanced by providing a structural training on how to deal with unsolvable problems. The training involves empathizing with different characters involved in the problem and taking certain perspectives, such as that of a wise grandmother, a rational manager, or a psychologist. Longitudinal studies that investigate the effectiveness of the program in increasing participants’ well-being are currently being conducted.

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For educational settings, Sternberg (2001), and Sternberg, Jarvin, & Reznitskaya (this volume) have suggested the implementation of a wisdom-related training. The wisdom curriculum encompasses diverse topics ranging from general definitions of wisdom to the discussion of specific aspects of sternberg’s balance theory of wisdom (e.g., values, the common good) and the introduction of particular wise persons as role-models. At the end of this training program students are evaluated and tested for improvements in their wisdom-related performance. This training program is specifically designed to reflect core aspects of Sternberg’s balance theory of wisdom; but it could serve as a model for the testing of interventions that are oriented towards the enhancement of wisdom-related performance as defined in the Berlin Wisdom Model. A second major group of variables associated with wisdom-related knowledge are described as facilitative experiential contexts. Examples of these facilitative experiential contexts include education, parenthood, and mentorship. It is still an open question whether better educated societies are also “better” societies, but there is evidence that higher education is associated with healthier life-styles as well as better psychological adjustment. Creating contexts that facilitate the development of wisdom may involve governmental tasks, such as making education accessible, as well as individual tasks, such as being willing to partake in generative tasks, for example parenting or mentoring. Programs can be designed that give individuals the opportunity to engage in activities which may foster wisdom, such as intergenerational or international exchange programs. However, programs need to be carefully designed and evaluated to establish their effectiveness for the growth of wisdom. If wisdom is largely tacit knowledge, as Sternberg (1998) suggests, it may be difficult to design intervention programs that are specifically targeted towards the enhancement of wisdom. A third potential avenue for fostering wisdom may be the systematic training of expertise-related factors. The studies reviewed above suggested that being trained as a clinical psychologist was related to higher levels of wisdom-related knowledge. It might be helpful to isolate certain parts of the professional training experience of clinical psychologists and identify those which can help to foster wisdom. For example, the ability to take different perspectives and empathize with all characters involved may play a major part in the development of value relativism. The suggestions about potential strategies of increasing wisdom-related knowledge should be taken with some caution. Empirical studies conducted within the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm have used cross-sectional samples only. The variables studied so far statistically predict the level of wisdom-related knowledge, but it is yet to be investigated whether they will predict change in wisdom-related knowledge across time. Longitudinal studies using the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm will be necessary to address this issue. Although the causal relationship between wisdomrelated knowledge and facilitative experiential contexts, expertise-specific factors, and person-factors cannot be determined at the present state of research, the research demonstrate that these factors are related to wisdom-related knowledge. The intervention research conducted within the Berlin Wisdom Model suggests that there is plasticity in wisdom-related performance. People often have more wisdom available that they use in a given situation. Teaching strategies that allow people to activate and apply the wisdom that they have in principle would be an interesting

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route for further research. For example, many situations requiring wisdom are highly emotional. Being able to regulate one’s self-centered feelings of anger, contempt, or sadness might facilitate wisdom-related thinking, which requires distance to the immediate situation, balance, and elaboration (e.g., Kunzmann, 2004). It should be noted that past research on the activation of wisdom-related knowledge in a given situation were conducted in the laboratory (Staudinger & Baltes, 1996; KrumhaarBöhming et al., 2002). It would be an interesting avenue for future research to implement wisdom-activation strategies in an everyday problem-solving context and see if they may help people solve their personal problems more effectively or make them more effective advice-givers to others. To summarize, the present chapter introduced the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm as one way of conceptualizing wisdom and making it accessible for empirical research. The theoretical model of Baltes and colleagues allows the identification of antecedent factors to the development of wisdom-related knowledge. Although further studies are needed to understand the complex interactions between these factors, the model can stimulate thinking about potential interventions that may facilitate the fostering of wisdom-related knowledge. The intervention studies conducted within the Berlin Wisdom Model have shown that wisdom has a latent component as well. Facilitating the use of wisdom-related knowledge that people have available in principle should be another focus of future interventions aiming at the enhancement of wisdom-related knowledge. Many adults may be wiser than they actually appear.

References Alexander, C. N., & Langer, E. J. (1990). Higher stages of human development: Perspectives on adult growth. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Ardelt, M. (2004). Wisdom as expert knowledge system: A critical review of a contemporary operationalization of an ancient concept. Human Development, 47, 257–285. Arlin, P. K. (1990). Wisdom: The art of problem finding. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Wisdom: Its nature, origins, and development (pp. 230–243). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Baltes, P. B. (2004). Wisdom as orchestration of mind and virtue. Berlin: Max Planck Institute for Human Development: http://www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/dok/full/baltes/orchestr/index.htm (available online). Baltes, P. B., Dittmann-Kohli, F., & Dixon, R. A. (1984). New perspectives on the development of intelligence in adulthood: Toward a dual-process conception and a model of selective optimization with compensation. In P. B. Baltes & O. G. Brim (Eds.), Life-span development and behavior (Vol. 6, pp. 33–76). New York, NY: Academic Press. Baltes, P. B., Glück, J., & Kunzmann, U. (2002). Wisdom: Its structure and function in regulating successful lifespan development. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 327–350). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Baltes, P. B., & Kunzmann, U. (2004). Two faces of wisdom: Wisdom as a general theory of knowledge and judgment about excellence in mind and virtue vs. Wisdom as everyday realization in people and products. Human Development, 47, 290–299. Baltes, P. B. & Kunzmann, U. (in press). Wisdom and aging: The royal road toward excellence in mind and character. In D. Park & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Cognitive aging: A primer (2nd ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press. Baltes, P. B., & Smith, J. (1990). Toward a psychology of wisdom and its ontogenesis. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Wisdom: Its nature, origins, and development (pp. 87–120). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

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Baltes, P. B., & Staudinger, U. M. (2000). Wisdom: A metaheuristic (pragmatic) to orchestrate mind and virtue toward excellence. American Psychologist, 55, 122–136. Baltes, P. B., Staudinger, U. M., Maercker, A. & Smith, J. (1995). People nominated as wise. A comparative study of wisdom-related knowledge. Psychology and Aging, 10, 155–166. Böhmig-Krumhaar, S. A., Staudinger, U. M., Baltes, P.B. (2002). Mehr Toleranz tut Not: Lässt sich wert-relativierendes Wissen und Urteilen mit Hilfe einer wissensaktivierenden Gedächtnisstrategie verbessern? [In search of more tolerance: Testing the facilitative effect of a knowledgeactivating mnemonic strategy on value relativism]. Zeitschrift für Entwicklungspsychologie und Pädagogische Psychologie, 34, 30–43. Clayton, V. P., & Birren, J. E. (1980). The development of wisdom across the life span: A reexamination of an ancient topic. In P. B. Baltes & O. G. Brim (Eds.), Life-span development and behavior (Vol. 3, pp. 103–135). New York, NY: Academic Press. Dittmann-Kohli, F., & Baltes, P. B. (1990). Toward a neofunctionalist conception of adult intellectual development: Wisdom as a prototypical case of intellectual growth. In C. N. Alexander & E. J. Langer (Eds.), Higher stages of human development: Perspectives on adult growth (pp. 54–78). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Dixon, R. A. & Baltes, P. B. (1986). Toward life-span research on the functions and pragmatics of intelligence. In R. J. Sternberg & R. K. Wagner (Eds.), Practical intelligence: Nature and origins of competence in the everyday world (pp. 203–234). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Dixon, R. A. & Gould, O. N. (1996). Adults telling and retelling stories collaboratively. In P. B. Baltes & U. M. Staudinger (Eds.), Interactive minds: Life-span perspectives on the social foundation of cognition, 221–241. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Ericsson, K. A., & Charness, N. (1994). Expert performance: Its structure and acquisition. American Psychologist, 49, 725–747. Ericsson, K. A. & Simon, H. A. (1984). Protocol analysis: Verbal reports as data. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Ericsson, K. A., & Smith, J. (1991). Toward a general theory of expertise: Prospects and limits. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Heckhausen, J., Dixon, R. A., & Baltes, P. B. (1989). Gains and losses in development throughout adulthood as perceived by different adult age groups. Developmental Psychology, 25, 109–121. Holliday, S. G., & Chandler, M. J. (1986). Wisdom: Explorations in adult competence. In J. A. Meacham (Ed.), Contributions to human development (Vol. 17, pp. 1–96). Basel: Karger. Kekes, J. (1983). Wisdom. American Philosophical Quarterly, 20, 277–286. Kramer, D. A. (1990). Conceptualizing wisdom: The primacy of affect-cognition relations. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Wisdom: Its nature, origins, and development (pp. 279–313). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Kramer, D. A. (2000). Wisdom as a classical source of human strength: Conceptualization and empirical inquiry. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 19, 83–101. Kunzmann, U. (in press). Wisdom and Aging. In R. Schulz (Ed.), Encyclopedia of aging (4th edition). New York, NY: Springer. Kunzmann, U. (2004). Approaches to a good life: The emotional-motivational side to wisdom. In P. A. Linley & S. Joseph (Eds.), Positive psychology in practice (pp. 504–517). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons. Kunzmann, U., & Baltes, P. B. (2003a). Beyond the traditional scope of intelligence: Wisdom in action. In R. J. Sternberg, J. Lautry & T. I. Lubart (Eds.), Models of intelligence: International perspectives (pp. 329–343). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Kunzmann, U., & Baltes, P. B. (2003b). Wisdom-related knowledge: Affective, motivational, and interpersonal correlates. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 1104–1119. Kunzmann, U. & Baltes, P. B. (2005). The psychology of wisdom: Theoretical and empirical challenges. In R. J. Sternberg & J. Jordan (Eds.). A Handbook of wisdom: Psychological perspectives (pp. 110–135). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Kunzmann, U., & Stange, A. (2007). Wisdom as a classical human strength: Psychological conceptualizations and empirical inquiry. In A. D. Ong & M. Van Dulmen (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Methods in Positive Psychology, 306–322. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

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Labouvie-Vief, G. (1990). Wisdom as integrated thought: Historical and developmental perspectives. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Wisdom: Its nature, origins, and development (pp. 52–83). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. McKee, P., & Barber, C. (1999). On defining wisdom. The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 49, 149–164. Meacham, J. A. (1983). Wisdom and the context of knowledge: Knowing that one doesn’t know. In D. Kuhn & J. A. Meacham (Eds.), On the development of developmental psychology (Vol. 8, pp. 111–134). Basel: Karger. Meacham, J. A. (1990). The loss of wisdom. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Wisdom: Its nature, origins, and development (pp. 181–211). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Pasupathi, M., Staudinger, U. M., & Baltes, P. B. (2001). Seeds of wisdom: Adolescents’ knowledge and judgment about difficult life problems. Developmental Psychology, 37(3), 351–361. Reznitskaya, A., & Sternberg, R. J. (2004). Teaching students to make wise judgments: The “Teaching for Wisdom” program. In P. A. Linley & S. Joseph (Eds.), Positive psychology in practice (pp. 181–196). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Rice, E. F. (1958). The renaissance idea of wisdom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Riegel, K. F. (1973). Dialectic operations: The final period of cognitive development. Human Development, 16, 346–370. Schippan, B., Baumann, K., & Linden, M. (2004). Weisheitstherapie: Kognitive Therapie der Posttraumatischen Verbitterungsstörung [Wisdom therapy: cognitive behavioral therapy of posttraumatic embitterment disorder. Verhaltenstherapie, 14, 284–293. Sinnott, J. D. (1998). The development of logic in adulthood: Postformal thought and its applications. New York, NY: Plenum Press. Smith, J., Staudinger, U. M., & Baltes, P. B. (1994). Occupational settings facilitating wisdomrelated knowledge: The sample case of clinical psychologists. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 62, 989–999. Sowarka, D. (1989). Weisheit und weise Personen: Common-sense-Konzepte älterer Menschen [Wisdom and wise persons: Common-sense concepts of older people]. Zeitschrift für Entwicklungspsychologie und Pädagogische Psychologie, 21, 87–109. Staudinger, U. M. (1999). Older and wiser? Integrating results from a psychological approach to the study of wisdom. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 23, 641–664. Staudinger, U. M., & Baltes, P. B. (1994). Psychology of wisdom. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Encyclopedia of intelligence (Vol. 1, pp. 143–152). New York: Macmillan. Staudinger, U. M., & Baltes, P. B. (1996). Interactive minds: A facilitative setting for wisdomrelated performance? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 746–762. Staudinger, U. M., Lopez, D. F., & Baltes, P. B. (1997). The psychometric location of wisdomrelated performance: Intelligence, personality, and more? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 1200–1214. Staudinger, U. M., Maciel, A. G., Smith, J., & Baltes, P. B. (1998). What predicts wisdom-related performance? A first look at personality, intelligence, and facilitative experiential contexts. European Journal of Personality, 12, 1–17. Staudinger, U. M. & Pasupathi, M. (2003). Correlates of wisdom-related performance in adolescence and adulthood: Age-graded differences in “paths” toward desirable development. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 13, 239–268. Staudinger, U. M., Smith, J., & Baltes, P. B. (1994). Manual for the assessment of wisdom-related knowledge. Berlin: Max Planck Institute for Human Development. Sternberg, R. J. (1985). Implicit theories of intelligence, creativity, and wisdom. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 607–627. Sternberg, R. J. (1990). Wisdom and its relations to intelligence and creativity. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Wisdom: Its nature, origins, and development (pp. 142–159). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R. J. (1998). A balance theory of wisdom. Review of General Psychology, 2, 347–365. Sternberg, R. J. (2001). Why schools should teach for wisdom: The balance theory of wisdom in educational settings. Educational Psychologist, 36, 227–245.

Teaching for Wisdom Through History: Infusing Wise Thinking Skills in the School Curriculum Robert J. Sternberg, Linda Jarvin and Alina Reznitskaya

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, some residents of New Orleans who remained in the city began looting stores. Many were in search of food and water and other basic necessities that were unavailable because of the destruction. Jackie Roberts, the owner of a drugstore on Canal Street, faced a dilemma: open the doors of her store and let people come in and take what they wanted, which would mean losing more money in addition to the damage the floods had already done to her store and storage facilities; or protect her store from looters with the help of a few armed friends, shooting at looters if necessary. Lee Ann Brown of Baton Rouge faced another type of dilemma. The single mother, who works two jobs, was concerned for her elderly parents, who can no longer care for themselves. After reading media accounts of what happened in some nursing homes when Hurricane Katrina hit, Brown worried that her parents would not properly be cared for in the type of nursing home she could afford. On the other hand, taking them in to live with her and her two children would exacerbate tensions in their already cramped household, and her teenage sons strongly opposed it. When the Miller family evacuated their home on Lake Pontchartrain, they were confronted with the realization that all their household pets, including two dogs, could not fit in the car that would take them out of the city to safety. They had to make a choice—leave some of the animals behind or have a family member remain with the pets until further evacuation help could be found. All three examples above depict people in extremely difficult situations; but the kinds of dilemmas they face are similar to what all of us, at any age, have to confront when choosing between our own best interests and those of others, be they strangers, close family members, or beloved pets. To solve dilemmas of this type, we need more than just knowledge or analytical thinking skills. We need wisdom.

Robert J. Sternberg Tufts University, Medford/Somerville, USA Linda Jarvin Tufts University, New Haven, USA Alina Reznitskaya Montclair State University, Montclair, USA

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What is Wisdom? Wisdom has many definitions, none of which are entirely agreed on by laypersons or scholars alike. It has been defined as the ability to make proper judgments, a wealth of philosophic or scientific learning, the possession of insight, the ability to discern inner qualities and relationships, and good sense. How do these general definitions relate to more developed theoretical models of wisdom? Historically, the concept of wisdom has been the object of philosophical inquiries since 5th century BCE Athens (Hadot, 2004). More recently, with the emergence of psychology as a field of study separate from philosophy, the concept of wisdom has also been studied as a psychological construct, and a number of psychologists have attempted empirical investigation of the concept of wisdom and its manifestations (Sternberg, 1990; Sternberg & Jordan, 2005). Wisdom has been studied from a range of psychological perspectives (a summary of the major approaches to understanding wisdom, and references for further reading, can be found in Sternberg, 2001). Some researchers (see Clayton, 1975, 1982; Holliday & Chandler, 1986; or Sternberg, 1990) have focused on implicit theories of wisdom, that is, on trying to understand how the layperson perceives and defines wisdom. Other researchers have adopted a developmental perspective to investigate how wisdom develops or fails to develop. Much of the empirical work in this area has been conducted by Paul Baltes and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute (Baltes & Staudinger, 1993, 2000; Smith & Baltes, 1990). Another developmental approach to defining wisdom is to view it as postformal-operational thinking, extending beyond the traditional Piagetian stages of intelligence (Piaget, 1972). Several researchers and theoreticians have focused on the importance of integration and balance in wisdom. Labouvie-Vief (1990), for example, has emphasized the balance between different kinds of thinking, suggesting that wisdom constitutes a balance of logos, which are objective and logical processes, and mythos, which represent subjective and organismic processes. Kramer (1990) has focused on the balance between various self-systems such as the cognitive, conative, and affective, arguing that wisdom involves integration of cognition and affect, resulting in a wellbalanced personality, where the conscious and unconscious interact in harmony. Still others insist on the balance between different points of view (Kitchener & Brenner, 1990), or on “a balance between the opposing valences of intense emotion and detachment, action and inaction, knowledge and doubts” (Birren & Fisher, 1990, p. 326). This chapter will focus on a theory of wisdom proposed by Sternberg, which builds on previous theories emphasizing the importance of integration and balance in wisdom.

The Balance Theory of Wisdom Sternberg defines wisdom as the use of one’s intelligence, creativity, and knowledge as mediated by values toward the achievement of a common good through a balance among (a) intrapersonal, (b) interpersonal, and (c) extrapersonal interests,

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over the (a) short and (b) long terms to achieve a balance among (a) adaptation to existing environments, (b) shaping of existing environments, and (c) selection of new environments (Sternberg, 2001, 2004). The visual presentation of this conception of wisdom is shown in Fig. 1. Let us examine the different components of this definition one by one. First, wise decisions do not just require intelligence and explicit knowledge, they typically draw on tacit, or implicit, knowledge gained through experience as well. The term tacit knowledge was first introduced by Polanyi (1966) and describes knowledge that is (a) implicit, or acquired without instructional support or even conscious awareness, (b) procedural, or “knowing how” rather than “knowing what,” and (c) instrumental to obtaining a particular goal (Sternberg et al., 2000). Tacit knowledge allows people to appreciate the nuances of a given situation that are not obtainable from any formalized, or even verbalized, set of rules. It is the ability to

Goal

Common Good

Adaptation

V Balance of Responses to Environmental Context

A L

Shaping

Selection

E

Extrapersonal

S

Short- and Long-term Balance of Interests

Intrapersonal

U

Interpersonal

Intelligence, creativity, and knowledge

Fig. 1 Wisdom as value-mediated tacit knowledge balancing goals, responses, and interests (reprinted from Sternberg, 2001)

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be attuned to the unique complexities of one’s rich environment and to use the understanding of these complexities to reach one’s desired objectives. We should add that, although it is important, tacit knowledge is not a substitute for other types of knowledge, such as declarative or explicit procedural knowledge. Tacit knowledge helps to inform wise decision making in combination with other, explicit, types of knowledge. For example, if one presented a problem of a border dispute between two countries to a seasoned diplomat and to the top student in a political science graduate program with a focus on foreign affairs, the two are likely to suggest different solutions. These differences are not likely to be based on their factual knowledge of the countries or the historical events leading up to the border dispute, but rather stem from differences in experience with similar problems, and a tacit knowledge of what works and does not work in arbitration cases between nations. This is not to say that the older person is always wiser. When an elementary school teacher is confronted with a classroom management issue, the younger teacher who has three young children of her own at home may have more applicable tacit knowledge to apply to solving the problem than does the older teacher who has no children of her own. Second, the definition draws heavily on the idea of balance: the balances among multiple interests, immediate and lasting consequences, and environmental responses. Most of the psychological theories of wisdom summarized in the introduction propose a balance of only one component from Sternberg’s theory— intrapersonal interests. In contrast, Sternberg’s theory applies the idea of balance to the interactions within and between people and within their environment. In other words, the balance needs to exist not only for intrapersonal interests, but also for interpersonal and extrapersonal interests, as well as among the environmental responses. What are these different interests and responses? Intrapersonal interests affect only the individual. They have to do with one’s own sense of identity and may include such things as the desire for self-actualization, popularity, prestige, power, prosperity, or pleasure. Interpersonal interests involve other people. They relate not only to one’s sense of self but also to desirable relationships with others. Extrapersonal interests are those that affect a wider organization, community, country, or environment. In addition to multiple interests, the consequences of each decision are assessed in order to balance short- and long-term objectives. For example, the seasoned diplomat and the top graduate student in the earlier example may both know, from books and from experience, that the country with the strongest army is likely to win a border dispute. But if one considers the long-term consequences of growing resentment from the country that was attacked, or the potentially negative image it projects of the attacker, a military intervention may not be the wisest solution. Importantly, the balance in Sternberg’s theory of wisdom does not mean that each interest, consequence, or response is weighted equally. The relative “weightings” are determined by the extent to which a particular alternative contributes to the achievement of a common good. For example, when working out a solution, self-interests (intrapersonal) can be weighted less than the interests of others (interpersonal), although both are considered in the final decision. To illustrate: when the classroom teacher described earlier is trying to decide whether or not to send a disruptive

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student to the principal’s office, she may consider the self-interest of wanting someone else to deal with the problem as well as the interests of other people at the school (i.e., the principal). She may also think of the short-term consequences (i.e., immediate expulsion of the troubling element from the room) and the longer-term consequences (i.e., student having lasting resentment and negative feelings towards the teacher and schooling in general). A wise person will take into account all of these considerations. Moreover, he or she will try to balance multiple interests and consequences in a way that maximizes a common good. For example, the teacher can remove the noisy student from a group activity and assign her to complete a set of worksheet exercises in the back of the classroom, therefore weighting selfinterest and immediate satisfaction less, although not necessarily ignoring them altogether. What is evident, even from the trivial examples above, is that choosing the right balance depends on one’s system of values. In fact, values lie at the core of wise decision making, and not only in the balance theory described here. According to Csikszentmihalyi and Rathunde (1990, p. 32), “wisdom becomes the best guide for what is the summum bonum, or ‘supreme good.”’ Pascual-Leone (1990) also considers “moral feelings and ethical evaluations (right–wrong or bad–good judgments) of motives and possible acts (e.g., morality)” as an important component of wisdom (p. 267). In Sternberg’s theory, values not only establish what constitutes the common good, they also influence the relative weightings of the various interests, conflicting consequences, and alternative responses to the environment. The central place of values in Sternberg’s theory brings up the question of who determines what the “right” values are. We know that people’s values differ in different cultures and at different points in history. In fact, our own democratic values dictate that we respect others’ differences in deciding what is right or wrong. The danger here is of succumbing to moral relativism and proclaiming that any value framework is equally justifiable and that there is no principle to distinguish right from wrong. There are three ways to avoid such relativism. First, we would argue that although there could be more than one acceptable value system, there are also those that must be rejected on the grounds of failing to acknowledge fundamental human freedoms. In other words, respect for others’ differences must not extend beyond the respect for core human values, such as life or fairness. Second, although we do not claim to define the exhaustive list of values that should be held and recognized by every culture, we reserve the right to explicitly set apart certain values—such as disrespect for human life—as unacceptable and unwise. Third, we can subscribe to Charles Taylor’s (2005) position, saying that core values are those that cannot be denied without being incoherent. For example, I cannot say, “Life has no value” and keep on living; if I really believed life has no value I would commit suicide. When faced with a problem, wise individuals rely on their values and knowledge to help them find a solution that balances conflicting intrapersonal, interpersonal, and extrapersonal interests over short and long terms. This conceptual model of wisdom, however, is not merely an esoteric intellectual exercise. Rather, it is oriented toward action. Applying relevant values and knowledge, together with considering multiple interests and consequences, must lead to choosing a particular behavior. Here again the theory draws on the idea of balance: a balance between adaptation,

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shaping, and selection of environments. Adaptation involves changing oneself to fit the already existing environment. For instance, the teacher from an earlier class may set up her room so that there is a quiet corner for individual work to which disruptive students can be assigned. Or, she might ask her aide to work individually with those students who do not function well in group settings. Shaping is the opposite behavior—it involves modifying parts of the environment to fit one’s own interests. For example, the teacher can work with others in the school to get additional assistance to deal with classroom management issues. She can ask for professional training to improve her skill, or that a part of the library be reserved for one-on-one tutoring of difficult students, or that parents be present for more frequent parent– teacher conferences and help monitor their child’s behavior in school. Finally, if people cannot adapt to an existing environment or change the environment to meet their needs, they can select a new environment. The teacher might choose to move to a different school where there are fewer classroom management issues. A particular solution may also combine the environmental responses, such as adaptation and shaping, as when one concurrently changes oneself and one’s environment. It may seem that the balancing act among interests, consequences, and responses to environment has by now become overwhelmingly complex and will not help us understand the psychological processes and outcomes involved in wise decision making. Some authors (Paris, 2001) have criticized the model for making the concept of wisdom more opaque and harder to understand, rather than the reverse (see Reznitskaya & Sternberg, 2004 for a discussion). The presence of balance, values, and knowledge in a conceptualization of wise thinking is not unique to Sternberg’s theory. What is unique is the proposition to include all relevant factors involved in making wise judgments, as well as to explain the relationship between these factors. The value of the balance theory of wisdom comes from its comprehensiveness in describing one of the most sophisticated acts of the human mind. We do not believe that it is possible to dissect wise thinking into conveniently manageable fractions. The theoretical model is complex because real behavior in real environments is complex. However, one should recall that each decision takes place in a particular context, where, realistically, there is a finite number of competing interests, possible consequences, and available environmental responses. The balance theory of wisdom allows one to evaluate a decision within a specific context by considering all the factors enumerated and described in the conceptual model of the decision-making process. It could be rightly argued that formulating a wise solution to a problem may not necessarily lead to actually acting on it. We can all likely think of personal examples when a clear awareness of potentially harmful long-term consequences did not preclude us from performing an action that was in some way attractive at the time. This mismatch between insight and behavior is addressed through the inclusion of intrapersonal interests in the model. A wise action, as well as a wise solution, will require a balance among intrapersonal interests, which may include resolving the tension between various affective and cognitive appeals. Perkins (2002) describes several strategies for confronting dispositions and behaviors that one considers unwise, but nevertheless finds too irresistible to abandon. For example, dispositions such

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as impulsiveness, procrastination, indulgence, or indecisiveness can be diminished and even eliminated with the use of deliberate conditioning and self-management techniques (Perkins, 2002). Considering the complexity of the theoretical framework, and the possible obstacles to finding wise solutions and acting wisely, can and should schools teach in a manner to increase wise thinking in their students?

Can We Teach for Wisdom? Western education in the past couple of centuries has typically focused on imparting content knowledge and developing cognitive skills in students. Schools promote intelligent—but not necessarily wise—students. These students may have admirable records in school, yet make poor judgments in their own lives and in the lives of others. An important goal of educators, we believe, is to help prepare students to lead happy, satisfying, and productive lives. An increasing number of both researchers and policy makers share this belief that schools must foster both the cognitive and the moral development of their students (Reznitskaya & Sternberg, 2004). Leading a successful life inevitably involves the ability to solve difficult and uncertain everyday life problems. The problems people are exposed to vary depending on their environment and the responsibilities they carry, as we saw in the opening paragraphs of this chapter, but all people will at one point or another be exposed to situations in which they have to rely on wisdom to make the right decision. We therefore believe that school should help enhance these wise thinking skills in students, and we here describe a curriculum program that we have developed to help teachers teach for wisdom. The program reviewed here, Teaching for Wisdom, was designed to facilitate the development of wise and critical thinking skills in middle school children through the infusion of these skills into a history curriculum. The aim was to enhance students’ wise and critical thinking skills, as well as their knowledge of American history. First, we examine how a complex theoretical model can be transcribed into guidelines for developing a classroom curriculum. We then show examples and share teacher feedback from the implementation of the curriculum in a number of public middle schools. Teaching for Wisdom is based on Sternberg’s (1998, 2001) balance theory of wisdom, reviewed above, which posits in essence that wise thinking involves the ability to use one’s intelligence in the service of a common good by balancing one’s own interests with those of other people and of a broader community over both the short and long terms. Because it is a complex model accounting for real behaviors in real contexts, it is possible to apply the theory in a concrete, real-world setting, as we have done in this program. How was it done? At a first glance, Sternberg’s model of wisdom may appear unsuitable for formal education. The heavy emphasis placed in the balance theory on values, tacit knowledge, and context-specific interactions between person and environment may seem to preclude its application in a classroom setting. How can teachers help their students develop all the explicit and implicit insights requisite for the display of wisdom?

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We believe that the goal of teaching for wisdom can be achieved by providing students with educational contexts where students can formulate their own understanding of what constitutes wise thinking. In other words, teaching for wisdom is not accomplished through a didactic method of “imparting” information about wisdom and subsequently assessing students with multiple-choice questions. Instead, students need to actively experience various cognitive and affective processes that underlie wise decision making. Teachers can provide scaffolding for the development of wisdom and case studies to help students develop wisdom, but a teacher cannot teach particular courses of actions, or give students a list of do’s and don’ts, regardless of circumstances. What are the processes underlying wise thinking that students have to acquire, and how can they be introduced into the classroom? Sternberg (2001) outlines 16 pedagogical principles and 6 procedures derived from the theory of wisdom, described in Figs. 2 and 3. The fundamental idea behind all these educational guidelines is that the instructor teaches children not what to think, but, rather, how to think. Let us review the six procedures for teaching for wisdom presented in Fig. 3 in more detail. Many of these procedures are already in use by classroom teachers, and what we strive for in our curriculum is not so much to revolutionize teaching and make instructors rotate their educational practices 180 degrees, but rather, to help teachers systematically and frequently implement sound teaching procedures that foster wise thinking.

Procedure 1 Encourage students to read classic works of literature and philosophy (whether Western or otherwise) to learn and reflect on the wisdom of the sages. The rush to dump classic works in favor of modern works makes sense only if the wisdom these modern works have to impart equals or exceeds that of the classic works. Whenever possible, encourage students to engage in reflective thinking, to reflect on their own functioning to increase their metacognition (Flavell, 1987), that is, their awareness of their cognitions, emotions, and beliefs. The process of making a wise decision is strategic and goal-oriented, and therefore requires an ongoing monitoring of selected strategies, as well as an ability to modify less successful strategies to better fit the situational demands. Teachers can help students practice reflective thinking by designing instructional activities that allow students to explore and shape their own values. Also, students can be explicitly instructed in useful metacognitive strategies such as self-questioning or the use of self-monitoring checklists. For example, in our history curriculum, students study the ideas of the intellectual movement of the Enlightenment and the character of Benjamin Franklin. In this activity, students first read Franklin’s maxims, such as “Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame,” “Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing,” “Well done is better than well said,” etc. (Franklin, 1983). Next, students work in pairs to describe to their partners their own past experiences where one of the Franklin’s maxims could apply. Students are then invited to think of a maxim they have learned from their own past and

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Principles 1–8

Principles 9–16

1 Explore with students the notion that conventional abilities and achievements are not enough for a satisfying life. Many people become trapped in their lives and, despite feeling conventionally successful, feel that their lives lack fulfillment. Fulfillment is not an alternative to success, but rather, is an aspect of it that, for most people, goes beyond money, promotion, large houses, and so forth.

9 Help students learn the roles of adaptation, shaping, and selection, and how to balance them. Wise judgments are dependent in part on selecting among these environmental responses.

2 Demonstrate how wisdom is critical for a satisfying life. In the long run, wise decisions benefit people in ways that foolish decisions never do.

10 Encourage students to form, critique, and integrate their own values in their thinking.

3 Teach students the usefulness of interdependence—a rising tide raises all ships; a falling tide can sink them.

11 Encourage students to think dialectically, realizing that both questions and their answers evolve over time, and that the answer to an important life question can differ at different times in one’s life (such as whether to go to college).

4 Role model wisdom because what you do is more important than what you say. Wisdom is action-dependent and wise actions need to be demonstrated.

12 Show students the importance of dialogical thinking, whereby they understand interests and ideas from multiple points of view.

5 Have students read about wise judgments and decision making so that students understand that such means of judging and decision making exist.

13 Teach students to search for and then try to reach the common good—a good where everyone wins and not only those with whom one identifies.

6 Help students to learn to recognize their own interests, those of other people, and those of institutions.

14 Encourage and reward wisdom.

7 Help students learn to balance their own interests, those of other people, and those of institutions.

15 Teach students to monitor events in their lives and their own thought processes about these events. One way to learn to recognize others’ interests is to begin to identify your own.

8 Teach students that the means by which the end is obtained matters, not just the end.

16 Help students understand the importance of inoculating oneself against the pressures of unbalanced self-interest and small-group interest.

Fig. 2 Sixteen Principles for Teaching for Wisdom (Sternberg, 2001)

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Procedures Encourage students to read classic works of literature and philosophy to learn and reflect on the wisdom of the sages. Engage students in class discussions, projects, and essays that encourage them to discuss the lessons they have learned from these works and how they can be applied to their own lives and the lives of others. A particular emphasis should be placed on dialogical (see principle 12) and dialectical (see principle 11) thinking. Encourage students to study not only “truth,” but values, as developed during their reflective thinking. Place an increased emphasis on critical, creative, and practical thinking in the service of good ends that benefit the common good. Encourage students to think about how almost any topic they study might be used for better or for worse ends, and about how important that final end is. Remember that a teacher is a role model! To role model wisdom, the teacher should adopt a Socratic approach to teaching, and invite students to play a more active role in constructing learning—from their own point of view and from that of others.

Fig. 3 Six Procedures for Teaching for Wisdom (Sternberg, 2001)

to continue writing their maxims in a notebook or a journal throughout the school year. From this activity, students learn about the benefits of reflecting on one’s life experiences and thinking about a general rule or maxim they can apply to new situations. Wisdom involves an ability to learn from the past, whether your own or that of other people. Reflective thinking about one’s life experiences is an important skill that students get to practice in this activity. Also, having students generate their own maxims throughout the year helps to make reflection on various life experiences a habit of mind.

Procedure 2 Engage students in class discussions, projects, and essays that encourage them to discuss the lessons they have learned from the literary and philosophical works they’ve read, and how these lessons can be applied to their own lives and the lives of others. The curriculum makes salient the relationships between history and personally relevant everyday experiences. For example, when studying Benjamin Franklin, students examine his accomplishments at improving his own community, such as the establishment of a post office and a library. Students then consider the needs of their own school and classroom communities and devise a plan to address these needs. The goal of such activities is to allow students to see the relevance of historical figures and events to their own lives in order to develop their ability to benefit from past experience and to become active contributors to contemporary history. Teachers should engage students in dialogical and dialectical thinking, in addition to the reflective thinking described earlier. What is dialogical thinking (principle 12)? When one is faced with a complex problem involving several points of view, it is often necessary to take into account different frames of reference and various perspectives to find the best possible solution. What may at first appear as the right answer may turn out to be the wrong choice when the long term is considered, or when the interests of the community as a whole are taken into account.

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In dialogical thinking, one uses multiple frames of reference to generate and deliberate about various perspectives on the issue at hand. Optimal solutions come from careful weighing of alternatives, rather than from following one single prescribed course of action. In the classroom, teachers can nourish students’ ability to think dialogically by proposing activities in which multiple points of view are presented and discussed. Some empirical studies that have investigated the effectiveness of student discussions for the development of dialogical thinking show improvements in students’ ability to resolve ill-structured problems following their participation in the discussions (Kuhn, Shaw, & Felton, 1997; Reznitskaya et al., 2001). In our history curriculum, one example of an activity that fosters the development of dialogical thinking comes from the historical topic of British colonial polices in the late 18th century. In this activity, students read multiple accounts (primary historical sources) of events during the Boston Massacre. The reports include an excerpt from a colonial newspaper, an account by a British captain, and an interview with a Boston shoemaker. Students discuss the origins of the differences among the accounts and evaluate the relative credibility of the sources. They are also invited to write their own account of the Boston Massacre events and to consider how their own frames of reference affect their descriptions. From this activity, students learn to appreciate the importance of multiple standpoints, the constructed nature of knowledge, and the powerful influences of one’s perspective on one’s view of the world. What is dialectical thinking (principle 11)? Whereas dialogical thinking involves the consideration and weighing of multiple points of view, dialectical thinking emphasizes the consideration and integration of two opposing perspectives. The first perspective considered is the thesis. For example, one can be a radical pacifist and opposed to any military presence or intervention, whatever the circumstances. A second perspective, an antithesis (a negation of the original statement) is then considered. For example, one can argue that a people can only live freely and in peace if their borders are protected by armed forces. Finally, a synthesis or reconciliation of the two seemingly opposing statements is developed. For example, one might decide that borders under dispute should be protected by a third party, such as an international army, rather than having the opposing countries measure their military strength against each other. The process does not stop when the two opposing views are reconciled; on the contrary, each synthesis becomes a new thesis, which can then be integrated in a new round of dialectical thinking. In the classroom, dialectical thinking can be encouraged through opportunities to study different sources, enabling students to build their own knowledge, or through writing assignments that explicitly call for a thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Empirical studies have investigated the impact of developing such a fluid and dynamic concept of knowledge, where the source of knowledge is not the “authority” (the teacher or the book), but rather, the student. Such conceptions of knowledge have been shown to relate to active engagement in learning (e.g., McDevitt, 1990), persistence in performing a task (e.g., Dweck & Leggett, 1988), and deeper comprehension and integration of the material taught (e.g., Qian & Alvermann, 2000; Songer & Linn, 1991). An example of an activity where students get to practice their dialectical thinking in our curriculum comes from the same unit on the colonial independence

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movement. In this activity, students first study the writings of Thomas Paine and Charles Inglis, who express two opposing views on the question of whether America should break away from England. Next, students consider a compromise solution proposed by Joseph Galloway, who attempts to reconcile the two conflicting positions. Students then discuss the notion of compromise and propose their own resolutions to the British–American conflict. Through this activity, students practice synthesizing an opposing perspective. They also learn to recognize that the same questions can be answered differently at different points in time.

Procedure 3 Encourage students to study not only “truth,” but values, as developed during their reflective thinking. In our curriculum, students were presented with Benjamin Franklin’s maxims and encouraged to engage in reflective thinking. In the homework related to that classroom activity, students are asked to study an excerpt from Franklin’s autobiography, where Franklin describes his plan to achieve moral perfection. Having read Franklin’s plan, students choose three values that they consider important, and develop their own plan to improve their characters. Students then monitor their behavior for a period of one week and record in a journal their successes and failures at practicing the chosen values. This activity allows students to explore, form, and apply their own values. Also, students are given an opportunity to monitor events in their daily lives and to recognize the connections between values and actions.

Procedure 4 Place an increased emphasis on critical, creative, and practical thinking in the service of good ends that benefit the common good. In the typical classroom, teachers encourage critical thinking skills in their students. Some teachers also aim to develop creative and practical thinking skills (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2002) by engaging students in activities that lead them to go beyond the content they have studied (creative thinking) to apply this knowledge to their environment (practical thinking). To enhance wise thinking, however, students should also be encouraged to consider the outcome of their thinking, and to keep in mind that the best solution is not the one that benefits only the individual doing the thinking, but rather the one that helps others as well. The common good should be the guiding principle in choosing between different possible solutions. For example, when studying How Slavery Arrived in the New World students are encouraged to consider the various reasons underlying the choice of importing slaves to work on the sugar cane plantations. Through readings and classroom discussions, students learn about the analytical, practical, and creative reasons behind the Europeans choice to import free labor from Africa (fertile soils, need for cheap labor, possibility to import free laborers from Africa who were resistant to European diseases and well adapted to a tropical climate). Students are led to consider and debate the analytical reasons

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for this choice, and shown the limitations of choices made purely on the basis of self-interest: Importing free labor may have furthered the goal of increased power and financial wealth for the European settlers, but was it the best solution to the need for more plantation workers? Fig. 4 contains a sample activity from the teacher manual, along with the teacher transparencies and student worksheets. Activity 1: European Attitudes Towards Locals Estimated Time 20 minutes Grouping Small groups (4–6 participants) Presentation Materials Transparency 1A Student Materials Worksheet 1A, Worksheet 1B Content Objectives  Students will analyze the writing of Christopher Columbus, which depicts his attitudes towards the local population. Critical Thinking Objectives  Students will identify unstated assumptions.  Students will formulate appropriate questions.  Students will evaluate the credibility of historical evidence.

a. Explain to students that many European explorers obviously believed it was their right to take over other people’s lands, change their lives, and, if needed, conquer and force them into labor. b. Divide students into small groups. Have students read the excerpts from Columbus’s letter to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, which he sent back to Europe upon his arrival in the new lands in Caribbean, Worksheet 1A. c. Have students complete the activities on Worksheet 1B. Students should understand that Columbus assumes that European ways of living, including work, dress, and customs, are superior to those of the natives. He further assumes that it is appropriate to force the native populations to adopt European ways. Students can challenge Columbus’s assumptions by reflecting on 1) what makes one way of living better than another, 2) whether it is ever appropriate to change the ways other people live, 3) whether assuming that one’s way is better leads to understanding and peaceful relationships among people, and 4) whether there are dangers in not assessing a situation from several perspectives (i.e., not only the European perspective, but also the view of the locals). d. Have groups report their answers to the class. e. Evaluate the credibility of the information presented by Columbus in his writings. Use Transparency 1A to present questions to the class: Is it a primary or a secondary source? How large is the lapse of time between the described events and the reporting? Does Columbus ever reflect the point of view of the locals? Was the accuracy of Columbus’s account affected by the fact that he did not try to reflect the perspectives of the locals in his descriptions? Did he write his description using a systematic, deliberate process? Did Columbus have motivation (i.e., his religious or political beliefs) to distort the information? Fig. 4 Sample activity from the unit How Slavery Arrived in the New World

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Transparency 1A Questioning the Credibility of Columbus’s Accounts  Is it a primary or a secondary source?  How large is the lapse of time between the described events and the reporting?  Does Columbus ever reflect the point of view of the locals?  Was the accuracy of Columbus’s account affected by the fact that he did not try to reflect the perspectives of the locals?  Did he write his description using a systematic, deliberate process?  Did Columbus have motivation (i.e., his religious or political beliefs) to distort the information?

Worksheet 1A European Attitudes Towards Locals

From Christopher Columbus’s letter to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. “Let your majesties be informed that Hispaniola is as much their possession as Castile; they need do nothing more than to have a settlement built here. . .. These people are most tractable, and easily led; they could be made to sow crops and build cities, and be taught to wear clothes and adopt our customs. . . [These people are] “extraordinarily timid. . .. But once their fear has left them, they give proof of an innocence and a generosity that can scarcely be believed. No matter what is asked of them, they never refuse it, and show themselves contented with any gift offered them. . .. They are people of noble bearing. . . “These people are very unskilled in arms. . . with fifty men they could all be subjected and made to do all that I wished.”

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Worksheet 1B European Attitudes Towards Locals

Activities 1. In the space below, use your own words to describe the way Columbus viewed the local inhabitants.

2. According to Columbus, what kind of relationship should the Europeans have with the locals?

3. What does Columbus take for granted when he says that the locals “could be made to sow crops and build cities, and be taught to wear clothes and adopt our custom”? List the unstated assumptions that are evident from the above excerpt. Do you agree with Columbus’s assumptions?

4. If you could interview Columbus today, what questions would you ask him to challenge his opinions about the native populations and their treatment by Europeans?

Procedure 5 Encourage students to think about how almost any topic they study might be used for better or worse ends, and about how important that final end is. As described under Procedure 4, students should be encouraged to seek different solutions and to choose the one that benefits the common good rather than the individual. They should also be brought to realize that, just as there are different solutions benefiting different people, a given concept or point of knowledge can be used to a good or

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poor end. A stereotypical example is that the knowledge of nuclear physics can be applied to constructing bombs or to developing sources of energy. The end to which one chooses to apply one’s knowledge matters greatly.

Procedure 6 Remember that a teacher is a role model! To role model wisdom, the teacher adopts a Socratic approach to teaching, and invites students to play a more active role in constructing learning—from their own point of view and from that of others. Wise thinking is not a set of rules or decisions that the teacher can outline for students to copy down; it is a type of thinking that the students themselves need to adopt and master. The most effective way to encourage wise thinking skills is not through memory drills but through student participation and teacher modeling. For example, a teacher can capitalize on a negative event, such as two students getting into a fight, as a way to demonstrate how one can approach a similar situation in a more constructive way. The teacher can model wise thinking by saying: “When I get into the situations like this, I try to see the dispute from the perspective of the other person and think about whether my own behavior contributed to the situation. Was there anything I could have done differently to prevent this confrontation? Is there a solution to our disagreement that is acceptable to both of us?” Also, teachers should not miss the opportunity to recognize and praise good judgments made by students, such as when they show consideration for others and their ideas, or when they offer a solution that benefits the class as a whole rather than themselves as individuals. The most effective teacher is likely to be one who can create a classroom community in which wisdom is practiced, rather than preached. Students need to experience that wisdom can be accomplished in real life and not just on paper, and that it can lead to a more harmonious existence. The examples we have cited to show how the principles of the balance theory of wisdom can be applied to instruction and infused into a curriculum are all excerpts from two units we developed for use in middle school U.S. history classrooms.1 This is not to say that wisdom is limited to history—wise thinking skills can be infused in most subject areas and at most grade levels. Although it may be difficult to engage very young children in dialogical thinking, most of the procedures described here can be adapted from the end of elementary school and up. Let us briefly review how the procedures and principles for wise thinking can be used in other subject areas. In science teaching, dialectical thinking can be applied to illustrate to students the notion that scientific facts are not eternal or immutable, but rather the state of affairs as we perceive them at this very specific point in time. Indeed, science often is presented as though it represents the end of a process of evolution of thought, rather than one of many midpoints (Sternberg, 1998). Students could scarcely realize from this kind of teaching that the paradigms of today, and thus the theories and findings that emanate from them, will eventually be superseded, much as the paradigms, theories, and findings of yesterday were replaced by those of today. Further, students must learn that, contrary to the way many textbooks are written, the classical “scientific method” is an ideal rather than a reality, and that scientists are

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as susceptible to fads as is anyone else. How many scientists in his time considered as scientific evidence the data presented by Galileo Galilei to demonstrate that the Earth evolved around the Sun, and not vice versa? Wise thinking skills can also be applied in the literature classroom. Literature is often taught in terms of the standards and context of the contemporary American scene. Characters are often judged in terms of our contemporary standards rather than in terms of the standards of the time and place in which the events took place. Imagine if students were routinely encouraged to approach the study of literary works with a dialogical mindset, studying literature in the context of history. Censorship and the banning of books often reflect the application of certain contemporary standards to literature, standards of which an author from the past could never have been aware. One example is the opposition by a parent from an Arizona school district to the study of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn in her daughter’s high school English class because the book contains the word “nigger.” The parent felt that this would exacerbate already existing racial tensions in the school. In the words of Circuit Judge Reinhard, who ruled on the case, The setting is a freshman English class in Tempe, Arizona, and the competing interests are the First Amendment rights of high school students to receive information or ideas— even when contained in literary works that may in today’s world appear to have racist overtones—and the rights of those same students to receive a public education that neither fosters nor acquiesces in a racially hostile environment. (Monteiro vs. Tempe Union High School District, 97–15511, U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, October 19, 1998).

The Appeals Court eventually ruled against the banning of books and other literary works on the basis of their content. The foreign language classroom is another terrain for enhancing students’ wise thinking skills. Foreign languages should be taught in the cultural context in which they are embedded, requiring students to engage in reflective and dialogical thinking to truly grasp the foreign culture and to position themselves and their experiences in relation to this culture. It tends to be more common in Europe to speak one or several languages beyond one’s mother tongue. Perhaps American students have so much more difficulty learning foreign languages than do children in much of Europe not because they lack the ability, but because they lack the motivation and the exposure. An American student would probably much more readily see the need to learn a foreign language if each of the 50 states spoke a different language, much like the member states of the European Union do. We would also do our students a service by teaching them to understand other cultures rather than just to expect people from other cultures to understand them. Learning the language of a culture is a key to understanding it, and the two cannot be taught separately, or by viewing culture as an appendix to language rather than the context in which it is deeply rooted.

Should We Teach for Wisdom? All the examples of student activities from our curriculum demonstrate that it is possible to design instructional activities consistent with the theoretical tenets of the balance theory of wisdom. In fact, our biggest discovery when developing

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the curriculum was the abundance of opportunities to integrate teaching for wise thinking into the subject matter of history. Regardless of what historical topic we were working on, we found multiple opportunities for incorporating instructional activities that would allow students to develop their ability to make just and sound judgments. We have also provided examples showing how wise thinking skills can be infused in the curriculum in other subject areas. We have shown that we can, and we believe that we should, teach for wisdom. Teaching for wisdom not only enhances students’ thinking skills—their ability to reason reflectively, dialogically and dialectically—it also helps educators to develop more integrated curriculum units. Integrated units are beneficial because they help students see the bigger picture and understand how literature is related to history, how science and scientific discoveries and facts are embedded in a specific time and place (history), how social science and social-policy relates to history and geography, how economics is influenced by philosophical and political beliefs as well as by climate and geography, or how foreign language is inseparable from culture. Even within disciplines, far more integration is needed for students to acquire a complete and complex understanding of a topic. Different approaches to psychology, for example, are often taught as competing when in fact they are totally compatible. Thus, biological, cognitive, developmental, social, and clinical psychology provide complementary viewpoints on human beings. They do not compete with each other as being the “right approach.” The study of the brain is important, for example, but most of the insights about learning and memory that can be applied to instruction have come from behavioral and cognitive approaches, not from the biological approach. We have also observed that an integrated curriculum that fosters wise thinking skills is motivating to students and their teachers who implement it. One teacher who implemented our curriculum expressed it thusly: A large portion of my kids notice they are feeling more in touch with their wise elders. They have a new respect for their input, perspectives, and wisdom. They are enjoying sharing and accepting advice. As a group, both classes love to share what they have discovered or what has been revealed to them by peers and elders.

Another participating teacher noted that his students took Ben Franklin’s maxims to heart, and that many of them took seriously the curriculum’s invitation to imitate the way Franklin tried to improve his character by developing their own maxims and keeping daily logs of their own behavior. To summarize and conclude this chapter, let us state four reasons why schools should include instruction in wise-thinking skills in their curriculum. First, knowledge is insufficient for wisdom and certainly does not guarantee satisfaction or happiness. Wisdom seems a better vehicle to the attainment of these goals. Second, wisdom provides a mindful and considered way to enter thoughtful and deliberative values into important judgments. One cannot be wise and at the same time impulsive or mindless in one’s judgments. Third, wisdom represents an avenue to creating a better, more harmonious world. Dictators such as Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin may have been knowledgeable and may even have been good critical thinkers, at least with regard to the

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maintenance of their own power. Given the definition of wisdom, however, it would be hard to argue they were wise. Fourth and finally, students—who later will become parents and leaders—are always part of a greater community and hence will benefit from learning to judge rightly, soundly, or justly on behalf of their community. Though IQ scores have risen over the past few decades, there seems to be no decrease in manmade violence or natural catastrophes leading to turmoil. It is likely that the future will continue to be plagued with conflict, and that most of today’s students will at one point or another in their life face difficult dilemmas. For all these reasons, we endorse teaching students not only to recall facts and to think critically (and even creatively) about their lives and the content of the subjects they learn in school, but to think wisely about it too.

Note 1

Additional information on these units can be obtained by contacting the author, or by sending an inquiry to [email protected].

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Kramer, D. A. (1990). Conceptualizing wisdom: The primacy of affect–cognition relations. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Wisdom: Its nature, origins, and development (pp. 279–313). New York: Cambridge University Press. Kuhn, D., Shaw, V., & Felton, M. (1997). Effects of dyadic interaction on argumentative reasoning. Cognition and Instruction, 15, 287–315. Labouvie-Vief, G. (1990). Wisdom as integrated thought: Historical and developmental perspectives. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Wisdom: Its nature, origins, and development (pp. 52–83). New York: Cambridge University Press. McDevitt, T. M. (1990). Mothers’ and children’s beliefs about listening. Child Study Journal, 20, 105–128. Paris, S. G. (2001). Wisdom, snake oil, and the educational marketplace. Educational Psychologist, 36, 257–260. Pascual-Leone, J. (1990). An essay on wisdom: Toward organismic processes that make it possible. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Wisdom: Its nature, origins, and development (pp. 244–278). New York: Cambridge University Press. Perkins, D. (2002). The engine of folly. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Why smart people can be so stupid (pp. 233–243). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Piaget, J. (1972). The psychology of intelligence. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield-Adams Polanyi, M. (1966). The tacit dimensions. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Qian, G., & Alvermann, D. E. (2000). Relationship between epistemological beliefs and conceptual change learning. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 16, 59–74. Reznitskaya, A., Anderson, R. C., McNurlen, B., Nguyen-Jahiel, K., Archodidou, A., & Kim, S. (2001). Influence of oral discussion on written argument. Discourse Processes, 32, 155–175. Reznitskaya, A., & Sternberg, R. J. (2004). Teaching students to make wise judgments: The “teaching for wisdom” program. In P. A. Linley, & S. Joseph (Eds.) Positive psychology in practice, (pp. 181–196). New York: Wiley. Robinson, D. N. (1990). Wisdom through the ages. In R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), Wisdom: Its nature, origins, and development. New York: Cambridge University Press. Smith, J. & Baltes, P. B. (1990). Wisdom-related knowledge: Age/cohort differences in response to life-planning problems. Developmental Psychology, 26, 494–505. Songer, N. B., & Linn, M. C. (1991). How do views of science influence knowledge integration. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 28, 761–784. Sternberg, R. J. (1998). A balance theory of wisdom. Review of General Psychology, 2, 347–365. Sternberg, R. J. (1990) Wisdom: Its nature, origins, and development. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R. J. (1990). Understanding wisdom. In R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), Wisdom: Its nature, origins, and development. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R. J. (2001). Why schools should teach for wisdom: The balance theory of wisdom in educational settings. Educational Psychologist, 36(4), 227–245. Sternberg, R. J. (2001). Why schools should teach for wisdom: The balance theory of wisdom in educational settings. Educational Psychologist, 36, 227–245. Sternberg, R. J. & Jordan, J. (2005) Handbook of wisdom: Psychological perspectives. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R. J., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2002). Teaching for successful intelligence. Arlington Heights, IL: Skylight Sternberg, R. J., Forsythe, G. B., Hedlund, J., Horvath, J. A., Wagner, R. K., Williams, W. M., et al. (2000). Practical intelligence in everyday life. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, C. (2005). The ethics of authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Authors’ Note We wish to thank the different PACE personnel who were involved in this project at various stages. We are also thankful to Ms. Robyn Rissman for her editorial assistance. Preparation of this chapter was supported by a grant from the W. T. Grant Foundation, and by government grant R206R950001 under the Javits Act Program as administered by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education. Grantees undertaking such projects are encouraged to express freely their professional judgment. This article, therefore, does not necessarily represent the positions or the policies of the funding agencies, and no official endorsement should be inferred. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Robert J. Sternberg, School of Arts and Sciences, Tufts University, Ballou Hall, 3rd Floor, Medford, MA 02155; e-mail: [email protected].

The Cultivation of Character Strengths Nansook Park and Christopher Peterson

Education has for its object the formation of character. –Herbert Spencer (1850)

Introduction Wisdom has long occupied the attention of psychologists, philosophers, educators, and theologians concerned with the good life and how to lead it. Wisdom is variously defined as erudition, especially in regard to philosophy or science; as the ability to judge correctly in matters relating to life and conduct; and/or as the understanding of what is true, meaningful, or lasting (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). Such definitions of wisdom are so broad and all-encompassing that they work against the development of deliberate strategies for imparting wisdom per se, although we applaud our colleagues who are attempting such bold interventions. A different approach is to unpack wisdom by identifying its components and addressing how these might be encouraged. This approach is of course but a first step, because it leaves unaddressed how the components of wisdom are integrated and brought to bear in everyday life (Aristotle, 2000). But it is a first step that we know how to take. Sternberg (1985) studied what he called implicit theories of wisdom: the behaviors and dispositions that people believe are characteristic of wise individuals. Across a variety of groups, a consensus emerged. The ideally wise individual has a storehouse of experience; is a good problem solver; understands people and takes their advice; is perceptive; is thoughtful and fair; admits mistakes and learns from experience; takes a long view; and thinks before acting. This prototype of “wisdom” is distinct from those of “intelligence” and “creativity.” Sternberg (1998) acknowledged that implicit theories of wisdom are not to be confused with explicit theories but also observed that the overlap is substantial, which is hardly surprising given that wisdom is a familiar everyday language concept. One limitation of Sternberg’s (1985) initial studies of implicit theories of wisdom is that his research participants were from the United States. Are there cultural

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differences in the prototype of wisdom? Takahashi and Bordia (2000) addressed this question with Western (United States and Australia) and Asian (India and Japan) samples. Western samples were more likely to emphasize cognitive and analytic features of wisdom, such as knowledge and experience, whereas Asian samples additionally emphasized emotional and synthetic features, such as empathy, prudence, and discretion (see also Takahashi, 2000; Takahashi & Overton, 2002). Reprising Aristotle (2000) and other moral philosophers, Sternberg and Stemler (2004) argued that wisdom is a moral virtue, and we extend this point by proposing that its implicit components, as identified by Sternberg, Takahashi, and others (e.g., Birren & Fisher, 1990), are instances of good character—personality evaluated in moral terms (Park & Peterson, 2006b). For the past several years, the present authors have been concerned with strengths of character, positive traits like curiosity, kindness, hope, and leadership (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). Part of our project has entailed a systematic survey of deliberate interventions that encourage strengths of character. Here we describe what is known about the cultivation of these strengths of character, especially those that comprise wisdom. We abstract some of the common features of these interventions and suggest how they might inform attempts to teach character and thus produce individuals who—if not wise in all of the traditional senses—are at least poised—to become wise. Our strategy is consistent with the suggestion by Erikson (1963) that wisdom results from the successful resolution of life’s basic challenges and the resulting development of a cascade of psychosocial virtues that taken together define wisdom.

The Values in Action Project Guided by the perspective of positive psychology (Peterson, 2006; Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000; Seligman, Steen, Park & Peterson, 2005), we identified important strengths of character and ways of measuring them. The Values in Action (VIA) Classification of Character Strengths proposes that there are 24 ubiquitouslyvalued strengths of character. The classification is presented fully in Peterson and Seligman (2004), but let us mention the important theoretical issues that frame this perspective on good character. What does good character mean? We approach it as a family of positive dispositions. To convey the plurality of character, we call its components character strengths. The various character strengths are in principle distinct from one another, meaning that a person can be high on one strength yet low or middling on others (Walker & Pitts, 1998). We assume that character strengths are individual differences with some stability and generality. However, we do not regard them as fixed or grounded in immutable biogenetic characteristics. In keeping with a premise of positive psychology, we further assume that good character is more than bad character negated or minimized. Character strengths must be studied and developed in their own right. To determine the specific entries for our classification, we reviewed pertinent literature that addressed good character—from psychology, psychiatry, youth

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development, character education, religion, philosophy, and organizational studies— with the goal of identifying candidate strengths (e.g., Dahlsgaard, Peterson, & Seligman, 2005; Park & Peterson, 2003). We also looked at the character strengths explicitly mentioned in an array of cultural products: popular songs, greeting cards, children’s stories, obituaries and testimonials, mottoes and credos, and personal ads in newspapers. From the many candidate strengths identified, we winnowed the list by combining redundancies and applying criteria like those in Table 1. The final VIA Classification contains 24 strengths of character grouped under six core virtues that consensually emerge from influential philosophical and religious traditions (Table 2). We also developed measures of each of these strengths, including self-report inventories for youth and for adults, a structured interview, and a content analytic scheme for use with archived material (Park & Peterson, 2006b; Peterson, Park, & Seligman, 2005a). There are many other positive traits of potential interest—e.g., ambition, autonomy, gravitas, and tolerance—and their absence in our classification and inventories reflects only our judgment that they do not meet the criteria set forth. They may not be as widely valued across cultural groups as the included entries; they may reflect blends of more basic strengths; they may fail the test of a non-felicitous opposite; and so on. Although we classified some of the character strengths under a core virtue labeled wisdom, this categorization probably betrays a Western bias because these strengths are for the most part cognitive and analytic (see Table 2). As the cross-cultural work of Takahashi and colleagues suggests, there are additional elements of wisdom found in our other categories, and so a broad look at the components of wisdom is indicated. Of the 24 strengths in the VIA Classification, the one we call perspective—being able to offer wise counsel to others—most closely resembles the way that wisdom has been operationalized by contemporary researchers (e.g., Baltes, Staudinger, Maercker, & Smith, 1995). That is, investigators usually measure wisdom by presenting research participants with difficult interpersonal decisions and asking them to offer advice, which is then scored by experts as more versus less wise. Which of the other character strengths of interest in our classification are most highly linked with perspective? Table 1 Criteria for a Character Strength 1. ubiquity—is widely recognized across cultures 2. fulfilling—contributes to individual fulfillment, satisfaction, and happiness broadly construed 3. morally valued—is valued in its own right and not for tangible outcomes it may produce 4. does not diminish others—elevates others who witness it, producing admiration, not jealousy 5. non-felicitous opposite—has obvious antonyms that are “negative” 6. traitlike—is an individual difference with demonstrable generality and stability 7. measurable—has been successfully measured by researchers as an individual difference 8. distinctiveness—is not redundant (conceptually or empirically) with other character strengths 9. paragons—is strikingly embodied in some individuals 10. prodigies—is precociously shown by some children or youth 11. selective absence—is missing altogether in some individuals 12. institutions—is the deliberate target of societal practices and rituals that try to cultivate it

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Table 2 VIA Classification of Character Strengths 1. wisdom and knowledge—cognitive strengths that entail the acquisition and use of knowledge. • • • • •

creativity: thinking of novel and productive ways to do things curiosity: taking an interest in all of ongoing experience love of learning: mastering new skills, topics, and bodies of knowledge open-mindedness: thinking things through and examining them from all sides perspective: being able to provide wise counsel to others

2. courage—emotional strengths that involve the exercise of will to accomplish goals in the face of opposition, external or internal • • • •

authenticity: speaking the truth and presenting oneself in a genuine way bravery: not shrinking from threat, challenge, difficulty, or pain persistence: finishing what one starts zest: approaching life with excitement and energy

3. humanity—interpersonal strengths that involve “tending and befriending” others • kindness: doing favors and good deeds for others • love: valuing close relations with others • social intelligence: being aware of the motives and feelings of self and others 4. justice—civic strengths that underlie healthy community life • fairness: treating all people the same according to notions of fairness and justice • leadership: organizing group activities and seeing that they happen • teamwork: working well as member of a group or team 5. temperance—strengths that protect against excess • forgiveness: forgiving those who have done wrong • modesty: letting one’s accomplishments speak for themselves • prudence: being careful about one’s choices; not saying or doing things that might later be regretted • self-regulation: regulating what one feels and does 6. transcendence—strengths that forge connections to the larger universe and provide meaning • appreciation of beauty and excellence: noticing and appreciating beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in all domains of life • gratitude: being aware of and thankful for the good things that happen • hope: expecting the best and working to achieve it • humor: liking to laugh and joke; bringing smiles to other people • spirituality: having coherent beliefs about the higher purpose and meaning of life

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In a large world-wide Internet sample of adult respondents to our character strengths inventory (N = 12,814), we found the following zero-order correlations between perspective and other strengths of character to be robust and notable: social intelligence (r = .65), hope (r = .62), open-mindedness (r = .61), bravery (r = .55), zest (r = .54), authenticity (r = .52), curiosity (r =.51), leadership (r = .51), gratitude (r = .47), and love (r = .45). This pattern of results suggests that wisdom— i.e., perspective—indeed reflects both cognitive and emotional elements. Consistent with other wisdom research, perspective as we measured it was minimally associated with age (r = .04) and formal education (r = .07) and not at all with gender (r = .00) (Staudinger, Maciel, Smith, & Baltes, 1998). Although we address all of the strengths in the VIA Classification in the remainder of this chapter, the reader especially interested in wisdom should keep in mind that some of the VIA strengths are more likely to be related to wisdom (e.g., perspective, social intelligence, hope, open-mindedness) than are others (e.g., appreciation of beauty, humor) (Baltes & Staudinger, 2000).

The Encouragement of Character Strengths The VIA Classification is presented in a handbook that describes what psychologists know about each strength as an individual difference, including enabling factors, societal institutions, and deliberate interventions that build or resurrect the strength (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). Enabling factors are “naturally-occurring” features of the person or environment that make the strength more likely to occur. Societal institutions are existing social groups thought to encourage the strength among its members. Deliberate interventions refer to programs undertaken by psychologists, educators, and others with the explicit goal of building the strength. Taken together, these ideas provide for each strength a starting point for planning how to teach that strength. Caveats are in order. The empirical evidence about the cultivation of strengths is uneven, especially for societal institutions, and our identification of institutions that nurture a given strength of character is often based more on our intuition and the stated rationale for that institution than on hard data that the institution indeed has its intended effect on a component of good character. So, the Boy Scouts of America have among their goals the creation of young men who are thrifty, reverent, courteous, and brave, but their success in achieving these goals has not been definitively established. We also know that some well-intended programs can backfire— e.g., the popular but largely unsuccessful DARE programs that try to discourage drug use (prudence) among adolescents but may instead encourage experimentation (curiosity). Some of the enabling factors that have been documented are theoretically interesting but impractical targets for intervention; their effect sizes vis-à-vis a given strength may be very small, or the enabling factor may be beyond the reach of education or prevention science. Nevertheless, there is widespread agreement that

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interventions of any sort be guided by tentative theory, so surveying what is established or at least suspected is of value. Table 3 summarizes what is known about the encouragement of each of the character strengths in our classification (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). Entries focus on children and youth, but this is not meant to imply that strengths cannot be cultivated among adults. Entries also have a U.S. bias, which explains some of what is missing. For example, we could not readily identify societal institutions in the United States that encourage bravery or modesty among young people, although strategies for creating these strengths are formalized in other cultures. Consider the traditional Maasai rite of passage for adolescent males in which they must kill a lion in order to become brave (Biswas-Diener, 2006), or the Zen Buddhist practice of inji-gyo (performing secret good deeds) that helps people become modest because part-and-parcel of inji-gyo is taking no public credit for kindnesses rendered to others (Larkin, 2000). Importing such practices to the Western world—with appropriate modification—would be a fruitful avenue for future work. Rather than discussing each strength separately, we note some of the common themes. First is the importance of the social context in which a strength of character develops: mentors, role models, and general social support. Second is the need to structure an intervention and provide didactic instruction as well as extensive hands-on experience. Third is the critical role played by the personal meaning and significance of the intervention (and its goal) to the individual.

Targets for Intervention These common themes represent the “good news” counterpart to findings from the psychopathology literature that diverse disorders have similar risk factors (e.g., poverty, family chaos, trauma) (Romer, 2003). Character strength interventions, even if they target but one component of good character, can affect other components. Along these lines, note in Table 3 that some strengths of character enable the development of other strengths of character. A complex view of the cultivation of character is demanded, one that echoes current thinking about optimal moral education (Murphy, 1998; Nucci, 2001). One must go beyond a focus on one virtue at a time in isolation from others and additionally address the psychological processes— cognitive and emotional—that unite them (DeVries & Zan, 1994; Noddings, 1992; Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1989). One nonetheless would probably want to emphasize some strengths rather than others in any deliberate attempt to cultivate good character. One’s own values or those in an existing setting might dictate which character strengths are chosen as intervention targets, but let us describe some of what we have learned about character strengths. This information can further inform choices about what to teach. From research using our self-report inventories, we know which strengths of character are relatively frequent—we call these signature strengths—among youth and adults. In a study of more than 110,105 adults from 40 nations and all 50 U. S. states, we found that the most commonly-reported strengths are kindness, fairness,

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Table 3 The Encouragement of Character Strengths creativity • enabling factors: domain-relevant skills; supportive mentors; extensive practice • societal institutions: art classes; music lessons, creative writing workshops; “how to” books and classes • deliberate interventions: brain-storming; teaching creativity heuristics; formal interventions like the Productive Thinking Program (Covington et al., 1974), the Cognitive Research Trust Program (de Bono, 1973), and Project Intelligence (Adams, 1986) curiosity • enabling factors: increased knowledge and awareness of knowledge gaps in areas that are personally meaningful and engaging • societal institutions: emphasis is usually on identifying experiences that children might find interesting by exposing them to a smorgasbord of activities until they find one that they like; the smorgasbord approach assumes that the activity drives curiosity; this seems incomplete because it neglects the roots of curiosity within the individual • deliberate interventions: none love of learning • enabling factors: increased knowledge; feelings of competence; availability of learning resources and skills for using them; positive feelings about a topic; supportive mentors • societal institutions: schools of all types; training programs; apprenticeships; internships; mentoring relationships • deliberate interventions: Wise Schooling Intervention (Steele, 1997); Mastery-Approach Learning (Harackiewicz, Barron, Carter, Lehto & Elliot, 1997) open-mindedness • enabling factors: age, education; sufficient time to make decisions • societal institutions: high school debate; political opinion essays pieces; political debates; education generally; clichéd advice to list pro’s and con’s of difficult decisions; liberal arts education; travel • deliberate interventions: classes that emphasize critical thinking (Costello, 1995) perspective • enabling factors: ongoing and active participation in life; successful resolution of life’s crises and challenges; ego-resiliency • societal institutions: apprenticeships • deliberate interventions: Social Collaboration (Staudinger & Baltes, 1996); Teaching for Wisdom Program (Sternberg, 2001) authenticity • enabling factors: age, parental role models, supportive social context • societal institutions: admonitions like tell the truth, follow the rules, and be true to yourself; childhood games and sports with explicit rules • deliberate interventions: Authenticity Coaching (Chessick, 1996); Boy Scouts of America, Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, Children’s Defense Fund, Girls Incorporated

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Table 3 (continued) bravery • enabling factors: group cohesion (teamwork); emotional stability; appropriate role models • societal institutions: none • deliberate interventions: Educational Encouragement (Carns and Carns, 1998); in vivo desensitization; over-learning of tasks to be enacted in the face of fear persistence • enabling factors: age, reward for effort, social support; task relevance; self-regulation; intrinsic motivation • societal institutions playing the game to the final out; mission statements; five-year plans; and New Year’s resolutions that index progress at difficult tasks and chunk activity into manageable segments • deliberate interventions: Effort Training (Eisenberger, Kuhlman, & Cotterell, 1992); Persistence Training (Dweck, 1975; Nation & Massad, 1978) zest • enabling factors: physical and psychological health; good health habits; safety; social support for autonomy • societal institutions: none • deliberate interventions: exercise and fitness programs; Outward Bound; contact with nature kindness • enabling factors: empathy; social responsibility; agreeableness; positive mood; supportive childrearing practices (Eisenberg, Lennon, & Roth, 1983) • societal institutions: admonitions to share; community service requirements in school • deliberate interventions: Cognitive/Affective Empathy Training (Pecunokis, 1990); Cross-Age Tutoring (Yogev & Ronen, 1982); Cooperative Learning (Slavin, 1985); Acts of Kindness (Lyubormirsky, Sheldon, & Schkade, 2005) love • enabling factors: secure attachment with caretaker during infancy; sensitivity about the past of significant others; social support • societal institutions: sleepovers; pen pals; chat rooms; mixers • deliberate interventions: Sensitive Responding Intervention (van den Boom, 1994); Big Brothers/Sisters and other mentoring programs (Tierney & Grossman, 2000) social intelligence • enabling factors: not known • societal institutions: psychology courses (sometimes) • deliberate interventions: Collaborative for Social and Emotional Learning school curricula (CASEL, 2003)

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Table 3 (continued) fairness • enabling factors: familial emphasis on justice and equality; perspective-taking; general cognitive development • societal institutions: any system of rules that emphasizes their spirit as much as their letter; character education • deliberate interventions: Transactive Discussion (Berkowitz & Gibbs, 1983); Just Community Schools (Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1989) leadership • enabling factors: need for power (for helping others, though not for self-aggrandizement); self-confidence; propensity for risk taking; creativity; social intelligence; orientation toward nurturing others and being concerned for their progress (kindness) • societal institutions: making leadership roles available to young people; rotation of these roles • deliberate interventions: numerous programs variously emphasizing formal instruction, developmental work experiences, or self-help (Yukl, 2002, Zaccaro, 2001) teamwork • enabling factors: participation in extracurricular school activities; discussion of current events in school courses • societal institutions: group activities for children (sports, music, clubs) • deliberate interventions: Service Learning Programs (Youniss & Yates, 1999); Balanced and Restorative Justice (Bazemore & Walgrave, 1999); Positive Coaching Alliance (Thompson, 2000) forgiveness • enabling factors: empathy for transgressor; low rumination; apologies; close and committed relationship with transgressor • societal institutions: rituals like shaking hands after a fight, sending (and accepting) flowers after a misunderstanding, offering a public mea culpa • deliberate interventions: Process Model of Forgiveness (Enright & Coyle, 1998) modesty • enabling factors: democratic parenting; identity development; secure relationship with others (love) • societal institutions: none • deliberate interventions: none prudence • enabling factors: conscientiousness; ability to engage in means-ends thinking • societal institutions: financial savings programs • deliberate interventions: instruction in prudent action (as opposed to inaction) and practical reasoning that marks prudence; not interventions that provide admonitions only (“just say no”)

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Table 3 (continued) self-regulation • enabling factors: early ability to delay gratification; past exercise of self-control; selfmonitoring • societal institutions: any rituals that require regular “discipline” • deliberate interventions: Implementation Intentions Intervention (Gollwitzer, 1993); appreciation of beauty • enabling factors: familial or educational emphasis on the appreciation of beauty • societal institutions: exposing children to art, music, and so on through museum trips and concerts; like institutions that attempt to encourage curiosity, these institutions may be incomplete because they emphasize external beauty rather than internal appreciation • deliberate interventions: nature-based programs like Outward Bound; art, music and outdoor camps gratitude • enabling factors: age; hope; generosity; spirituality; empathy; humility; perspectivetaking • societal institutions: secular and religious holidays emphasizing thanksgiving; thank-you notes • deliberate interventions: Learning Gratitude Intervention (Miller, 1995); Core Virtues Program (Klee, 2000) hope • enabling factors: sense of safety during infancy; success; freedom from stress and trauma • societal institutions: teachings and practices that nurture expectations for a better life; Christmas wish lists; goal-setting • deliberate interventions: Penn Resiliency Project (Seligman, Reivich, Jaycox, & Gillham, 1995) humor • enabling factors: cheerfulness; playful mood; insight into the human condition; group norms for humor; joking relationships; adversity (sometimes) • societal institutions: riddles; knock-knock jokes; comedic arts • deliberate interventions: Clown Camps; Laughing Clubs; Playfulness Program (McGhee, 1999) spirituality • enabling factors: parental socialization; family cohesion; crisis (sometimes) • societal institutions: formal religion; volunteer work • deliberate interventions: conversion; faith-based initiatives, contact with nature

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authenticity, gratitude, open-mindedness, and love, and the lesser strengths include prudence, modesty, and self-regulation (Park, Peterson, & Seligman, 2006). The highest strengths correspond perfectly to what Bok (1995) proposed as the universal values minimally necessary for a viable society. Kindness, love, and gratitude reflect what she identified as positive duties of mutual care and reciprocity; the strength of authenticity enables what she called negative injunctions against deceit and betrayal; and the strengths of open-mindedness and fairness underlie norms for fairness and procedural justice in cases of conflict regarding positive duties and/or negative injunctions. These may be strengths worth cultivating among young people. Although they seem to develop as a matter of course for most people, it may still be desirable to “leave no child behind” with respect to these critically important strengths, especially given the likely association of some of them with what is typically meant by wisdom. The lesser strengths are all instances of what we call strengths of temperance (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). Are these strengths unimportant? Certainly not. They are probably less common only because they can be more difficult to develop and/or display. The strengths of temperance are sometimes termed corrective virtues because they counteract strong urges to behave to the contrary. In many cases, these urges lead to outcomes that themselves are valued. Regardless, the lesser strengths may also represent worthy targets for intervention, although we suspect that these interventions cannot be light-handed ones. A contrast is the point of view expressed by the Gallup Organization in their approach to strengths in the workplace that remedial interventions are pointless (Clifton & Harter, 2003). One should build only on character strengths that already exist. We are not sure that we agree with this philosophy when it is applied to parenting and education, but we mention it as an alternative basis for choosing intervention targets. In general, we do not know which strengths are easier to cultivate and which more difficult because the interventions described in Table 3 have not played one strength off against another in terms of ease, efficiency, efficacy, or effectiveness of cultivation. When we compare the relative frequencies of character strengths among youth and adults (Fig. 1), we find overall agreement but certain interesting exceptions (Park, Peterson, & Seligman, 2004b). Some strengths (those above the diagonal) are relatively less common among youth than adults: authenticity, open-mindedness, perspective, leadership, forgiveness, and spirituality. These strengths may simply require cognitive and emotional maturation in order to appear, but the relevant processes might be speeded along by deliberate intervention. Other character strengths (those below the diagonal) are relatively more common among youth than among adults: creativity, teamwork, hope, persistence, zest, and modesty. They seem to be eroded during the journey to adulthood, and perhaps these strengths are worthy targets for intervention, although the general strategy here would be to keep them from decreasing rather than building them from scratch. For young people who lack a strength common among their peers, special attention to its cultivation may be indicated. Such a strength might be developmentally important and essential to establish at an early age. As Erikson (1963) proposed, certain strengths may be necessary foundations for other strengths.

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Fig. 1 Relative prevalence of strengths for youth versus adults (1 = bottom, 24 = top)

We have found that certain strengths are robustly associated with life satisfaction1 among both youth and adults: zest, hope, gratitude, and love (Park & Peterson, 2006a, 2006c; Park, Peterson, & Seligman, 2004a, 2004b). Note that all of these strengths are strongly associated with wisdom rendered as perspective (although perspective per se is not a robust correlate of life satisfaction). Given that life satisfaction (happiness) is valued in its own right and further that it leads to diverse positive outcomes like physical and psychological health, good self-esteem, the avoidance of problems entailing drugs and violence, and resilience in the wake of stress (Park, 2004), it may be desirable to target these particular strengths in a deliberate intervention. We note that demographic variables are but modestly related to life satisfaction, which means that happiness is available to all; and by implication, so too are the contributing strengths of character (Park & Peterson, 2006c). One more factor in choosing an intervention target is what the young person is willing to try. Deliberate change can only occur when someone has thought about its costs and benefits (Prochaska, DiClemente, & Nocross, 1992). Remember that personal relevance is a critical feature that cuts across many of the factors that enable given strengths and the interventions that effectively build them. Why not ask a teenager about the strengths he or she has already thought about developing? Such a question would probably produce a blank stare if posed out of context, but if primed by appropriate information and discussion, it can be readily answered (Steen, Kachorek, & Peterson, 2003). There is no shortage of popular books, movies, and songs that highlight different strengths of character, and these

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could be used to introduce youth to a range of character strengths (e.g., Burrell, 1997; Kilpatrick, Wolfe, & Wolfe, 1994). While it is unlikely that a child would choose wisdom as a virtue to aim at, perhaps some of its elements—like bravery, honesty, and love—would be desired. It is a cliché to ask where all the heroes have gone, but we think they are all around us. Talking about heroes has become unfashionable, and we believe that young people need to be distracted from the good looks, wealth, and celebrity of teen idols. They need instead to focus on people who exemplify good character, although this refocusing may need to be done in a subtle way, perhaps without ever mentioning character in the abstract. Rather, discussion should be very concrete. Who is worthy of admiration? What are their personal qualities? How did they develop these qualities? And how can you become this kind of person? When we first began measuring character strengths among youth, we provided cooperating classroom teachers with individualized feedback about the strengths profile of each of their students who completed our surveys. We thought the teachers might find these profiles of interest, but we did not anticipate that the young people themselves would find them fascinating. Because everyone had high points and low points, insidious comparisons did not occur, and students found it empowering to put a name to what they did well. Figure 2 presents a representative strengths profile for a 14-year old male attending an urban school. Although we have not systematically undertaken the exercise, we believe that these sorts of profiles could be the starting point for an individualized plan for changing one’s character—strengthening its components, redistributing them, or remediating them.

Conclusions: Some Guidelines for Cultivating Character Regardless of the targets that are chosen, we offer some general guidelines for how given character strengths might be cultivated. We follow Aristotle (2000) in believing that good character can only be shown in habitual action. Psychologists know a great deal about habits and the steps that establish them. First is to establish the baseline of the habit in question. Strengths profiles like those in Fig. 2 would be useful, but these are summaries based on global self-report. We suggest that individuals also be encouraged to keep track in a very explicit way of strength opportunities and how they did or did not rise to the occasion. If the target strength is bravery, the strength opportunity is any situation in which fear is experienced yet some action still needs to be taken despite the fear: e.g., standing up for an unpopular opinion or jumping into a swimming pool to save someone in danger. Does one do what is needed or not? Many of the strengths of character have appropriate contexts for their display, but others are more generic: ongoing life or social interaction is the only context (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). If individuals track instances of doing the “right thing” (or not), their progress toward goals can be monitored and evaluated on an ongoing basis.

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Fig. 2 Strengths profile (5-point scales) for a 14-year old male

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Goals are not enough. One also needs to have plans for reaching these goals. Our literature reviews suggest that these plans are optimal when they combine didactic instruction with hands-on experience and extensive practice. Think about it, talk about it, and do it—over and over again. Goals should be difficult and specific but at the same time allow successes along the way in order to sustain motivation (Locke, Shaw, Saari, & Latham, 1981). Teachers and parents can help a young person devise realistic goals and the concrete steps for achieving them. Space does not permit a strength-by-strength discussion of specific programs to cultivate the components of good character. But outcome research in the field of positive youth development suggests that interventions to promote what is best in young people are most effective when they embody certain rules of thumb (Eccles & Gootman, 2002; Nation et al., 2004; Park & Peterson, 2004): • Weekend workshops are not effective interventions. However, programs in which youth spend many hours over extended periods of time are effective in encouraging positive outcomes. • In general, the most effective programs do not wait for their participants to enter adolescence but instead start with younger children. Among preschoolers, how early is optimal remains unanswered. • Programs work best when put in place before incompatible behaviors are set in place. And of course programs must be developmentally appropriate. Any program that requires meta-cognitive skills on the part of participants needs to be sure that these skills exist. • Programs that work best have a clear plan that is monitored on an ongoing basis. • Programs are most effective when implemented with fidelity. • The best programs are those in which youth have at least one supportive relationship with an adult. • The most effective programs actively teach skills related to the target outcome, through hands-on and minds-on engagement. • The most effective programs target several systems simultaneously: e.g., home and school. Programs that work best provide ways not only for youth to think differently but also to act differently. • Programs work best when tailored to the cultural background of their participants. • Programs that work best take a sophisticated “person-in-environment” approach. They do not address just internal factors like character strengths, and they do not address just external factors like school safety. Instead, they address both. • Programs work best when guided by explicit theories about the causes of outcomes and the mechanisms of change. In sum, good character matters. It is the foundation of wisdom. We believe that the emerging field of positive psychology provides a useful perspective on how the components of character can be taught to children and youth. Discussion of character education can become mired in political debates and derailed by the specter of cultural relativism. However, a close look at the facts of the matter reveals a great deal of concrete agreement about what we want for our children and how to help them achieve it. Rather than trusting to the passage of time and the occurrence of

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chance to produce a handful of wise people, our society should do all it can to make happiness, good character, and eventually wisdom a realistic legacy for all.

Note 1

Life satisfaction was assessed with self-report questionnaires that ask respondents to agree with statements such as “I am satisfied with my life” (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985; Huebner, 1991). Scores are neutral with respect to the bases of satisfaction, although our research suggests, at least among adults, that eudaimonic pursuits contribute much more to life satisfaction so assessed than do hedonic pursuits (Peterson, Park, & Seligman, 2005b).

References Adams, M. J. (Coordinator). (1986). Odyssey: A curriculum for thinking. Watertown, MA; Mastery Education Corporation. Aristotle. (2000). Nicomachean ethics (R. Crisp, Trans.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Baltes, P. B., & Staudinger, U. M. (2000). Wisdom: A metaheuristic (pragmatic) to orchestrate mind and virtue toward excellence. American Psychologist, 55, 122–136. Baltes, P. B., Staudinger, U. M., Maercker, A., & Smith, J. (1995). People nominated as wise: A comparative study of wisdom-related knowledge. Psychology and Aging, 10, 155–166. Bazemore, G. & Walgrave, L. (1999). Restorative juvenile justice: Repairing the harm of youth crime. NY: Criminal Justice Press. Berkowitz, M. W., & Gibbs, J. C. (1983). Measuring the developmental features of moral discussion. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 29, 399–410. Birren, J. E., & Fisher, L. M. (1990). The elements of wisdom: Overview and integration. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Wisdom: Its nature, origins, and development (pp. 317–332). New York: Cambridge University Press. Biswas-Diener, R. (2006). From the equator to the north pole: A study of character strengths. Journal of Happiness Studies, 7, 293–310. Bok, S. (1995). Common values. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press. Burrell, B. (1997). The words we live by. New York: Free Press. Carns, M. R., & Carns, A. W. (1998). A review of the professional literature concerning the consistency of the definition and application of Adlerian encouragement. The Journal of Individual Psychology, 54, 72–89. Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (2003). Safe and sound: An educational leader’s guide to evidence-based social and emotional learning programs. University of Illinois at Chicago: author. Chessick, R. (1996). Heidegger’s “authenticity” in the psychotherapy of adolescents. American Journal of Psychotherapy 50, 208–216. Clifton, D. O., & Harter, J. K. (2003). Investing in strengths. In K. S. Cameron, J. E. Dutton, & R. E. Quinn (Eds.), Positive organizational scholarship: Foundations of a new discipline (pp. 111–121). San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. Costello, P. J. M. (1995). Education, citizenship, and critical thinking. Early Child Development and Care, 107, 105–114. Covington, M. V., Crutchfield, R. S., Davies, L., & & Olton, R. M. (1974). The productive thinking program: A course in learning to think. Columbus, OH: Merrill. Dahlsgaard, K., Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2005). Shared virtue: The convergence of valued human strengths across culture and history. Review of General Psychology, 9, 209–213.

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de Bono, E. (1973). CoRT thinking. Blanford, England: Direct Educational Services. DeVries, R. & Zan, B. (1994). Moral children: Constructing a constructivist atmosphere in early education. New York: Teachers College Press. Diener, E., Emmons, R. A., Larsen, R. J., & Griffin, S. (1985). The Satisfaction with Life Scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 49, 71–75. Dweck, C. S. (1975). The role of expectations and attributions in the alleviation of learned helplessness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31, 674–685. Eccles, J. S., & Gootman, J. A. (Eds.). (2002). Community programs to promote youth development. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Eisenberg, N., Lennon, R., & Roth, K. (1983). Prosocial development: A longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology, 19, 846–855. Eisenberger, R., Kuhlman, D. M., & Cotterell, N.. (1992). Effects of social values, effort training, and goal structure on task persistence. Journal of Research in Personality, 26, 258–272. Enright, R. D., & Coyle, C. T. (1998). Researching the process model of forgiveness within psychological interventions. In E. L. Worthington, Jr. (Ed.). Dimensions of forgiveness: Psychological research and theological perspectives (pp. 139–161). Philadelphia, PA: Templeton Foundation Press. Erikson, E. (1963). Childhood and society (2nd ed.). New York: Norton. Gollwitzer, P. M. (1993). Goal achievement: The role of intentions. In W. Stroebe & M. Hewstone (Eds.), European review of social psychology (Vol. 4, pp. 141–185). Chichester, England: Wiley. Harackiewicz, J. M., Barron, K. E., Carter, S. M., Lehto, A. T., & Elliot, A. J. (1997). Predictors and consequences of achievement goals in the college classroom: Maintaining interest and making the grade. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 1284–1295. Huebner, E. S. (1991). Initial development of the student’s life satisfaction scale. School Psychology International, 12, 231–240. Kilpatrick, W., Wolfe, G., & Wolfe, S. M. (1994). Books that build character. New York: Simon & Schuster. Klee, M. B. (2000). Core virtues: A literature-based program in character education. Redwood City, CA: The Link Institute. Larkin, G. (2000). Tap dancing in Zen. Berkeley, CA: Celestial Arts. Locke, E. A., Shaw, K. N., Saari, L. M., & Latham, G. (1981). Goal setting and task performance: 1969–1980. Psychological Bulletin, 90, 124–152. Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K. M., & Schkade, D. (2005). Pursuing happiness: The architecture of sustainable change. Review of General Psychology, 9, 111–131. McGhee, P. E. (1999). Humor, health and the amuse system. Dubuque IA: Kendall/Hunt. Miller, T. (1995). How to want what you have. New York: Avon. Murphy, M. (1998). Character education in America’s blue ribbon schools. Lancaster, PA: Technomic. Nation, J. R., & Massad, P. (1978). Persistence training: A partial reinforcement procedure for reversing learned helplessness and depression. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 107, 436–451. Nation, M., Crusto, C., Wandersman, A., Kumpfer, K. L., Seybolt, D., Morrisey-Kane, E., & Davino, K. (2003). What works in prevention: Principles of effective prevention programs. American Psychologist, 58, 449–456. Noddings, N. (1992). The challenge to care in schools. New York: Teachers College Press. Nucci, L. P. (2001). Education in the moral domain. Cambridge University Press. Park, N. (2004). The role of subjective well-being in positive youth development. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 591, 25–39. Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2003). Virtues and organizations. In K. S. Cameron, J. E. Dutton, & R. E. Quinn (Eds.), Positive organizational scholarship: Foundations of a new discipline (pp. 33–47). San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2004). Early intervention from the perspective of positive psychology. Prevention and Treatment, 6(35). Document available on the World Wide Web at http://journals.apa.org/prevention/volume6/pre0060035c.html. Accessed February 15, 2004.

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Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2006a). Character strengths and happiness among young children: Content analysis of parental descriptions. Journal of Happiness Studies, 7, 323–341. Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2006b). Methodological issues in positive psychology and the assessment of character strengths. In A. D. Ong & M. van Dulmen (Eds.), Handbook of methods in positive psychology (pp. 292–305). New York: Oxford University Press. Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2006c). Moral competence and character strengths among adolescents: The development and validation of the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth. Journal of Adolescence, 29, 891–905. Park, N., Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004a). Strengths of character and well-being. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 23, 603–619. Park, N., Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004b). Strengths of character and well-being among youth. Unpublished manuscript, University of Rhode Island. Park, N., Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2006). Character strengths in fifty-four nations and the fifty US states. Journal of Positive Psychology, 1, 118–129. Pecukonis, E. V. (1990). A cognitive/affective empathy training program as a function of ego development in aggressive adolescent females. Adolescence, 25, 59–76. Peterson, C. (2006). A primer in positive psychology. New York: Oxford University Press. Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. New York: Oxford University Press/Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Peterson, C., Park, N., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2005a). Assessment of character strengths. In G. P. Koocher, J. C. Norcross, & S. S. Hill, III (Eds.), Psychologists’ desk reference (2nd ed., pp. 93–98). New York: Oxford Uniiversity Press. Peterson, C., Park, N., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2005b). Orientations to happiness and life satisfaction: The full life versus the empty life. Journal of Happiness Studies, 6, 25–41. Power, F. C., Higgins, A., & Kohlberg, L. (1989). Lawrence Kohlberg’s approach to moral education. New York: Columbia University Press. Prochaska, J., DiClemente, C., & Norcross, J. C. (1992). In search of how people change. American Psychologist, 47, 1102–1114. Romer, D. (Ed.) (2003). Reducing adolescent risk: Toward an integrated approach. Thousand Oaks, CA; Sage. Seligman, M. E. P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction. American Psychologist, 55, 5–14. Seligman, M. E. P., Reivich, K., Jaycox, L., & Gillham, J. (1995). The optimistic child. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60, 410–421. Slavin, R. E. (1985). Cooperative learning: Applying contact theory in desegregated schools. Journal of Social Issues, 41(3), 45–62. Staudinger, U. M., & Baltes, P. B. (1996). Interactive minds: A facilitative setting for wisdom-related performance? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 746–762. Staudinger, U. M., Maciel, A. G., Smith, J., & Baltes, P. B. (1998). What predicts wisdom-related performance? A first look at personality, intelligence, and facilitative experiential contexts. European Journal of Personality, 12, 1–17. Steele, C. M. (1997). A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape intellectual identity and performance. American Psychologist, 52, 613–629. Steen, T. A., Kachorek, L. V., & Peterson, C. (2003). Character strengths among youth. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 32, 5–16. Sternberg, R. J. (1985). Implicit theories of intelligence, creativity, and wisdom. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 607–627. Sternberg, R. J. (1998). A balance theory of wisdom. Review of General Psychology, 2, 347–365. Sternberg, R. J., & Stemler, S. E. (2004). Wisdom as a moral virtue. In T. A. Thorkildsen & H. J. Walberg, Nurturing morality (pp. 187–198). New York: Kluwer.

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Wisdom in Elementary School Richard Reeve, Richard Messina and Marlene Scardamalia

Introduction The Knowledge Age brings with it the need for a new form of educational wisdom—wisdom about knowledge. It is generally believed that it takes a long time to achieve wisdom. If that is true, the best schools can do is start students on a long progression—but a progression toward what? What represents a good or bad start on wisdom? Knowledge-Age wisdom requires deep understanding about knowledge itself, and the means by which it is created and continually improved. To what extent are students in elementary school years able to take charge of knowledge advancement? Can they understand the socio-cultural-cognitive processes by which knowledge is advanced, and take responsibility not just for their own knowledge advancement but also for that of their community as a whole? For wisdom about knowledge to develop, classroom interactions need to better approximate how knowledge is created and how groups at the forefront of knowledge creation in our society organize themselves (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2003). Toward this end, researchers at the Institute for Knowledge Innovation and Technology (IKIT) and teachers at affiliated elementary schools have for the past two decades been working to ensure such processes are integral to the day-to-day operations of the classroom. Participants in Knowledge Building Communities (KBCs) take collective responsibility for the advancement of community knowledge. KBCs are designed to increase the ability of students to create and work with knowledge in the same manner as those who work with ideas in research teams and knowledge-creating organizations. Although turning agency for knowledge work over to students is difficult (Moreau, 2001); teachers report that the shift is possible and well worth the effort (Messina, 2003; Moreau, 2001; Caswell, 1998; Reeve, 1998). The pedagogical shift

Richard Reeve Assistant Professor, Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada Richard Messina Institute of Child Studies, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada Marlene Scardamalia Institute for Knowledge Innovation and Technology, OISE, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

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that teachers describe is both in the design and functioning of their classrooms and also in the changes in their beliefs about the nature of knowledge and what young children are capable of doing when they are allowed to work with ideas about which they care deeply (Messina, 2003). This chapter presents the KBC approach as a context for making knowledge creation the central concern of young children in elementary schools. We first present the underlying theory and supporting software environment, and then examples of knowledge work from a group of students as they progressed through elementary school grade 1 to grade 6. The chapter concludes with indication of how this approach promotes “active” wisdom by enabling individuals to work creatively with ideas and better address the challenges of a Knowledge Age (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1995).

Knowledge Building Principles Twelve principles of Knowledge Building form a system of interacting determinants of KBCs (Scardamalia, 2002). When a KBC is functioning well, the complex inter-relations that are at work between the principles make it difficult to isolate the effect of any single one; all are important to the proper functioning of a KBC. In R , supports addition to the theory, the computer environment, Knowledge Forum the knowledge building efforts of the community. For example, it provides an environment in which student ideas become public objects of continual improvement; it supports knowledge building discourse; it enables embedded and transformative assessment with analysis of online activity fed directly back into ongoing processes. The software environment is described after the conceptual framework is elaborated. We focus here on six of the principles (Scardamalia, 2002), but with indication of how all twelve were involved (phrases corresponding to principles are in italics in the following account of KBCs).

Epistemic Agency Epistemic agency requires that participants “set forth their ideas and negotiate a fit between personal ideas and the ideas of others, using contrasts to spark and sustain knowledge advancement rather than depending on others to chart that course for them. They deal with problems of goals, motivation, evaluation, and long-range planning that are normally left to teachers or managers” (Scardamalia, 2002, p 10). An indicator of this principle is student control over working with their ideas, both in the classroom and in the database. Evidence suggests that the promotion of students’ epistemic agency is not something the teachers are practiced in and also that teachers may underestimate the level of agency their students are able to handle (Messina, 2003). A positive disposition towards the sharing and improvement of ideas is therefore a trait promoted by teachers in KBCs. The principle of Epistemic Agency is related to the transformative character development discussed by Park and Peterson (this volume).

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Improvable Ideas ‘All ideas are treated as improvable. Participants work continuously to improve the quality, coherence, and utility of ideas. For such work to prosper, the culture must be one of psychological safety, so that people feel safe in taking risks—revealing ignorance, voicing half-baked notions, giving and receiving criticism’ (Scardamalia, 2002, p. 9). This principle is in keeping with the beginner’s mind-set that Rosch (this volume) suggests is required for wise thinking. It requires that individually and collectively participants work to overcome their preconceived notions and look at ideas anew, engaging all ideas as potentially improvable, and seeing themselves as members of the larger society of thinkers who currently and historically have worked in the field. This principle also links to what Noddings described as nonfoundational theories of knowledge where truth, although unattainable, is something one strives for on an on-going basis (Noddings, 1995, p. 105).

Idea Diversity In addition to viewing ideas as improvable, knowledge builders work with idea diversity. “To understand an idea is to understand the ideas that surround it, including those that stand in contrast to it. Idea diversity creates a rich environment for ideas to evolve into new and more refined forms” (Scardamalia, 2002, p. 9). Knowledge building environments help give ideas a public life so that those ideas are available for consideration by everyone in the community (and beyond, depending on the knowledge media available), so ideas can be built on and refined by the extended community. Depending on the value of those ideas to the community, and the social dynamics of the participants, some ideas grow, others gain no additional force (although they remain available, and may be re-entered into the discourse at a later time). Kresse (this volume) also calls for social engagement to help lead others to wisdom. In the case of Idea Diversity—and another knowledge building principle Collective Responsibility for Community Knowledge—the group provides the ideas and social engagement to create conditions for knowledge advancement (also see Sternberg’s dialogic in this volume).

Knowledge Building Discourse Without a focus on improving ideas, discourse can easily reduce to opinion stating and idea exchange: “The discourse of Knowledge Building Communities results in more than the sharing of knowledge; the knowledge itself is refined and transformed through the discursive practices of the community (through) practices that have the advancement of knowledge as their explicit goal” (Scardamalia, 2002, p. 11). Discourse in the KBC is oriented toward the advancement of the knowledge of the community as a whole. Roochinik (this volume) describes the wisdom generating

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potential of Plato’s dialogues. In a KBC progressive discourses are woven into the social fabric of the classroom rather than being identified with a single activity structure. Knowledge building discourse is the sustaining force of face-to-face and computer-mediated communication, interactions around readings and experimental work, and is even found in the hallways and on the playground. Of course many other forms of discourse (opinion stating, social chit-chat) are found in these contexts, as well. What distinguishes a KBC is commitment to substantial amounts of knowledge-building discourse across activities, thus leading to pervasive knowledge building.

Rise-above A difficult principle to enact is rise-above. As with Sternberg’s dialectic (this volume) for the principle of rise-above to be effective students must be, “Working toward more inclusive principles and higher-level formulations of problems. It means learning to work with diversity, complexity and messiness, and out of that achieve new syntheses. By moving to higher planes of understanding, knowledgebuilders transcend trivialities and oversimplifications and move beyond current best practices” (Scardamalia, 2002, p. 9). The tendency is to translate this principle into practices such as end-of-unit summary activities, but this misses the intention. The horizon of one’s knowledge is continuously advancing. The rise-above note R makes high points in the ongoing discourse evident and in Knowledge Forum encourages efforts to continuously rise to an even higher plane.

Constructive Uses of Authoritative Sources Related to rise-above is the challenge of engaging the world of ideas beyond those of the local community. The goal in using authoritative sources is not to identify objective truths, but to make contact with theories and ideas of others, especially others more knowledgeable in the discipline. This principle is positioned in the following manner, “To know a discipline is to be in touch with the present state and growing edge of knowledge in the field. This requires respect and understanding of authoritative sources, combined with a critical stance toward them” (Scardamalia, 2002, p. 11). In most school situations source material is presented with such an air of objective truth that students view the given information as unquestionable. Knowledge building principles map nicely onto Sternberg’s approach to wisdom (this volume), with focus on the combination of content knowledge and sophisticated reasoning to solve life’s problems. Knowledge building principles, taken together, engage students in problem identification and solution more in keeping with knowledge work in out-of-school contexts. These principles are embedded in designs for the knowledge building R . environment, Knowledge Forum

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R Knowledge Forum R is a networked, Internet-based environment in which students Knowledge Forum create notes that are available to all participants in the community. Other students can “build-on” (a new, linked note appears) if they have something to add or wish to seek clarification. Only the author(s) of each note can modify or revise the note. The author can highlight important “keywords” and create pictures and diagrams within their notes to further explain their ideas. Each note is titled and automatically displayed in the “view” it was created in, and contains scaffolds that can be customized by teachers or students. The classroom database may include as many separate views as there are authors wishing to help organize notes. Ideally, students are engaged in discussions around the creation of new views. Views are given a title and may contain a background illustration to aid organization. Links from one view to other views can easily be added to aid navigation within the database. And, students can subsume notes into “rise-above” notes to clarify or summarize the state of the knowledge work on a particular view. All of these features are designed so that teachers can turn over control to students, thereby facilitating the transference of high-level knowledge work from teacher to student. By providing this more democratic forum within which ideas can be posted, discussed and refined, Knowledge R becomes a place for students to work collectively to make wise deciForum sions. Ideas either move forward or not based on the discourse of the members of the community which is, in turn, based on assembled information, authoritative sources, and judgments about the “promisingness” of ideas and theories (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1995).

Knowledge Building Communities: Elementary School Cases Knowledge building activities of elementary school students were tracked as they moved from grade 1 to grade 6. In this section, we present work at three grade levels: early, grade 1 (exploration of “why do leaves change color in the fall?”); middle, grades 3 & 4 (study of worms and optics); and upper, grade 6 (“what constitutes a civilization?”).

Grade 1—Idea Diversity and Improvable Ideas Although students as young as Junior Kindergarten (Halewood, 2003) are, with direct adult support, capable of working with ideas in a KBC, by grade 1 students begin to possess the language skills necessary to read and write on their own R . Initially, the focus is on having the students see visiin Knowledge Forum ble/explicit records of their ideas—ideas that are separate (represented in different notes) from the ideas of others, but at the same time show commonalities and form

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the basis for subsequent interchanges. In the database view different perspectives, and possible points of convergence are represented in the array of notes presented and the different titles that allow the students to see how their ideas relate. In the fall of 1999 this group of grade 1 students began to wonder why leaves change colour in the fall. This led to the development of many theories about the functioning of trees. The students were encouraged to write notes about their various R (Fig. 1). ideas in a common view titled “Trees and Leaves” in Knowledge Forum Their theories included: “. . . the chlorophyll goes to the outside of the leaf so it leaks off the leaf”, “it’s too cold for chlorophyll to make food for the tree”, “the chlorophyll goes into the trunk to keep warm,” and “there are tubes in the trunks of trees with colors running in them.” In terms of knowledge building, Epistemic Agency is supported by the fact that students can literally see their ideas in relationship to the ideas of other students, and Idea Diversity through the multiple theories represented on their view. These are further discussed, and refined through classroom conversations. In the early grades, then, the focus is on students seeing their ideas as being in some ways distinct but also related to the ideas of other students. Another central goal in the early grades (1 & 2) is to have students learn to see their ideas as improvable. This is achieved by encouraging conversation about the R database. ideas that have been put forward in class and in the Knowledge Forum The students can build-on in the database, however in early grades much of the Knowledge Building Discourse that leads to the improvement of ideas happens during group discussions known as “Knowledge Building (KB) Talks”. These talks aim

Fig. 1

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to engage all students, with encouragement to follow up by entering their ideas/notes in their community knowledge space, in line with the Democratization of Knowledge principle. These talks are integral to other classroom activities, such as designing experiments to test theories. Students use a “my theory” scaffold support in Knowledge Forum to enter theories into their collaborative knowledge space. One student, for example, thought that leaves changed colour because the leaf gets cold. So the student decided to put a leaf in the freezer and see if it would change colour. Another student put a leaf in a microwave oven, to test the effect of heat. The grade 1 class also began to discuss the relationship between chlorophyll and sap. They began theorizing about where the chlorophyll came from, whether it was the same place that the sap came from and which of the earlier theories fit with a maple bush experience they had in the spring, in which they watched sap flow from a tree, and recalled their work many months earlier regarding leaves, trees, and chlorophyll. As Fig. 2 indicates students in these early grades can make excellent use of graphics to illustrate and explain their theories. In the database, the class worked on their most promising theories. In class and in the database they discussed these theories and with the support of the teacher used rise-above notes to cluster similar theories together. One student’s theory was that chlorophyll goes into the trunk to keep warm and there are possibly tubes in the

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trunk. After going on a field trip to a sugar bush farm, a student noted that this prior theory had to be incorrect because the sap that they saw coming out of the trunk wasn’t green. The ability to contemplate theories over an extended period of time is R . supported by making ideas explicit and contributing them to Knowledge Forum These recorded ideas then help students revisit their theories and improve them, as new data emerges. In this case improving a theory was accomplished through a mix of classroom discourse, online discourse, experiments, and a field trip.

Grades 3 & 4—Epistemic Agency In the middle elementary grades students begin to take agency over the processes by which ideas are created and improved both in the classroom and the database. In grade 3 they studied worms and in grade 4 optics. By this point, the students were able to contribute many notes, and were able to produce each note much more quickly than in earlier years. In the case of their study of worms, they produced an initial view (Fig. 3), which quickly became rather chaotic, in the sense that there were multiple questions, themes and perspectives put forward within the same view, with no order to the view. This diversity was welcomed as a rich source of ideas, but since there were many questions, the students and their teacher found it difficult to move forward in a coherent manner. They printed all the notes, read each one highlighting the keywords, and then placed them in piles according to concepts. Notes dealing with

Fig. 3

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what they viewed as similar concepts were combined (e.g. Life Cycle & Reproduction). This could have been done electronically (search by keywords and sort into themes in new views), but the students found it easier to work with printouts. Inside the database, new views were created for the new categories and notes were moved to these new views for further work. An example of one of these new views is “Compost and Natural Habitat” (Fig. 4). By grade 4 Epistemic Agency was reflected not only in student designs of database content and views, but in defining classroom processes, as well. During their study of optics, the students co-designed with their teacher new procedures to aid their KB Talks. The group created a set of categories to help focus the talks. They created corresponding card pockets on the wall: “Knowledge Advances”, “Problems of Understanding” and “Technical Concerns” (Messina, 2003). If a student had something they wanted to talk about they would fill in a card and the group would consider the set of cards that were available when the time for the KB Talk came around each week. Their agency in defining knowledge work was reflected at a point when there were no cards, so students chose not to hold a KB Talk. This represented an important move signifying recognition that they were in control of processes by which knowledge work was being conducted, and they were able to

Fig. 4

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alter the processes relevant to this work. It also helped them appreciate the need to contribute ideas, as they found the KB talks important for their work. As Fig. 4 illustrates, students are also able to change view backgrounds to make their workspaces more coherent. In both grade 3 and grade 4 these students also customized scaffold supports. In grade 3 they added, “Did you know?” to help them remember to state relevant information (Support for Knowledge Building DisR ). After a period of time the course is an important feature of Knowledge Forum group decided that this particular support “Did you know?” was not contributing to their discourse in a positive manner. According to their own assessment it was used for “knowledge telling” rather than “knowledge transformation,” a distinction their teacher introduced to them (see Scardamalia and Bereiter, 1987). Accordingly, they deleted the “Did you know?” scaffold reflecting a level of agency over their communal knowledge space and processes to benefit the community as a whole (Collective Responsibility for Community Knowledge). In the classroom the students were also more in control of the types of activities they did to support their knowledge work. With encouragement from their teacher they created their own experiments to further explore and refine their questions about light. For example, one student wondered about the transparency of different surfaces, and proposed an experiment to address this question: student-designed experiments help to focus student attention not just on the concepts and theories they are working on but also on the management of the knowledge creation process itself.

Grade 6—Rise above: Advancing knowledge horizons Through the middle grades and into the upper elementary grades students are engaged in knowledge management, in the classroom and electronic knowledge spaces: they create views, create view contents, use graphical and other organizational tools to provide higher-order frameworks for their ideas, cite authoritative sources, and produce rise-above notes. In the current context it was not until grade 6 that the use of Rise-Aboves and Constructive Uses of Authoritative Sources were advanced to the level that students could synthesize different perspectives and create a more integrative framework for their work. They attempted to pull together all available information—to achieve explanatory coherence (Thagard, 1989), based on what they knew and knowledge gained through reviewing authoritative sources. At this level students go beyond the use of rise-aboves to collect similar ideas or produce summaries, they use them in a process of continually finding higher-ground as a basis for their ongoing work. The grade 6 teacher was, in parallel, engaged in a design study, engaging students in the creation of 6 main rise-above notes as jumping off points for their work about ancient civilizations. An example is the note in Fig. 5. It shows what they had learned about the question, “what qualifies as a civilization,” and, perhaps most importantly, what they still wanted to know. In addition to using rise-above notes in a more embedded manner, the students in grade 6 also began to question the authoritative sources that they were bringing to

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Fig. 5

bear on their questions. The principle of constructive uses of authoritative sources was present at all grade levels discussed in this chapter. What emerged in the upper level was questioning authoritative sources in an effort to determine if the material directly addresses the questions asked and whether it could be assumed to be accurate. In the case of the ancient civilizations work the students were doing, the grade 6 class had wondered: “What makes an ancient civilization great?” “Are we living in a great civilization?” “What qualifies as an ancient civilization?” and “How do civilizations fall?” The class used a central view in Knowledge Forum to continually work-on and then rise-above their current best understandings in each of these areas, using relevant reference material to advance their understanding, and also noting limitations in available information Following the identification of the central questions different groups of students formed small groups to study different civilizations (e.g. The Inca, The Aztec). The class later went on a field trip to a local museum to see the displays related to their specific civilizations. In one of the notes written upon returning to the school a student questioned an authoritative source—the local museum guide. The student didn’t disagree with the guide but instead engaged in a careful recounting of the criteria that their class had identified for defining a civilization. It is clear from the notes in the view that the students recognized that the decision to define a particular group of people as a civilization was a criterion-based judgment. And so it is important to consider the criteria used, realize others use different criteria, and check the fit between one’s own ideas and those of others more knowledgeable in the field. This ability to work at the cutting edge of their own understanding, with reference to the work of others knowledgeable in the discipline, suggests engagement in symmetric knowledge advancement—rather than working simply with their own ideas.

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Conclusion When elementary school students are given the opportunity to work in the context of a Knowledge Building Community (KBC) they can, from the earliest years of school, begin to see and make judgments about ideas as important, improvable and valuable for community members. There are several features that run through the grade level examples we have presented. Taken together their scope and sequence suggests how wisdom for knowledge might progress through elementary school. However, we must stress that results are based on limited data; and teachers are engaged in early, exploratory work with a new pedagogical model. Also, while their work touches on all knowledge building principles, several are engaged in a limited way. We might thus think of the work reported in this chapter as providing an early and conservative account of what is possible. In the Early grades (1/2) Students put their ideas forward in a public space of ideas and through group discussion and self-designed experiments (leaves in freezers and microwaves) came to see their ideas as important and improvable. Because ideas were recorded, they were revisited, revised, and contrasted with those of other contributors. Idea diversity, created a need to rise-above, in the sense of clustering similar ideas together. Students also discussed their ideas in relation to real-world phenomena, as suggested by the refinement of ideas following their visit to a sugartree farm. In the Middle grades (3/4) Students begin to view the environment in which their ideas exist as itself improvable. In addition to using reference material and creating experiments to explore their theories, they manage the group’s time. In their shared knowledge space they build-on to each other’s notes, edit scaffolds, co-construct view backgrounds to create more coherent knowledge spaces, move notes within and between views and link them, so they are working within larger knowledge spaces and citing authoritative sources. In the Upper grades (5/6) Students engage in effective knowledge management of the community as a whole (e.g., engage in discussions about how to manage their knowledge space and classroom processes). They created increasingly high-level rise-above notes, to summarize their work and to set increasingly advanced levels of inquiry. Thus they were able to work with emergent, not simply fixed goals. They also constructively questioned authoritative sources. They identified a problem with source material and then explored and contrasted definitions to better define the knowledge created and improved in their own knowledge space, and in work in the discipline as a whole. Wisdom in the elementary school, we believe can be defined in Knowledge Building terms: the continual creation of knowledge of value to the community. As is the case with other submissions in this volume, wisdom thus defined suggests not simply a theoretical but also a practical approach. In the case of Knowledge Building we see this as the ability to make judgments about the value of the knowledge being considered and then to make appropriate advances based on these judgments. It is important to note that knowledge, as we use the term, goes beyond simply gathering information (Baltes, 2004; Dewey, 1933). Bereiter and

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Scardamalia have referred to the ability to have, “an enlightened concern” for the value and far-reaching consequences of knowledge as “active wisdom” (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1995, p. 235). Positioned within an ever-broadening landscape of problem solving, they suggest that active wisdom is needed if we are to become a “knowledge society” (Scardamalia, 2002). Thomas Homer-Dixon has suggested that in a thinking society—a “prospective mind”—is needed, to address complex problems (Homer-Dixon, 2006, p. 29). The prospective mind and active wisdom require individual or group judgments based on the “promisingness” of ideas (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 995, p. 234). Knowledge Building happens in a community setting. John Dewey wrote little about wisdom as a specific concept (Baltes, 2004); but his educational writing stressed the value of community in the development of adults who could make sound judgments, as contrasted with accumulation of information (Campbell, 1998). The KBC approach involves acquisition of new concepts, along with making judgments about the value of ideas in relation to real ideas and authentic problems, as they are experienced in their class and in their day-to-day lives. If we want to develop adults able to apply their knowledge, then engagement in the socio-cultural-cognitive processes of knowledge advancement seems a promising way to proceed. We would like to give the final word to a student. During an end of year interview a student stated the following about the value of working in a KBC. Clearly this student views knowledge as more than something to be accumulated. She has begun to develop an understanding that she will be engaged in this process her entire life. I learned that there is not so much right answers (emphasis by student). So it’s not like this is wrong (hand gesture left) and this is right (hand gesture right). It might be wrong and it might be right but to do that you need to find it out. It’s not like you already know it and by researching it you can find other things that you want to research about and so you realize that there is more and more and more things that you don’t know (pauses) and it’s also this thing that once you know this much (holds hands up in a small circle) and once you know more you know that there is even more that you don’t know. So it starts like this (starts again), first you know this much (holds up hands again in a small circle) and you know there’s this much you don’t know (circles her hands around where her hands first were). Then you know this much (makes initial hand size bigger) but then you know there is this much you don’t know (circles arms around her, indicating an even larger area) and so on and so on. Acknowledgments This research was funded by an Initiative on the New Economy (INE) Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (512-2002-1016). We are thankful to Michel Ferrari for insightful comments and to the students, teachers, and principal of the Institute of Child Study, University of Toronto, for making this work possible.

References Baltes, P. B. (2004). Wisdom as orchestration of mind and virtue. Book in preparation. Full text: http://www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/en/institut/dok/full/baltes/orchestr/ Bereiter, C., & Scardamalia, M. (2003). Learning to work creatively with knowledge. In E. De Corte, L. Verschaffel, N. Entwistle, & J. van Merriënboer (Eds.), Unravelling basic

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components and dimensions of powerful environments. EARLI Advances in Learning and Instruction Series. Bereiter, C., & Scardamalia, M. (1995). Surpassing ourselves: An inquiry into the nature and implications of expertise. Chicago: Open Court. Caswell, B. & Lamon, M. (1998). Caswell, B & Lamon, M. (1998, April). Development of scientific literacy: The evolution of ideas in a grade four knowledge building classroom. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego. CA. Campbell, J., (1998). Dewey’s conception of community. In Larry Hickman (Ed.), Reading Dewey: Interpretations for a postmodern generation. Indiana University Press: Bloomington. Ind. Dewey, J. (1933). How we think. A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. Boston, MA: Heath & Co. Halewood, C. (2003). Knowledge building in junior kindergarten. Paper Presented at the Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago. Ill. Homer-Dixon, T. (2006). The upside of down: Catastrophe, creativity, and the renewal of civilization. Toronto: Random House. Messina, R. (2003). Collaborative structures supporting knowledge building. Paper Presented at the Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago. Ill. Moreau, M. J. (2001) Knowledge building pedagogy and teacher change: One teacher’s journey. Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association. Seattle WA. Noddings, N. (1995). Philosophy in education. Oxford: Westview Press. Reeve, R., & Lamon, M. (1998, April) Factors to be considered: Overlapping communities of inquiry and a knowledge-building classroom. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego. CA. Scardamalia, M, & Bereiter, C. (1987). Knowledge telling and knowledge transformingin written composition. In S. Rosenberg (Ed.), Advances in applied psycholinguistics: Vol. 2. Reading, writing, and language learning (pp. 142–175). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scardamalia, M. & Bereiter, C. (2003, Fall). Beyond brainstorming: Sustained creative work with ideas. Education Canada, 43(4), 4–7, 44. Scardamalia, M. (2002). Collective cognitive responsibility for the advancement of knowledge. In B. Jones (Ed.) Liberal education in the knowledge age. Chicago: Open Court. Thagard, P. (1989). Explanatory coherence. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12, 435–467.

Master Zhu’s Wisdom John Berthrong

Introduction It is a commonplace in the study of Chinese philosophy to observe that Zhu Xi [Chu Hsi] (1130–1200) believed that he taught a form of Confucian philosophy called ) or the ‘Teaching of the Way’ as the cardinal virtue of zhi ( or daoxue ( ), or wisdom/discernment, within the large educational structure of the Confucian Way. Zhu Xi is important because he is recognized as one of the two or three most influential of all Confucian scholars, ranking along side Kongzi [Confucius] and Mengzi [Mencius] as a great Song dynasty (960–1279) reformer of the teaching of the founding sage teachers. The reason for this assumption is that the Confucian Way had been adopted in the Second Century B.C.E. by the Han dynasty as its official teaching, and for better or worse, the ru ( ) or Confucian teachers dominated the political, social, educational, and often the philosophical and religious life of the Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese peoples until it was officially abolished as the ideological superstructure of the Chinese state by the last dynasty in 1905 in response to the tidal wave of Western influence in the modern period. The Confucian tradition, even during the flourishing of Buddhism starting in the Second Century C.E. and the rise of great Buddhist schools such as Tiantai, Huayan, Chan [Zen in Japanese] and the Pure Land traditions as well as the foundation of many great Daoist religious lineages, became even stronger with the increased dominance of Confucian civil service examinations from the Song dynasty right down to 1905. Because Confucianism provided the curriculum for the civil service examinations, and since these examinations were the ladder to social success in later imperial China, Confucianism reigned supreme as the most important philosophical and educational discourse in this long period of Chinese history. Moreover, it was Master Zhu’s interpretation of the Confucian Way that was adopted in 1313 as the model for orthodox Confucian thought in the examination system. Nonetheless, Master Zhu was controversial because he had strong opinions about how one should go about the process of self-cultivation for the sake of wisdom and because he had such a rational and analytic philosophical style that set him apart from so

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many other highly respected Confucian masters. And if this were not enough, great Confucian philosophers and public intellectuals such as Master Zhu would assert that the Confucian tradition was simply intrinsically a profound and universal set of rituals and social practices with a special concern for education, textual canons, practical technologies such as administrative theory and philosophical speculation useful to any sensible person. Hence Confucianism was the wisdom of the primordial sages of the mythical past and yet ever now present as a tradition of wisdom for many contemporary East Asian people. In fact, almost all Confucian philosophers would include a discussion of wisdom after the second of the great classical thinkers, Mengzi (Mencius) (371–289 BCE), ) or wisdom/discernment or knowledge one of the four seeds of made zhi ( ) or exemvirtue that every person must cultivate in order to become a junzi ( plary person. Zhi as the virtue of wisdom or discernment always firmly held its place as the fourth of the five cardinal virtues of humaneness, justice, civility or ritual, and faithfulness—with these five virtues becoming the standard set of Confucian virtues ), or Master Zhu as he was later for over two thousand years. Therefore, Zhuzi ( known with the honorific of a master teacher, would always include both an exegetical and a philosophical exposition of the nature of what Kongzi [Confucius], Mengzi [Mencius] and the other Confucian sages had taught about zhi. But more than this narrowly exegetical interpretation of the classical canonical teachings about zhi, Master Zhu also had a much broader commitment to teaching about wisdom. There was in Zhu Xi’s thinking an unbroken, even intimate, connection between wisdom in all its Aristotelian forms such as theoria [theoretical reflection], phronesis [practical reason], and praxis [practical application of both theoretical and practical reason], and the final goal of cultivating the virtues of the junzi or exemplary person as an ultimate telos or goal of the actualization of all the five Confucian virtues for the sincere student of the Confucian Way. There were very few sages, and even Kongzi, recognized by the Confucian tradition as a sage if ever there was one, never ever claimed to be a sage or even to have met one—one learned about the sages through their writings preserved in the canonical texts revered by Master Kong and all subsequent Confucian scholars. One did, of course, meet the sages through the written canon in which the sages left their words and records of their deeds for the contemplation of any serious student. One of the marks of Zhu’s teaching style was to combine careful scholarship about the meanings to be found in the canonical Confucian classics conjoined with an equally strong and insistent demand that such mere philosophical, philological, and historical mastery of the classical texts was vain unless it was inextricably linked to the cultivation of all the proper ethical virtues, among which was wisdom itself.

Zhu Xi the Educator Zhu Xi achieved the highest national imperial jinshi ( ) or ‘presented scholar’ degree at the extremely early age of 18. The average age of his fellow candidates was in the mid-30s and this was a remarkable achievement for someone so young. While

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Master Zhu went on to have a career befitting his early examination achievements, he preferred to serve as an educator or local official rather than to make his mark within the upper echelons of the imperial civil service as would have been the case for his fellow civil servants. More often than not Master Zhu held titular or honorary positions that would allow him to spend his time devoted to teaching and scholarly research and publication rather than with the normal ebb and flow of the work of an imperial bureaucrat. However, when he did serve in the regular civil service in various district and provincial tasks, he conducted himself with a distinguished sense of duty and success. However, he often found that his fellow administrators did not always share his high ethical standards and when he denounced unjust or illegal bureaucratic behavior, he got into more trouble than the great scholar found tolerable. As he became more and more famous as a reforming scholar and educator at the end of his career, his enemies in the civil service ultimately brought a series of completely false charges of moral turpitude against the great philosopher and, in fact, he died under an imperial ban, with the dynasty he sought to serve—rather like Aquinas did on the other side of the world. Nonetheless, his biographer notes that thousands of students, disciples, and admirers attended his funeral to mark their respect for the man considered the greatest Confucian—the greatest philosopher of the Southern Song dynasty. Not long after his death the Song dynasty reversed the condemnation of his conduct and thought and began to give him posthumous rewards and titles in recognition of his majestic scholarly accomplishments. A great deal of this success can be attributed to the fact that Zhu’s commentaries on the Four Books, his selection of the Great Learning, Analects, Mencius, and the Doctrine of the Mean as the basic texts for the study of the Confucian Way from among the vast canon of the Confucian classics, were selected as the basis for the imperial civil service examination by the Yuan dynasty in 1313. Hence, for hundreds of years all educated Chinese, and often Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese scholars as well, had to be completely conversant with the philosophy of Master Zhu in order to be eligible to serve in the imperial civil service—even if many scholars would take great exception to both Master Zhu’s interpretation of the classics and the philosophy that supported Zhu’s exegesis of the Confucian canon. In point of fact, all of Zhu Xi’s voluminous writings were dedicated to the task of teaching about the wisdom of the Confucian sages. The famous Four Books are a perfect example of Zhu’s mature pedagogy. But we would be remiss if we forgot that Zhu, although he spent most of his life teaching adult students, was interested in all aspects of education, beginning with what he called the education of youth or ). The reason for this was that Zhu firmly believed that education for xiaoxue ( wisdom was a life-long task. Had not Kongzi himself set forth his plan for a life of self-cultivation in Analects 2:4 with the observation that at fifteen the master set his mind-heart on learning. Just as with Kongzi, Zhu Xi reconfirmed the intimate connection of learning and wisdom; the path to wisdom was a path of learning and vice versa. Moreover, along with what can easily be recognized as scholarly learning, Zhu Xi was also concerned to promote a broad range of methods for self-cultivation. The focused reading of texts was a definite part of his plan for perfecting the self in wisdom. The closest Western version of this cultivational role for serious and reflective

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reading of texts is found in the veneration of the study of the Torah and tradition in Judaism. Zhu Xi also taught a form of meditation called quiet-sitting. The name quiet-sitting was used by Zhu in order to try to distinguish the Confucian practice of meditation from Daoist and Buddhist methods, though in terms of the actual method there was very little to differentiate Confucian quiet-sitting from its Daoist and Buddhists cousins—save for the fact that Master Zhu recommended sitting in a chair rather than on the floor. The aim was to let the mind-heart or xin ( ) become calm and hence able to better perceive and understand the mundane world as and when the student emerged from meditation. Be this as it may, Zhu was adamant that however much Confucian meditation resembled Daoist and Buddhist forms, its ultimate goal was different, because Confucians never sought to flee the social responsibilities and obligations of the quotidian world for a monastery or abbey. Zhu’s rhetoric was that Confucians were tied to a real or shi ( ) in the sense of an empirically concrete and pluralistic world as opposed to Daoist notions of wu ( ) nothingness or Buddhist kong ( ) emptiness. The Confucian claim was that Confucians attempted to deal with a living, real, concrete world of things and events instead of the empty realms of Daoist and Buddhist meditation. For Zhu quiet-sitting and reading books was all part of his larger picture of true Confucian wisdom, a resolute commitment to human flourishing in family, community, empire, and cosmos. The history of the compilation of the Four Books illustrates Zhu’s profound sense of concern for Confucian pedagogy. By the time of Master Zhu the official Confucian canon had grown to thirteen works, many of them large, archaic, and difficult texts for a Song dynasty student to comprehend. Clearly Master Zhu believed that every good Confucian scholar would need to read all the classics; moreover, Zhu also strongly advised that students also needed to read the works of the other great philosophical masters such as the Daoist masters Zhuangzi [Chuang Tzu] and Laozi [Lao Tzu] and all the other thinkers of the golden age of Chinese philosophy in the Warring States period (480–221 BCE) such as the utilitarian Mozi and the Legalist Hanfezi. Notwithstanding his unwavering commitment to the whole corpus of classical texts, Zhu also recognized that the Southern Song was a vastly different culture from the world of the Zhou philosophers; without putting too fine a point on it, students found it difficult to understand the language and intellectual content of these early classical Confucian (and non-Confucian) writings. In order to help the student master the canon, Zhu Xi selected a canon within the canon, as it were. He took two works of the most important Confucian teachers, Kongzi and Mengzi, and added to these classics two more texts or rather chapters taken from one of great canonical ritual texts in order to form the Four Books. ) or the Great Learning, and the These two additional works were the Daxue ( ) or the Doctrine of the Mean. It was Zhu’s considered opinion Zhongyong ( that these four philosophical texts provided a ladder for or access into the much vaster set of the full thirteen Song Confucian classics. If the student could master the philosophical vision, and the linguistic patterns as well, of these Four Books, then the student would be ready, with the appropriate teachers, to tackle all the rest of the literature of the Confucian Way. While this was an inspired bit of teaching methodology, more conservative Song dynasty scholars grumbled that it was not an entirely innocent adventure into teaching about the Confucian Way. For one thing,

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it clearly valued the philosophical works of the tradition more highly than the ritual, historical, or even the poetical aspects of the Confucian canon. In his own defense, Zhu maintained this choice was an appropriate pedagogical approach to the much more complicated world of the entire canon—and would also make the point that his method allowed the student to grasp the true meaning of the early sages. It was not enough just to be able to read the texts with philological proficiency: for the true Confucian student must be able to grasp the real philosophical and ethical intent of the sages and then make this true meaning of the classics come alive in the life of the student as a budding scholar. Nor did Zhu stop with writing various commentaries on the canonical texts. He and his good friend Lü Zuqian [Lü Tsu-ch’ien] (1137–1181) also complied the famous selection of the sayings and writings of the Northern Song philosophers, ) or Reflections on Things at Hand. If the Four Books were a the Jinsi lu ( portal for entry into the study of the classical canon, the Reflections were a gate for understanding the whole tradition. Thus if a young man in an isolated village who has the will to learn, but no enlightened teacher or good friend to guide him, obtains this volume and explores and broods over its material in his mind, he will be able to find a gate to enter (Zhu Xi 1967, 2).

Of course, having a good teacher was to be highly desired, but if this were not possible, the Reflections could set the student on the right path towards wisdom. The fourteen chapters of the Reflections provided the student with the philosophical and methodological tools to be able to become a true scholar of the Confucian Way. The Reflections became a classic in its own right and did indeed function as a gateway to the study of Song philosophy and for further contemplation of the teachings of the classical canonical texts. Needless to say, Zhu Xi provided ample commentaries on the 622 passages that he and Lü anthologized as the key to understanding the Northern Song masters—and by extension, the orthodox teachings of the classical sages and worthies. Zhu Xi did not cease his pedagogy for wisdom with just his great commentaries such as his annotations on the Four Books and the teaching anthologies such as the Reflections. These kinds of exegetical, philosophical, historical, and philological studies were indeed gates or ladders to initiate the cultivation of the mind-heart of the sincere student in order that she or he would indeed get the message of the sages for him or herself and in dedicated service to others. Although justly famous as the second most important philosopher in the history of China, Zhu Xi had equal fame as a reformer of ritual. Ritual was one of the cornerstones of any Confucian education, and ritual texts had from the very beginning been part of the canon. Confucius himself spent a great deal of time teaching his students about proper ritual conduct, and through his concern for ritual knowledge and proper form, Zhu Xi was merely following hallowed Confucian praxis. Based on the careful work of other Song scholars of ritual, Zhu Xi undertook ) or Master Zhu’s Family Ritual. In this text, to publish the Zhuzi jiali ( a book that came to dominate not only the ritual life of China but also became extremely influential in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, Zhu described in loving detail the various rituals appropriate to family life, from birth to death and all the various

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stages of life’s transformations along the way. Ritual, according to Zhu, was not just the prerogative of the imperial government but accessible to anyone who could follow his precise descriptions of the important life rituals. Moreover, like so many of Zhu’s writings, it was written in a very clear, almost vernacular style that was designed to be read by and understood by anyone with even only a smattering of formal education. Zhu Xi was very critical of the kind of writing that was so refined or erudite that only an accomplished scholar could understand it. Though Zhu was the consummate Confucian philosopher, he was also a passionate public educator who wanted the teachings of the sages to be available to anyone who wanted to cultivate the mind-heart in order to set themselves on the profound way of the Confucian Dao. Nor did Zhu Xi stop with trying to reform the complex patterns of family rituals. He was also justly famous for helping to promote what is known throughout East Asia as the ‘community compact’ as a way for families and even communities to provide essential educational and social relief services to members of the clan or local community. It was not enough just to become a student of the classical and more contemporary Confucian philosophical, poetic, historical and ritual texts and to follow proper family ritual. It was equally important that this kind of growing social wisdom or social capital, as modern sociologists would call it, be put into community service. In order to help people cooperate in forming a flourishing humane society, Zhu fashioned the theory and practice of the local or clan community compact. As Wm. Theodore de Bary notes, These values that Zhu promoted through the medium of his public proclamations were also built into the community compact (xiangyue ), which Zhu Xi adopted from a follower of Cheng Yi, Lü Dajun, as the basic “constitution” for a self-governing community (de Bary 1998, 59).

The three main goals of the community compact system were (1) to encourage the communal performance of good and worthy deeds and activities, (2) the correction of various errors or failings within the community and (3) provide mutual support in difficult times and when faced with the kinds of adversities that need to tap the resources of the entire community and not just the assets of one family. Zhu Xi’s grand vision of education for wisdom began with the basic cultivation of the mind-heart of the eager student; and he built upon these humble beginnings forward toward a vision of refined and civilizing ritual for all families. He then even moved into forming what we might now call the institutions of civil society with his eager promotion of the community compact as a model for communal or clan civic mutual support. Some scholars have charged that in all his work Zhu relied inordinately on the creativity of his beloved Northern Song masters for the materials of his vast philosophical and social teachings. This kind of charge would not have bothered Zhu Xi at all. His was not a vision of the isolated individual genius dictating wisdom drawn de novo from his private ruminations. Rather, Zhu Xi saw himself as part of a long lineage of Confucian teachers and that it was his job to respect the wisdom of the past as he tried to find a way to teach wisdom in the present. He was both a transmitter, and—like great transmitters such as Kongzi—an equally great creative reformer of the tradition he sought to revivify in the Southern Song.

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This vision of a complete educational program was erected upon the foundations of a very common Confucian teaching about the goal of self-cultivation. This is the ) or a ‘sage famous theory of finding the way to unite neisheng waiwang ( within (internal sage virtues) and a king without (external action)’—a shorthand way of saying that good philosophical theory and social practice must always be joined together following the Confucian Way. This is the most common way the Confucian tradition thematized its fundamental axiological vision, a theory of value and action for how the person can become an authoritative exemplar in the larger world of family, clan, village, region, empire and even All under Heaven, the whole ecumenical world. The simple precept of trying to be both a sage (wisdom) and a king (practical action based on wisdom) encapsulated the Confucian understanding that a person can ultimately only achieve real civilized self-cultivation in the company of other men and women. Long ago Kongzi (2003, 4:25) had taught that virtue loves company, and Zhu Xi strove to give voice to this notion of an expansive virtue seeking to find a home in the cosmos.

The Architectonic Setting of Zhu Xi’s Cosmology Part of the attraction of Zhu Xi’s philosophical achievement is simply its comprehensive scope and depth. As we shall see, sometimes size does matter to the scope, depth, range, and inclusiveness of vision. First, Zhu Xi, as already noted, was an extremely prolific author. The modern critical collected edition of his works runs to twenty-seven dense volumes. Second, there is hardly a topic, genre, philosophical, ritual or historical concern within the whole range of traditional Chinese culture that Zhu Xi did not address in one fashion or another. He wrote critical memorials to the throne about current political concerns of the day, community compacts to improve local living conditions and massive commentaries on the whole range of the Confucian canon, letters to colleagues and students, poetry and much, much more. Third, along with the size of textual output there was an equally productive attempt to state as clearly as possible the philosophical underpinnings of the Confucian Way as Zhu Xi understood it. One of Zhu’s greatest strengths was his all-encompassing cultural, historical, and philosophical vision of the tradition of the Confucian masters from the high sages of antiquity through the classical Zhou philosophers down to his beloved Northern Song teachers. The massive edifice of Zhu’s philosophic achievement represented Zhu’s own existential struggle to discern the true teachings of the Confucian tradition. Rather like Kant, Zhu actually developed the philosophy that made him famous after a profound intellectual struggle in his late 30s and early 40s. Although he was already a productive and famous scholar in his 20s and 30s, it was through a series of debates and dialogues with his friends that Zhu Xi realized that all was not well with his understanding of the teachings of the Northern Song masters, especially the profound thought of scholars such as Shao Yong [Shao Yung] (1011–1077), Zhou Dunyi [Chou Tun-i] (1017–1073), Zhang Zai [Chang Tsai] (1020–1077), Cheng Hao [Ch’eng Hao] (1032–1085), and Cheng Yi [Cheng I] (1033–1107). By his early

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40s Zhu Xi had achieved his great intellectual breakthrough; and the rest, as they say, is history. In his 50s and 60s he then attracted more and more students, and it is in the dialogues with and letters to his friends and students in the last two decades of his life that we find the most careful exposition of his philosophical vision. Much of the power of Zhu’s philosophy comes from its scope and its fundamental organizational patterns. The basic pattern of his complicated architectonic is schematically presented in Fig. 1. As the chart demonstrates, Zhu, when he was presenting his work in a systematic fashion, often organized his discourse around four major motifs. These are (1) the formal, (2) the dynamic, (3) the unifying, and

Li as principle, pattern, order matter-energy

Xing

Dao

Qi

as vital force,

as nature, dispositions, tendencies Qing as emotion, desire, passion Shen

as the Way

as spirit, function of

feeling

Goal of SelfActualization as forms of Centrality and Harmony

Unifying Traits:

Xin

as mind-heart unifying human nature/xing and emotion/qing

Yi

change/transformation as xin/mind-heart

Taiji

as Supreme Ultimate/Polarity

Realization of the goal of Self-Actualization/cheng

as harmony/he

and centrality/zhong

Fig. 1 Architectonic of Form, Dynamics, Unification and Goal

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(4) the goal or end of the process of self-actualization. While not completely atypical of Confucian scholars, such attention to a detailed presentation of the architectonic of the entire vision is still relatively rare within the Confucian tradition. For instance, within the classical period of Confucian thought, Xunzi is another example of a comprehensive, articulate and extremely orderly thinker—though this would not have been comforting to Zhu Xi because Xunzi was not considered to be part of the orthodox teaching of the Confucian sages owing to his quarrels with the second sage, Mengzi—although Zhu acknowledged that Xunzi was a brilliant scholar. Regardless of the relatively non-assertive or unorganized style favored by many Confucian teachers, Zhu Xi did have a comprehensive plan for organizing the vast amount of traditional material that came to him from the classical canonical sources as well as from the teachings of the Northern Song reformers and revivalists who he revered as the band of scholars that had restored the true Confucian teachings in the Song dynasty. Mou Zongzan [Mou Tsung-san] (1909–1995), a great modern Confucian scholar, has stated that the true goal of all of these Song Confucian thinkers was to articulate a comprehensive ‘moral metaphysics’. By this Mou meant that all Confucian thought is concerned with moral values as well as the analysis of the structure of the cosmos—you can never have a true Confucian metaphysical vision without a commitment to humane moral values.

Formal Trait The first architectonic trait of Zhu’s mature system is the most characteristic, namely, the formal aspect of all the myriad things and events of the cosmos. As can be seen more graphically in Chart 1, Zhu Xi most often worked analytically on two levels, the one abstract and the other in the decidedly human realm of moral anthropology. Borrowing from Cheng Yi especially, Zhu made use of the concept of li or principle, norm, pattern, or order—the configuring trait of the cosmos and all of the myriad things and events that make up the Dao. This formal trait of his system was most important to him, and also the most controversial among the later debates about the merits of Zhu’s approach. Principle li ( ) serves as the normative trait that serves to distinguish one thing or event from other things and events. Each of the myriad things and events has its own defining principle, just as the Supreme Ultimate/Polarity serves as the defining principle for the Dao itself. One of Zhu’s favorite examples is to point out that tian ( ) or heaven endows each person with xing ( ) or nature, or the characteristic dispositions that define what the human person ought to become. It is important to remember that principle is more than just a name within a semantic matrix of referential meaning. Principle also serves to define not just the ‘natural’ dispositions of the person but also what the person ought to become. The best way to ) or what define principle according to Zhu was to recognize that it is dangran ( ought to be—with the distinct axiological flavor of all of Zhu’s teachings based on the conviction that whatness and oughtness must and can be discussed together in an intelligible fashion. Master Zhu holds that ‘is’ and ‘ought’ actually do have an organic unity; it is the task of the scholar to comprehend this unity of is and ought

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and then to act upon this axiological insight. Principle can also be defined in terms ) or the raison d’ˆetre, the autotelic pattern or disposition of any of souyiran ( entity. Zhu, no doubt in a practical teaching mode, noted that the principle or nature of a bamboo was to be both round and straight (Qian 1971, 1:252). The discussion of the principle of a bamboo illustrates a common way in which Zhu writes and speaks of li ( ) via the metaphor of a boundary. All the things and events of the world have boundaries and it is these boundaries that help us define what they are as individual entities. Moreover, boundaries can be both physical and moral; a bamboo can be physically straight and tall and a resolute scholar can be morally upright in the discharge of her social obligations. While Zhu stoutly maintained that all things, including things like writing brushes and rice cookers, have their distinctive principles, it is only in human beings that principle becomes the principle of living creativity or generativity such that human beings can become accomplished sages. Therefore, for a person to become fully human is for that person to become fully ren ( ) or humane or benevolent. For a person, principle manifests in more than just physical boundaries; principle also designates both the subjective and inter-subjective relationships that define the ethical, ritual, and social lives of human beings. For Master Zhu, principle not only defines the boundaries, the ‘whatness’ or pattern of any entity, but also describes the method, or how the person goes about the task of moral self-cultivation. To be human is to make harmonious, elegant, intelligent, and ultimately moral decisions.

Dynamic Trait The second trait I have called configurational, or more commonly, the dynamic element of the cosmos. The terminology of configurating energy is taken from Manfred Porkert’s (1971) fascinating discussion of the role of qi ( [ch’i]) in the philosophical foundations of Chinese medicine. Qi, which is Zhu’s favorite choice for this configurating vital energy, is such a dynamic field of activity that is very hard to define because of its unceasing protean power of transformation. No one thing or event, nor any collection of things and events, can ever exhaust its power to assume novel configurations in conjunction with principle as a norm or pattern. Qi represents the vital, dynamic and even impulsive side of nature that takes on boundaries via the mediation of li or principle, pattern, order, or coherence. As Prokert is careful to point out, we would be mistaken to think of qi as merely physical; rather, it is better to think of it as the active, energetic or dynamic trait of all things, events, or persons. Joseph Needham (1956, Vol. 2) has also pointed out that it does no good to try to understand qi by the Western contrast of matter and spirit; qi can cheerfully be defined as both the most spiritual aspects of the cosmos and as the most turbid physical elements equally well. Another aspect of the configurating, dynamic vital force of qi is found in, for instance, human qing ( ) or the emotions, desire, or passions. The dynamics of a person’s emotional life has a lot to do with whether one becomes a good or failed ethical agent, from Zhu’s perspective. However, it is very important to remember

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that qi is never per se a source of evil, even though it can provide the unanticipated opportunity for completely misguided actions. People are all too often moved by ill-considered emotions. Hence Zhu never tired of explaining that the emotional life, the dynamic side of human life needed very careful cultivation into good habits within the mind-heart. It is crucial to understand that everything whatsoever that is, is qi. If there ever was a truly vague metaphysical category, qi is it; and it simply eludes any elegant or straightforward translation into English as it indicates both energy and movement and the stability or material nature of things and events. There are probably as many translations of qi as there are scholars of Chinese philosophy, including renderings such as energy, vital force, material force, ether, configured energy or matter-energy. A rock is qi as much as the most ethereal spirit. However, it does not appear to have been a contested categorial term in Zhu’s thought, even though everyone recognizes its critical role in the development of Chinese philosophy. It was, for instance, the critical concept for Zhang Zai, and Zhu was deeply indebted to Zhang for his own reflections on qi. Qi has a role as an agent because it takes shapes and also changes what shape it has and becomes something new. Nothing departs from qi: there is simply nothing that is greater or more expansive or dynamic than the vital force of qi. And while Zhu is always focused on li as the principle or coherent pattern of the vital force that defines what a person is, Zhu never wavers from stating that we can never, ever or anywhere separate principle or li from vital force or qi. “You cannot say that today there is li and that tomorrow there is qi. Following the distinction of before and after, it is really like the myriad mountains and rivers of the world flowing down. Finally, li is like this [i.e., the always fluid qi]” (Zhu Xi [Li Qingde] 1973, 1: 144). Zhang Dainian has a wonderful quote from an early Song source that states, “Dimension and duration produced original qi, which has shoreline” and slightly later quotes “Heaven and earth are that which sprout forth from original qi and that which the myriad things come from” (Zhang 2002, 50–51, 53). As David Hall and Roger Ames (1987, 1995, 1998) would say, qi is the vast field of dynamic force in which the myriad things and events become focal points, the shorelines of a vast and dynamic sea of ever-changing creativity wherein the particular objects and events emerge out of the constant flow of energetic force as qi.

Unifying Trait The third organizing trait is the unifying configuration of the formal and dynamic traits. One of the things that many scholars have noticed about the Confucian tradition is the importance of relationships, beginning with the family and extending in Song thought to include a connection between humanity and the whole cosmos. Zhang Zai’s great Western Inscription is taken as the anthem for the Song understanding of the unity of heaven, earth, and humanity. Zhang wrote in the famous opening section “Therefore that which fills the universe I regard as my body and that which directs the universe I consider as my nature. All people are my brothers and sisters, and all things are my companions” (Zhu & Lü, 1967, 76–77). The emphasis

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on the critical role of the family would surprise no one, but Zhang extends this far beyond the boundaries of the family to encompass the whole universe. This is a grand teaching about relationality. Confucian philosophers are always and everywhere concerned about how things relate; this is so much the fact that often, and with some reason, Confucianism is seen as simply a complicated form of social ethics. Yet in Zhu’s case, he tries to explain the philosophical hardware of the ethical software, to use a modern analogy. Zhu Xi also honored Zhang Zai as providing him with one of the key philosophic insights that led to his philosophical breakthrough in his late 30s. This was Zhang’s teaching about the mind-heart/xin ( ) unifying the nature and emotions, passions or feelings. “The mind[-heart] commands and unites man’s nature and feelings” (Chen Chun, 1986, 60). Or in more abstract terms, the mind-heart represents the Supreme Ultimate/Polarity as the unification of the principle and qi and hence to the configuration of all the objects and events of the universe. Chen Chun, one of Zhu’s most faithful and philosophically astute disciples, wrote “Only when principle [li] and material force [qi] are combined can there be mind[-heart]” (Ibid., 56). Being a Confucian scholar, Zhu was, of course, most interested in how this worked itself out in terms of the self-cultivation of the human person. The locus of this self-cultivation was, again of course, the mind-heart in Zhu’s architectonic of form, dynamics, and unification—as the Supreme Ultimate/Polarity unifies principle and qi. Along with the conceptual elegance of Zhu Xi’s reorganization of the philosophical insights of his Song masters was his concomitant recognition that the unification and relational process of the mind-heart was not an easy one. The reason for this is that although Zhu held that while the mind-heart’s true perceptivity was really ) or the principle of heaven, the active xin ( ) can potentially one with tianli ( move unpredictably in two different directions. It can become dependent on the selfishness of the uncultivated human passions dominated by inordinate self-interest, or it can return to its truly correct appropriation of human nature as the principle decreed for it by tian ( ). Or as Chen Chun put it, “That the mind[-heart] is lively is made possible by the material force [qi]” (Ibid., 58). Zhu never underestimated how difficult this task was and that is why he developed such a complicated and exhaustive method for the ethical cultivation of xin. At the base of Zhu’s concept of mind-heart, and at the core of his whole philosophy, is the concern for the primal appetite for ethical choice. This is the concern of a cultivated person to create a fiduciary community for humane flourishing for all the creatures of the universe. Whatever else one can say about Zhu’s philosophy, it does have a grand scope and scale in terms of its aspirations for humane self-cultivation of the mind-heart. Chen Chun remarked “The capacity of the mind[-heart] is extremely large. None of the ten thousand principles is not embraced, and none of the ten thousand events not commanded. The ancients often said that in one’s learning one wants to be extensive” (Ibid., 59). Zhu often attempted to put these pedagogical principles into practice in the various schools he founded over his long career as a scholar, official and educator. One more caveat about Zhu’s architectonic: it is one that proclaims a ceaseless production or creativity in the universe. Chen Chun says at the end of his discussion of the mind-heart “Change is the transformation of yin and yang, involving both

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principle and material force [qi]” (Ibid., p. 61). According to Chen’s explanation of the Dao, and he is following Zhang Zai’s lead at this point, even principle is not something dead, but rather a goal, a lure for the ceaseless dynamic configuration of the objects and events of the universe. Obviously principle is not something dead just lying there. As the material force of the One Origin spreads out, it produces man and things. There are thus the lines and veins, as it were. They are the way followed by man and things. That is what it is when one traces the source of the creative process. (Ibid., 106)

In terms of the Supreme Ultimate/Polarity as the highest form of principle, Chen teaches “This simply means that although principle has no shape or appearance, spatial restriction, or physical form, it is the basis and axis of all transformation” (Ibid., 117). As the Classic of Changes taught so long ago, the very nature of the Dao is ceaseless generativity, the constant and unending production and reproduction of the objects and events of the universe. “The great virtue of Heaven and Earth is called ‘generation’ ” (The Classic of Changes, 77).

Zhi: Knowledge, Discernment, and Wisdom Zhang Dainain (2002) provides an excellent summary of the development of the notion of zhi ( or ) as both knowledge and wisdom. He begins his summary by stating that “Chinese philosophers were not concerned with how knowledge is acquired but rather with what knowledge should be acquired and what ought to be the object of knowledge and research” (Zhang 2000, 421). While I question whether it is entirely true that Chinese philosophers were not concerned with the question of how knowledge is to be acquired, one can certainly agree with the second part of Zhang’s statement. Among the many motifs within the powerful and passionate concern for self-cultivation among the various emerging Confucian philosophic traditions was a strong desire to find ways to polish the virtue of zhi, even if epistemology was never an overriding Confucian pastime. As Zhang himself notes while quoting Xunxi (ca. 310-210 BCE) on the rectification of terms, Xunzi made the following distinction between knowledge and wisdom. “That in a person by which they know is called knowledge (zhi ). That knowledge which matches reality is ), Master Xun writes called wisdom” (Ibid., 425). In chapter 22 of the Xunzi ( “To be able to know is the nature of human beings; what can be known are the principles of things” (Ibid). For Zhu Xi, building on his interpretation of the classical sources and the contemporary teachings of the Northern Song masters, the key precept for finding a knowledge that can become wisdom is located in the complicated task of gewu ) or ‘investigating things’, a key if enigmatic concept found in the Great ( Learning. Because it is so important to Zhu’s understanding of the cultivation of knowledge, I will quote the famous (and extremely controversial) appended passage on gewu in Zhu’s commentary on the fifth section of the Great Learning in its entirety. The controversy was whether someone would dare to add text to a classical text as through he actually knew that something needed to be added—this would be

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tantamount to playing the role of a sage. To comment was one thing, but to add to an established classic was a daring act for Zhu Xi. The above fifth chapter [of the Great Learning] of the commentary explains the meaning of the investigation of things and extensions of knowledge, which is now lost. I have ventured to take the views of Master Cheng Yi and supplement them as follows: The meaning of the expression ‘the perfection of knowledge depends on the investigation of things’ is this: in order to further my knowledge, I have to go to things and appropriate their principles, for the intelligent mind-heart of human beings is certainly formed to know, and there is no single thing in the world which does not possess principle. It is only because all principles are not appropriated that a person’s knowledge is incomplete. For this reason, the first step in the education of the adult is to instruct the student, in regard to all things in the world, to proceed from what knowledge the person has to their principles, and investigate further until he or she reaches the limit. After exerting him/herself in this way for a long time, the student will one day achieve a wide and far-reaching penetration. Then the qualities of all things, whether internal or external, refined or coarse, will be apprehended, and the mind-heart, in its total substance and great functions, will be perfectly intelligent. This is called the investigation of things. This is called the perfection of knowledge. (For an alternative translation see Chan and Wing-tsit 1963, 89).

Along with the debate on the philosophic position outlined in Zhu’s commentary, there was also the audacious fact that Zhu Xi, albeit relying on the teachings of Cheng Yi, had actually added to the text of a classic—which is usually only the prerogative of a sage, though Zhu Xi would never have claimed that he or even Cheng Yi was an actual sage. Zhang Dainian’s comment on the passage is instructive. “In this passage the knowing of the mind is contrasted with the principles of things known. ‘Knowing’ here is taken to be the ability to know” (Zhang 2002, 429). One of Zhu’s major claims is that wisdom is based on our ability to know the principles of things and events, and our ability to know resides in the mind-heart’s capacity to engage the world in its full cognitive, affective, and ethical manifestations. This was such an important topic that Zhu and Lü devoted the third chapter of Reflections on Things at Hand to a discussion of the nature and practice of the “investigation of things.” (Chu and Lü 1967, 88–122). Zhu Xi offers the following two examples of how we can understand li in Bruce’s translation of two sections from juan ( ) chapter 46 of the famous anthology, Zhuzi [The Complete Works of Master Zhu]). quanshu ( A principle [li] is invisible; it is only in actions and speech that right and wrong are perceived. The more minutely we investigate and understand it, the more exquisitely fine the principle appears. When the ancients [the ancient sages] spoke of “investigating things” and “perfecting knowledge,” they mean no more than we should make a beginning at this point. Law is like a piece of thread with its strands, or like this bamboo basket. Point to its rows of bamboo splints, the Philosopher [Zhu Xi] said, One strip goes this way; and pointing to another strip, Another strip goes that way. It is also like the grain of bamboo: on the straight it is of one kind, on the transverse it is of another kind. So the mind[-heart xin ( ) possesses numerous principles. (Zhu Xi [Chu Hsi] 1973, 290–291)

The beginning of the process derives from what Zhu calls thought. In one of his dialogues with his disciple Defu, Zhu reminds his student that learning without reflective thought is useless because without thought one cannot extend the mindheart’s apprehension of the principles of things and events. As Zhu comments on

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Defu’s question, he points out that without thought, what use would the words, i.e, the canonical texts, of the sages be to the student? The rhetorical implication is that the words would then be useless. Or later in answering Miu Zihui’s question about zhi as the virtue of discerning wisdom, Zhu suggested the following definition of the defining characteristics of zhi. “The ruling traits of wisdom are to be found in collecting and discriminating; and in having intelligent awareness without action as the image of winter [wisdom’s season]” (ZZQS juan 48, 1052). Zhu, following ancient folk wisdom, held that winter was the time of wisdom, of reflection, of the ingathering of the bounty of all the other seasons of the years. Typically in Chinese philosophy, each one of the four virtues is assigned a correlated season for its symbolic reference or expression. For wisdom it is winter. The reason for this is based ultimately on the pan-Chinese theories of the operation of the yin-yang forces (Graham 1986). For instance, ren or humaneness and yi ( ) as righteousness are the correlates of the originating yin powers of the growing seasons of spring and summer whereas autumn and winter are taken to represent li ( ) or ritual action, and zhi as knowledge or wisdom as the times of harvesting and storing up what is grown during spring and summer. Humaneness and righteousness symbolize action moving outward; whereas ritual and knowledge revert inward, until this inward motion reaches is ultimate yin state in the cold storage of deep winter. But as anyone would know, when yin reaches its conclusion, yang yet again energetically emerges, like plants sprout again in the spring after a long, hard winter. As Zhu says, the wisdom of winter then hands over all that has been accumulated to the other three virtues for them so that the ingathering of winter is, in some ways, the silent precursor to the abundance of spring and summer and then autumn yet again (see ZZQS juan 48, 1048–1049). In the same chapter of the Complete Works, Master Zhu has a long section in which he tries to explain how and why the examination of things is, at least for a substantial part, an empirical process of human responsiveness to the world around us. He begins by asserting that the world surrounding us is an all-embracing aspect of the Supreme Ultimate/Polarity (to which we will later return); it is so vast and pure that no perfect definition of it is possible. But there are certain principles within ) or Supreme Ultimate/Polarity, such as the four virtues, which allow the taiji ( us to comprehend its true nature. If there were no such principles as manifesting marks of the taiji, the whole edifice would be like, Zhu writes, a steel-yard without inscriptions such that ordinary people would be unable to measure their way in the world. This was why Mengzi taught about the four seeds of virtue as the characteristic inscriptions of the mind-heart, marking the very mind-heart of humanity with the four seeds of virtue, including wisdom. Expanding out from the mind-heart, Zhu teaches that all the principles of the myriad things have their manifesting marks that can be observed by the cognitive sensibility of the mind-heart. It is from the observations of these outward manifestations or marks of things and events that we can discern their inward principles. This joining of inner and outer is a pivot of the dynamic world of things and events. “The pivot of the myriad transformations resides in the conjunction of humaneness (ren) and wisdom (zhi). The revolutions of this principle such as the turning of seasons is never exhausted and is united without any separation” (ZZQS juan 48, 1052).

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Ultimately Zhu Xi is a realist about the ability of the mind-heart to respond cognitively to the dynamic world of the myriad things and events and to comprehend their principles of order and coherence. Moreover, while never discounting the role of inner cultivation of the mind-heart, as we shall see, Zhu also never doubted for a moment that human beings live in a complex, dynamic world of real objects and events that need to be carefully attended to in order to realize true wisdom as one of the cardinal Confucian virtues. This is an important point to remember, because not all Confucian philosophers would agree with Zhu Xi’s admonition to pay attention to the world beyond the mind-heart; this is an external world of principle as surely as the principles to be found in the mind-heart itself. True wisdom is learning how to pay attention to all the principles of the world, both inner and outer, as Zhu believed Cheng Yi taught in the famous supplementary commentary to the Great Learning. Like a well-marked steel-yard (the traditional form of a Chinese measuring instrument), Zhu’s wisdom was a balanced affair. Master Zhu’s comprehensive approach to the role of knowledge and wisdom within a larger matrix of an extremely complex architectonic or axiology of meaning either entranced or repelled later generations of East Asian Confucians.

The Goal of Self-Actualization: Self-Actualization in Harmony and Centrality Zhu Xi is always clear that study for study’s sake is not the final end of true reflection for the student of the way. Rather, the true seeking of the way has a goal, and in this sense Zhu’s vision has a strong autotelic aim that seeks for the perfection of the axiological virtues of Confucian self-cultivation. The virtues, of course, are the five classical worthy dispositions, the central one being ren ( ) or humaneness or benevolence. Chen Chun provides this summary of Zhu’s teaching about ren. . . .. But why should humanity [ren] be the leader of all virtues and monopolize the perfect character of the mind[-heart]? The reason is that the Principle of Heaven embodied in the human mind is totally humanity. That principle is always active, always producing and reproducing without cease. Taken totally, it is called humanity, but righteousness, propriety, and wisdom are included in it. Taken by itself, as soon as there is slightest selfish human desire mixed in it, the Principle of Heaven is cut off and dead, and it can no longer be called humanity. . ... The principle of humanity is vast, refined, and subtle. Why is its application limited to love, and what is the beginning of its manifestation the feeling of commiseration? Answer: Humanity is the totality of the mind’s principles of production. . .. Therefore humanity is the root of love, commiseration the sprout of the root, and love the sprout of reaching its maturity and completion. Looking at it this way, we can easily see the vital connection between humanity as the principle of love and love as the function of humanity. (Chen, 1986, 70–71)

In commenting on the passage from Cheng Yi, Zhu Xi explains how a person moves from the reflection on things at hand (that is to say, the mundane and simple things of the world) until the person can actually embody the virtue of ren or humanity as defined by Chen Chun above.

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[Cheng Yi] QUESTION: What is meant by reflection on things at hand? ANSWER: To extend on the basis of similarity in kind. [Zhu Xi comments]: This is well said. We must not skip over steps and aim too far, nor should we stray to the right or left. We must proceed from what we understand in what is near to us and move from there. . . . For example, if one understands how to be affectionate to his parents, he will extend this feeling, on the basis of similarity in kind, to be humane to all people, for being humane to people and being affectionate to parents are similar in kind. When he understands how to be humane to people, he will extend this feeling, and on the basis of similarity in kind, to loving all things, for being humane to all people and loving all things are similar in kind. (Chu, 1967, 94)

Ultimately, Zhu’s sense of where wisdom leads is to authentic humane virtue and an extension of this expansive moral sentiment to the limits of the world. It is a vision of wisdom that leads to humane flourishing for all human beings and indeed the whole cosmos. It is a harmony (he ) that is balanced (zhong ) through the task of self-actualization (cheng ). This is a path with steps along the way, but the final goal is the ability to extend humaneness (ren ) to all people and things based on the analogy that we form one body with the cosmos. This is ultimately the goal of wisdom as seeking harmony with the cosmos and the end of a life that begins the task of seeking wisdom by reflection on things near at hand, but a process that does not end until this reflection of humaneness is extended to the whole universe. It is a grand vision, but anything less would not be true wisdom according to Master Zhu: finally wisdom is the fusion of knowledge and action that leads the person to become a sage, however rare and difficult this goal might be. Yet such sage wisdom is the patrimony of all human beings.

References Berthrong, John H. 1994. All under Heaven: Transforming paradigms in Confucian-Christian dialogue. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press. —— 1998a. Concerning creativity: A comparison of Chu Hsi, Whitehead, and Neville. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. —— 1998b. Transformations of the Confucian way. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. —— and Evelyn Nagai Berthrong. 2000. Confucianism: A short introduction. Oxford: Oneworld Publications. Chan, Wing-tsit. 1963. A source book in Chinese philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chen, Chun (1159–1223). 1986. Neo-Confucian terms explained (The Pei-hsi tzu-i) by Ch’en Ch’un (1159–1223). Translated and edited by Wing-tsit Chan. New York: Columbia University Press. Ching, Julia. 2000. The religious thought of Chu Hsi. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Chu Hsi [Zhu Xi]. 1973. The philosophy of human nature. Trans. By J. Percy Bruce. London: Probsthain & Co., 1922; New York: AMS Press Edition. —— and Lü Tsu-ch’ien. 1967. Reflections on things at hand: The Neo-Confucian anthology. Trans. by Wing-tsit Chan. New York: Columbia University Press. —— 1991. Chu Hsi’s family rituals: A twelfth-century Chinese manual for the performance of cappings, weddings, funerals, and ancestral rites. Trans. and ed. by Patricia Buckley Ebrey. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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—— 2002. Introduction to the study of the classic of changes (I-hseh ch’i-ming). Translated by Joseph Adler. New York: Global Scholarly Publications. Bilingual Edition. The Classic of Changes: I Ching (Yijing). 1994. The Classic of Changes: I Ching. As interpreted by Wang Bi (226–249) and translated by Richard John Lynn. New York: Columbia University Press. Confucius [Kongizi]. 2003. Analects: with selections from traditional commentaries. Translated by Edward Slingerland. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. De Bary, Wm. Theodore. 1998. Asian values and human rights: A Confucian communitarian perspective. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. de Bary, Wm. Theodore, Irene Bloom, and Richard Lufrano, eds. 1999–2000. Sources of chinese tradition. 2 Vols. Second Edition. New York: Columbia University Press. Gardner, Daniel K. 1986. Chu Hsi and the Ta-hsüeh: Neo-Confucian reflection on the Confucian Canon. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. —— trans. 1990. Learning to be a sage: Selections from the conversations of Master Chu, arranged topically. Berkeley: University of California Press. —— 2003. Zhu Xi’s reading of the analects: Canon, commentary, and the classical tradition. New York: Columbia University Press. Graham, A. C. 1986. Yin-yang and the nature of correlative thinking. Singapore: The Institute of East Asian Philosophy. Hall, David L. and Roger T. Ames. 1987. Thinking through Confucius. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. —— 1995 Anticipating China: Thinking through the narratives of Chinese and Western culture. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. —— 1998. Thinking from the Han: Self, truth, and transcendence in Chinese and Western culture. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Kim, Yung Sik. 2000. The natural philosophy of Chu Hsi, 1130–1200. Philadephia, PA: Memoirs of the American Philosophic Society. Li Qingde (fl. 1263), ed. 1973. Zhuzi yulei dajuan [The Dialogues of Master Zhu]. 8 vols. Tokyo: n.p. Japanese Edition of 1668. Li Quangdi (1642–1718), ed. 1713. Zhizi quanshu (ZZQS) [The Complete Writings of Master Zhu]. 2 Vols. Taipei: Guangxue she yinshequan; 1977 edition. Munro, Donald J. 1988. Images of human nature: A sung portrait. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Needham, Joseph. 1954 –. Science and civilisation in China. 8 Vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Porkert, Manfred. 1974. The theoretical foundations of Chinese Medicine: Systems of correspondence. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Porkert, Manfred and Christian Ullmann. 1988. Chinese Medicine. Translated by Mark Howson. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. Qian Mu. 1971. Zhuzi xin xuean [A New Study of Master Zhu]. 5 vols. Taipei, Taiwan: Sanmin shuju. Tillman, Hoy Cleveland. 1992. Confucian discourse and Chu Hsi’s ascendancy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Yao, Xinzhong. 2000. An introduction to Confucianism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zhang, Dainian. 2002. Key concepts in Chinese philosophy. Translated and edited by Edmund Ryden. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Part II

Teaching for Wisdom as Personal Transformation

Wisdom and Learning to Be Wise in Chinese Mahayana Buddhism Vincent Shen

Introduction Wisdom is an essential concern of Buddhism, and “education” in the Buddhist sense should be understood as a process of attaining wisdom or becoming wise—in getting oneself enlightened and ridding oneself of the original ignorance. The teaching of and about wisdom should be considered as part of this process. Since the attainment of wisdom is for Buddhism not a remote possibility but rather a spiritual reality, as evidenced by Buddha himself and so many other bodhisattvas, the answer to questions such as whether or not wisdom is possible is indubitably “yes”. Also, as the final end of Buddhist teaching is to attain enlightenment and to get rid of the original ignorance, the question as to whether wisdom could be taught is also definitively “yes”. Therefore, instead of questioning whether it is possible to teach wisdom, what we should ask here is rather the nature of the Buddhist wisdom and the Buddhist pedagogical process of attaining it. In this chapter I’ll deal with the concept of “wisdom” in three schools of (Three Treatises School), Chinese Mahayana Buddhism: the Sanlun Zong (Conscious-Only School) and the Chan Zong (Chan the Weishi Zong School), which have appeared successively in the history of Chinese Buddhism. We know that Mahayana Buddhism has two major schools in its Indian tradition: M¯adhyamika and Yog¯ac¯ara. They must have contained in themselves such an original generosity to go outside of themselves and the capacity to recontextualize themselves in Chinese culture and become Chinese Mahayana Buddhism. After their spreading and recontextualization in China, the Sanlun School could be seen as the Chinese development of M¯adhyamika, whereas the Weishi School should be seen as Yog¯ac¯ara in its Chinese version. As to the Chan School, which later in its Japanese version was called “Zen”, it should be seen as a properly Chinese Mahayana Buddhism. For reasons of space, we will leave other Chinese Mahayana , which was thus named Buddhist Schools undiscussed, such as Tiantai Zong

Vincent Shen University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

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because of its being built on the Mt. Tiantai by Master Zhiyi (538–597), and Huayan , founded by Fazang (643–712) and was thus named because of its Zong Avatamsaka Sutra, or The Flower Splendor focusing on the Huayan Jing( Scripture). In Chinese Mahayana Buddhism, the mostly used term for “wisdom” is the Chiof the Sanskrit word “praj˜na¯ ”. In its Indian nese phonetic translation “bore” tradition, the term “praj˜na¯ ” means knowledge as well as wisdom, perfect wisdom as well as imperfect wisdom; whereas in Chinese Mahayana Buddhism, “praj˜na¯ ” is taken to mean only perfect wisdom. It is in this sense that when Xuanzang (596–664), who had launched the biggest project of translation of the Buddhist Scriptures in Chinese intellectual history, set up a system of rules for translation, he showed a particular respect for this term in establishing the wu bu fan (five categories of terms not to be translated), of which the fifth concerns itself with the term praj˜na¯ . There, it is said, “the use of the Sanskrit term ‘praj˜na¯ ’ shows (wisdom) turns out to be respect, whereas the use of the Chinese term zhihui ).1 Nevertheless, in this chapter, we still have to superficial”( (wisdom) to render the meaning of praj˜na¯ . This is espeuse the term zhihui (transformation of cially the case in Weishi’s concept of zhuanshi dezhi (transformation consciousness to obtain wisdom) or zhuanshi chengzhi of consciousness into wisdom). For the Weishi School, wisdom is based on the marvellous being of the Alaya-consciousness (Alya-vij˜na¯ na). But, for the Sanlun School, praj˜na¯ would mean the attainment of and the marvellous function of emptiness. In Chan Buddhism, praj˜na¯ would mean the immediate self-realization of the Buddhahood in the details of everyday life. One of the major focuses of this chapter is to relate the concept of wisdom (and various ways to learn to be wise) to the relation between the mind (or consciousness) and the multiple others in which it finds itself. My basic idea, to be developed in the following sections, is that both M¯adhyamika and Yog¯ac¯ara in their Indian traditions keep a certain dimension of the other. For example, Yog¯ac¯ara pays respect to the “textual other” and the “ethical other”, in the sense that wisdom is to be acquired by appropriating the meaning of the Scriptures; and the meaning of life thus acquired is to be put into practice with an unconditional generosity towards multiple others, that is, all sentient beings, without even expecting a return from them. For the M¯adhyamika, the dimension of the other becomes that which lies always beyond, in denying or making empty that which one achieves in negative dialectics: to render empty in order to show the nonsubstantial character of the Ultimate Reality. The Middle Path, which is the way wisdom or praj˜na¯ takes, consists in understanding the interdependent causation in the sense of non-substantiality. After destroying any dualistic situation in the process of negative dialectics, even the reality of interdependent causation should be denied. Unfortunately, the dimension of the other gradually got lost in Chinese Mahayana Buddhism, through Sanlun and Weishi, finally to be radically abandoned in absolute immanentism without any necessity to refer to the other—in Chan Buddhism.

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Wisdom and the Middle Path in the Sanlun School The Sanlun School, which is historically the earliest among the three schools I’m dealing with here in this chapter, is named as such by the fact that it bases itself on three important Buddhist treatises: N¯ag¯arjuna’s Madhyamika-´ ¯ s astra ¯ (or Treatise on the Middle Doctrine), Dvada´ ¯ s anikaya-´ ¯ s a¯ stra (or Zhongguanlun Twelve Gates Treatise) and N¯ag¯arjuna’s disciple, Shi’ermenlun ¯ ´ One Hundred Verses Treatise). All these Aryadeva’s Sata-´ s astra ¯ (or Bailun three treatises, translated into Chinese by Kum¯araj¯ıva (344–413), belong to the Indian M¯adhyamika School, which puts its emphasis on praj˜na¯ and sees wisdom in emptiness. It was introduced and transmitted to China through Kum¯araj¯ıva and (352–436) and especially Sengzhao his Chinese disciples, such as Sengrui (383–414). Sengzhao played the most important role in transforming it into Chinese Mahayana Buddhist discourse before its fuller development and system(549–623). Sengzhao appropriated Daoist language as atization by Jizang used in the Laozi, the Zhuangzi and that of the neo-Daoists2 to re-interpret and transform Indian Buddhist discourse into elegant Chinese Buddhist discourse. On (emptiness), or the other hand, he also used the Buddhist concept of kong (unreal), to solve the Neo-Daoist its related Chinese term such as buzheng (being) and wu (non-being), by saying that philosophical problems of yu both yu and wu were buzheng (unreal) therefore kong (empty), and bringing the geyi Buddhism of his time back to the properly Buddhist discourse of kong (emptiness). ´ unyat¯a or kong (emptiness) in Chinese could have many The Buddhist term S¯ meanings. I would suggest that philosophically we discern three major meanings in it: (emptiness) means that all things come First, on the ontological level, kong and go by interdependent causation and therefore are without any self-nature or any substance of their own. Second, on the spiritual level, it means that the spiritual achievement of a sage consists in total freedom, attaching himself neither to being nor to non being, neither to dualism nor to non-dualism, even not to the idea of kong (emptiness), nor any form of spiritual achievement, no matter how high and deep it is. (emptiness) means that all words we use Third, on the linguistic level, kong are but artificially constructed, without any fixed correspondence or reference to the reality. Although Indian Buddhism puts more emphasis on the ontological and the linguistic senses of emptiness, generally speaking, Chinese Mahay¯ana Buddhism mostly emphasizes the spiritual sense of emptiness. For example, in the Buzhengkong (On the Emptiness of the Unreal), Sengzhao himself would interpret lun kong (emptiness) in appropriating Daoist philosophy, as the spiritual achievement of a sage, even if we can also find other meanings of the term “emptiness” in it. For example, we read:

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The sage moves within the thousand transformations but does not change, and travels on ten thousand paths of delusion but always goes through. This is so because he leaves the empty self-nature of things as it is and does not employ the term “emptiness” to make things empty. (TSD 45: 152–153, Wing-tsit Chan: 356; my corrections in bold)

This spiritual achievement of a sage who has no attachment to the realm of either being or non-being, and no attachment to his own spiritual achievement whatsoever, belongs to the marvellous function of his mind/heart, which on the one hand is non-substantial and empty, yet on the other hand is marvellous in its function and self-transcending. Because of this, both the Dao, the Ultimate Reality, and the Sage are not far away from us but can be realised all of a sudden at the moment of enlightenment. “Things when touched become real . . . Man when enlightened becomes marvellous” (TSD 45: 152–153; my translation). The idea that a marvellously enlightened Mind renders reality to all things touched upon by it, is a very powerful idea and very influential to other later Chinese Mahayana Schools, especially Chan’s understanding of the Mind. In his Prajñ¯a as non-knowing, Sengzhao distinguishes wisdom from common knowledge. Knowledge is epistemologically structured by the “knowing subject– object known” relation and therefore relative and limited to a particular object, and the content of knowledge is expressed through logical propositions that should commit no logical contradiction. On the other hand, praj˜na¯ is all-knowing and comprehensive of all things, including itself, therefore without subject–object structure, and is not limited and relative to any particular object. Its self-awareness is a function of its own crystal-clear and mirroring function and does not result from any self-reflection upon the act of intuition. Praj˜na¯ is the marvellous function of the Mind that is characterized as emptiness, the Ultimate Reality, that belongs to the ontological level and is therefore beyond all logical level of consideration, including its principle of non-contradiction.3 Praj˜na¯ is beyond all delusions. That’s why Sengzhao says, “So, when then sutra says that Praj˜na¯ is pure, it means that the essential nature of Praj˜na¯ is absolutely pure, fundamentally devoid of knowing that apprehends deludedly.”4 For Sengzhao, there should be a process of learning to become wise; this means the access to praj˜na¯ needs a gradual process of self-cultivation, not a sudden one. Although the hot debate between gradual enlightenment and sudden enlightenment in Chan Buddhism came much later in Chinese intellectual history, Sengzhao already discussed them in his essay Nirvana is unnameable and there he argued for the gradual against the sudden. As I read it, he proposed three arguments:

1. Different people are differently talented and therefore they need different methods or means to achieve enlightenment. He says, “They do not ride on the same vehicle because they vary in mental strength.”(Liebenthal: 122) In Buddha’s own metaphor, elephant, horse and hare, all three animals cross the river, but with different strength. “The hitting and crossing are the same but the arrows penetrate more or less deeply and the animals are submerged in different degrees because they differ in strength.”(Liebenthal: 122)

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2. Emptiness as the Ultimate Reality is infinite, whereas human intellectual capacity is finite. If the Ultimate Reality itself could be understood by a sudden enlightenment, then it must be limited and exhaustible by a sudden grasping. But the Ultimate Reality itself must be infinite, and therefore it is impossible to grasp it all of a sudden. Sengzhao says, “Numerous as mundane things are, a man, . . . in spite of all his genius and knowledge he would not be able to know them all. How much could one in one act measure the infinity of empty space and lift the veil from the secret of secrets?”(Liebenthal: 123) 3. Cultivation needs a gradual process: Sengzhao quotes from the Laozi where it is said, “He who seeks learning must daily increase; he who seeks the Dao must daily diminish.” And then he proceeds to give his own comment and says, “Are we told that it can be reached at once? You must diminish again and again until nothing is left.” (Liebenthal: 123) This means there should be a gradual process of self-cultivation leading to the ultimate level of emptiness. In other words, concerning the process of teaching wisdom and learning to be wise, Sengzhao seems to sustain the position that first of all we should pay more attention to the individual differences among students. Then we should recognize one’s own finitude and be humble before the infinite Ultimate Reality that is kong (emptiness). Finally one should be persistent in the gradual process of self(emptiness). The teaching of cultivation, of self-transcendence, leading to kong or about wisdom should pay special attention to the attitude of students and their self-cultivation in view of this self-transcendence towards enlightenment.

Jizang’s Negative Dialectics Jizang (549–623), the greatest thinker and systemizer of the Sanlun School, who claims himself to be deeply influenced by Sengzhao, develops the gradual process of learning to be wise into a negative dialectics. In order not to attach oneself to being or non-being or to any horizon of spiritual achievement, a negative dialectic is necessary to depart from any attachment, fixation or presumed foundation. In (Treatise on the Double Truth), we find a negative process of Jizang’s Erdiyi leveling up. The first level, according to Jizang, is the worldly view of being on the one hand and the true view of non-being on the other. Then, through a negative dialectic, one moves on to the second level, where both being and non-being belong to the worldly view, whereas non-duality (or middleness, centrality) belongs to the true view. Then, again through negative dialectic, comes the third level on which both duality and middleness are worldly views, whereas neither-duality-nor-centrality is the highest truth. (Wing-tsit Chan: 360) It is clear then, according to this negative dialectic, that the refutation of the mundane views is identical with the elucidation of the true view. However, when a true view is held in place of a mundane view, it has to be refuted again. It is only through an endless dialectical process of denial that the enlightened person can keep to the real Middle Path. In ancient Chinese Philosophy, the concept of zhongdao

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(Middle Path) comes down from the category of the huangji (Royal Ultimate) in the Book of Documents, in which the Middle Path is interpreted as impartiality or non-one-sidedness.5 In the case of Sanlun Buddhism, the concept of Middle Path, inherited from N¯ag¯arjuna, is interpreted as “emptiness”, which can be arrived at only through unceasing negative dialectic, free from all names and is “inexplicable in speech and unrealizable in thought,” and therefore rid of all discursive sophistry or playful discourse. There emerges then the universal principle of spiritual equality according to which all dharmas, conceived from the viewpoint of emptiness, would show no sign of difference and are, therefore, equal one to another, and are seen merely as different facets and manifestations of the same Reality Itself or Reality as It is (Bh¯utatathat¯a). The negative dialectics, going beyond any attachment to any fixed psychic state, spiritual achievement, any limited thesis or findings, has the effect of spiritual therapy. Operating with negative dialectics, there will be no discrimination; everything becomes equal to one another on the ontological level, as seen by an ever open and self-heightening spirit. There is no attachment to any discriminating doctrine, not even to Buddhism itself or to the distinction between Mahayana Buddhism and (Profound Meaning of the Hinayana Buddhism. In his Sanlun Xuanyi Three Treatises), Jizang says, If one’s mind still dwells on Buddhist or heterodoxical schools or if one’s feeling still lingers around the Mahayana or Hinayana Buddhism, one will fall into one-sided perversion and lose sight of correct principle (li). If correct principle is lost sight of, correct view will not arise. If correct view does not arise, then the views that things come to an end and that they are eternal will not be eliminated. If they are not eliminated, the wheel of suffering will forever turn. (Wing-tsit Chan: 365)

Therefore, in the process of teaching wisdom and of learning to be wise, one should help the students to eliminate any attachment to any finite and dualistic view. This effort has a therapeutic effect in the sense that it could in deed cease or stop in an ultimate sense the “wheel of suffering”. Once the delusion is thereby cured, there is no need to attach oneself to any form of affirmation or negation. Jizang says, The idea of non-existence is presented primarily to handle the disease of the concept of existence. If that disease disappears, the useless medicine is also discarded. Thus we know that the way of the sage never has never held to either existence or nonexistence. (Wing-tsit Chan: 366)

To become wise, one should learn to see all things as equally empty and one’s spirit should be able to transcend all forms of finitude. Helping students to learn this spiritual equality is most important in the teaching of Buddhist wisdom. Summing up the spirit of the Mahapraj ¯ n˜ ap ¯ aramit ¯ a¯ sutra, ¯ Jizang says, Such a doctrine is recondite and abstruse, deep and profound as to be unfathomable. . . . the primal theme of the s¯utra under discussion is to entertain the Dharma-nature with nothing particular to dwell upon and the ultimate fulfillment of the Dharma-nature is to attain nothing whatever that has been gained. (Fang: 199)

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Here all dharmas and all sentient beings are seen as equal, not because all of them are “irreducible others”—that their otherness is worthy of our respect and our unconditional generosity—but rather because ultimately speaking they are empty, without substance and without gain. The true meaning of prajn˜ a¯ therefore accords well with the philosophy of emptiness. It is very interesting here to learn the three typologies of wisdom according to ) which penJizang. First, there is the ultimate wisdom (shixian prajn˜ a¯ etrates genuinely into the Ultimate Reality, or the emptiness of all things. This is the ultimate ground of all other wisdoms, and from it we can derive the following ) typologies of wisdom. Second, the illumining wisdom (zhenguan prajn˜ a¯ which throws light upon the Ultimate Reality in all its different facets and manifestations. In fact this is the application of the ultimate wisdom in the meditation of the essence of each and everything, to see that each and every one of them are empty. ), with powerful linguistic Third, the linguistic wisdom (wenzi prajn˜ a¯ expressions elucidating the perfect congruence between the Ultimate Reality and its various manifestations. The linguistic wisdom is especially needed today in that in speaking, writing, and using multi-media, we should be able to use perfect language devices, both verbal and imagery, to communicate with people and thereby to allow them access to the Truth. The teaching of wisdom, in Jizang’s sense, is to teach students to learn these three kinds of wisdom. Now we may ask: Have These three wisdoms ever been learnt by some one? It seems that Jizang himself represents such a person who has realized in himself these three wisdoms and therefore he is the one who can give a yes answer to the question. Also his linguistic skill allows him to communicate with exactitude his ideas to the elite of his times. Unfortunately, Sanlun School’s negative dialectic aiming at emptiness and no-gain, though very rich in philosophical ideas and in the art of refutation and negation, was unable to show common people any positive values for their everyday lives. Probably this has resulted from its abstract way of discourse and his followers’ lack of linguistic wisdom capable of using various types of language device accessible for people of different levels of understanding. Therefore it becomes less and less accessible to common people and more and more divorced from the Chinese mind. This explains why it started to decline in the 9th century.

From Indian Yog¯ac¯ara to Chinese Weishi Generally speaking, scholars of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism agree that the Chinese Weishi School keeps itself faithful to its Indian Yog¯ac¯ara tradition and is more or less alien to the Chinese Mind. I myself do not make the distinction, as Fung Yulan does, between “Chinese Buddhism” and “Buddhism in China.” Rather, I use the term “Chinese Mahayana Buddhism” to denote broadly those Mahayana Buddhist tendencies introduced and developed in China without discrimination of their “Chineseness” upon any criteria whatsoever. Scholars opinions’ vary here on which

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among them is more Chinese and which less. Sometimes they are quite contradictory one to another. For example, Fung Yulan takes Weishi or the Conscious-Only School as his example of “Buddhism in China,” and the Middle Path School and Chan or Zen Buddhism as the best examples of “Chinese Buddhism.”(Fung: 242) On the contrary, according to Wing-tsit Chan, both the Sanlun or Three Treatise School and the Weishi or Consciousness Only School lasted only for several centuries and failed to exert a lasting influence on Chinese thought. For him, the Weishi School was completely alien to Chinese tradition and, together with the Salun or Three Treatise School, was merely an “Indian system transported on Chinese soil” (Chan: 373). For me, even if the Chinese Weishi School has made an effort to keep as faithful to its Indian origin as possible, there could still be discerned some difference and switch of interest from the Indian Yog¯ac¯ara to the Chinese Weishi. For example, in the Indian Yog¯ac¯ara, especially in the line of thought of Asanga’s Mahay ¯ anas ¯ utr ¯ alamk ¯ ara, ¯ there is a very strong respect for the “textual other”; and there developed quite sophisticated hermeneutic methods of interpreting texts and relating the meaning of a text to the meaning of life. But, since Mahay ¯ anas ¯ utr¯ alamk ¯ ara ¯ was not translated into Chinese together with other translation projects of Xuangzang, this respect for a “textual other” was not very evident in the later Weishi School and the hermeneutics method was not developed accordingly. Second, in the Indian Yog¯ac¯ara tradition, the analysis of consciousness was to serve as guidance for Yoga praxis; but in the Chinese Weishi, this complicated analysis of consciousness is more for the purpose of the transformation of consciousness into wisdom. Generally speaking, for both Yog¯ac¯ara Buddhism and Weishi Buddhism, praj˜na¯ consists in moving away from the two extremes; there is neither the grasper (the knower) nor the grasped (the known), and yet still there remains the nature of depending on others, which, though non-substantial and to be purified, is not to be totally annihilated. For both of them, the non-discriminating wisdom realizes the True Thusness or the Bh¯utatathat¯a, depending on the marvelous being of consciousness. We should notice here that Yog¯ac¯ara attains wisdom not by the method of negative dialectic, but by its yoga praxis that purifies the consciousness progressively in returning to its original root. For Weishi Buddhism, it is more interesting to engage in a process of transforming consciousness into wisdom. The idealistic doctrine of both Yog¯ac¯ara and Weishi is quite often exaggerated by scholars, to the extent of saying that for these two schools there is no self, no dharma, but there is Consciousness Only, and everything else is merely a definite form of manifestation of the Consciousness. For me, the most interesting philosophy of the school of Consciousness Only, in its Indian form, is its analysis of consciousness, which serves as a praxiological program; and, in its Chinese form, is the idea of the transformation of consciousness into wisdom as the final goal of spiritual achievement. Yog¯ac¯ara, and Weishi following it, is famous, not to say notorious, in its awesomely detailed analysis and minute classification of all kinds, presented most completely in the so called 100 dharmas which are classified into five categories: Citta-dharma (mind), Caitasika-dharma (mental contents), R¯upa-dharma (material elements), Citta-viprayukta-samsk¯ara (things not associated with mind) and

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Asamskrta-dharma (non-created elements), as they were elaborated out of the 75 dharmas of the Abhidharma-kosa (Takakesu: 72–74). All these minute distinccalled “a tedious scholastic philosophy” (Hu Shi tions lead to what Hu Shi 1969:106). This could be seen as one of the reasons why Weishi was not easily accessible to the common Chinese people, except for a few sophisticated-minded monks and intellectuals. But, as I would emphasize, we have to understand Yog¯ac¯ara’s minute distinctions and classifications, not as purely intellectual inventions, but as in fact appearing in the process of Yoga praxis. Because of this, all these detailed distinctions and classifications are very helpful in Yog¯ac¯ara’s pedagogy and in the teaching of Yog¯ac¯ara’s wisdom. They are very useful in discerning where one or a student is and where to proceed in one’s/his/her spiritual itinerary. Even if we could find intellectual pleasure in these kinds of minute conceptual distinctions, without spiritual progress all kinds of distinctions prove themselves to be in vain and without gain. Yoga praxis itself is very much related to the understanding of Buddhist Scriptures and therefore to a “textual other” in order to appropriate it in the process leading to wisdom. This is very clear in its Indian origin. For example, in the Mahay ¯ anas ¯ utr ¯ alamk ¯ ara ¯ of Asanga, a special regard was paid to the Scriptural texts and the hermeneutic understanding of their meaning. We find this in the “Teaching and Lesson” explored in the fourteenth chapter of the Mahay ¯ anas ¯ utr ¯ alamk ¯ ara, ¯ which, in describing the way of praxis towards the fullest unfolding of Bodhisattvahood, emphasizes the textual other and the hermeneutic procedure of appropriating it by starting with linking one’s mind to the names of s¯utras, then censuring gradually the categories of words and their meaning (artha) both individually and collectively.6 In the Mahay ¯ anas ¯ utr ¯ alamk ¯ ara, ¯ six kinds of thought are discerned in the study of texts: “fundamental thought”, “consecutive thought”, “pondering thought”, “thought of affirmation”, “thought of subsumption”, “thought of expectation”. Some of them have their own subdivisions of steps or methods; for example, in the case of “pondering thought”, we find methods such as calculation, comparison, reflection, and perspicacious observation of Buddhist texts. All these hermeneutic considerations and understandings of texts lead eventually to the self-awareness that “the thought is the only foundation and there is nothing other than thought” (Asanga 1992: 262). Then, the practitioner of Yoga should go through eleven kinds of mental acts7 and nine steps of elaboration,8 thus making gradual progression to enlightenment and these are therefore very interesting from the point of view of spiritual praxiology and pedagogy. For my part, what is most remarkable here is that, once one arrives at the supra-mundane wisdom, one achieves a deep sense of equality with others. There is five-fold equality: equally no-self, equally suffering, equally working, equally lack of payment in return, and equally like other bodhisattva. In his compassion for all creatures, he does all his best for the welfare of others; he employs himself in the artha (meaning) of their life; and he is tireless for this work, for which he has no anxiety and expects no return from others. This shows a bodhisattva’s generosity to the others without condition. In Chapter 14 of Mahay ¯ anas ¯ utr ¯ alamk ¯ ara, ¯ we read, for example,

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Those who, without the view of self, have here the view of self, Those who, without suffering, are extremely afflicted for others, Those who develop the work for all without waiting for returns. (Asanga 1992: 274; my correction in bold)

We should point out here that this kind of unconditional generosity towards the other without waiting for any returns is preponderant in Asanga’s writings. Let’s take again another example in Chapter 4 of the Bodhisattva-bhumi, ¯ where Asanga discussed the problem of knowing reality (Tattvartha), it was written that, The Bodhisattva has many benefits: he rightly engaged in thoroughly ripening the Buddhadharmas for himself and for others, in thoroughly ripening the Dharma of the Three Vehicles. Moreover, thus rightly engaged, he is without craving for possession or even for his own body . . .. You should know that the bodhisattva thus rightly engaged carefully attends all virtuous beings with worship and reverence. And all un-virtuous beings he carefully attends with a mind of sympathy and a mind of supreme compassion. And in so far as he can and has the strength he is engaged in dispersing their faults. He carefully attends all harmful beings with a mind of love. (Asanga 1979: 156–157)

I should say that, in the case of the Chinese Weishi School, Xuanzang still kept a deep respect for the “textual other”, and it was probably because of this that he made the effort to travel to India and brought 657 Buddhist Scriptures back to China and translated 75 of them into Chinese. However, generally speaking, the Chinese Weishi School did not much discuss the hermeneutic procedure of treating the textual other. Even less discussed was the “ethical other” as the receiver of unconditional generosity. Rather the Weishi School put more emphasis on the purification of consciousness and its transformation into wisdom. Even when “equality” was mentioned, it did not evoke so much an unconditional generosity towards the other, but rather mentioned it as a spiritual horizon to be attained.

Consciousness: Its Structure and its Purification Now, the learning of wisdom should be considered as a process of purification of consciousness, which takes the form of consciousness analysis and makes practical progress thereby. We find in both Yog¯ac¯ara and Weishi Buddhism an analytic progression from the five consciousnesses to the empirical self-consciousness, to the transcendental self-consciousness, and then finally to the ontological origin of all consciousness, the Alaya-vij˜na¯ na. Five sense perceptions—seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting—are seen as the five consciousnesses. Then comes the consciousness properly speaking, which is empirically the center of the five sensations or the sense-centered consciousness, which could be called the empirical self-consciousness. For my part, it is philosophically questionable to separate, as in the case of Yog¯ac¯ara and Weishi Buddhism, these “six consciousnesses,” or to separate the five consciousnesses from the sixth, because when there is consciousness of their activities, the five senses always work with empirical self-consciousness so as to

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form a conscious perception of the object that appeared in any definite form. The five senses or some of them have to work together to reach the object thereby perceived. Phenomenologically speaking, the object of perception appears in profiles, and we always perceive it with a certain “imagined totality.” This is the effect of the co-working of the senses in body-movement and their passive synthesis in our empirical consciousness. The act of analyzing the structure of consciousness consists of going to deeper and deeper layers of consciousness, from the five consciousnesses to the sixth, then to the seventh, then to the eighth. It is a process of getting deeper self-understanding and returning to the root of one’s true self. Now, the seventh consciousness as the thought-centered consciousness, the manas-vij˜na¯ na, is the imagined “center” from which all acts of willing and thinking come, and which often attaches to its own imagined centeredness as its own true self. In comparison, the seventh consciousness is quite similar to the Cartesian Cogito, or the Husserlian “transcendental ego”. They are different in the sense that the Cogito for Descartes and the transcendental ego for Husserl are seen as the ultimate constituent of our self and even as the transcendental constituting origin of all our empirical experience. On the other hand, the seventh consciousness, for the Weishi School, is not the ultimate self but only a derivative transformation of the eighth consciousness. Finally, the eighth consciousness, or the “storehouse consciousness”, alayavij˜na¯ na, contains all seeds or potentialities of right/wrong thoughts and good/evil deeds to be manifested and thereby effected in the former seven forms of consciousness; and it receives also their influences. That is to say alaya-vij˜na¯ na exercises a double process: on the one hand, it realizes the seeds into deeds and thoughts in the process of manifestation; on the other hand, it receives their influence or is fumigated by the former seven consciousnesses in its actual operation. In the Indian Yog¯ac¯ara tradition, all these distinctions in psychic layers are meaningful and eventually abandoned in the process of Yoga praxis for the benefit of the enlightened and the multitude of others, and should be considered as distinctions with practical implications, not to be considered as real distinctions or distinctions made merely for distinction’s own sake.

Transformation of Consciousness into Wisdoms For me, the most interesting philosophical idea in the Weishi School consists in the transformation of consciousness into wisdom. The process of teaching wisdom, or that of learning to be wise in general, concerns essentially the transformation of consciousness into wisdom. This presupposes that we enter into the Ultimate Reality, either as alaya-vij˜na¯ na (according to the tradition of Xuanzang) or as bh¯utatathat¯a (according to the tradition of Param¯artha)—both related with but still detached from (yet not determined by) all other dharmas and all specific representations and names.

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We should notice that there were two traditions in the Chinese Weishi’s interpretation of the transformation of consciousness into wisdom. On the one hand, we have the tradition of Param¯artha, who lived in China in the 6th century, which emphasized the ontological meaning of these transformations based on the Reality Itself. In this line of thought, for example, we can read in the Buddhabhumi that, Transform the eighth consciousness into the heart corresponding to the wisdom of grand perfect mirror, which is thus called because it could retain in itself all seeds of merits and virtues, and manifest and give birth to all representations of all bodies and lands; Transform the seventh consciousness into the heart corresponding to the wisdom of equality, it is thus called because it is far away from the two extreme distinctions of self and the other, and attests to the equality of all things. Transformation of the sixth consciousness into the heart corresponding to the wisdom of marvelous observation, which is thus called because it could regard all things without any hindrance. Transformation of the five actual consciousnesses into the wisdom of achieving all actions, which is thus called because it is capable of realizing and achieving all external activities. (Buddhabhumi, in TSD 26: 302; my translation).

On the other hand, according to the tradition of Xuanzang, who, in his Cheng Weishi Lun, would say that it is for the reason of encouraging sentient beings, but not for ontological reasons, to cling to wisdom and relinquish consciousness, that these four wisdoms are attained by the transformation of the eighth consciousness. He says, The four wisdoms are attained by the transformation of the mental attributes of the eighth, the seventh, the sixth, and the first five consciousnesses respectively . . .. In order to encourage sentient beings to cling to Wisdom and relinquish consciousness, we say that one attains the four wisdoms by virtue of the transformation of the eighth consciousness. (Xuanzang 1973: 770).

Nevertheless, in these two interpretations, there is always a double process in the transformation of consciousness into wisdom. On the one hand, there is the process of retracing self-awareness, going back to deeper and more original layers of selfawareness from the five consciousnesses to the sixth to the seventh to the eighth consciousness, until we arrive at the Original Ground, either the alaya-vij˜na¯ na or the bh¯utatathat¯a. On the other hand, there is the process of purifying manifestation, which transforms first the eight consciousness into the wisdom of the grand perfect mirror; then purifies and realizes the seventh consciousness into the wisdom of equality; then purifies and realizes the sixth consciousness into the wisdom of marvelous observation; and finally purifies and realizes the five consciousnesses into the wisdom of achieving all deeds. There is another major difference between these two interpretations. According to the tradition of Param¯artha, “The so-called original nature of heart is the true noumenon. The heart of all sentient being is imbued with equality. All sentient being is bh¯utatathat¯a; all sentient being owns Buddha nature” (TSD 26:305). Therefore, in this tradition, all sentient beings can learn to be wise in transforming their consciousness into wisdom. Yet, according to the tradition of Xuanzang, not all sentient beings are capable of converting consciousness into wisdom and becoming Buddha. There is a class of people who are “sentient being without Buddha nature”, and therefore cannot attain Buddhahood and attain wisdom in its perfect sense. Unfortunately, this position makes the Weishi School alien to the Chinese mind in general, and also

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to Confucius’ philosophy of teaching that assumes everyone as teachable without making any discrimination, which is a much sounder position in the philosophy of education. We should know that Chinese people have always cherished Daosheng’s (355–434) thesis that “All sentient beings can become Buddha.” This position makes Buddhism congenial to the Confucian idea that “Everyone can become Yao and Shun (both are sages).” Unfortunately, this line of thought was not followed by Xuanzang’s Weishi School, which posits a category of youqing wuxing (sentient beings without Buddha nature). This idea has its origin in the Lankavat ¯ ara¯ sutra. ¯ Although he was well aware of its potential conflict with Daosheng and in the beginning reluctant to introduce it to China, Xuanzang nevertheless kept to it in his ´ ılabhadra. The writing under the command of his Indian Master, the Venerable S¯ doctrine that some human beings could not attain Nirv¯ana and therefore could not (632–682) and again developed by become Buddha, was continued by Kuiji (650–714). This was also one of the reasons why the Kuiji’s disciple Huizhao Weishi School failed to become more popular among Chinese people, who welcomed more the idea that “All sentient being has Buddha nature and can become Buddha”, from which we could derive a more egalitarian philosophy of teaching.

Wisdom as Sudden and Gradual Enlightenment in Chan Buddhism As I mentioned right from the beginning, the Chan movement is a real Chinese Buddhist movement. Although the legend traces its origin to Bodhidharma (fl.460– 534), in fact all later Chan schools claim themselves to belong to the Southern Chan (638–713). Right from the start of the Southern School initiated by Huineng School, there is the dispute over Gradual Enlightenment and Sudden Enlightenment, beginning from Huineng’s competition in verse-writing with his opponent (605?-706) for the position of the Sixth Patriarch. Shenxiu’s verse Shenxiu expresses a process of gradual enlightenment, emphasizing the wiping of dust in one’s mind/heart:

The body is the tree of perfect wisdom The mind is like the stand of a bright mirror. At all times diligently wipe it. Do not allow it to have dust. (Wing-tsit Chan: 431, my correction in bold)

This verse presupposes the concept of the true nature of Buddha as the perfect wisdom and bright mirror, for which both body and mind are but its material and mental support, like a bodhi tree or a mirror stand. Also it distinguishes between the true nature of Buddha as pure and bright, and the defilements and vexations as dusts that should be diligently wiped out so as not to contaminate the Buddha nature. It

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distinguishes also between the state of mind when the mind is undisturbed and calm (sam¯adhi) and the state of mind pure and quiet that is wisdom (praj˜na¯ ). There existed therefore a metaphysical dualism and a psychological dualism in Shenxiu’s verse, which were overcome in later Chan Buddhism and were denied the status of being an essential constituent of the later tradition of Chan Buddhism. We can compare it with Huineng’s verses which earned for him the position of the Sixth Patriarch. Here we have two verses from Dunhuang’s version of the Platform sutra, instead of one verse in the conventional version:

Originally perfect wisdom is no tree. Nor is the bright mirror a stand. Buddha nature is forever pure and quiet. Where can it have dust? ∗

∗

∗

∗

∗

∗

∗

∗

The mind is the tree of perfect wisdom. The body is the stand of a bright mirror. The bright mirror is originally pure and quiet. Where has it been defiled by any dust? (Wing-tsit Chan: 432, my correction in bold)

These two verses are not repetitive, as some scholars might suppose. In fact, the first verse is posited as a statement of Huineng’s own vision, whereas the second verse is written as a refutation of Shenxiu’s verse. Together, they express the vision according to which Huineng recognizes the concept of Buddha nature, for which, according to Chinese Mahayana Buddhism, all sentient beings have their own Buddha nature and are capable of becoming Buddha. Since the dualism of Buddha nature versus its defilement is overcome in the sudden enlightenment, Chan Buddhism after Huineng not only takes it for granted that all sentient beings are capable of becoming Buddha, but also puts it more radically into “All sentient beings are originally Buddha”9 , supposing that Buddha nature or the absolute mind/heart is in everyone and everywhere. For Chan Buddhism, the Bh¯utatathat¯a reveals itself in the selfsameness of the absolute mind/heart and the everydayness of its manifestation. This could be interpreted either as encouraging all people to return to their own original nature, or even as saying that everyone of the ordinary people, in their everyday act of sleeping, waking-up, eating, washing, drinking, is already the Buddha in person. In Chan’s position we find an infinitely rich resource in the Mind that is one’s own, to be realized also, quite profoundly indeed, in the details of everyday life.

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This is one of the most important inspirations of Chan Buddhism to the education of wisdom. But, be careful, it is also here that Chinese Mahayana Buddhism tends to lose its dimension of the other. Chan Buddhist interprets the life of wisdom as the enlightenment of one’s own heart in everyday life and in ordinary virtues. In everything great or small of everydayness there is the Dao of enlightenment, and there is no need of any transcendence whatsoever. As Huineng says, If one’s heart is even, there is no need of obeying obligations. If one’s act is right, there is no need of practicing dhy¯ana (concentration). There is gratitude when one is filial and nourishing his parents; there is justice when the superior and the inferior are sympathetic one to another. When one knows how to cede to elders, there is harmony among the noble and the mean; . . . Praj˜na¯ is to be sought in one’s heart, there is no need of searching for metaphysical truth in the external world. Just to listen, to say and to cultivate one’s self in this way, the Western paradise appears just in the present moment. (TSD 48: 352)

There we can see that the openness and unconditional generosity to the other, prominent in Indian Yog¯ac¯ara Buddhism, have now undergone a radical process of reduction in Chan Buddhism. When Chan Buddhism came on the scene in the history of Chinese Buddhism, it radicalized the proposition “All sentient beings can become Buddha” into “all sentient beings are originally Buddha.” If all sentient beings are already Buddha, they have no need of any teaching in wisdom. Also, since the self-nature of everyone, the bh¯utatathat¯a, reveals itself in the self-sameness of the absolute mind/heart, there is no place for the other. In the Platform Sutra, ¯ transformation of consciousness into wisdom is merely nominal, not noumenal. It reads: It is the nature of the wisdom of a grand mirror to be pure and calm; the wisdom of equality means no sickness of one’s mind/heart; the wisdom of marvellous observation sees no merit of one’s own; the wisdom of achieving all deeds is the same as the grand mirror. The fifth and the eighth transformations work on the side of cause, and the seventh and the sixth transformations work on the side of effect. They are all but transformations of names, not transformations of noumenon. (TSD 48:356)

Also, there is no respect for the textual other. Here, no teaching of wisdom in reference to Scriptures is needed. For Chan Buddhism, there is no need to refer to the Scriptures,10 even if historically it has produced, quite paradoxically, a whole pile of its own texts. Chan Buddhism uses dhy¯ana to attain one’s Buddha nature and combines it with the praj˜na¯ , even in identifying them into one.11 There is the primacy of practice over any argumentation and hermeneutics of texts. Chan Masters use situational methods of teaching in order to let their disciples penetrate into their own Buddha nature, sometimes even by beating and shouting, such as in the case of Linji Chan, beyond the use of any language. In Linji Chan Buddhism, shouting and beating are taken to be quite normal methods of teaching wisdom. We read, for example, in the Recorded Conversations of Chan Master Yi Xuan: The Master ascended the hall. A monk asked, “What is the basic idea of the Law preached by the Buddha?” The Master lifted up his swatter. The monk shouted, and the Master beat him.

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The monk asked again, “What is the basic idea of the Law preached by the Buddha?” The Master again lifted up his swatter. The monk shouted, and the Master shouted also. As the monk hesitated what to say, the Master beat him. (Wing-tsit Chan, 445)

Or again, Thereupon the Master said, “Listen, men. Those who pursue after the Law will not escape from death. I was in my late Master Huang-po’s place for twenty years. Three times I asked him about the basic idea of the Law preached by the Buddha and three times he bestowed upon me the staff. I felt I was struck only by a dried stalk. Now I wish to have a real beating. Who can do it for me?” One monk came out of the group and said, “I can do it.” The Master picked up the staff to give him. As he was about to take it over, the Master beat him. (Wing-tsit Chan, 446)

As a pedagogical method, beating and shouting are interpreted very differently by scholars. For Hu Shi, they represent “a method of education by the hard way” (Hu Shi 1953: 21). Therefore, the apparently nonsensical Chan gestures are seen by Hu Shi as well calculated to force the student to think for himself. On the other hand, Suzuki would say that this is more a pedagogical device against any use of language and human intellect. They represent for him “Zen’s persistent and often violent opposition to words and then to the intellect which deals exclusively in words” (Suzuki 1953:36). Against Hu Shi, I don’t think there is any calculation in Chan’s pedagogy. It is more a method of teaching in action beyond the use of any linguistic device. As we can see, this method, though it might lead to a direct insight into the unfathomable emptiness without the need to discern any progressive steps (TSD 48:357) as in the case of Weishi Buddhism, still it tends to deny the function of language and texts, which is very important for human civilization and philosophy. Chan’s denial of language and texts leads itself to shouting and beating, of which the effect on human understanding is uncertain, or at least still hard to determine; yet unfortunately the Scriptures are thereby already abandoned without being carefully read. Chinese Mahayana Buddhism has since long penetrated both the intellectual life and the everyday life of Chinese people. This might have been realized by Chan Buddhism, which has gone so far as to become immanent to people’s everyday lives. We should say that the loss of dimension of the other in Chan Buddhism has brought huge changes to Buddhism in China. According to N¯ag¯arjuna and Asanga in the Indian tradition, the Buddhist way of life should lead to compassion and altruism for the benefit and enlightenment of multiple others, of all sentient beings. Yet Chan Buddhism would interpret it as the enlightenment of one’s own heart in everyday life. Though this has the merit of unfolding the infinitely rich resources in people’s mind and also transforming Buddhism into the everyday life of Chinese people, by the same token it has limited Chinese life and philosophy within the constraint of immanence, without any necessity to be open to the other, to go outside of one’s self and to go to strangers, to multiple others. This, among others, has a huge impact on Chinese thought in capturing it within the philosophy of immanence and, unfortunately, within a certain form of

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self-enclosure. Today, more contributions should be made to Chinese culture by bringing it back to the dimension of multiple others. Here I use the term ‘multiple others’ to replace the term “the other” used by Jacques Lacan, Giles Deleuze, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, because we are all born into multiple others and we grow up among multiple others. In no concrete situation of life are we facing the other pure and simple. It is much better for the sanity of our psychological and ethical life to keep in mind of the existence of multiple others. In facing multiple others, we need always to practice strangification, which means the act of going outside of one’s self-enclosure and go to multiple others, outside of one’s familiarity to the strangers. There it implies always an original generosity before the reciprocity could be established accordingly. Strangification and original generosity to multiple others are needed now not only for transforming Chinese culture, already rich in immanent resources, into a renovating cultural dynamism complemented by resources from multiple others and strangers, but also for all human beings who are now trapped through the impact of modernity in the self-enclosure of their ego or subjectivity, to go beyond and lead a collective life of peace and harmony. This should be especially emphasized in the interactive and communicative process of education and teaching, in which there is always the dimension of multiple others. Education, learning and teaching should keep on appropriating knowledge and values from multiple others by translating unceasingly strangeness into one’s familiarity; and, the other way round, by unceasingly going outside of one’s self, from one’s familiarity, to strangers, which presupposes always an original generosity from one’s part. In this way, education and teaching can be considered as a process of mutual strangification among teachers and students, teachers and teachers, students and students, teachers, students and the social environment, in which ever-increasing mutual enrichment could be obtained.

Some Conclusions concerning Education and Teaching Wisdom The above analysis gives us some inspirations about education as teaching of wisdom. Here I understand “education” not merely in its strict sense as an institutionalized process of teaching and learning, but in its broader sense, as the formation of persons, either by themselves or with the help of others (such as teachers), towards the fuller realization of their own human potentiality. In this respect, Chinese Sanlun Buddhism inspires us with its idea of negative dialectics, which transcends any kind of dualism and any psychic or even spiritual attachment or fixation, with a creative advancement that always goes beyond itself and its already-made achievements and thereby cures all mental illness produced by mental fixation or doctrinal obsession. For Sanlun Buddhism, wisdom education is a process of learning to be wise, to lead a life of always going beyond in order to embrace the infinite, in the meanwhile it is able to see things as they are and to express their meaning by adequate linguistic means. As to Weishi Buddhism, its Indian origin reminds us of the necessity of reading important texts using the pertinent hermeneutic technique of reading them, not only

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for the meaning of the texts but also for the meaning for one’s life. The teaching of wisdom, to be sure, should include the training how to read important texts, especially the Scriptures. Also, education implies self-understanding that comes from a deeper analysis of consciousness, not only with theoretical tools but also through the process of praxis. Especially when today’s psychology and pedagogy are too technicalized and immersed in instrumental rationality, still the Weishi’s idea of transformation of consciousness into wisdom can inspire us with an ever-creative ideal of education as a way towards wisdom instead of today’s self-contentment in technicality and rationality. Finally, Chan Buddhism inspires us with a life of enlightenment which, instead of being far from us, is so close to us that it is right here in my mind/heart and to be realized in the everydayness of my life. In this sense, the teaching of wisdom is essentially a way of helping students to be aware of this rich resource in him/herself. But, on the other hand, he/she will not thereby lose his openness to multiple others, even when he/she has an intimate resource of grasping the meaning of life within him/herself. From this critical reflection, let me come up to a more general affirmation that the resources that we can find within our own mind/heart should always be enriched by our unceasing openness and original generosity to multiple others. Multiple others existing in Nature, among other peoples, even with the divine, always demand respect from me and that I act to go outside of myself to them in an originally generous way. This is what I mean by the term “strangification”, which etymologically means the act of going outside of oneself to multiple others, outside of one’s context of familiarity into the context of strangers. Education, teaching, the development of life and the process of becoming wise should consist in this process of strangification and mutual strangification, which presuppose also learning as a process of appropriation of languages, which means more concretely learning ways of expression or language of one’s own cultural tradition and of. As Wittgenstein has well suggested, different language games correspond to different life-forms, therefore appropriation of one’s language or the language(s) of others would give us access to the life-forms implied in these languages. In our childhood, we have appropriated language by the generosity of significant others talking to us and thereby opening up to us a world of meaningfulness. In growing up, we learn more by appropriating different kinds of expression and language, no matter whether they are scientific, cultural or of everyday life. By appropriating different ways of expression or languages, we are allowed to enter into different worlds and thereby enrich the construction of our own meaningful world. By appropriation of language, we are also allowed to conduct strangification and mutual strangification. Here we can distinguish three levels of strangification: The first is linguistic strangification, by which we recontextualize or translate a proposition/value/belief system of our own into the language of or understandable by others, to see whether it works there or becomes absurd. If it does work there, then that proposition/value/belief system is valid to that extent. If it doesn’t, reflection must be undertaken concerning one’s own methodology and the principles by which one has established that proposition/value/belief system.

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The second is pragmatic strangification, by which we draw a proposition/value/ belief system out from its original social and organizational context, to put it into another social and organizational context, in order to make clear its pragmatic implications and to see whether it works there. If it doesn’t work in the new context, reflection must be done concerning its validity. If it does work, then this means somehow it is valid to that extent. The third is ontological strangification, which means the act by which we enter other’s microworld/cultural world/religious world through the detour of a direct experience with Reality Itself.12 For example, Confucian experience with Heaven, humaneness or sincerity, Daoist experience with the Dao, or Buddhist experience with emptiness or the One Mind, or Christian experience of God . . . etc., all these experiences with Ultimate Reality in different traditions may help them to understand each other on the level of religious dialogue. Without the detour of a direct experience with Reality Itself, religious dialogue will merely fall into conceptual debate without mutual understanding. By the above analysis, we can make clear also what I mean by “mutual strangification.” In the interactive process between A and B, on the level of linguistic strangification, A should translate his proposition(s) or idea(s)/value(s)/belief system into the language of B or a language understandable to B. In the meanwhile, B should translate his proposition(s) or idea(s)/value(s)/belief system into the language of A or understandable to A. On the level of pragmatic strangification, A should draw his proposition(s), supposed truth(s)/cultural expression(s)/value(s)/belief system out from his own social, organizational contexts and put it into the social, organizational context of B. In the meanwhile, B should draw his proposition(s), supposed truth(s)/cultural expression/value/belief system out from his own social, organizational context and put it into the social, organizational context of A. On the level of ontological strangification, A should make efforts to enter into B’s micro-world, cultural world or religious world through the detour of his experience with Reality Itself, such as a person, a social group, Nature, or Ultimate Reality. In the meanwhile, B should also make efforts to enter into A’s micro-world, cultural world or religious world through the detour of his experience with Reality Itself. Buddhism is a religion of strangification par excellence that has made it a world religion today. This spirit should always be well kept in order to continue the dynamism of its truth in the world. Also, I presume that, in general, education, research and teaching should be seen more from the perspective of strangification and mutual strangification. We should conduct and organize education in functions of strangifiability and mutual-strangifiability. This is one of the major inspirations we can draw from our critical evaluation of the concept of wisdom and the ways of learning to be wise in Chinese Mahayana Buddhism.

Notes 1

These five categories are: 1. those that represent secrecy; 2. those that represent multiple meanings; 3. those that represent objects not found in China; 4. those that are in accordance with ancient usage; 5. and those that bring better respect.

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2

The Laozi, produced arguably in the 6th Century BC, was the founding text of classical Daoism, whereas the Zhuangzi, produced in the 4th Century BC, was the most important text in its second phase of development. Neo-Daoist Wangbi’s (226–247) concepts of yu (being) and wu (nonbeing) and benwu (original no-being) were most influential neo-Daoist ideas adopted by the giyi Buddhism, which was the Buddhism that had developed in the 4th Century China that appropriated Daoist language and terms to make Buddhism understandable to the Chinese elite of the time. 3 See Sengzhao’s answer to the 2nd objection that says to characterize Praj˜na¯ as non-knowing is contradictory: “If knowing is applicable to Holy Mind, then in it there is nothing to be qualified by ‘no-knowing’. If ‘no-knowing’ is applicable to the Holy Mind, then in it there is likewise nothing to be qualified by ‘no-knowing’. If both are applicable, then there is nothing more to discuss.” R. H. Robinson, Early M¯adhyamika in India and China, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1976, p. 216. 4 Ibid., p. 216. 5

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8 9 10

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In the fifth (therefore middle) category of the “Royal Ultimate”(huangji

), interpreted by Zhu

(1130–1200) as the Great Middle (dazhong ), we read, “Without deflection, without Xi unevenness, pursue the splendid righteousness. Without any selfish preferences, pursue the middle path; Without deflection, without partiality, broad and long is the middle path. Without partiality, without deflection, the middle path is level and easy; Without perversity, without one-sidedness, the middle path is right and straight.” (Legge: 331–332). Read for example verses 4, 5, in Chapter 14. I use S.V. Lamaye’s translation (Asanga 1992: 260). From time to time this translation needs corrections. Here I pick up this Scripture to serve my purpose of comparing Indian Yog¯ac¯ara with Chinese Weisi in respect of the problem of the other. Such as discursive thought, judgment, non-discursive thought, judgment alone, non-discursive, non judgmental mental act of pacification, mental act of inspection, mental act of tying and checking, mental act of retaining, mental act of cause of pacification, mental act of cause of apathy, mental act of continuation, mental act of good deeds etc. Such as holding thought, restraining, retaining, supporting, taming, appeasing, appease more, rendering unified, and awaiting. Such as what Huang Poh said, “This Mind/heart is Buddha. Buddha is all sentient beings, all sentient being is Buddha.” In Tripitaka, vol. 51, p. 270. For example, we read, in the Platform Sutra, “Therefore it is known that we possess prajn˜ a¯ in our own nature, and we should always contemplate by using our own wisdom, without going through scriptures”. (TSD 48:350). We can see this point clearly in Huineng’s saying that “Calmness and wisdom are the foundation of my method. . . . In the case of those whose hearts and words are both good and in whom the internal and the external are one, calmness and wisdom are identified. Self-enlightenment and practice do not consist in argument”. (TSD 48: 352). Vincent Shen, Confucianism, Taoism and Constructive Realism (Vienna: Vienna University Press, 1994), pp. 126–129.

References Asanga. 1979. On knowing reality. The Tattvartha chapter of Asanga’s Bodhisattvabhumi. Trans. with introduction, commentary, and notes by Janice Dean Willis. New York: Columbia University Press. Asanga. 1992. Mahay ¯ anas ¯ utr ¯ alamk ¯ ara. ¯ Trans. by S. V. Lamaye. Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications. Chan, Win-tsit. 1969. A source book in chinese philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fang, Thom´e Press. Fung, Yu-lan

. 1981. Chinese philosophy: Its spirit and its development. Taipei: Linking . 1948. A short history of Chinese philosophy. Toronto: Collier-Macmillan.

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Hu Shi . 1953, “Chan Buddhism in China: Its history and method,” in Philosophy East and West, 3, 1953. .1969, A short intellectual history of Mediaeval China , Hu Shi Taipei : Academia Sinica. . Rambling thoughts about the Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra, in Taisho¯ sinshu¯ daizoky ¯ o, ¯ Jizang Vol. 38, No.1768. Legge, James, trans. 1893–1895. The Shoo King, or the book of historical documents. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Liebenthal, Walter. 1968. Chao Lun: The treatise of Seng-chao, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Shen, Vincent. 1994. Confucianism, Taoism and constructive realism. Vienna: Vienna University Press. —— 1997. “Inter-religious dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity conceived with strangification and contrast.” In The movement of constructive realism, edited by Thomas Slunecko. Vienna: Wilhelm Braumüller. (Contrast, strangification and dia—— 2002. Duibi, waitui yu jiaotan logue). Taipei : Wunan Publishing Company . Suzuki, Teitaro. 1953, “Zen: A reply to Hu Shih,” in Philosophy East and West, 3, 1953. , 1924–1932. ed. Takakusu Taisho¯ shinshu¯ daizoky ¯ o¯ (Abbreviated as TSD) and K.Watanabe. Vols. 1.30.38.45.48. Tokyo: Taisho Issaikyo Kankokai. Takakesu, Junjiro. 1956. The essentials of Buddhist Philosophy. 3rd ed. Honolulu: Office Appliance Co. . 1973. Ch’eng Wei-shih Lun, trans. from the Chinese texts by Wei Xuanzang (Hsuan Tsang) Tat. Hong Kong: Dai Nippon Printing Co.

Beginner’s Mind: Paths to the Wisdom that is Not Learned Eleanor Rosch

“The goal of practice is always to keep our beginner’s mind . . . .In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.” Shunryo Suzuki Roshi (Suzuki, 1970, p. 21) “By magic we do not mean unnatural power over the phenomenal world, but rather the discovery of innate or primordial wisdom in the world as it is. The wisdom we are discovering is wisdom without beginning, something naturally wise . . . ” Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (Trungpa, 1984, p. 103) “God put the self revealing truth in everything that exists . . . ” Shaykh Muhammad Said Al-Jamal ar-Rifa’i ash-Shadhuli (Al-Jamal, 2002, p. 167)

Embedded in most of the world’s spiritual traditions is some version of beginner’s mind/primordial wisdom teachings. Such teachings and the paths they introduce have been marginalized by scholars as mysticism, suppressed by their parent religions as heresy, and largely ignored by our psychological and social sciences. I believe it is time to pay attention to these teachings. Aside from their inherent value, they may have important contributions to make to psychology, education, religion, and to decision making in an increasingly complex and dangerous world. Furthermore, if there is to be an academic discipline of Wisdom Studies, it needs to incorporate the traditions in which wisdom is something decidedly different from the usual candidates of rules, skills, or life experience. In order to focus the discussion in this chapter, I will examine two specific case studies of beginner’s mind paths, one from a non-theistic Buddhist source (the Kagyu-Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism), the other from a Western religion (the Shadhiliyya Sufi order). The last part of the chapter will show how versions of beginner’s mind teachings and practices are becoming more widespread today—including a movement called Contemplative Education which is introducing some of the practices into public schools. What is meant by beginner’s mind? William James speaks of “that which is seen as most primal and enveloping and deeply true” (James, 1902, p. 34). The beginner’s mind claim, ordinary yet radical, is that we already have such basic wisdom—the “innate primordial wisdom in the world as it is,” the “self revealing truth” that “God

Eleanor Rosch University of California, Berkeley, USA

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has put into everything that exists” (see quotes above). Thus people do not need to acquire more information, more logic, more ego, and more skills to make them wise. What they need is to unlearn what they have accumulated that veils them from that wisdom. When they do this, it is believed, they find not only what they themselves really are already but what the world actually is, and, from that vantage point, they can live a good life. The psychological picture that corresponds to beginner’s mind (which I will also call “inner path”) teachings is of different levels of mind (or modes of functioning or ways of knowing). On the surface is the mind of ordinary concepts, emotions, desires, fears, even boredom—the mind with which everyone is familiar. Below that is the mind that is more in contact with basic wisdom and better able to see and act from it. This point may be clarified, hopefully, by a computer analogy. Imagine the ordinary surface mode of knowing as a particular computer program running on a more basic operating system. In daily life (and in psychology and cognitive science—and wisdom studies?) researchers mistake the limited surface program for the whole system. The research community keeps trying to study how the system works, but all it can see is the functioning of the program in which it, as well as the people it is studying, are confined. Every attempt to see beyond or get out of the program, either in science or religion or scholarship, is frustrated because to try to get out, one is only using the operations of the program itself. The situation would be hopeless, except that it is the operating system that supports and defines the program in the first place and the operating system that offers the escape keys that allow one to return to it. Although this is basically a claim about psychology, two religious traditions are examined as examples because it is within religions, particularly the meditative and contemplative strains in religion, that different modes of knowing and the levels of wisdom such modes might reveal have been most clearly codified and taught. Psychology and cognitive science generally take religions to be no more than cognitive beliefs about personified deities whose purpose is to provide illusory comfort or to explain things that science can explain better. Such an approach obscures the other aspects of religions. As people pursue an inner path, their vision of religious objects changes radically; perhaps that is why inner path teachings have historically had such uneasy relations with their parent religions. If scientists and educators dismiss everything related to religion out of hand, they may miss the chance to understand aspects of the mind that no other part of society can as readily bring to our attention. It is a hallmark of beginner’s mind teachings that the deeper levels are said to be accessed only by letting go. While discipline and effort may be recommended as the first step toward restraining the unruly surface mind with its accumulation of information and habits, it is ultimately only by relaxation and surrender (“like a Brahmin housewife whose daily chores are done” or “like a bale of hay whose bailing wire has been cut”– Tibetan sayings) that the seeker is understood to become progressively able to enter into the deeper stages of his functioning. This may be seen in religions when they speak of surrender, mystery, beyond concept, humbleness, grace, or letting God do it. Artists too talk of receiving inspiration, lovers of falling in love, athletes of entering “the zone,” and ordinary people of the virtues of sleeping on a problem. Most therapists, parents, diplomats, and teachers

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can recall one magical moment when, without effort, they “just knew what to say.” But for any of this to have sustained impact, it needs to be the right kind of letting go; otherwise the seeker may just shrug off his glimpse and continue running around “like a madman” using his surface mind as always. So guidance is needed. Traditionally, inner path teachings of all kinds tended to be secretive passed only from teacher to a small circle of intimate students. Much can go awry in the transmission of teachings that speak to levels of the mind beyond what most people imagine they have. That paranoia appears to be changing presently, perhaps under the pressure of global crises, and a number of interesting mass movements have arisen. Tibetan lamas are offering empowerment ceremonies as blessings to the Western public at large; Jewish and Christian contemplative practices are being rediscovered and fostered; traditional Islamic Sufi teachers are inviting everyone of all religions to join them to help bring love and peace to the world; and Indian gurus are offering diksha (a transference of enlightened energy) to vast numbers of people without the traditional requirement that recipients henceforth be bound as formal students to that teacher. (As one Indian teacher puts it, “Mankind has already done his sadhana (religious practices), so now he is ready for enlightenment,” Bhagavan, 2005). There is a general belief in these movements that it is only by a radical change of heart on a mass scale that the world can be saved. Both teachers and recipients of such mass teachings are sometimes spoken of as protected by the principle of “self secret.” In its simplest form this just means that a person only understands what he is ready to understand. An example might be St. John of the Cross’ popular work Dark Night of the Soul (1976). People commonly speak of their “dark night of the soul” when they mean a terrible period of their life in which disasters befell or they were deeply depressed. But what St. John is referring to as darkness is a state in which the soul moves toward God on an illuminated inner journey that is dark to the outer eye of ordinary prayer and devotion. It is not thought to harm people to understand the work according to their need at a given time nor to harm the inner path for them to do so. So far I have been speaking somewhat abstractly, but the real way in which children and adults learn new concepts is through concrete examples (Rosch, 1999b). Thus a significant portion of the chapter will be occupied by a comparison of two specific lineages both of which present clear cases of the beginner’s mind approach yet provide contrast in other important respects. The Shadhiliyya Sufi lineage, like other Western religions, defines fundamental wisdom in terms of God; the KagyuNyingma lineages of Tibetan Buddhism see such wisdom as beyond concepts altogether. Given the prejudices that theistic religions have about the nontheistic ones, the ignorance nontheistic religions have about contemplative paths in theistic religions, and the ignorance and prejudice that scientists generally have about all religions, such a study appears to be well warranted. Note that in studying these two lineages, I am not making the claim that their wisdoms are the same thing (how could anyone know?), or that all religions are the same (obviously they are not), or that all forms of Buddhism have a beginner’s mind core (highly debatable). Rather the point is to convey what beginner’s mind paths are like through examples, thereby perhaps opening a space for discussion of what such paths are and how they might be of significance.

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A further word about reading the chapter, particularly the material on the two lineages: inner path teachings are evocative. They are designed to penetrate through the familiar shell of the outer mind to touch, stir, and evoke those levels of mind that are deeper than what ordinarily passes for understanding. I’ve thus included traditional teaching stories and quotations whenever possible as they are what carry the transmission of the meanings. It would be helpful for the reader to allow this material to have its say briefly on its own terms before translating it into labels, jargon, or judgments. Among the labels most likely to be obstructive are: a) Mysticism. This is a dismissal; it implies that the teachings of such paths are not relevant to normal people or to the everyday world. b) Unscientific. This implies that our present sciences and methods of study already include everything basic about human minds and the rest of nature and will remain just as they are in perpetuity. c) Wisdom as personal transformation. This likens wisdom to personal therapy rather than to something related to truth. These are among the views in our society that I believe need to be held in abeyance if we are to have a chance of understanding these traditions or of benefiting from what they might have to offer.

Introduction to the Two Lineages What is meant by beginner’s mind? Let’s look now at the two case studies and begin with a story from each lineage about how their founding figure came to his path: A popular Kagyu teaching story tells how the human founder of the lineage, Naropa, is brought to a path of inner wisdom. Naropa is said to have already been a Buddhist monk, a renowned scholar, and a professor at Nalanda University, a center of Buddhist learning in northern India circa the 10th century C.E. (The following account is based on Guenther, 1963.) One day Naropa is sitting on his balcony with his back to the sun studying his books on grammar, epistemology, spiritual precepts and logic when a terrifying shadow falls across the page. He sees behind him an old woman with 37 hideously ugly features (in many versions described at length). She asks him what he is looking into. He replies that he is studying the books on grammar, epistemology, spiritual precepts, and logic. She asks, “Do you understand them?” He says, “Yes.” She asks, “Do you understand the words or the sense?” He says, “The words.” The old woman is delighted, rocks with laugher and begins to dance, waving her stick in the air. Naropa adds (perhaps wryly), “I also understand the sense.” At this the old woman begins to weep and tremble and throws her stick down. Then Naropa asks the fateful question: “How is it that you were happy when I said that I understood the words, but became miserable when I added that I also understood the sense?” She replies, “I felt happy because you, a great scholar, did not lie and frankly admitted that you only understood the words. But I felt sad when you told a lie by stating that you understood the sense, which you do not.” (Guenther, 1963, p. 25). Naropa asks how he can learn the meaning, and she directs him to seek the teacher Tilopa. As Naropa reflects on the vision of the old woman, he realizes that her ugly features are actually aspects of samsara, the suffering world of conditioned existence. (The old woman is understood in context to be Vajrayogini, the tantric wisdom deity, who appears as ugly to those who cannot

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see.) Deeply moved to renounce samsara and find wisdom, he leaves his position at the university and sets out on a quest to find his teacher. Having been inspired to enter the path, the next phase in this kind of wisdom narrative is meeting one’s teacher. For a simpler version of this than what happens next to Naropa, one can turn to the life of Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli, founder of the Shadhiliyya Sufi order. (The following is based on Al-Jamal & Abdullah, 1998.) Born in 1196 C.E. in an area west of Iraq, Abu al-Hasan had been raised as a practicing Muslim, had studied at a famous madrasa (religious school) in Fez, and had already become a promising Sufi student. Instructed to follow a light that will guide him to his true teacher, he arrives at the holy mountain of Jabal ‘Alam, makes the standard ritual ablution (wudu) at a spring at the base, and climbs the steep mountain. At the top, he goes forward in reverence and awe to meet his Master, but the Shaykh greets him by asking if he has made ablution, and when he answers “Yes,” tells him, “You cannot come to us in a state of impurity. Return and make wudu.” He goes down the mountain to the spring, makes ablution again, and climbs back up the mountain, but is again rejected with, “I told you to return only when you had purified yourself with the ablution.” This sequence repeats until he goes down the mountain with “the question of his rejection turning in his heart,” and is shown the meaning of his trial and what it is necessary for him to do. “This time, as he made his ablution, he emptied himself of everything that he knew, or thought he knew, or that he had learned and taken in . . . and he destroyed all his attributes, pictures, and prejudices, until he knew that he was left with only a vast space . . . inside him which was waiting . . . ” (Al-Jamal & Abdullah, 1998, p. 317). Now when he makes the ascent, his teacher embraces him with deep love and says, “If you wish to fetch water, you take an empty bucket to the well to do so.” These stories illustrate what is meant by a wisdom that cannot be taught or understood with our usual outer faculties of mind and that cannot be reached by accumulating information, skills, life experience, or accomplishments. In the stories, both Naropa and Abu Hasan already have outer learning and achievement, but these are not the vehicles that will serve them on their quests; in fact they are obstacles. Both already have the outer forms of their religion, but these do not suffice. While neither are told to abandon those forms (doctrine, spiritual precepts, ritual ablution), they are required to penetrate through the forms to their deeper meanings. Both travel far to find a teacher but, as we shall see, are to find the true guide and wisdom close at home—“closer than your eyes” is the Buddhist saying, “nearer than your jugular vein” the Sufi. Keep in mind, of course, that neither figure has yet begun his training. In the remainder of the chapter I will attempt to sketch those paths and show how the teaching methods used for inner wisdom differ from the outer teaching methods with which we are familiar. The concluding sections will offer some examples of how teaching consonant with beginner’s mind wisdom can be applicable in our secular school setting. The Kagyu-Nyingma Tibetan Buddhist lineages and the Shadhiliyya Sufi lineage are particularly suited for comparison as beginner’s mind paths. Historically, each lineage is the product of the most recent form of its parent religion. It is generally known that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam developed in historical order and that

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Sufism is part of Islam (often called the contemplative or mystical side of Islam). Buddhism also has a lengthy history, usually classified both by scholars and practitioners into three main stages called yanas (vehicles). The earliest form of Buddhism is now represented by the Theravada school of Southeast Asia; the next development was the Mahayana (Great Vehicle), the many diverse forms of which spread from India to East Asia and are now spreading to the West. The final historical form of Buddhism is the Vajrayana (Diamond Vehicle) which arose in northern India, spread through China to Japan, and then moved north into Tibet where it had its most complete development. Now, with the Tibetan diaspora, it is spreading into Asia, Europe, and North America. Despite doctrinal disputes and wide differences in form, Buddhism did not split into self-identified separate religions as did the theistic religions of the West. Earlier Buddhist teachings are generally incorporated and built upon by the later schools (somewhat in the way that the Christian bible includes the Old Testament). For example, the eight stages of consciousness of the Yogacara (consciousness only) school described by Shen (this volume) is a Mahayana doctrine that the Vajrayana includes but then “goes beyond” (as will be discussed later). Of interest from the teaching perspective is that in the three-yana approach of Tibetan Buddhism it is assumed that the path of an individual practitioner recapitulates the historical development of Buddhism. Obviously there are beginner’s mind paths and aspects of beginner’s mind teachings beyond what is discussed here. Christianity has a long tradition of explicit inner paths, as shown in the Kanangeser and Bright chapter (this volume). In Japan there is also a history of secular forms that can be practiced as inner paths: the way (do) of tea, of archery, of flower arranging, of martial arts—even less formally the way of striving to be a good employee or good daughter-in-law. For purposes of exposition, however, this chapter will concentrate on our two examples. Both Tibetan Buddhism and Sufism are organized through lineages of teacher-tostudent transmission rather than in terms of doctrinally defined sects, as is the case in Western religions. There are four main lineages in Tibetan Buddhism and hundreds of Sufi lineages and branch lineages. Because there is much interchange of students and teachings between friendly lineages, especially in Tibetan Buddhism, lines of transmission can become serpentine, and some teachers may hold teachings from more than one lineage. It is for this reason that I am presenting a joint portrait of the Kagyu-Nyingma lineages for the Tibetan Buddhist example.1 In some respects the teachings of the Kagyu-Nyingma Buddhist and Shadhiliyya Sufi lineages would appear diametrically opposed; the Sufi professes the creator God of Western religion; Buddhism is non-theistic. The Sufi talks of God in humanlike terms, for example as having intentions or being pleased or angry, whereas Buddhism eschews speaking of basic reality (later Buddhism does have a basic reality) in any such way. There is no explicit record of historical contact between the Shadhiliyya lineage and either Hinduism or Buddhism which makes this a more interesting group to compare with Buddhism than would a Sufi order originating in India and professing hybrid East-West ideas (such as Hazrat Inayat Khan’s Sufi Order of the West). Given the overt differences between the two groups, it is particularly revealing to examine some striking convergences that appear in their inner paths.

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First, a few convergences in their outer sociological form: both lineages are active in the contemporary world and are spreading to Europe and the United States. Both stress, at least in their modern forms, the potentials of using everyday life as the path to wisdom. Both are hierarchical with much emphasis on the importance of the teacher student relationship that sometimes causes friction in Western contexts. Both identify themselves as lineages in the sense of a direct teacher-student transmission beginning from a primordial source outside of time (the “natural state” for the Buddhist, God for the Sufi), through the radiance of that source (the ground luminosity for the Buddhist, the Mohammedan light for the Sufi), through the founding figures of their tradition (the Buddha, Muhammad), and finally through the individuals who initiated and perpetuated their particular historical line—whom we have just met. In both groups, the authority of the teacher comes from the understanding that he ultimately represents the primordial source—but, in this case, so does the student. In this chapter, I will highlight teachings from contemporary teachers in order to explore the two paths not as cultural curiosities but as, in the Buddhist saying, “freshly baked bread.” In so far as is possible, the attempt will be made to present the two traditions from their own perspectives. (For a historical account of Buddhism in Tibet, see Snellgrove, 1987; for a history of Sufism, see Knysh, 2000; for a sociological study of Sufism in a Western country, see Geaves, 2000.) Both lineages see the inner path as retracing what appears in our unexamined experience (our senses and our mind) to its original source, then returning to the world to be of help—a process that will eventually be seen to occur each moment. The methods of both paths are highly experiential. The Shadhiliyya Sufi speaks of the path as a sequence of four major Stations (Maqam). The structural equivalents in the Kagyu2 lineage are the four Abhishekas (empowerments, Tib. wang). While technically the Abhishekas are part of ritual, more broadly they can be seen to be representative of elements of the entire path. The paths of both lineages begin with the student imprisoned in the dark, confused and veiled state of the outer layer of his mind. This is called samsara in Buddhism and the Dunya in Islam. Both end with the realization by the student, or at least his initiation into, the deepest truth as seen by that lineage. For both lineages that final level is referred to as Secret in that it cannot be known with the more outer levels of the mind. I will be describing and drawing parallels between each of the four levels in the Sufi and the Buddhist lineages. Let me repeat that exploring parallels between the two paths is not a claim that they are the same; in particular, it is not a claim that God in Shadhiliyya Sufism is the same as the Kagyu Very Secret (or any other tradition’s absolute)—after all, who could know? There is a general problem with exposition of these kinds of teachings whether in a paper like this or in an actual teaching situation. Since each stage is increasingly beyond the emotions, concepts, and presuppositions of the surface mind, strictly speaking none of it is describable. Furthermore, the final stage in both paths is that the student is no longer separate from the fundamental truth or reality; and because that is what he was (timelessly) all along, there are not really any stages—nor any path for that matter. Since the teacher is one who ideally knows himself thus and is speaking from that place, even the first stage is transmitted and described basically from the point of view of the last stage. In short, expositions are linear but the path

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is not. However, that is also why presentation of these teachings is thought to be possible at all. As Tibetans say, “You are offering meat to a young tiger, not a tree.”

The Outer Level: the Stations of the Personality (Nafs) (Sufi), the Outer Abhisheka (Buddhist) The outermost layer of the mind is the way in which we are said to experience ourselves and the world when we are operating through the habitual functioning of the body and mind. Why do anything else? Buddhism, from its beginning, stresses the suffering inherent in that condition. The Sufi talks about separation from God, but that too entails darkness and struggle; the very first of the substations in the Sufi system is called Listening to the Orders from the Darkness. Buddhism specializes in a detailed psychological analysis of the workings of the suffering mind. Driven by desire for what one wants, fear and aggression towards what one doesn’t want, and ignorance of the real nature of things, humans and other sentient beings act in ways that only serve to increase the mental and emotional states that they are trying to alleviate. Such motivations, called the three poisons in Buddhism, center around one’s self, a self which actually has no inherent reality. The three basic poisonous drives build into self perpetuating habitual realms of dissatisfaction in which sentient beings are imprisoned moment after moment and life after life, endlessly circling in samsara (the wheel of life, i.e. life as seen from and perpetuated by the suffering egocentric outer layer of the mind). However, through it all, according to later Buddhist schools, the basic nature remains unchanged like the sun hidden by clouds, and a longing for the awake wisdom state propels fortunate beings toward the path. For the Sufi, the initial state of the self, the nafs (the components of one’s outer personality), is also a fearsome abode. “Be careful of your self for it is a big snake and if it bites you it will kill you.” (Al-Jamal & Abdullah, 1998, p. 8). The nafs, like the Buddhist description of ordinary consciousness, “contains all the things that come from your self—your perception, your hearing, your feeling, the voices in your mind, and the desires of your heart, that say this and that or ask why or what.” (Al-Jamal, 2002, p. 47). As in Buddhism, this is seen as an imprisoning and meaningless circle. “Travel not . . . like the donkey at the mill. Roundabout he turns, his goal the same as his departure.” (Shaykh Ibn ‘Ata’illah quoted in Al-Jamal & Abdullah, 1998, p. 394). All of this comprises the dunya, the dark outer state of separation from God and truth. Walking in the Way means walking toward God and overcoming obstacles, inspired by one’s longing (hima) for God. Teachers have to address people where they are. The mind of samsara in Buddhism and of the dunya in Islam presents a set of powerful obstacles that beginner’s mind teachings feel they must work with. That mind is wild; constantly flitting from one worldly thought and object to another. It is blinded by concepts; the eye of the self sees only through its own ideas and pictures—for example, it lays its own conceptions of good and bad over everything. That mind is dualistic: the self is felt as separate from the world, separated from other people, and separated

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from good things whether they be objects of desire or the ultimate good of God or enlightenment. Because of all this, that mind of samsara and the dunya is self centered. Such a mind is mistaken not only about its true nature but about its own benefit which leads it to (in Sufi terms) worship idols and (in Buddhist terms) practice material, psychological, and spiritual materialism; that is, the individual does everything, including the practice of religion, in a way that caters to ego, trying to make it feel comfortable. Small wonder that the actions performed on the basis of all this are the unwholesome ones that lead to bad karma (in Buddhism) or God’s displeasure (in theistic systems generally). Given the power of these imprisoning obstacles, what are beginning students in either tradition to do? The specialty of inner wisdom paths is to use those very attributes of mind that create obstacles to captivate and lead the student toward the truth “like a deer listening to a flute in the forest” (a saying attributed to Naropa). The trick is that, in the process, the student’s mind, as well as the rest of the student as he imagines himself to be, is going be destroyed and transformed.

Actions Let’s look at how this works for actions. There’s a tension in all intensely undertaken human activities between the knowledge that one has to throw oneself into the activity and make great effort and the knowledge that one is powerless to force the result to happen. This shows up in Christianity in the faith versus works debate; in athletics as the athlete’s recognition that, train as he may (and must), there’s no way he can produce “a hot hand” or enter “the zone”; and in Buddhism in the gradual versus sudden enlightenment debate, most often expressed in a ritualized “dharma combat” between parties who fully agree that enlightenment is always both a gradual path of practices and a timeless uncaused sudden realization. At the outermost level, very definite actions are usually prescribed. Buddhism and Islam, like all religions (and societies), have codes of moral conduct (precepts in Buddhism, shari’a in Islam) that forbid harmful overt actions such as lying and stealing, and substitute for them beneficial actions such as honesty and giving charity. Mental actions, such as the ungovernable wildness or dullness of the thought process, may also be addressed by techniques that are themselves actions: for example, concentration and mindfulness meditation in Buddhism or mantra-like repetition of the name of God for the Sufi. But to describe either the overt or mental practices in this way is to touch only their outer shell. If the delicate kernel of an almond is to grow, say the Sufi, it must be protected by its shell, but to eat the almond, one must eventually break the shell. The reason why the Buddhist wants the student to settle his mind is not to make him an expert concentrator or marginally better at attention tasks in his outer life (which is too often how modern psychology studies meditation), but to enable him to penetrate to the nature (understood differently in different forms of Buddhism) of the phenomenal world. The reason why the Sufi does not want his mind to “fly from place to place” is so that it can abide with God and His Creation. (For inner path discussions of the Buddhist precepts see Nhat Hanh, 1987, and for Islamic shari’a see Al-Jamal, 1996). The desired end result in

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both cases is for actions to cease entirely; that is, for the student’s egoically generated acts to be replaced by actions from God (Sufi) or actions from the primordial wisdom (Vajrayana Buddhist). We’ll see how this theme plays out as we go along the path.

Concepts and Language The slavery of the habitual mind to concepts and language undergoes a similar reworking. At the first level of teaching, the aim is to change the student’s mistaken views and concepts to correct concepts, namely the institutional doctrines of the tradition. At the intermediate level, these doctrines warn of their own demise; the Sufi admonishes the student to drop all of his pictures, and Buddhism speaks of a raft that must be abandoned on the other side of the river. But inner path teachings have a further twist; the language of the teachings is fashioned to simultaneously communicate to the outer ear and to transmit to the dormant ear of the deeper inner levels. In fact it is designed eventually to reach through the concepts and layers of the student’s mind entirely to touch the underlying truth that is beyond the mind.3 Kagyu teachers say that you need to get new ears. A Shadhiliyya Sufi example: “Give me your ear and take care not to hear any voices, only the Voice of your Beloved. Because your Beloved wants to make a holy marriage with you when he sends the Word to your ear . . . This word is the first Word . . . the first light in the world of al-azal (pre-eternity.) And listen to my voice to know my story which is also your story from the first.” (Al-Jamal & Abdullah, 1998, p. 36). We might think of such language as metaphoric but it is the understanding of these paths that this is the direct language of truth and that it is the supposedly referential language of the outer world that is metaphoric. The inner language may or may not refer; above all it is designed to transmit.

Dualistic Mind The dualistic nature of the outer mind is used to advantage in a similar fashion. Initially, the teacher (guru, guide) appears as someone outside oneself, a wondrous being who engenders awe, love, devotion and obedience and thereby can transmit the teaching. Enlightenment or God is seen as something outside oneself, a passionately desired goal that drives one forward. In fact at the outer level of the mind, it is through a personified God, Christ, guru or Shaykh (Islamic guide) that the deeper wisdom is transmitted. The dualism of concepts of good versus evil provides strong motivation since the student wants to be on the side of the good. And, finally, the feeling of a lonely separated self opens the door in both traditions to receptivity to teachings of compassion and love and to the embrace of the community of fellow practitioners (called sangha in Buddhism). All of these techniques are common to social institutions in general. What starts to undercut the dualism in inner path teachings is inclusiveness. The conditional outer mind understands by means of divisions, duality, and judgment. Beginner’s mind teachings are spoken

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from a position of unconditional inclusiveness. “The great way is not difficult so long as you do not pick and choose” (Zen saying).4 From a Kagyu path perspective, beginning mindfulness meditation as well as advanced Vajrayana ritual is understood to encompass everything, including mistakes, inattention, and impurities, as part of the practice itself. The Shadhiliyya teaches that even mistaken actions and beliefs are from God and can, handled properly, bring the student closer to God’s all embracing love. The psychological claim is that when the dualistic mind is fully included in awareness rather than ignored or fought against, mind can expand to the nondual recognition of its truer nature. Here light and dark are part of the fabric and even Satan (as ‘shaitan), as we’ll see later, is obeying God.

The Ego Self The self and self-centeredness are perhaps the poster child for the way inner path teachings work with the outer layer of the mind. The beginner enters the path in order to get rewards for himself such as gaining happiness in this life, entrance into heaven rather than hell in the afterlife, or the imagined triumph of attaining enlightenment or union with God. But the inner path teacher warns people that they are in for a surprise. The Sufi might say at an introductory talk that you are going to have to die before you die, and the Vajrayana Buddhist might add that you’re not even going to be able to watch your own funeral. The Sufi saint Rabi’a asks God to burn her in hell if she worships him for fear of hell and to exclude her from paradise if she worships him for hope of paradise but to not begrudge her his essence if she worships him for his own sake. The Vajrayana warns against spiritual materialism and extols hopelessness for the ego. Interestingly, such warnings are quite seductive for students. The student may first fight against self-centeredness with asceticism and good works, later be able to witness his self centered striving with compassion, but finally realize that the supposed self, not being real, cannot actually do anything, including giving itself up. (Note again the theme of what one can and cannot accomplish of oneself.) Then it is that the path is said to become one of true surrender. “ . . . you don’t actually . . . give anything up, but things just go . . . It’s like the end of the heavy rainy season . . . There’s a little brightness in the south and west and east. The clouds begin to lift rather than you pushing them up.” (Trungpa, 1976). And from the Sufi side: “If a person gives up a pleasure . . . this is an outside leaving. But if the pleasure leaves him, this is . . . the true witnessing (mushada).” (Abu al-Husayn an-Nuri quoted in Al-Jamal & Abdullah, 1998, p. 160). Basically the self has to fail at the path and thereby surrender—not our ordinary idea of teaching and learning. The fruition of reaching such lowness will be that the student returns “to be a holy king or a holy queen” (Al-Jamal, 2002) empowered with the purified form of the qualities of the outer mind. In the Kagyu ritual of the Outer Abhisheka, the lama literally sits on a throne and is crowned with a diadem of skulls representing the primordially pure and beneficial form of the confused outer attributes. But none of this can take place if one remains at the outer level, so we must travel inwards.

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The Inner Level: the Stations of the Heart (Sufi), the Inner Abhisheka (Buddhist) Here the language begins to change to be less representational. The pervasive imagery is of connection, falling in love, and intoxication. Think of the first blush of romantic love in which the world becomes infused with magic. Or imagine coming home after a bad day and taking the first swallow of a stiff drink. Of course if it’s physical alcohol, in a few seconds you need another swallow, and things can soon get out of hand. And the touch of romantic love may quickly become anxiety, jealousy and the rest of ego’s tricks. But, say the Sufi, when the eye of the heart opens, one tastes the wine that is not like any other wine. This is the beginning of the divine intoxication. On the outer level one related to other people, including loved ones and even one’s guru, as separate from oneself. One also saw God as separate, as another anthropomorphic person operating from an outer level mind like one’s own. It is at the inner level, the Sufi stations of the heart, that this begins to change into real intimacy, an intimacy that includes everything in one’s world from sense perceptions, to people, to God. This is where an I-Thou relationship with God (Buber, 1958) becomes possible. What may only have been a concept of God at the outer level becomes a taste at the inner. There is communication with God, perhaps beautiful in its expanded states, perhaps fearful in contracted states, but viable as long as one continues on the path. In Kagyu Buddhist language, the second level is the opening of communication (of speech in an expanded sense) with reality. Here the phenomenal world begins to meet the wisdom of emptiness (sunyata). Emptiness at this point means that the world known to the senses, thoughts, and emotions of the outer level is seen as insubstantial, perhaps dreamlike, yet imbued with a spark of the ungraspable deepest wisdom.5 Both Kagyu and Shadhiliyya speak here in terms of the union of masculine and feminine. For the Kagyu the union is visualized as “deities” representing the masculine energy of the phenomenal world in union with the feminine energy of wisdom, a union that generates the bliss that intoxicates all obstacles. For the Shadhiliyya Sufi, the relationship of masculine and feminine is the tracing back through one’s humanity to the unity of the original Adam and Eve, a holy union which also generates bliss. The Sufi enjoins the student to “break his tomb” and drink the divine wine, and in the Vajrayana ritual of the inner abhisheka, the student receives a spoonful of sacred wine from a skull cup (in Tibet supposedly a real skull). The fruition of opening to the inner level in both the Sufi and Buddhist examples is that compassion and love start to flow and circulate. In Sufi language the heart is now God’s house, and the student prays, “Help me to show the flower inside my heart, so that anyone can take what they need from this flower . . . ” (Al-Jamal, 2002, p. 53). The Buddhist vows, “May I become sustenance in every way for sentient beings to the limits of space . . . ” (Shantideva, 1995, a phrase often used in Tibetan Buddhist Bodhisattva vow ceremonies.)6

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The Wisdom Level: the Stations of the Soul (Sufi), the Third Abhisheka (Buddhist) In folk psychology, many people have intimations of some level in themselves deeper still than the warmth of the heart. The word “soul” is sometimes used to indicate that level. For example when people say that a spouse or lover is their soul mate it indicates a bond deeper than ordinary love such that, perhaps, the union is not affected by geographical separation or that betrayal by such a person would be devastating. In both Kagyu and Shadhiliyya this third level forms an intermediary between the inconceivable source and the everyday phenomenal world of matter and form. It is understood as the subtle radiance of the source. For the Sufi it is the world of the 99 names of God; these are names for qualities of God. In Vajrayana Buddhism it is the world of the reality of the mandala. The atmosphere of this level is indicated in the Sufi instruction to “Change every quality in your heart to become a new quality full of light.” (Al-Jamal, 2002). The 99 names comprise many kinds of qualities such as compassion, power, peace, wisdom, and unity (see, for example, Al-Jamal, 2001, and Al-Jerrahi, 2000). The qualities are alternatively treated as attributes of an external God and as one’s own attributes to be developed. What this means in practice is that the student is alternately, or even simultaneously, receiving a quality (for example peace), embodying it, and giving it to others. Students are encouraged to contemplate the qualities in depth and to repeat the Arabic names for them like mantras to nurture those qualities in themselves. They are also taught to use the qualities to effect specific purposes such as protection or healing. The essence of all the qualities, like the essence of everything else, is God. The Tibetan mandala is also a structure of unity representing the sacred form of the universe. The basic meaning of the mandala has been expressed as “All things are included in the sphere of self-born wisdom.”(Trungpa, 1981). Just as the 99 qualities of God are manifestations of God, so the energies of the mandala are considered the radiance of the undefinable sacred ground beyond mind. The confused outer mind grasps at the energies of this radiance with the karmic habits that turn it into a material world of insatiable desire, fear, aggression, and ignorance. The function of the mandala is to transform the energies back into their wisdom aspects (more accurately to recognize them as what they always were). The mandala is ringed by fierce protectors whose role it is to assure that energies received into the mandala are properly transformed. Each section of the mandala represents a specific confused outer energy, its wisdom transformation, and the Buddha activity that corresponds to that wisdom. Students do practices (rituals, visualizations, mantra recitations, meditations) in which they identify with these energies for the purpose of transforming their own and the world’s confused energies into their corresponding wisdoms. It is the teachings of this third and the fourth level of human functioning that most distinguish Vajrayana from Mahayana Buddhism, and it is the images and ritual aspects of mandala practices that people in the West most associate with Tibetan

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Buddhism in particular, since that is the observable form of the empowerments (wang) given as public blessings. Let us take a tour of a basic mandala (See Figures 1a and 1b) to look at correspondences between the principles of the mandala and the types of names and qualities of God. Note that the purpose of such an exercise in both traditions would be compassion; compassion and mercy are the first two qualities of God among the 99 names, and compassion is considered the reason behind all Buddha activity in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism. We enter the mandala through the east gate. This is where the penetrating energy of anger cuts through the aggression of outer-level concepts and emotions to reveal the peaceful mirrorlike wisdom (vajra) that lies beneath them. Mirror-like wisdom shows all things in their pure form, empty (see endnote 5) yet luminous. The Buddha activity associated with mirror-like wisdom is that of pacifying. In the Sufi stations of the soul, the image of the mirror is also central as the student is to see all things as a mirror of God. From this vision, he can begin to receive the many qualities of peace, protection, and security that God is offering him.

Fig. 1a. Pictorial Representation of a Vajrayana Mandala

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Fig. 1b. Schematic Representation of Mandala Showing Meanings of its Parts

To the south of the mandala, the hungry-ghost mentality of poverty, pride, and greed, when pacified, is revealed as none other than awareness of the inherent richness of the universe (ratna). The corresponding wisdom is that of equanimity. The Buddha activity is that of enriching, which is also the energy of expansiveness and generosity. Likewise the Sufi in the stations of the soul, having surrendered the poverty of his nafs (personality) and now seeing the face of God in all his trials and circumstances, abides in equanimity. Among the 99 names, there are qualities of self-sufficiency, generosity, and expansiveness. The connection between poverty

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at the outer level (the ego doesn’t actually possess anything) and the discovery of inner richness is a theme in many spiritual traditions; e.g. think of “Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . ” of the Christian beatitudes. In the west of the mandala, the seductive energy of passion which seeks to draw towards itself objects of pleasure and desire and thrust away objects of pain and fear is liberated through equanimity into its true nature as the clear and gentle vision of what is truly beneficial. This is called the wisdom of discriminating awareness (padma). The Buddha activity is that of magnetizing (i.e. of attracting and bringing together). Through the guidance available in the awareness that discriminates what is useful to the path from what is harmful to it, blessings, beauty, good fortune, and the highest good fortune of meeting with the true dharma can be attracted and brought into situations. Among the 99 names of God, there are an abundance of qualities of God’s guidance, vision, knowing, and wisdom as well as love and beauty. The humble and faithful student of the soul can attract these qualities to himself and others. Put another way, God draws the open and willing student to His qualities and Himself, and the more realized a Sufi teacher, the more power he has to be a channel of this for others. In the north of the mandala the tightly clenched energies of jealousy and miserliness, when relaxed and informed by the wisdom of discriminating awareness, are released as the powerful energies of the wisdom of all accomplishing action (karma). The Buddha activity is that of destroying—destroying understood as the destruction of whatever needs to be destroyed and care for whatever needs care. Among the 99 names of God, there are attributes of power, majesty, dominion and accomplishment, since God—and the student who is now identifying with God’s attributes—can do anything that is needed. In the center of the mandala is the wisdom of all encompassing space (buddha). It represents the true form of the embodiment of the animate and inanimate universe: unified, self existing, all encompassing, space-like in its unreality to the eye of the outer mind, luminous to the subtle eye. The 99 names of God also contain qualities of unity, self subsistence, all pervasiveness, and light. In Sufi imagery, at the level of the soul, the tomb of the body is broken, and the body is now light. Vast and panoramic as all this may be, it is not yet the ultimate for either tradition. Behind the mandala principle in the Vajrayana and behind the qualities of the soul as understood by the Sufi is the essence itself. In Shadhiliyya Sufi language, Adam never actually left the garden, but in order to reach and penetrate to the garden of the essence, it is necessary to surrender all idols completely, to “die.” At the end of the stations of the soul is the fana, the death of the soul into God. A being who is completely drawn to God and surrendered to Him might pass very gently into the fana, but that is not the case for most people. One image of the needed purification is of fire. On the outer levels, the shaitan (Satan) was an enemy, but from the deep perspective of the soul, Satan, in deep love and surrender to God, accepts his appointed role as the guide of the darkness who tests mankind and guards the gate of the essence so that none may pass without burning off everything in them that is not of the Truth. Here the Satanic fire plays much the same role as the fierce Tibetan protectors (mahakalas) who ring both the periphery of the mandala and its innermost chamber.

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On the Kagyu Buddhist path one must also die. At the end of Naropa’s trials (not described in this account), he cuts off his head and limbs and uses them, together with his blood, to make a mandala in the desert for his teacher. Only then can he receive the final teaching. It is understood that while previous practices may have resolved desire, aggression, and the heedlessness of the outer levels of ignorance, now the student must penetrate through his basic ignorance itself. As with the Sufi fana, the imagery for most students is of fire. When the phenomenal world and wisdom meet fully at the level of the mandala, the yogic fire of chandali ignites. In the words of the teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, . . . it begins to expand and it begins to burn heaven, and it begins also to burn and consume earth, and then it also begins to consume and burn what’s in between the two . . . It begins to burn anything you thought was the saving grace for your life in the past: your little memories, your little works of art, your little poetry, your little music, your little philosophy, your little science, your little love affair, your little bank account, your little expense account, your little house, your little husband or wife, your little children . . . It consumes everything you have laid any kind of trip on . . . that fire is not the fire of destruction, necessarily . . . That fire is a very productive fire . . . That fire actually destroys precisely what needs to be destroyed, and it cultivates what needs to be cultivated . . . There is a sense of tremendous productivity and faith and hope whereby you could actually let go . . . (Trungpa, 1978)

The Essence: The Stations of the Secret (Sufi), The Abhisheka of That (Mahamudra and Maha Ati)7 (Buddhist) In both traditions, the essence, altogether beyond the grasp of the mind, is inexpressible. It is beyond time, beyond causality. It is said to be the real object of human desires; in the words of the poet Rumi, “When grapes turn to wine, they’re wanting this. When the night sky pours down, . . . [it’s] wanting this.” (Barks,1995, p. 262).8 Perhaps everyone has occasionally had an ungraspable, unknowable, and unforgettable glimmer of a truly other way of knowing and being that is worth everything. The Shadhiliyya Sufi speaks of the first light of creation (the Mohammedan light) and of the deep secret love. The Kagyu and Nyingma lineages teach the clear light (the ground luminosity) and the Great Perfection. The Sufi speaks of God. Buddhism goes to great lengths not to speak of anything that could be grasped as a concept. Both traditions teach that the world as it appears in the previous levels, particularly in the outer level of samsara and the dunya, is not real in itself—the essence is the only actual reality. Both traditions speak of unity, perfection, compassion, luminance, timelessness, completion.

Pause This is not yet the end, but note what we are seeing at this point. We started with two different religions. The Shadhiliyya Sufi begins with our standard Western notions about God and man, but by the time he reaches the level of the secret, he has shed

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both himself and his conceptions of God. The Kagyu-Nyingma Tibetan Buddhist begins without Western concepts of God, but by the time he reaches the essence, he asserts that he has gone beyond mind. We might well reconsider our preconceptions and clichés about religion. Many questions may now arise. Are the two traditions talking about the same thing? (After all, one might use the same tool to crack the outer shell of an almond or of a pecan, but the sweet inner flesh would not be identical.) And what are the implications of same or different, or of one way or the other? My hope is that this chapter will lead to an additional question: With what kind of mind is one asking (whatever the question), and with what kind of mind is one willing to receive an answer? At issue is that concepts change meaning at different levels of the mind. Consider obedience, an important aspect of the Sufi and Vajrayana paths, as well as of the Christian contemplative path (Kanangeser & Bright, this volume). Obedience is one face of surrender and a common method of training for surrender and letting go. But the understanding of both what one is surrendering to and who is doing the surrendering changes with stages of the path. The outer mind, experiencing itself as a separate ego, may obey parent, spouse, guru or God through any number of self referencing motivations such as fear, desire to be loved, desire for reward, or giving up to a hopeless situation with no known alternatives. At the level of heart (using the Sufi terminology), obedience could become an I-thou intimate communication with a not completely separate other, be that other a person, moral system, natural order, or one’s God. At the soul level, “obedience” is the embodiment and transmission to others of natural or God-given virtues and powers such as peacefulness, strength, or compassion. And at the level of the secret, the concept of obedience becomes mute altogether as the realized person acts directly and inherently from the deepest wisdom beyond mind (Buddhist) or from God (Sufi). (Re Christianity, note St. Augustine’s dictum that freedom for the elect means that they can no longer will to sin). If scientist, scholar, or educator persists in asking and answering questions about the deeper levels of experience using only the outer level conceptual mind, the phenomena asked about will dissolve or mutate into something quite different, leaving only misunderstandings. It is possible, nonetheless, with proper respect for what is at issue, to have reasonable communication between the levels; that is because what may appear from the path perspective as different levels are not really separate to the eye of completion. We turn now to the completion part of the journey.

The Return The essence is not a place (there is no place) where one dwells in time (there is no time), but conditionally speaking, after the death into God of the fana, is the baqa, the return. In returning the student is changed; he now perceives everything through the eye of the secret. The Kagyu-Nyingma Buddhist speaks of it this way,

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If you have been properly consumed by this cosmic fire of chandali, then you could be anywhere and you could become anything—but always connected with whatever is needed . . . you begin to realize that the jnana (wisdom) principle contains a tremendous sense of fullness. Then you again go back and restep what you have gone through . . . Having attained unity, you go back and restep the whole thing. (Trungpa, 1978).

Returning to the third level, the Kagyu student may say, as is sometimes done in an abhisheka ritual when pulling the blindfold from one’s eyes, “The structure and inhabitants of the mandala become real.” The Shadhiliyya Sufi student is, at this point, said to embody the qualities at the soul level so that he is himself now the qibla, the direction of prayer. Return from death in the essence should confer a profound (and perhaps radiant) equanimity. For the Buddhist there should be no preference even for enlightenment over confusion, since enlightenment is itself a relative condition which depends on confusion, and the essence is beyond both. It is also beyond paradise for the Sufi, as we saw earlier for Rabi’a. Thus for the Shadhiliyya lineage, the fully realized Sufi is not the ecstatic but the sober Sufi. Psychologists and neuro-scientists could well take note of this; studies of meditative and religious experience have all assumed that what is at stake are particular kinds of experience, but the essence of inner path teaching is that the kind of experience one is having is ultimately irrelevant. Ecstatic experiences, painful or boring experiences, they are equally the essence of truth or, for the Sufi, of God—and thinking otherwise is the essence of obstacles. Returning to the second level, the eye of the heart is now fully open. In Buddhist language, “compassionate energy arises without pretense.” The Sufi says, “If you look at people with these eyes (the outer eye), you do not like them, but if you look with the Eye of Reality, you can see that everything is perfect.” (Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli quoted in Al-Jamal & Abdullah, 1998, p. 396). The Sufi student should see God’s face in every face and send the love and the mercy to everyone. The final fruition is the return to the first level, the outer world, the confused world to give to others what one has realized. At this point it can be seen how the levels telescope into a unity; the nafs (elements of the personality) that listen to the orders from the darkness are, from the perspective of the purity of the essence, the perfect nafs possessed by the completely realized man (Insan al-Kamil). From the perspective of the Buddhist Great Perfection, the complete practice is “just ordinary life itself.” (Khentse, 1970). But the understanding of action in ordinary life has changed. For the Vajrayana Buddhist, action out of wisdom means action (properly non-action or spontaneous action) fully in contact with the realities and needs of the situation and unencumbered by the strategies of the self-centered ego or by preconceptions or methods. This is sometimes called crazy wisdom (cholwa). Likewise the Sufi no longer “asks how or why” but turns to God as “the ears he hears through and the eyes he sees through and the hands he strikes through and the feet he walks with.” (Hadith Qudsi).9 The student constantly asks how to do things. The Buddhist now says you just do it. And Rabi’a’s answer when asked “how” was, “You know of the how but I know of the howless.” (Al-Jamal & Abdullah, 1998, p. 64). In the final vision, we see the Sufi as caliph of his kingdom under God10 and the Buddhist as the wise and compassionate universal monarch, crowned with the

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wisdoms of the mandala. For both, it is a vast vision. Ibn Arabi says, “My heart has opened into every form. It is a pasture for gazelles, a cloister for Christian monks, a temple for idols, the Tables of the Tawrah (Torah), and the Book of the Qur’an.” (AlJamal & Abdullah, 1998, p. 311). And the Buddhist finally fulfills his Bodhisattva vow to offer sentient beings that mind of the essence which is the inexhaustible treasure which removes the world’s poverty, the supreme medicine which cures the world’s sickness, the tree which provides rest for beings weary of wandering on the paths of existence, . . . the rising moon of mind which dispels the torment of the kleshas [conflicting emotions], the great sun which puts an end to the obscurity of ignorance . . . (phrases from a Bodhisattva vow ceremony based on Santideva,1995).

Applications to Education People smile when the Austrian satirist Thomas Bernhard calls school “a machine for the mutilation of my mind.” (See Bernhard, 1985). Who in the “civilized” world has not, at least sometimes, felt that way? Yet surely what we want is an educational system that enables people to access aspects of their minds capable of making creative and wise decisions in an increasingly complex political, religious, and scientific environment. So long as people remain trapped in the conceptual and emotional boundaries of the outer mind, Buddhist, Sufi and others would assert such an education to be impossible. Formal educational systems around the world specialize in feeding information to the outer mind, and it is generally done in such a way that students are socialized (some might say brainwashed) into abandoning all other portions of their intelligence. This is not because public schools are secular; most religious education also consists of the delivery of information, only in this case information about particular theologies. There is nothing wrong with knowledge on the outer level; the outer world blossoms when seen (and lived) in its proper perspective. It is the cutting off of access to the deeper levels that are said to nourish the outer that is at issue.11 Western psychology is of little help for any of this; it may describe mechanisms of the body, cognition, emotion, and personality but has remained largely oblivious to anything else. (The psychoanalytic unconscious, though sometimes called depth psychology, is generally pictured as an ego-centered manipulative homunculus that differs from the conscious outer layer of the mind only in not being conscious.) Even research done on meditation and spirituality tends to be formulated from the perspective of the outer mind; not surprisingly, if that is what is put into the research, that is what is gotten out of it (Rosch, 1999a, 2007a, b, Rosch & Fallah, 2007). Is there any place for beginner’s mind wisdom in ordinary education? The beginner’s mind approach ought to be applicable to education. Remember that beginner’s mind teachings (even when described in dramatic and colorful fashion) concern the basic nature of the everyday mind and the way to access that nature. They say that there are levels of mind beyond the surface of our usual consciousness and habits that are increasingly real, good, and efficacious. (Actually, from a fruition perspective, talking about “levels” and even “path” is misleading.)12 Since

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the methods for accessing the “levels” call for not doing, rather than being an expert doer, those deeper levels are said to be fully accessible (“closer than your eyes”), always available each moment in daily life if one is but willing to notice let alone live from them, and relevant to everything, including both teaching and learning in public schools. Many people would now claim that tapping into this kind of mind on a mass level is the only thing that can, at this juncture in history, change the world in a significant way. From this point of view, trying to create wisdom by moving around concepts in the outer mind is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. There is, in fact, a burgeoning movement in North America towards what is being called “Contemplative Education.” This is defined by one of the leading institutes in the field, the Garrison Institute, as “a third way of knowing that complements the rational and the sensory.” (Hart, 2003). Inspired by a number of pioneering books that both argue the need for such education and demonstrate the way in which it can be done (Palmer, 1998; Livey & Palmer, 1999; Kessler, 2000; Hart 2001, 2003; Lantieri, 2001; Forbes, 2004; Hoppe & Speck, 2005), contemplative education programs are springing up in many major American and Canadian cities. These programs tend to be directed towards three main areas: meditative relaxation and mindfulness; social-emotional intelligence and compassion; and the ability to tap into and communicate about the serious concerns of life and death that are usually considered off limits for discussion by young people in our society. (Note that this latter taps into the traditions of wisdom by dialog and conversation that are presented elsewhere in this volume.) There are programs designed for different age groups and those designed for teachers. The reason beginner’s mind inspired programs are appropriate for public education is that their practices do not owe allegiance to any particular information content. Information may be sectarian (religious, secular, scientific, and so on), but training designed to allow people to find their own basic abilities is like type O blood. To object to such programs would be like objecting to the afternoon nap in preschool. A student who begins to access his basic nature might express it in a deeper understanding of the teachings of his own religion if he has one, but equally in his social relationships, schoolwork, athletics, hobbies, even his sleep. A number of institutes are presently funding programs designed to research and implement various forms of contemplative education: the Garrison Institute, the Impact Foundation, the Center for the Advancement of Contemplative Education, the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, SEL (Social and Emotional Learning), the Mind and Life Institute, Roots of Empathy, and the Tides Center’s Project Renewal. Naropa University in Boulder Colorado, a Buddhist inspired school, offers two degree programs in Contemplative Education: its regular Early Childhood Program and a low residency online Master’s program in Contemplative Education designed for working teachers. The new Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education that is being built in Vancouver, British Columbia, has a special mandate for fostering education in compassion. Many of the institutes have online forums encouraging local groups of teachers, educators, and other interested parties to meet and form working groups. Even as you read this, no doubt new groups and projects are being formed and new techniques experimented with.

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A cornucopia of techniques are employed by the various projects: a) The fostering of meditative relaxation and mindfulness might use secular meditation, yoga, attention training, exercises where children focus on their breathing, thoughts, or eating, body scanning, visualizing a safe place, slowing down, “chilling,” noticing bodily sensations, stopping and waiting for three breaths, finding a quiet personal space, centering, grounding and calming oneself. Such techniques also allow tuning into one’s own emotions and ways of relating with people. b) Compassion practices might include such classic techniques as generating thoughts of loving kindness for oneself, one’s relatives, friends, and others, including enemies. An innovative program designed by Mary Gordon of Roots of Empathy brings mothers with their infants into a classroom once a month for a year so that students may form their own relationships with the mother and infant. (A particularly haunting story from this project: a 14 year old boy who had lived in a succession of foster homes since he was four took the baby and gently rocked it for awhile, then asked the instructor if someone who had never been loved could still be a good father; Gordon, 2005.) c) Other techniques designed to connect students to their deep intuitions include working with the arts, storytelling, spending time in nature, and discussion groups of difficult topics important to the student. One of the things that contemplative education is willing to address that is normally shunned is the simple but pervasive experience of not knowing. The outer mind flees from not knowing as from death—and contemplatives know that, in a sense, we do die and return each moment. This is one of the everyday faces of the death that is talked about at the deeper levels of inner wisdom paths. Education usually deals with the issue by packing the outer mind with more information and skills so that there will always be something familiar to hold onto. The price for this is constant struggle and tension. Another price is stagnation, because it is in the gaps that novelty and creativity occur.13 A first principle of contemplatives East and West is to stay with not knowing. Contemplative education explicitly offers students, terrified of not knowing (for example of going blank on a test), a “perspective outside their usual thoughts and emotions that allows [them] to focus and center and ground and calm themselves, so they can access their inner knowledge” (quoted in Boyce, 2007). While programs at the K-12 level are largely motivated by desires to foster the personal development, socio-emotional capacity, and inner life of school children, in higher education a turn towards contemplative education has been provoked by a different need, the complexity and often ill defined nature of the emerging subject matters themselves. Most universities have committees or task forces charged with suggesting innovative approaches to teaching (see for example, Harvard Magazine, 2006), and maps for a radically new mind set to deal with uncertainty, change and other issues have emerged in some surprising fields, for example business (Senge, 2006) and architecture (McDonough & Braungart, 2002). To illustrate the issues at the college level, consider the example of a proposed pilot program for the training of engineering students at the University of California, Berkeley. Schools of engineering are becoming increasingly concerned that the complex and far reaching impacts of technology are no longer adequately served by a professional training and ethics geared to simpler processes. The systems of

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21st century technology, unlike those of earlier periods, have properties that are holistic, chaotic, and may not be describable independent of the observer. Such complexity leads to impacts that are geographically global, may be imperceptible in time (such as radioactive waste), are potentially irreversible, and could have catastrophic outcomes. A different sort of mind seems to be needed to cope with such issues. The proposed engineering program is an attempt to map contemplative education into the actual content of classes. The first principle is to provide an overarching mind-set or paradigm in which: 1) the world is perceived not as mechanical, as in classical engineering, but as nonlinear, and 2) engineering is seen not as an isolated technological domain but as an integrated part of society. Basic attitudes towards a subject are influential; the Buddhist and Sufi cases illustrated how the perspective of the final stage could determine introductory teaching. A core course in the new engineering program provides historical and social background so that students can learn to understand engineering problems in their social and human contexts. Core science courses are designed to be rigorous but at the same time convey the shifting nature of scientific paradigms and the relativity of concepts to the systems and networks in which they are used (a key insight in contemplative paths). The nonlinear perspective requires agility with concepts and a continuing openness of mind. It is interesting that it appeared necessary to also include practices in the program similar to those at the K-12 level. Courses are allowed and encouraged that address the student’s personal development (at present an engineering student can meet breadth requirements with a class in art history but not a class in painting). Such classes might include body awareness, contemplative practices, and creative selfexpression. Other classes are aimed at developing ethical know-how, entrepreneurship and leadership, with particular emphasis on the ability to take the point of view of others and think beyond one’s own egocentric concerns. Finally, the program includes training in praxis (learning through action) in which students are placed in field settings. The goal of classes, as it has been for the younger students, is not only to impart information but to develop needed abilities and qualities in the students. Courses such as these could do much for the training of other older professionals, most obviously therapists, teachers, social workers, managers, and other service providers who deal directly with people. Inner path teachings also offer hints towards improving general learning within the classroom. There is a good reason why the programs in contemplative education involve the training of teachers as well as students. Teachers, like parents, transmit a good deal more than information regardless of what they think they are doing; thus a teacher’s personal development will affect the classroom setting and should be encouraged. For a teacher, a beginner’s mind attitude of regarding students (and oneself) as perfect even in one’s imperfections is useful in reducing stress and burnout. (No student asks to be stupid nor teacher to be shy.) It is often useful to consider what preconceptions and habits need to be unlearned rather than to concentrate on only what is new. The desire system, because it includes rather than rejects what is other, is a far better means for learning than the fear and aggression system; thus any way to modify the tyranny of the grading system can be useful to a class. Finally, giving up the idea that one’s ego has control over anything, let alone the outcome

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of one’s endeavors, is sometimes called the universal path to peace of mind—and is likely to magnetize better outcomes in the classroom. But what about research proving that techniques of contemplative education work?—thus demands the well socialized outer layer of our minds. Most of the programs in contemplative education have a research component, and preliminary data, or at least case examples and quotes from participants, are available on the websites of most of the institutes sponsoring the studies. Given the successes of research demonstrating beneficial effects of mindfulness in psychotherapy (See, for example, Brown, Ryan & Creswell, 2007, and the set of commentaries on that paper which follow it), it can be expected that there will soon be multitudes of reports documenting the benefits of the various contemplative education techniques on measurable variables such as test scores, attendance records, and behavior problems. Some teachers (and authors of books on contemplative education) have mixed feelings about reducing the rich life of the classroom to such measures. It should be pointed out that mindfulness based psychotherapies do not work mechanically (Rosch, in press); the therapist or person running the program must have some feel for the meaning behind the technique. If teachers have a sense of that “third way of knowing that complements the rational and the sensory” they will likely be able to transmit a sense of the deeper layers of the mind to at least some of their students despite pressures toward measurable documentation. But isn’t there a great chasm between the imposing stages of beginner’s mind paths and (to play devil’s advocate) a six-year-old taking three breaths and wishing well to her puppy, or an engineering student studying nonlinear processes? Can one actually reach the depths and heights of such a path without its context, that is to say, without the guidance and protection of the outer shell provided by a spiritual group and its specific teachings? The problem is analogous to what happens when a religion or a secular form travels to new cultures. On the one hand, there is the danger of it losing itself entirely in the new culture; but, on the other hand, this is an opportunity for it to shed its cultural baggage and return to what it considers its core meaning. Two responses are being given to concerns about contemplative education losing its point in public schools. The more obvious is the reminder that we’re not really talking about an esoteric path but of people tuning into the full range of what they already are. Seeds are always small; everything must start somewhere; and all actions are ultimately local. The second response is perhaps more interesting if less plausible (at least to the outer mind). A fair number of spiritual groups and teachers claim that there is a sea change taking place in the interconnected mental life of the planet such that awakening to wisdom can now happen more easily and with fewer traditional accouterments (for example, Ardagh, 2005). Suiting action to claim, some groups are now using methods to convey their wisdom that may involve little or no conceptual content and virtually no institutional commitments (see, for example, OnenessMovement.org, but also note that this group is presently quite controversial)—definitely not the historical norm for movements either secular or spiritual. The attempt to apply beginner’s mind methods to public education might be a blind alley, but it might also be a breakthrough since it requires the shedding of historical conceptual shells of all sorts.

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Implications and Conclusions It’s time to pay attention to inner wisdom paths. This paper has given an example of two such paths and how they teach their wisdom. These paths radically overturn how teaching and learning are imagined in the world of the outer mind. Here are some of the ways. The end-state is already present. One needs to unlearn rather than learn. All one’s concepts need to be seen through. Language is used to transmit rather than refer. The dualities and polarities we use to guide our lives such as self and other, or good and bad, rather than being augmented, are to be given up in a wisdom that goes beyond polarities. One traverses a path, but, in the end all the stages are seen as one thing, and there is no path. Rather than promising ego a rose garden, the teachings are adamant that ego is not going to get anything. To be completely poor is the gateway to richness. There is nothing the egocentric outer mind can do in its ignorance to make wise decisions, but if one gives oneself up to formlessness and death, one comes back spontaneously guided to act with the deepest wisdom for the good of all. These paths may seem esoteric, but in both traditions it is understood that what is described is the most ordinary of realities. Each moment contains both the fana (the death) and the baqa (the return), and we have the choice of returning to our senses and mind with varying degrees of insanity or sanity. In a demanding world, science could at least explore the possibility of a means of tapping into a reservoir of wisdom that results in creative enlightened action. We need a different psychology for such an exploration (Rosch, 1999a, 2002, 2007b; Rosch & Fallah, 2007) and, as indicated earlier, perhaps a different educational system. We also need a different approach to religion. Religion is important to people. Returning to the words of William James, it deals with “whatever is seen as most primal and enveloping and deeply true”(James, 1902, p. 34). However, if religions are captured by the ego habits of the outer mind and used to comfort and aggrandize the outer self, the mixture can become explosive. The dualities of a good me and mine versus an evil other soon follow, and shortly “ignorant armies clash by night.” Yet religion may also be the institution in society that most readily specializes in the center of the mandala, in those faculties of the human that might lie below the surface of the mind or dwell beyond the mind altogether (which, as we have seen, does not have to be given a theistic interpretation). There are presently spiritual renewal movements in all the major religions. What magic might happen were each religion to find and embrace its own inner wisdom path? Finally, there is the issue of governance. Both the Buddhist and Sufi examples conclude with the vision of an enlightened king, perhaps reminding many of the philosopher king of Plato’s Republic. There is no obvious way to instantiate such an institution in today’s world, and it may be more appropriate to think of the king as an inner figure in the first place. Wouldn’t you rather be ruled by your wisdom mind than by a host of neurotic impulses vying for control? Imagine what it would be like to have a democracy in which the responsibility for enlightened kingship graces each individual. In conclusion: from a beginner’s mind perspective, blindness to all but the outer level of the mind has produced a constricted view of psychology, an obstructed

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educational system, a dearth of wise decision making, and a world in disarray. Beginner’s mind inner path teachings suggest an alternative vision of the human being and human mind. Remember that Einstein said that problems can never be solved with the same mind that created them. He also said that imagination is better than facts.

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Kagyu and Nyingma are separate lineages, but many of the most influential Tibetan Buddhist teachers in the United States hold both lineages and present the teachings as a single path. Kagyu teachings are used for the earlier stages; the Nyingma (and Dzogchen) perspective represents the final evolution. This relatively lucid format is the one that will be followed here. (Dzogchen is sometimes taken as a line of Nyingma teachings, sometimes as something separate; in either case, many Kagyu and Nyingma teachers also teach Dzogchen.) The Abhishekas will be described basically from the perspective of Kagyu sadhanas (practices). However, the interpretation of the fourth abhisheka will use primarily Nyingma and Dzogchen renderings as is customary in joint Kagyu-Nyingma paths. How can we know what is beyond the mind—given that the senses, reason, and whatever other states of consciousness one thinks one has are part of the mind? Theistic answers make reference to God. The Vajrayana Buddhist answer is that there is an awareness that is more fundamental and more inclusive than consciousness (from a path perspective Sanskrit: vipashyana, Tibetan: lhagthong; from the more fundamental perspective of nondual awareness Sanskrit: vidya, Tibetan: rig pa). This is one of the respects in which the Vajrayana sees itself as fundamentally different from the Mahayana schools (described by Shen, this volume). The Vajrayana teacher might point out (for example, Gyamtso, 1986) that all eight stages of consciousness in the Yogacara (Weishi, consciousness only) school of the Mahayana are only forms of consciousness (vijnana): i.e. six sense consciousnesses, a consciousness that turns everything into ego (the manovijnana), and a storehouse consciousness that contains one’s karmic seeds (the alayavijnana). Prescient as this may be, the Vajrayana argues it is still a description of samsara rather than a description from the fully awakened state. This saying is a somewhat loose translation of the first lines of the Hsin Hsin Ming by Sosan Zenji, the Third Zen Patriarch. Here we come to a watershed in Tibetan Buddhist teachings and, in fact, in Buddhist teachings in general. Three of the four major Tibetan lineages (Kagyu, Sakya, and Nyingma) adhere to the shentong (other empty) interpretation of emptiness in which all things are empty of other than wisdom. Put another way, things are empty of self nature but filled with wisdom (filled with the essence). Put in a yet more advanced way, all that things really are is wisdom essence. Historically shentong is traced from the Buddha nature (Tathagatagarbha) schools of Mahayana Buddhism. The fourth Tibetan lineage, the Gelugpa, adheres to the rangton (self empty) interpretation in which things are simply empty of self nature, a reversion to an earlier Mahayana position. There has been a good deal of conflict in Tibet over this point. Many of the parallels with Sufism that I am exploring in this chapter depend upon the shentong view because it is a view that says there is a way of knowing beyond the limits of the mind. (See Gyamtso, 1986; and Hookham, 1991 for a detailed account of this distinction.) A Bodhisattva vows to remain in samsara to work for the liberation of beings until all have attained enlightenment. He or she is vowing to continue to be reborn life after life and moment after moment in order to be helpful rather than simply driven by personal karma. This is where the Nyingma lineage aspects become prominent. The version here is how I have heard the verses sung. The Barks translation is a more complex rendering. Hadith are the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed as distinct from the revealed text of the Qur’an. Hadith Qudsi are the most authenticated of these, sometimes given a special status midway between

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the hadith and the Qur’an. The least controversial way to reference a Hadith Qudsi seems to be to simply label it as such. Various lists of hadith can be found in many sources including the online service USC-MSA Compendium of Muslim Texts. While Islam forbids visual representations of God and the making of idols, there is a rich tradition of linguistic imagery and poetry which is used to convey aspects of the path. Buddhism is generally more paranoid about the use of language as a snare for the mind than about visual representations. Both lineages use the language of royalty and rulership for the return of the realized person to the outer level. Buddhism, for example, distinguishes between Dharma, which is wisdom, and small “d” dharma, which is the knowledge of how things work in the outer world (fire burns and so on). Buddhism recognizes, as would any viable tradition, that you need the dharmas of knowing how the mundane aspects of the outer world work to have a world in which the wisdom of Dharma can manifest. The problem arises when all other forms of knowing are cut off, and dharma is left to substitute for wisdom Dharma—as in the expertise view of wisdom. An oft cited Tibetan teaching story tells of a boy who leaves home in search of his father (in some versions in search of a treasure) and, after many adventures, enters a house where he finds what he was looking for—and also finds that the house is just his old home which he has never left. Note the similarity to Maurice Sendak’s popular children’s books. Where is it that the wild things are? - - in the little boy’s bedroom. Artistic, scientific and other forms of creativity are examples of results that one can strive towards but can’t actually force to happen. There are many classic examples of inspirations and problem solutions that happened only when the would-be creator gave in to just plain not knowing what to do. Interestingly, one of Freud’s early methodological discoveries that led to much of his theorizing was that it was when patients finally ran out of free associations on a topic and went blank, that was the point when, if they stayed with the blank, insights into their situation could occur.

References Al-Jamal, M. S. (1996). The deeper meaning behind the pillars of Islam. Petaluma, CA: Sidi Muhammad Press. Al-Jamal, M. S. (2001). The meaning of the names of our Lord. Petaluma, CA: Sidi Muhammad Press. Al-Jamal, M. S. (2002). Music of the soul (rev. ed.). Petaluma, CA: Sidi Muhammad Press. Al-Jamal, M. S. & Abdullah, M. M. (1998). The children of the truth. Petaluma, CA: Sidi Muhammad Press. Al-Jerrahi, T. B. (2000). The name and the named: The divine attributes of God. Louisville KY: Fons Vitae. Ardagh, A. (2005). The translucent revolution. Novato, CA: New World Library. Barks, C. (Tr). (1995). The essential Rumi. N.Y.: Harper Collins. Bernhard, T. (1985). Gathering evidence: A memoir. New York: Knopf. Bhagavan, S. (2005). Evenings with Sri Bhagavan. Chennai, India: Kosmic Publishers. Boyce, B. (2007). Please help me learn who I am. Shambhala Sun. 15, No. 3, 66–73, 119–120. Brown, K. W., Ryan, R. M., & Creswell, J. D. (2007). Mindfulness: Theoretical foundations and evidence for its salutary effects. Psychological Inquiry 18, No. 4, 211–237. Buber, M. (1958). I and thou. New York: Scribner. Forbes, D. (2004). Boyz 2 buddhas: Counseling urban high school male athletes in the zone. New York: P. Lang. Geaves, R. (2000). The Sufis of Britain: An exploration of Muslim identity. Cardiff: Cardiff Academic Press. Guenther, H. V. (Tr.) (1963). The life and teaching of Naropa. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gordon, M. (2005). Roots of empathy: Changing the world child by child. Toronto: Thomas Allen & Son, Ltd. Gyamtso, T. (1986). Progressive stages of meditation on emptiness. Oxford: Longchen Foundation.

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Hart, T. (2001). From information to transformation: Education for the evolution of consciousness. New York: P. Lang. Hart, T. (2003). The secret spiritual life of children. San Francisco: Inner Ocean Publishers. Harvard Magazine Staff. (2006). Taking teaching seriously. Harvard Magazine, 109, No. 2, 60–65. Hookham, S. K. (1991). The Buddha within. Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press. Hoppe, S. L. & Speck, B. W. (Eds). (2005). Spirituality in higher education. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass. James, W. (1902), The varieties of religious experience. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. (Reprinted by Penguin Books 1985). Kessler, R. (2000). The soul of education. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Khentse, D. (1970), Unpublished transcript of a talk. Knysh, A. D. (2000). Islamic mysticism: A short history. Leiden: Brill. Lantieri, L. (Ed.) (2001). Schools with spirit: Nurturing the inner lives of children and teachers. Boston: Beacon Press. Livey, R., & Palmer, P. (1999). The courage to teach: A guide for reflection and renewal. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. McDonough, W. & Braungart, M. (2002). Cradle to cradle: Remaking the way we make things. New York: North Point Press. Nhat Hanh, T. (1987). Interbeing. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press. Rosch, E. (1999a). Is wisdom in the brain? [A review of J. H. Austin, Zen and the brain.] Psychological Science, 10, 222–224. Rosch, E. (1999b). Reclaiming concepts. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6, No. 11–12, 61–77. Rosch, E. (2002). How to catch James’ mystic germ: Religious experience, Buddhist meditation, and psychology. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 9, No. 9–10, 37–56. Rosch, E. (2007a). More than mindfulness: When you have a tiger by the tail, let it eat you. Psychological Inquiry 18, No. 4, 258–264. Rosch, E. (2007b). What Buddhist meditation has to tell psychology about the mind. Anti-Matters, 1, 11–21. (http://anti-matters.org) Rosch, E. & Fallah, E. (2007, May 16). Science and religion, Dalai Lama style [A review of A. Harrington & A. Zajonc (Eds.) The Dalai Lama at MIT]. PsycCRITIQUES–Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 52, No. 20, Article 4. Saint John of the Cross (1976). Dark night of the soul. London: Burns & Oates. (Tr. E. Allison Peers.) Santideva (1995). The Bodhicaryavatara. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Senge, P. M. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization (rev. ed.). New York: Doubleday/Currency. Snellgrove, D. (1987). Indo-Tibetan Buddhism: Indian Buddhists and their Tibetan successors. (Vols 1 & 2.) Boston: Shambhala. Suzuki, S. (1970). Zen mind, Beginner’s mind. New York: John Weatherhill. Trungpa, C. (1984). Shambhala: The path of the warrior. Boston: Shambhala. Trungpa, C. (1976). Unpublished talk given October 1976 at Land O’Lakes, Wisconsin. Trungpa, C. (1978) Unpublished talk given March 5, 1978 in Boulder, Co.

Ascending to Wisdom: A Christian Pedagogy Pamela Bright

Listen carefully, my son, to the master’s instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart. This is the advice from a father who loves you; welcome it, and faithfully put it into practice. The labor of obedience will bring you back to him from whom you have drifted through the sloth of disobedience. This message of mine is for you, then, if you are ready to give up your own will, once and for all, and armed with the strong and noble weapons of obedience, to do battle foe the true King, Christ the Lord.1

As the political and administrative and cultural resources of the Roman Empire disintegrated around him, Benedict of Nursia, sixth century ascetic and master of the spiritual life, thus begins the Prologue of his Rule in the small community gathered in the hilly area south-east of Rome. These young men looked to Benedict for spiritual guidance, echoing the question of the young man to Jesus: “Teacher, what must I do to gain eternal life?” (Matthew 19:16). This call to “the labor of obedience” is not to a dulled submission but to an attention (ob-audiens to listen intently) with the “ear of the heart” to the “message” that will arm them and prepare for a life-long spiritual journey. Witnesses to the centrality of fostering wisdom abound in both oral and literary sources throughout the centuries of Christian thought and practice. On the one hand, these witnesses range from the direct simplicity of laying out a choice between “two ways” in the Didache2 (The Instruction), one of the earliest of Christian writings. On the other hand, one finds the ardor and the sophistication of the sixteenth-century mystic, John of the Cross in the spiritual classic, The Dark Night: . . . This mystical wisdom will occasionally so engulf a person in its secret abyss that he will have the keen awareness of being brought into a place far removed from every creature. He will accordingly feel that he has been led into a remarkably deep and vast wilderness, unattainable by any human creature, into an immense unbounded desert, the more delightful, savorous, and loving, the deeper, vaster and more solitary it is . . . . He will also note the impossibility, without the illumination of this mystical theology, of a knowledge or experience of these divine things as they are in themselves through any natural means, no matter how wisely or loftily one speaks of them. Beholding this truth—that it can neither grasp nor explain this wisdom—the soul rightly calls it secret.3

Pamela Bright Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

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The Paradoxes of the Spiritual Journey The vast range of this literature expresses the all-encompassing nature of the fostering of wisdom in the Christian tradition where it will, at times, be elaborated within ascetic life styles, or be addressed to ordinary members of the community of faith, without exclusion and without restriction of gender, age, culture or circumstances of life. However, whether couched in simple or sophisticated language, at the heart of the millennia-old project of fostering wisdom in the Christian community there lies a paradox. Do we ascend to wisdom or does wisdom descend to us? An awareness of this paradox is already implicit in Benedict’s own instruction at the very outset of his monastic Rule: “What is not possible for us by nature, let us ask the Lord to supply by grace.”4 This is echoed by John of the Cross in his reflection on the nature of this spiritual instruction which, in his experience, in a certain sense lies beyond human pedagogy “no matter how wisely or loftily” drawn up. It is a spiritually oriented pedagogy that teeters on the edge of an “abyss” as the striking image of John of the Cross explains. These masters of the spiritual life, though fully engaged into a sophisticated communication of their own experience, are all too conscious of the inherent difficulties of communicating this experience to those drawn to the same path. Is the quest for attaining to the heights of wisdom a divine initiative into which we are swept, willy-nilly, or can it be a deliberate, and deliberated, project securely within the compass of human possibility? In the early years of the fifth century in Roman North Africa, present day Algeria, Augustine of Hippo (354–430)—a man of paradoxes himself, at once classical rhetor, convert, pastor, bishop, and inveterate “street-fighter” within the bitterly divisive controversies of his time—explores the profundity of this paradox in his reflections on praying the psalms. In his commentaries on Psalms 120–134, variously called the Songs of the Ascents, the Gradual Psalms, or the Psalms of Steps, he encourages his hearers to ascend to the heights of wisdom and join in the cries of joy or lamentation as they enter upon the pilgrim path to Jerusalem. Delivered as sermons or written as commentaries,5 these reflections are addressed to the community in general. The invitation of the psalms to ascend to Jerusalem is not reserved for an elite core of the faithful, but is addressed to the ordinary Christians praying the psalms together in communal worship. They are called to a mutuality of love, even as they ascend to Love itself, a mutuality defining this Christian pilgrimage to the heights of the City of God. In the tenth sermon on the First Letter of John, Augustine cites Galatians 5:6: “ . . . faith which works through love”. When love is added to faith: “ . . . you have found a Christian, you have found a citizen of Jerusalem, you have found a fellow citizen of the angels, you have a pilgrim sighing along the way. Go to join him, he is your companion, run with him . . . ”.6 But this insistence on the “universality” of the call to ascend to the source of life, is not the focus of Augustine’s meditation. The all-inclusiveness of the invitation is taken for granted. Rather, his attention is riveted on a specific aspect of the ascent itself. The desire to ascend to the Holy City has already been planted in the heart of those gathering as pilgrims. Not only are they responding to a profound experience of being drawn to the ascent, but instead of their carving out their own steps on the journey, they discover, day-by-day, that the steps have already been placed in their hearts. The

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priority of this interior “drawing” to wisdom is foundational and lies at the heart of the paradoxical ascent/descent of wisdom in the Christian tradition. This deliberate ambiguity dominates the Confessions of Augustine where the return of the prodigal son to his father is a constant motif throughout the narrative.7 The son finds his father not only waiting for him with open arms, but hastening to meet him: “While he was still a long way off the father saw him and his heart went out to him; he ran to meet him, flung his arms round him, and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). The classic image of the ascent of the soul, or as Plotinus, founder of Neo-Platonism, would image it, the flight of the one to the One (Enneads 6:9),8 is transformed by the Gospel parable into an encounter of dynamic mutuality. The fostering of wisdom within the Christian tradition is marked by this foundational insight and finds its clearest expression in the Prologue of John’s Gospel: “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Wisdom Incarnate descends to enable the ascent to Wisdom. Christianity thus is paradoxical in its founding intuitions; and paradoxes mark the long and complex story of the fostering of wisdom throughout the succeeding centuries.

A Pedagogy for the Fostering of Wisdom Benedict of Nursia rounded off the prologue of his Rule with a statement concerning the need for formation in wisdom: Therefore we intend to establish a school for the Lord’s service. In drawing up its regulations, we hope to set down nothing harsh, nothing burdensome. The good of all concerned, however, may prompt us to a little strictness in order to amend faults and to safeguard love. Do not be daunted immediately by fear and run away from the road that leads to salvation. It is bound to be narrow at the outset. But as we progress in this way of life and in faith, we shall run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love. Never swerving from his instructions, then, but faithfully observing his teaching in the monastery until death, we shall, through patience, share in the sufferings of Christ that we may also share in his kingdom. Amen.9

A younger contemporary of Benedict, the Irish monk, Columbanus, whose life and work had no direct contact with that of the monastic Rule of Benedict, echoes this profound commitment to a pedagogy of wisdom in a letter he wrote to a young monk. It is worth listening at some length to these instructions penned at the outset of the vast journeyings throughout Europe of wave after wave of Irish monks from the end of the sixth century. At the beginning of the letter Columbanus refers to the careful and constant training in character formation and morals integrated into the life of the monk. He follows with a remarkably detailed and perceptive summary of such an instruction penned with such eloquence (and elegance) that, across the centuries, one can still catch something of the persuasiveness of that ancient system of spiritual formation: Though I have already spoken for a long time about character and moral training, again, my son that needs instruction, you ask to be taught. You have heard what is written: “the man to whom little is not enough will not benefit from more”. I wrote to you before on the subject of seriousness and modesty, and indeed, as someone says, I fear the effect on you even of

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what is safe; but since a warning may turn into guidance for some, comfort for others, and fulfillment for others again: for those, that is, who carry out what they understand, for that reason my dearest sons must be often taught and instructed, so that by some of the delights of literature they may be able to conquer their own griefs arising out of inner conflict. Then conquer the battle and the brutal, I mean the lusts and the taint of pride. Be helpful in humbleness and most lowly in authority, simple in faith, trained in character, exacting in your own affairs, unconcerned in those of others, pure in friendship, shrewd in cunning, hard in times of ease, easy in times of hardness, versatile in even circumstances, even in versatile ones, joyful in sorrow, sorrowful in joy, a dissenter where necessary, agreeing about truth, serious in pleasures, kindly in griefs, strong in trials, weak in quarrellings; slow to anger; efficient in your progress, tardy in your revenge, careful in word, ready in work; friendly to the upright, rough to the dishonorable, gentle to the weak, firm to the stubborn, correct to the proud, humble to the low; ever sober, ever chaste, ever modest, patient to the point of enthusiasm, never covetous, ever generous, if not in money, then in spirit; timely in fasting, timely in watching, discreet in duty, purposeful in study, unmoved in turmoil, glad in suffering, valiant in the cause of truth, timorous in time of strife; submissive to the good, unconquerable by evil, agreeable in almsgiving, unwearied in love, just in all things; respectful to the worthy, merciful to the poor; mindful of benefits, unmindful of wrongs; a lover of moderate men, undesirous of riches, a leveler of high spirits, ready to confess your thoughts; obedient to your seniors, setting the pace for your juniors, equaling your equals, striving together with the perfect, not envying your betters, not grieving at those who outstrip you, not censorious of those who linger, ready to agree with those who call you on; though weary, yet unfailing; at once weeping and rejoicing for zeal and hope; ever fearing for the end, though making a sure advance. Let this be your model, beloved boy and dear secretary; if you be such, you shall be most blessed; for you will be the same through good times and through bad, ready for all things, coping with each, restraining your conduct, nourishing qualities that should grow, destroying those that should wither, smoothing the rough places, rough-hewing the defective ones; ever concerned, ever growing, ever making increase; ever aiming at the lofty, ever running to the mark; ever longing for heavenly things, ever thirsting for the things divine. There is my teaching; do you provide the disposition to follow, if you can, that you may enjoy happiness and strength, when by fleeing youthful lusts you have thus brought the body under the power of the spirit, and have made yourself surety for your sins, serving a brief period for the wages of eternity. Happy, blessed, admirable boy, if you fulfill all this. For if you are busily occupied with mind and hand in all of these things, you will have no leisure for vain, wandering, or wicked thoughts; but, as though ever at a new beginning, you will gather for yourself those fruits which you shall enjoy for ever, and you will deserve the name of a single-minded man, a seeker after the one reward, an outstanding merchant of the eternal kingdom. Then turn yourself entirely to these things, since you have opportunities on which to exercise your youth, virtue, competence and strength, lest these good qualities which seize the Kingdom of Heaven by force should perish, if they are put to the opposite use.10

This ancient set of instructions is characterized by a dynamic impetus, captured in the repetition, “ever concerned”, “ever growing”, ever running”, “ever longing”, “ever thirsting”—certainly a model for the modern pedagogy of life-long learning! Implicit is any consideration of the principles and practices of such a pedagogy is the central question: What is meant by “wisdom”? In his recent publication, Inheriting Wisdom,11 Everett Ferguson draws attention to a comment of Gregory of Nazianzus, fourth century bishop and theologian of Cappadocia, modern Turkey: The principal wisdom is a life worthy of praise and purified for God—that is, being cleansed for God—who is most pure and most radiant and who asks that our only sacrifice be purification, which is a contrite heart, a sacrifice of praise, a new creation in Christ, a new person, and those things that the Scripture tells us are objects of his love. The best wisdom

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despises wisdom that consists of words, turns of phrases, and deceitful and elaborate antitheses . . . I do not consider wise the person who is wise in speech and has a ready tongue but is unstable and undisciplined in his soul . . . I consider wise the person who speaks little about virtue but whose deeds provide many examples of it, and his life adds to the trustworthiness of his words.12

In the Christian tradition, the fostering of wisdom is concentrated on the understanding of Jesus as Incarnate Wisdom. The presentation of Jesus of Nazareth in the four canonical Gospels is multidimensional: he is messianic revealer of the Kingdom of God, healer, prophet and wisdom teacher. Although no one title captures the impact of the gospel accounts, Jesus as teacher of true wisdom, as sage, is one of the attempts to interpret his identity and his significance for those who encountered him. But “wisdom” as transmitted in the New Testament, is more than a concept or a philosophical ideal. As “personified” in Jesus in the New Testament, Wisdom transcends the literary device of “personification”. Jesus is Wisdom in “revealing” the nature of God as compassionate love, and thus “revealing” the possibility of attaining to a certain union and communication with God—which in biblical perspective is the essence of wisdom. John’s Gospel speaks of Jesus as “the Way, the Truth and the Life” (John 14:6). “Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of faith” (Hebrews 12:2) is both the paradigm of the journey and the one who both walks before us and alongside of us. He has descended from the Father to show us the way and accompanies us as we walk that way. While the Christian tradition is polarized by this perspective of Christ as the Way we ascend to the divine, the fostering of wisdom in Christianity has been marked by the great variety of “ways” of following Christ. In a recent work, Streams of Living Water,13 Richard Foster has explored six different “discoveries” of the ways of Christian discipleship: (1) the contemplative tradition, “discovering the prayer-filled life”; (2) the holiness tradition, “discovering the virtuous life”; (3) the charismatic tradition, “discovering the Spirit-empowered life”; (4) the social justice tradition, “discovering the compassionate life”; (5) the evangelical tradition, “discovering the Word-centered life”; and (6) the incarnational tradition, “discovering the sacramental life”. An appendix provides hundreds of thumbnail sketches of people and movements that witness to these discoveries of the many paths of discipleship. Exemplifying the contemplative tradition, a life characterized by “loving attention to God”14 we read of Antony of Egypt and Julian of Norwich. The holiness tradition emphasizes living “whole, functional lives in a dysfunctional world”,15 with Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a paradigm. Foster describes the charismatic tradition as “a life immersed in, empowered by, and under the direction of the Spirit of God”.16 Here Francis of Assisi provides a vivid portrayal of the “Spirit empowered life”. The social justice tradition is “a life committed to compassion and justice for all peoples”.17 Here we meet the Quakers, John Greenleaf Whittier and Elizabeth Fry, in company with Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker. Francis Xavier and Billy Graham epitomize the evangelical tradition, described as expressed in “a life founded upon the living Word of God, the written Word of God, and the proclaimed Word of God”.18 The incarnational tradition is represented by Dag Hammarskjold, secretary general of the United Nations, whose life “makes present and visible the realm of the invisible spirit”.19

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There is no suggestion of a sharp catagorization in the six spiritual traditions described by Foster (for example the “charismatic Francis of Assisi was surely no less “God-centered” than Antony of Egypt), nor do the exemplars of the “traditions”, or different styles of Christian discipleship, cluster in specific Christian denominations. We do not find the Orthodox or the Roman Catholics owning the contemplative tradition, nor find the Quakers monopolizing the social justice tradition. In contemplating this kaleidoscope of larger-than-life personalities, we could argue that the fostering of wisdom in the Christian tradition may rely more on the impact of the concrete example of the lived life than on the abstract formulation of patterns of instruction. The centrality of Christ as Wisdom of God underlines this personalized dimension of the fostering of wisdom in the Christian tradition. It is a quest that must be “personalized” both in its foundational principle, Christ as the Way, and in its pedagogical practice: . . . so that they may come to the full wealth of conviction which understanding brings, and grasp God’s secret, which is Christ himself, in whom lie hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge . . . Therefore as you have accepted Christ as Lord, live in union with him. Be rooted in him, be built in him, grow strong in the faith as you were taught, let your hearts overflow with thankfulness (Colossians 2:2,3,6,7).

Maturing in Wisdom An important aspect of the principles and practice of the Christian fostering of wisdom is the step-by-step “gradualness” of the maturing of the spiritual life: We teach everyone and instruct everyone in all the ways of wisdom so as to present each one of you as a mature member of Christ’s body (Colossians 1:28).

It is not a clap of thunder that transforms. No matter how earth-shifting the experience of conversion, the acquiring of wisdom is a transformative process, a growth process, a growth in maturity. Two masters of this life-long growth towards wisdom are Augustine of Hippo and Antony of Egypt. Augustine explores two “seven-step” biblical sources, the seven gifts of the Spirit (Isaiah 11) and the seven days of Creation in the first chapter of Genesis. The instructions of Antony, described by Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria in the first great Christian biography, as a Godgiven “physician” to Egypt, epitomize the need for a pedagogy of empowerment, where the disciple is given the basic tools for the lifetime of learning. For Antony it is indispensable to cultivate “the spirit of discernment” which is to be exercised at every point in the spiritual life. The teaching of these two spiritual masters within the Christian tradition represents the whole range of a life-long pedagogy of an ascent to wisdom. Augustine provides us with a double exposition of what he calls “the seven steps to wisdom” focused on the double commandment, love of God and neighbor in the context of the maturing of the spiritual life. The first of these reflections is in De doctrina christiana Book II,20 and the second in the allegory on the opening chapters of Genesis in Book XIII of the Confessions.21 Both were written in the first

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five years of his consecration as bishop and thus represented a kind of manifesto of his episcopal agenda. Augustine had commented on the gifts of the Spirit in Isaiah 11:2 in a number of earlier writings, but what is new in his treatment of the topic in Book II of De doctrina christiana is the context—a careful study of the role of reading the scriptures in the maturing of the spiritual life: . . . What he will find in them [the scriptures] is quite simply that he must love God for himself, and his neighbor, as himself—in other words, that his love of his neighbor, like his own self-love should be totally related to God.22

Having established the centrality of the double commandment of love of God and neighbor for the reading of scripture, Augustine proceeds to comment on the seven steps to wisdom. He reverses the enumeration of the gifts of the Spirit in Isaiah 11, which had begun with wisdom and ended with fear of the Lord. In this reversal of ordering, “fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”, Augustine typically emphasizes humility as the ground of the ascent of the spiritual life: “by nailing our flesh to the wood of the cross as it were crucify all our presumptuous impulses”.23 The second step to wisdom, piety, (pietas) (translated as “holiness” by Green), the second step, teaches that “to ponder and believe that what is written there [in the scriptures], even if obscure, is better and truer than any insights that we may gain by our own efforts”.24 The third step, knowledge: . . . makes the person with good reason to hope, not boastful but remorseful; in this state he obtains by constant prayer the encouragement of divine assistance, so that he is not crushed by despair. And so he begins to be at the fourth stage—that of fortitude—which brings a hunger and thirst after justice”.25

At this point of his reflection on the graduated ascent to wisdom, Augustine turns to emphasize the process of detachment that has been occurring in the first four steps: “In this frame of mind he [the pilgrim] extricates himself from all the fatal charms of transient things, turning away from these he turns to the love of eternal things, namely the unchangeable unity which is also the Trinity”.26 Augustine now approaches the next step which he names misericordia, the “resolve of compassion”. One approaches this fifth step with a keen awareness of the enormity of the distance between the pilgrim soul and the goal of the ascent, union with the “Trinity in unity”: When he beholds this light (as far as he is able to), shining as it does even into remote places, and realizes that because of the weakness of his vision he cannot bear its brilliance, he is at the fifth stage—that is in the resolve of compassion, and purifies his mind, which is somehow turbulent and feuding with itself because of the impurities accumulated by its desire of what is inferior.27

Here we have a foreshadowing of the sixth step—that purity of heart needed for the serene contemplation of God, but this fifth phase of the ascent, far from demanding a withdrawal from sentient things in order to plunge oneself in contemplation, is a call to the immediate and practical exercise of love of neighbor through the counsel/resolve of compassion: Full of hope now, and full of strength, since he has come to love even his enemy he rises to the sixth stage in which he now purifies the eye by which God may actually be seen—to the extent he may be seen to those who, to the best of their ability, die to this world . . . 28

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The fifth and sixth step form a tight unity of thought centered upon the process of purification: So that this holy person will have a heart so single-minded and purified that he will not be deflected from the truth either by an eagerness to please man or by the thought of avoiding any of the troubles which beset him in this life. Such a son ascends to wisdom which is the seventh and last stage, enjoyed by those who are calm and peaceful.29

Augustine was to explore the theme of the spiritual ascent in a much more sustained and spectacular mode in the other great work of the same period, the Confessions. These reflections can be found within another seven-fold pattern, the seven days of creation. Augustine sees in the days of creation the pattern of the pilgrim soul in its ascent to God, with every phase being marked with the goodness and mercy of the Creator. From day one, where the Spirit hovers over “the dark chaos of our inner being”30 so that already we are children of light, in hope, on to day two, with the vault (of scripture) overhead “with such efficiency to persuade me to confession, to gentle my neck under your kindly yoke”,31 Augustine draws his readers to his commentary on day three. Here he focuses on the emergence of the “dry land”, “dry” in its thirst for God: “Their thirst you quench from the sweet waters of your secret fountain, that the earth may yield its increase (Ps 84:13) and yield it does: at the command of its Lord and God the soil of our souls grows fertile in works of mercy according to its kind.”32 : . . . we fructify in love of our neighbor by assisting them in their bodily needs, for having seeds of similar kind within ourselves we learn compassion from our own weakness. So we are impelled to succor the needy in the way we would wish to be relieved ourselves were we in the same distress. This means not only the easy provision that could be likened to seed-bearing grass; we may also be called upon to supply the stout, oak-like protection of a fruit-bearing tree, which in its benign strength can lift an injured person clear of the grasp of a powerful oppressor, and furnish protective shade by the unshakable firmness of just judgment.33

In day four of the Genesis narrative, Augustine reflects on the role of the “lights of heaven”, great teachers for the pilgrims in their ascent. This section of the allegory is particularly dense in reference to the maturing of the spiritual life, especially with regard to the relationship between the active and the contemplative life which he sees as distinct, but co-related, both in the wider community of the church, as well as in the life of the individual: Then may the swift dawn break upon us so that rising from this lowly crop of active works to the delights of contemplation we may lay hold of the Word of Life above.34

For Augustine the links between “truth” springing from the earth of day three and “righteousness” looking down from heaven in day four are forged naturally from the psalms (see Ps 84: 12) which lie constantly at the horizon of his thought. Augustine notes the distinction between “souls devoted to the life of the mind [contemplation] and others preoccupied with sensible things [the active life]” and this leads him to reflect upon the diversity of spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12: 7–11): “All of them work of the one and the same Spirit, Who allots appropriate gifts to different people as he wills and causes stars to shine out clearly for the benefit of all”.35

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Just as he had carefully attended to the links between the various “steps” in the ascent to wisdom in the De doctrina christiana, taking time to recapitulate the distinct, but related, phases of the gradation of the ascent, so too in the “days” of Creation, does Augustine draw the reader’s attention to the interrelationship of the narrative as an image of the gradual maturing of the spiritual life. After the reflection on the seed-bearing grasses and the fruit-bearing trees springing up all over the land that has been watered from the secret spring in day three, the links between day three and day four are reinforced as he turns once again to love of neighbor: And so I pray you, Lord: as you cause joy and strength to spring and grow, even so let the truth spring up: let it sprout from the earth, and let righteousness look down from heaven. Let us break our bread for the hungry and bring the homeless under our roof, let us clothe the naked and not spurn our own kin. When these fruits are burgeoning on earth, take heed and see that it is good.36

At this point Augustine urges all to advance to spiritual maturing: “ . . . But first you must wash, purge the wickedness from your soul . . ..”37 We see his insistent warning about the need for on-going purification in the spiritual life at the same time as there is diligent exercise of the works of mercy and the deepening of the contemplative aspects of the spiritual life. Augustine, as consummate spiritual director of souls, insists on the purification of the “dry land” by uprooting all the vices and keeping the commandments: “Remember the rich man in the gospel who was seeking guidance from a good teacher as to what he ought to do to win eternal life” (Matthew 19: 16–22).38 Augustine concludes: Then where do these rampant thorns come from, if your land is fruitful? Go and root out the wild clumps of avarice, sell your possessions, get yourself rich fruit by giving to the poor, for you will have treasure in heaven. If you want to be perfect, follow the Lord in the company of those to whom he speaks wisdom . . . . As for you, race of the elect, weaklings in the world’s esteem, who have left all to follow the Lord, march after him, you beautiful feet.39

Day five is focused on the “living things” brought forth by the waters. Here Augustine concludes his reflection with a reference to the dynamics of the maturing of the spiritual life. Augustine’s sensitivity to the graduated phases of conversion reflects both his theology of the spiritual life and his pastoral experience. He sees in the days of creation the pattern of the pilgrim soul maturing in the spiritual life: . . . for even though people have been baptized and initiated . . . they would proceed no further did their souls not rise to a new level of spiritual life, and move on from elementary doctrine toward maturity.40

The Genesis account of day six begins with the reference to the emergence of the “living creature”, distinct from the “living things” of day five. In the logic of his allegory, Augustine identifies the “living creature” as those made alive in Christ: “This creature no longer stands in need of baptism (day one) . . . nor does this creature demand prodigious miracles to prompt it to faith (day four) . . . for already it is the believing earth”.41 But Augustine adds a warning to those on the path of spiritual maturing that they are still vulnerable to the concupiscences (unruly desires): “monstrous savagery of pride”, “the luxurious inertia of self-indulgence” and “sham pretension to knowledge”, the three “concupiscences”42 of 1 John 2:16:

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Seek God and your soul shall live (Ps 68:33) and so the earth will bring forth a living creature; and again, Shape yourselves no longer to the standards of this world (Rom 12:2), but restrain yourself from it. The soul that dies by craving lives by avoiding what it craves.43

The ascent to Wisdom entails a “re-formation” in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26), and this “re-formation” is a call to imaging this goodness and mercy in our own lives: Conform yourselves no longer to the standards of this world, but allow yourselves to be reformed by the renewal of your minds (Romans 12:2).44

Spiritual Discernment as a Pedagogical Tool While Augustine’s teaching emphasized the need for fostering the life-long process of spiritual maturing, Antony of Egypt focused on the importance of cultivating a constant discernment between what was authentic and inauthentic in the spiritual life. It is a life lived in an intense awareness of the present moment, of surrounding dangers as well as surrounding supports. This awareness (“wariness” in a positive sense) is coupled with a capacity for making critical judgements between what affirms and what negates life. In this respect, Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, and personal friend of Antony, calls Antony a God-given “physician” to Egypt. In the closing sections of his biography of Antony, Athanasius, draws together the different strands that characterized the legacy that Antony had left to the Christian community in general, and in particular, to the newly formed ascetic groups in Egypt and far beyond: This was also unique in Antony’s practice of asceticism that . . . he had the gift of discerning spirits. He recognized their movements and was well aware in what direction each of them directed his effort and attack. Not only was he himself not fooled by them, but encouraging others who were harassed in their thoughts, he taught them how they might ward off their designs, describing the weaknesses and wiles of the spirits practicing possession. And so each went down as though anointed by him and filled with confidence against the designs of the Devil and his demons.45

Athanasius’ biography, written perhaps within a year of the death of Antony (365 CE), and in the context of Athanasius’ own escape to the desert during his final persecution by Emperor Constantius II, was an instant best seller, transmitted quickly through the Christian communities of Egypt and then translated into Latin, and Syriac. Without exaggeration, it has become “the stuff of legends”, as centuries of literary commentators and artists testify. It is no surprise to read Athanasius describing Antony offering admonition and counsel to those plagued by demons, as the combat with demons is precisely what is most spontaneously associated with his name. But what is meant by “discernment” of spirits and to which “spirits” does Antony refer? In Letter III, one of a series of seven letters dictated to his disciples, Antony urges: Prepare yourselves while you have intercessors to pray to God for your salvation, that he may pour into your hearts that fire which Jesus came to send upon the earth (Lk 12:49) that

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you may be able to exercise your hearts and senses, to know how to discern the good from the bad, the right from the left, reality from unreality.46

Antony repeats the same advice in Letter VII: Therefore it behoves us all, approaching our Creator, to exercise our minds and senses to understand the distinction between good and evil, and to know the whole dispensation of Jesus which he made in his advent.47

He concludes the Letter with a prayer: But may the God of peace give you grace and the spirit of discernment, to know that what I write to you is the commandment of God. May the God of all grace keep you holy in the Lord to your last breath.48

However Letter VI calls for closer attention. The Letter begins with the pattern of salvation established throughout Letters II–VII: the fall of the “intellectual substances” from the original unity of love with God, God’s merciful “visitations” to humankind in their disgraced condition, through the ministry of Moses, the prophets, and finally through the coming (the advent) of the Saviour, “our great and faithful high priest and true physician”.49 Antony then turns to our present condition with the saints on the one hand praying and “groaning” for us, and on the other hand the Devil and his demons pressing their evil counsels through hatred and envy. Antony insists that he is praying unceasingly that we may be aware of the constant “malignities” with which we are surrounded: I want God to give you a heart of knowledge and a spirit of discernment that you may be able to offer your hearts as a pure sacrifice before the Father in great holiness without blemish.50

He follows this prayer by a detailed discussion of the different types of temptations, culminating in temptations to pride and lovelessness. Antony further develops his argument in urging the need to be attentive to the movements of the soul—the emotions: The evil spirits make us zealous for works which we are not able to perform, and cause us to faint in tasks on which we are engaged, and which are profitable for us. Therefore they make us laugh when it is time for weeping, and weep when it is time for laughter . . . When they fill our hearts with these deceits, and we feed on them, and they become our food . . . 51

Antony insists that the demons were in the original unity of “intellectual substances” with God: “For they are from one source in their intellectual substance, but in their flight from God, great diversity arises between them through the variety of their workings.”52 Antony follows with another long section of the multiple stratagems of the demons and once again urges his readers to keep the bonds of love intact, calling on the biblical image of the Body of Christ (1Corinthians 12): “Therefore we ought greatly to love one another. For he who loves his neighbor loves God; and he who loves God, loves himself.”53 In the conclusion of the Letter, Antony insists once more on the centrality of the gift of discernment: “Truly my children, I want you to know that there are many who have pursued asceticism throughout their life, but lack of discernment killed them.”54

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Antony was not the first Christian teacher in Egypt to focus upon the multiple temptations that surrounded the “athletes” of God. Origen of Alexandria had written extensively on the subject especially in the third book of the Peri Archon (On First Principles).55 What is proper to Antony is his precise insistence on the centrality of this “gift of discernment” and that the “discernment” is not just a question of distinguishing between the presence of good and evil spirits, but also being attentive to the shifts in awareness and in the emotions. Not every “joy” is a true joy, not every “fear” is authentic. The “spirits” are to be tested, just as the emotions are to be carefully scrutinized in the context of prayer, reflection on the scriptures and a confident turning to Christ, champion over evil in his Cross and Resurrection. It is one thing to admire the acuteness of observation of these masters of the spiritual life, but it is quite another to ask whether these observations are at all pertinent to contemporary life in lands whose existence was unheard of at the time of Antony or Augustine, Benedict, Culumbanus or John of the Cross. Recently I was invited to join a discussion about education today with students and faculty at the Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School in Indianapolis, Indiana. The young men and women of the student body reflect the wide variety of religious stances in contemporary society. At the end of the school day (which had begun with inter-faith reflection) there was a pause of a few minutes for the Daily Examen of conscience (or consciousness): 1. In this peaceful silence, review the events of your day. Recall the moments during the day for which you are grateful, and remind yourself that God is in all of these moments. 2. Now, consider the challenges you may have faced today . . . remember that God is present when we face our difficulties and gives us courage, peace, and wisdom; God makes a way out of no way. 3. Now, reflect on when you may have fallen short today . . . recall that God helps us to understand our failings and forgives us. 4. Finally, give thanks to God for the gift of this day, and ask for God’s help to do better tomorrow. This exercise of discernment can be traced back over the centuries to Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits in the sixteenth century, and then back to masters of discernment like Antony of Egypt. Not only do the students have the opportunity to practise this daily examen but many of their parents, in their own workplaces, join in this reflection at the same time of day. On the one hand it is a modern adaptation of a very old Christian practice, and on the other hand, it can be practised by peoples of many different spiritual perspectives. It can be interpreted in a theistic way or it can be an exercise of “mindfulness” as the Zen masters advocate.

A Christian Pedagogy for the Fostering of Wisdom This reflection on the principles and practices of fostering wisdom in the Christian tradition has underlined the fact that this pedagogy, shaped over long centuries and through diverse cultures, has neither been focused by the needs for a basic

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catechetical instruction, nor been oriented towards a wisdom-phase towards the end of life. It is a life-long learning process, hammered out in the ordinariness of everyday life as well as in the vertiginous landscape of mystical experience. It is a pedagogy that is adapted to both extremes and to every point in the continuum between. The examples of pedagogical practice cited in this short chapter point to the vast range of the Christian tradition of fostering wisdom, but also point to the constants in the tradition. These include the insistence on the paradoxical nature of the enterprise itself—that one is urged to acquisition of what cannot be attained except by gift. Even more paradoxical is the insistence that the inward-turning towards a seeking of self-knowledge implies a simultaneous outward-turning to the other—the neighbour in love, and to the ultimate Other, the loving one, Christ who descends to the one aspiring to ascend to wisdom.

Notes 1 2

3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Benedict of Nursia, Rule of Benedict, Prologue 1,2. The Rule of Benedict in English. Ed. Timothy Fry, O.S.B. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1982, p. 15. See Charles Kannengiesser, Handbook of Patristic Exegesis. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2004. Its final editing was secured in the first half of the second century; its provenance located in rural settlements of the Syrian mountains. p. 413. John of the Cross, The Dark Night, Book 2.17.6. The Collected Work of St. John of the Cross. Translated, Kieran Kavanagh O.C.D. Washington DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1991, p. 437. Benedict, Rule, Prologue 41. p. 18. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos. See Charles Kannengiesser, Handbook of Patristic Exegesis, pp. 1174–76. Charles Kannengiesser, Early Christian Spirituality. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986. “On the First Epistle of John, Sermon X”, translation, Pamela Bright, p. 103. Augustine, The Confessions. Translated Maria Boulding, New York: New York Press, 1997. “Not with our feet or by traversing great distances do we journey away from you or find our way back. That younger son of yours in the gospel did not hire horses or carriages, nor did he board ships, nor take wing in any visible sense nor put one foot before the other when he journeyed to that far country where he could squander at will the wealth you, his gentle father had given him at his departure. Gentle you were then, but gentler still with him when he returned in his need.” Book I, 18, 28, p. 30. Plotinus, Enneads. Plotinus was the founder of Neo-Platonism in the third century CE. “The flight of the one to the one” concludes the last book of the Enneads. Benedict, Rule, Prologue, 45–50, p. 18, 9. Columbanus, Letter 6. www.ucc.ie/celt/published/T201054.html Columbanus Hibernus. The Letters of Columbanus, G.S.M. Walker, compiled by Ruth Murphy. CELT PROJECT Corpus of Electronic Texts. University College Cork. Ferguson, Everett, Inheriting Wisdom. Readings for Today from Ancient Christian Writers. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004. Ferguson, Inheriting Wisdom. Gregory Nazianzus, Oration 16.2, p. 81. Foster, Richard, Streams of Living Water: Celebrating the Great Traditions of Christian Faith. New York: HarperCollins (HarperSanFrancisco), 1998. Foster, Streams of Living Water, p. 58. Ibid., p. 96. Ibid., p. 132. Ibid., p. 182. Ibid., p. 206.

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P. Bright Ibid., p. 272. Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana. Edited and translated by R.P.H. Green. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Augustine, The Confessions, Maria Boulding, 1997. De Doctrina Christiana, Green, Book II, 7, 10, 18, p. 65. Ibid., 7, 11, 21, p. 65. Ibid. De Doctrina Christiana, Green, Book II, 7, 10, 18, p. 65. Ibid., 7, 10, 20, p. 67. Ibid., 7, 11, 21, p. 67. Ibid., 22, p. 67. Ibid. The Confessions, Boulding, Book XIII, 14, 15, p. 284. Ibid., 15, 13, p. 285. Ibid., 17, 21, p. 286. Ibid. The Confessions, Boulding, Book XIII, 18, 22, p. 287. Ibid., 18, 23, p. 288. Ibid., 18, 22, p. 287. Ibid., 19, 24, p. 288. Ibid. The Confessions, Boulding, Book XIII, 19, 24, p. 289. Ibid., 20, 28, p. 291. Ibid., 21, 29, p. 291. See also The Confessions, Book X, 30, 41–43, 70, pp. 204–222. The Confessions, Boulding, Book XIII, 21, 30, p. 292. Ibid., 20, 28, p. 291. Athanasius of Alexandria, The Life of Antony, 88. p. 91. Antony of Egypt, The Letters of Antony the Great. Translation by Derwas Chitty. Oxford, 1975, p. 11. The Letters of Antony the Great, Chitty, p. 25. Ibid., p. 28. Ibid., p. 17. Ibid., p. 18. Ibid., p. 19. Ibid., p. 20. Ibid., p. 22. Ibid., p. 23. Origen of Alexandria, On First Principles Book III. Original edition, Berlin, 1913, English translation, G. W. Butterworth, Origen on First Principles, New York, 1966.

Part III

Learning from Wise People

Plato and Socrates (c. 1250) drawing by Matthew Paris in a collection of prognosticating tracts (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 304, fol. 31v)

The Wisdom of Plato’s Phaedo David Roochnik

On the surface, Plato’s conception of wisdom, as expressed in the Phaedo, is crystal clear. It is a condition of a purified human soul that is able, as far as possible, to think purely about objects that are changeless and eternal. As Socrates puts it, “purification” (catharsis: 67c4) occurs when the philosopher “using pure thought itself by itself attempts to hunt down each of the beings that purely is itself by itself” (66a).1 To achieve such wisdom, the soul must distance itself, as far as possible, from the body. It must reject the testimony of the senses, ignore the pangs of hunger, thirst, and sexual desire, cleanse itself of the subjective turbulence of the emotions, and become singularly focused on the immortal “Forms,” those ultimate beings that exist “themselves by themselves” and, unlike all residents of the sensible world, do not change. When the soul, itself by itself, investigates, it departs to the other place, to what is pure and always is, and is immortal and self-same. And because it is kindred to [what is pure and always is], it comes to be with it whenever it comes to be itself by itself . . . Then it has ceased from its wandering and always remains constant about these same beings, inasmuch as it has grasped them. And this condition of the soul has been called wisdom (79d).

Socrates expresses sentiments such as these throughout the Phaedo. Furthermore, he offers a series of four arguments whose apparent goal is to prove the immortality of the soul. As a result, then, this dialogue gives voice to what is surely the most familiar characterization of Platonic philosophy: it is a quest for an “otherworldy” wisdom, for a realm far above, and superior to, the earthly and mortal. Passages such as that cited above have also given rise to vociferous criticisms of Plato. Among the most powerful is Nietzsche’s in The Birth of Tragedy. According to Nietzsche, Plato “is the prototype of the theoretical optimist” (97) who believes that not only can reason comprehend reality, but is also capable of “correcting it” (95).2 This implies that, for Plato, “to be beautiful everything must be intelligible,” and that “knowledge is virtue” (84). Perhaps surprisingly, such optimism does not signal a genuinely positive stance towards life. Instead, it is “a sign of decline, of weariness, of infection” (18), of “life’s nausea and disgust with life” (23). To believe that human existence can be remedied through reason, and then to devote oneself

David Roochnik Boston University, Boston, USA

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to the attempt to remedy it, is to turn away from, and even to hate, the temporality, materiality, irrationality and general messinesss of actual human life. Such hatred is vividly depicted by Plato in the Phaedo in the person of a Socrates who is “without any natural awe of death.” It is “the dying Socrates” (89), Nietzsche says, who becomes the new, and perverse, ideal of a purely rational form of human existence. In direct opposition to Platonism, Nietzsche recommends “a pessimism of strength” (17): a deep affirmation of life as it really is; namely, without hope for a “beyond” or a “wisdom” that can cure all earthly ills. Perhaps surprisingly, however, such pessimism is anything but negative. Instead, it is life-affirming and is generated not by despair, but by the “joy, strength, overflowing health, overgreat fullness” (21) of a human being strong enough to appreciate life on its own terms. As Nietzsche puts it in the Gay Science, “Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse . . . some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.”3 By contrast, according to Nietzsche, Plato is the supreme No-sayer. He says no to the body, no to the transient, the mutable, the impure. His conception of wisdom is the refuge of an escapist and a coward. Most recently, Charles Griswold has reiterated his own version of these complaints against Platonic wisdom. (Indeed, he opens his essay with the passage from the Gay Science cited above.) Griswold’s Plato thinks that “The world we actually inhabit is an unlovable, even hateful, place” (119), and in general feels “revulsion at the imperfection” (122) of actual human life.4 As a consequence, he holds that “particular human beings, or other composite beings in the ordinary world, are not valuable in and of themselves.” Their “unique passingness and mixedness” (121) make them thoroughly unlovable. Much like Nietzsche, Griswold condemns Plato for a “pathology that leads [him] to conceive of the valuable as the ideal or perfect which is metaphysically removed and discontinuous with the here and now,” and to long for “something unalloyed, stable, not susceptible to decay” (121); in other words, the Forms. The Nietzschean/Griswoldian critique finds ample support in the Phaedo. It does so, however, only on the surface of the text. The purpose of this paper is to show that the Platonic conception of wisdom is more complicated than either of these critics take it to be. This is because the surface teaching of the dialogue, whose general “otherworldliness” is palpable, is qualified and thereby revised when the context in which Socrates’ statements are made is considered. In other words, the surface of the dialogue is not the whole Platonic story, for there is a depth from which the surface arises that is essential to the dialogue’s ultimate teaching.5 The first item to note about the context of Socrates’s speeches in the Phaedo is that he makes them to specific interlocutors: Simmias and Cebes. These young men are students of Philolaus (61d). As Burnet informs us, “Philolaus was one of the most distinguished of the older Pythagoreans . . . There seems to have been a regular sunedrion at Thebes as well as at Philius.” 6 (Philius is the dramatic setting of the dialogue: see 57a). Not only are the interlocutors Pythagoreans, so too is the narrator of the Phaedo, namely Echectrates.7 As Burkert argues, Pythagoreanism was above all else a way of life that took place within a religious cult: “The tradition of Pythagoras was associated with dietetic medicine, that is, the method of protecting health through a precisely regulated

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way of life on the basis of individual decisions.” The purpose of such regulations was to achieve a thoroughly purified soul. Burkert, noting that a Pythagorean article of faith was a belief in the immortality of the soul and a theory of transmigration, explains: What is most important is the transformation in the concept of soul, psyche, which takes place in these [Pythagorean] circles. The doctrine of transmigration presupposes that in the living being, man as animal, there is an individual, constant something, an ego that preserves its identity by force of its own essence, independent of the body which passes away. Thus a new general concept of a living being is created, empsychon, ‘a psyche is within.’ This psyche is obviously not the powerless, unconscious image of recollection in a gloomy Hades, as in Homer’s Nekyia; it is not affected by death: the soul is immortal, athanatos. That the epithet which since Homer had characterized the gods in distinction from men now becomes the essential mark of the human person is indeed a revolution.8

Because the soul is immortal and will be reborn, the Pythagorean must lead a life of purity in order to insure that reincarnation will go well. This description may seem perplexing since Pythagoreanism is famously associated with mathematics. In fact, however, we know nothing about the mathematical work of Pythagoras himself, and only have snatches of later teachings from thinkers like Philolaus. A few basic concepts can, however, be extracted. Consider the following two statements: (1) “They [the Pythagoreans] supposed the elements of numbers to be the elements of all existing things.” (2) “All things that are known have number. For without this nothing whatever could possibly be thought of or known.”9 Apparently, the Pythagoreans believed that number constituted the intelligible structure of all reality. To borrow a metaphor used much later in western history, they held that “the book of nature” was written in the characters of mathematics. What makes “all existing things” into what they are, and what makes them knowable, is their arithmetic structure. One of the best examples of this, and according to legend the first discovery made by Pythagoras, comes from music. The difference between mere noise and the harmonious sound produced by a lyre can be explained in terms of the numerical ratios of the musical scale. The beauty of music, which seems to be strictly a sensory phenomenon, can in fact be explicated mathematically. Under or behind music, then, lie ratios. This, for the Pythagoreans, is the great clue to reality itself. The order and harmony of the sensible world is grounded on the purely intelligible world of numbers. Why the Pythagoreans might well have been a religious cult should now be clear. For them, the sensible things we touch and see and hear are but a superficial and temporary manifestation of a much deeper and enduring “spiritual” reality. The individual lyre playing this piece of music, and the flute playing that one, and the boy over there whistling, are all but instances of an intelligible arithmetical structure that itself cannot be heard. Invisible, changeless, and utterly pure, numbers are more real than lyres, flutes and boys. In this sense, they are “spiritual,” and as such they can be virtually worshipped.10 To return to the Phaedo: Socrates’ interlocutors enter the conversation armed with a firm set of beliefs in the immortality of the soul and the existence of purely intelligible entities. As Plato makes clear, Simmias and Cebes are already disposed

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to agree with Socrates’ arguments. For example, when Socrates asks Simmias, “What about such things; shall we say that justice itself exists or not” (65d4–5)—in other words, when he asks him if he believes in the reality of the Form of Justice— Simmias responds with an enthusiastic “Yes, by Zeus, we should say so!” (65d6). When Socrates asks him whether the philosopher, “using pure thought itself by itself attempts to hunt down each of the beings that purely is itself by itself,” is the man who can “grasp the nature of being,” Simmias responds “Socrates you absolutely are speaking the truth!” (66a8–9). As a card-carrying Pythagorean, he is poised to agree with these statements. Far from trying to conceal this high level of agreement between Socrates and his interlocutors, Plato makes it explicit. In fact, at one point Socrates says this: “let us speak with one another, and give up trying to talk to others” (64c1). The resulting conversation, which takes place in the isolation of Socrates’ jail cell, is permeated with a feeling of cultic solidarity: it is a gathering of believers. These observations, far from being “merely” literary, should force the reader to reconsider virtually every speech Socrates makes. One must ask, why did Plato surround Socrates with people already predisposed to agree with what should be his most controversial claims? Why did he have Socrates offer a proof of the immortality of the soul to those who already believe that the soul is immortal? To feel the force of these questions, consider another famous dialogue, namely Berkeley’s Three Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous. In this work, Berkeley defends his theory of idealism. To do so he introduces Hylas, who holds a theory opposed to Berkeley’s own, namely materialism, and who argues forcefully against Philonous, who represents Berkeley. This seems to be a straightforward procedure: in order to craft the strongest defense of his position, Berkeley forces the character representing it to rebut the objections of his most radical opponent. By contrast, Plato fails to include such a radical opponent in the Phaedo.11 His failure should, I propose, provoke a kind of suspicion in the reader. Is Plato so wary of his own conclusions that he cannot risk genuinely radical critique? Does he think that a high level of fundamental agreement is required in order for this sort of dialogue to progress? If so, aren’t any claims it makes intrinsically limited? Shouldn’t the reader hesitate before attributing Socrates’ speeches to the author and instead ask, is Socrates “Plato’s mouthpiece?”12 If so, why didn’t he challenge him more severely in the Phaedo? To summarize this line of thought: two dialogues take place in the Phaedo. The first is on the surface of the text, and is between Socrates and two young Pythagoreans. The second is between Plato and the reader. To illustrate how this second dialogue arises from the depths, and then competes with the surface, I shall next examine one of Socrates’ arguments on behalf of the immortality of the soul, which is typically called the “affinity” argument. Socrates begins by suggesting that there are two kinds of substance: the composite and the non-composite. The former will eventually decompose, while the latter is “unlikely to be decomposed.” Furthermore, “it is most probable” that the former changes, while the latter does not (78c). Socrates next adds these premises: entities like “the equal itself” and “beauty itself” (78d)—i.e., the “Forms”—do not change. By contrast, the many particulars that go by the same name as the Forms—e.g., two men “equal” in height and a

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“beautiful” cloak—do change (78e). The Forms can be accessed only by “reason,” while the particulars are accessed by perception (79a). So far,we are in the midst of the familiar conception of Platonic philosopy, construed as the quest to articulate, and thereby somehow to participate in, the eternal and changeless realm of being. Next, Socrates asserts that there are two “kinds of existences:”: “one visible, the other invisible” (79a). The human body is similar to the former, while the soul, when it “inquires alone by itself” and achieves the state of “wisdom” (79d), is similar to the latter (79c). Therefore, Socrates, concludes “the soul is most like the divine and immortal . . . and ever unchanging.” While it is “natural for the body to meet with speedy dissolution,” the soul seems “to be entirely indissoluble” (80b), and hence immortal. This argument fails to prove the immortality of the soul. Even if X is like and so shares some properties with Y, it need not be identical to Y, or share all of Y’s properties. Therefore, even if the soul is like the Forms, it need not itself be immortal. But there is an even deeper problem with the argument, for it implies, somewhat covertly, that far from being like the changeless Forms, the soul actually is capable of significant change (and hence is quite unlike the Forms). After all, “when the soul makes use of the body for any inquiry . . . it wanders about and is confused” (79c), but when it purifies itself, thinks itself by itself, then it becomes more like the Forms, i.e., changeless and immortal. This seems to suggest that the soul is polymorphous. It can be either “confused” or “pure,” and is capable of shifting from one state to the other. As Ahrensdorf puts it, “despite Cebes’ emphatic agreement that the soul is most similar to that which is unchanging, Socrates’ account of the soul actually underscores its changeableness.”13 This is a key element of the depth teaching of the Phaedo. Human beings are not essentially disembodied souls that will live forever. Instead, we are changeable beings that dwell in-between the composite and the incomposite, the changing and the changeless, the mortal and the immortal. In this regard, the teaching of the Phaedo is more similar to that of the Symposium than is usually thought. In the latter, Socrates explicitly affirms the mortality of the soul, and its status as in-between the mortal and the divine. Mortal nature always seeks, as far as possible, to be immortal. In one way only can it do this: by generation. For with this it can always leave behind something new in place of the old. Only for a while can each one of the living things be called alive and to be the same, as a man is said to be the same from childhood until he becomes old. This man, however, despite being called the same, never possesses the same things in himself. He is continually becoming new, while in other ways also being destroyed. Some things he loses, like his hair, his flesh, his bones, his blood, and his body altogther. And not only his body, but also in the ways of his soul—his habits, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, fears—each of these is never present in the same fashion, but some come into being while others are destroyed. And much stranger is this, that even when it comes to things we know, some come to be while others are destroyed in us. Never are we the same when it comes to knowledge, for what we know suffers the same fate. What we call studying implies that our knowledge is departing; for since forgetfulness is the departure of knowledge, while studying implants new knowledge in place of that which departs, it preserves our knowledge such that it seems to be the same.

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Every mortal thing is preserved in this way; not by keeping it exactly the same forever, like the divine, but by replacing what goes off or gets old with something which is fresh but like it. Through this device . . . a mortal being participates in immortality both in its body and everything else. By no other means can it be done. (Symposium, 207d–208b).14

This passage suggests that the most human beings can hope for is “metaphorical immortality.” 15 We really are going to die, but while alive we can make some gesture towards the immortal. Because it seems to deny the immortality of the soul, which has long been taken, along with the theory of Forms, to be one of the “twin pillars of Platonism,”16 this passage causes some commentators fits. Crombie, for example, says this: “this passage from the Symposium is either to be explained away or regarded as unique; it should not cause us to modify the account we have given of Plato’s main doctrine of the soul,”17 i.e., that because it shares an “affinity” with the Forms it is immortal. Such commentators take Plato to be a “Platonist” who hates the sensible realm, and longs for the day when the soul will depart to “the other place,” unencumbered by the nuisance of having a body. This paper suggests otherwise, namely that Plato is a “Platonist” only on the surface. More precisely, while it is often the case that when Socrates is speaking to his Pythagorean friends he does indeed sound like a “Platonist,” Socrates is not equivalent to Plato. (As if to underscore this point, Plato makes it clear that he himself was not present in the jail cell. He was, Phaedo thinks, “sick” (59b10).)18 To continue this line of thought, I turn next to the second proof of the immortality of the soul, the one based on “recollection.” Relying on the example Socrates himself uses, it can be summarized briefly. Ordinary sensory experience discloses that one stick is equal to another stick (in, say, length). In order to make this measurement, one must employ a notion of “the Equal Itself” without which the measurement and the consequent declaration that the two sticks are equal could not take place. The key feature of the “Equal Itself” is that it is perfectly equal, and betrays not a whit of inequality. By contrast, sensible equals, like the two sticks, inevitably betray some measure of inequality. They may be only approximately equal in length, or equal in length and unequal in width, or equal in length today but unequal tomorrow. Because the Equal Itself never admits any inequality, while sensible equality inevitably does, the two must be fundamentally distinct. As a result, the Equal Itself is required for the measurement of the sensible equals, but because it is essentially different from them, i.e., it is perfect while they “fall short,” it cannot be derived from them. Therefore, the argument runs, there must have been some prior access to the Equal Itself before the measurement of the two sticks took place. The sensible equals, then, “remind” the soul of the Equal Itself. Since being alive implies continual sensory experience, access to the non-sensible Equal Itself must have its source in some form of pre-natal existence. The argument concludes that the human soul is immortal. The “recollection thesis” is too complex to be fully discussed in this paper. Two points, however, do seem to emerge clearly: sensible equals “fall short of” but nonetheless are required to remind us of the Equal Itself. As clear as these are, however, when he summarizes this line of thought Socrates complicates them.

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So, do we agree that whenever someone, upon seeing something, thinks, ‘this thing which I now see wishes to be like some other being, but it is lacking and not able to be like it, but instead is inferior,’ the person thinking this must happen to have known beforehand that thing he says resembles it but falls short (74d–e)?

Note that Socrates speaks not about “everyone,” but instead about what happens when a particular “someone” has a certain experience. (Note especially how he uses the first-person—“I see”—to describe this experience.) This person realizes that the equality exhibited by the two sticks falls short of the perfect equality contained in the Equal Itself, and is then moved by this realization to reflect upon such a perfect being. What is striking in this passage is its acknowledgement of how contingent such an experience is. Only when someone “happens” to feel this way, it seems to suggest, “must” the process of recollection take place. The necessity attributed to recollection is thus compromised. This sort of qualification is present throughout the Phaedo. For example, in his initial description of the philosophical soul Socrates says that it “has an urgent longing for Being” (65c9). The strength of the verb (oregetai) suggests that a particular psychological disposition is required to be a philosopher. To use a term prominent in the Symposium and the Republic, Socrates is describing the philosopher’s “eros,” his love of wisdom. But by having him do this, Plato invites his reader to be suspicious about the very project of philosophy itself. Love, after all, plays tricks on us. It fuels the imagination and often causes us to exaggerate the beauty of the beloved. It closes our minds to others and sometimes drives us mad. It makes us see things that aren’t there. People love different things. To reiterate, that Plato would emphasize the role of eros in the constitution of the philosophical soul shows again how cautious he is. He is not unambiguously celebrating the philosopher who by “using pure thought itself by itself attempts to hunt down each of the beings that purely is itself by itself” (66a) apprehends the Forms. Instead, he is highlighting the subjective constitution of the philosopher, a constitution that may not be shared by many. Does this mean not every one has a constitution to become a philsopher and so wise? To clarify and explore the implications of this point, consider the following remarks Socrates makes in his summary of recollection: For our present logos is no more about the Equal than it is about the Beautiful Itself and the Good itself and the Just and the Holy and, as I was saying, about all those Beings which we, in the asking of our questions and the answering of our answers, stamp with the seal of ‘that which is’ (75c).

The metaphor of the “stamp”—and Socrates has in mind the impress a stamp would make in wax—is striking precisely because it challenges Nietzsche’s characterization of Plato as a “theoretical optimist.” The English word “theory” is derived from the Greek noun theôria, itself derived from the verb theôrein, meaning “to look at closely.” Theory is a kind of seeing, and so the “theoretical optimist” is one who has high hopes for the possibility of seeing the intelligible structures of reality—or, in Platonic terms, the Forms—for what they really are in themselves. Such a thinker is optimisitic about the possibility of the soul accessing, without interference from the subjective act of such accessing, the objects of its rational activity. But with

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the metaphor of the stamp Socrates draws the reader’s attention precisely to the role the subject plays in this process. Stamping is a productive activity in which the object, the impress in the wax, would not exist were it not for the activity of the one who does the stamping. By contrast, vision requires distance from its object and so “theory,” construed as a kind of seeing, does not make contact, and so cannot affect, its object. As a result, the metaphor should be a bit shocking. Far from being expressive of theoretical activity, it suggests the possibility of subjective interference. The passage implies that what is actually responsible for the “stamping” is the discourse of the philosopher, or, as Socrates puts it, “the asking of our questions and the answering of our answers.” In the dialectical process of question and answer, in the course of philosophical exchange, human beings “stamp” some object with the impress “that which is.” So, for example, Socrates frequently engages in conversations that begin with the question “what is X itself?” The Meno begins with “what is virtue itself?”, the Euthyphro treats the question, “what is piety itself?”, the Laches, “what is courage itself?’ These kinds of conversations imply, it seems, that the speakers “stamp” the object of the question—virtue, piety, courage—with the intensive pronoun “itself” and thereby declare them to “be.” If we take the metaphor seriously, then without such conversation these entities would not “be” in the strong sense suggested by the “itself.” Again, this should be shocking. The salient feature of the Platonic Forms would surely seem to be their ontological independence. Because they are said to be “themselves by themselves” they should not require any contribution from the human subject. Instead, they should be intelligible entities that simply “are there” for inspection by the rational mind. They should function as fundamental principles on which the rest of reality depends. But the metaphor of the stamp challenges these familiar characterizations of Platonic metaphysics. To reiterate, if we take it seriously, we must acknowledge the possibility that the human subject does indeed affect the object. Just as a lover may exaggerate the beauty of the beloved, so too does the impress of the stamp require the one who stamps for its being. Far from being expressive of theoretical optimism and the notion that the subject has unimpeded access to the Forms, the metaphor suggests that philosophical discourse is quite possibly productive in nature, and so is fundamentally questionable. This line of reasoning returns us to the initial remarks made about the interlocutors of the dialogue. They are Pythagoreans who are disposed from the outset to agree with Socrates that the soul is immortal and that intelligible entities like the Forms exist and can be known. Plato underscores this point. Early in the dialogue, for example, during his initial description of philosophy as “purification,” Socrates says this: “Such words as these, I think, Simmias, all who correctly love learning must say to each other and must believe” (67b). This is odd. Why must philosophers believe “such words?” As philosophers, shouldn’t they prefer knowledge to belief and so prove such words to be true? Why must philosophers say “such words” to themselves? Wouldn’t the genuine “theoretical optimist” refuse to allow his speeches to be kept within the confines of the prison cell, and instead demand that they be put on public display so that all who hear them would be able to raise relevant criticisms?

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This sort of underscoring is even sharper at the end of the dialogue. After telling a long myth about an orderly and rational world—a move that itself should give one pause before attributing theoretical optimism to Plato—Socrates says this: Now to insist that these things are just as I’ve related them would not be fitting for a man of intelligence; but that either this or something like it is true about our souls and their dwellings, given that the soul appears to be immortal, this, I think, is fitting and worth risking, for one who believes that it is so—for a beautiful risk it is—so one should repeat such things like a spell, which is just why I’ve so prolonged the tale (114d).

This is strange. Socrates seems to be counseling Simmias to cast a “spell” on himself by repeating the incantation, “the world is rational and I am immortal, the world is rational and I am immortal, the world is . . . ” But if the world is rational, why is there a need to repeat such words? Why do philosophers need to cast spells and tell stories? The answer is contained in the phrase “beautiful risk.” Being rational is, without doubt, what Plato recommends. But it is a risk because, as the previous discussion of the recollection thesis suggests, it is not clear just how rational human beings can actually be. It is possible that the human subject, the philosophical soul, is a powerfully intrusive force and in fact somehow helps to brings its object, the Forms, into existence. As such, there is no guarantee that rational “theory” is even possible. The conclusion, then, is this: one ought to strive to understand the Forms, even if it is possible that we bring them into existence by our stamping-discourse. Far from being the sentiment of a theoretical optimist, it reflects the views of someone who appreciates the precariousness of philosophy itself. To conclude with a final look at the topic of “teaching wisdom”: in thinking about Plato it is a terrible mistake to take one’s bearings from a few Socratic speeches and to stamp them with the label “Platonic.” Doing so may well lead to precisely the “standard” view of Platonic wisdom, and thereby to provoke the Nietzschean/Griswoldian critique. Far from teaching its readers to feel “revulsion at imperfection” and a deep distaste for the “passingness” of human life, far from urging them to become theoretical optimists who are hungry only for a glimpse of the Eternal Forms, the Phaedo instead reminds us that we are human beings, precariously poised between the mortal and the divine, the changing and the immutable. We may, at times, long for the Forms, but we can never be sure if we ever see them whole and untouched by our own desires. This is the lesson that the Phaedo teaches. It is accessible only through a careful reading of the dialogue as a dialogue, a work that contains a surface and a depth, both of which make essential contributions to its content. To put this point in one final way: Platonic wisdom is not what today would be called “metaphysics” or “epistemology.” It is, instead, much closer to “psychology.” Far from fleeing human life, Plato understands it well and values it highly. His work can teach its readers much about what it means to be a human being, a human “soul” (psuchê). But to absorb this lesson readers must be willing to read his dialogues as wholes, and to remember that even Socrates’ most abstract speeches emerge from a carefully crafted dramatic context which expresses the human condition in which all of us spend most of our time.

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Notes 1 Translations of the Phaedo are my own. The Greek text is Burnet’s Oxford edition. 2 I am citing the Kaufmann translation of the Birth of tragedy (NY, 1967) and suppressing the complex

3 4 5

6 7

8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18

distinction between Plato and Socrates that Nietzsche may actually have in mind. I indicate page numbers in parentheses. The citation is from the Kaufmann translation of the Gay science (NY 1974) p. 223. Charles Griswold, “Longing for the Best: Plato on Reconciliation with Imperfection,” Arion 11(2003). I indicate page numbers in parentheses. Commentaries that follow this general line include Ronna Burger, Plato’s Phaedo (Yale, 1981), Kenneth Dorter, Plato’s Phaedo (Toronto, 1982), Peter Ahrensdorf, The death of Socrates and the life of philosophy (SUNY, 1997). See Carl Huffman, Philolaus of Croton (Cambridge, 1993), for a thorough commentary. Echectrates is the first speaker. From Diogenese Laertius (VIII.24) we know this: “And the last of the Pythagoreans, whom Aristoxenus knew, were Xeophilus the Chalcidean . . . and Echechrates, and Diokles . . . who were also Philiasians, and they were disciples of Philolaus.” Walter Burkert, Lore and science in ancient Pythagoreanism. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 300. From S. Marc Cohen, P. Curd, C. Reeve, Ancient greek philosophy (Hackett: 1999). In the chapter on Protagoras in my book, Retrieving the ancients: An introduction to ancient greek philosophy (Blackwell: 2004), I elaborate on this material. Michel Ferrari has rightly pointed out that Simmias’ “attunement” theory of the soul, which he presents at 85e–86d, and which expresses an epiphenomenalist account of “consciousness,” does indeed provide a strong challenge to Socrates. It must be noted, however, that when Simmias faces a choice between recollection and attunement (92c), two positions Socrates takes to be mutually exclusive, he immediately abandons the latter. In other words, his defense of attunement is somewhat contrived. As such, he is not a genuinely strong opponent. See G. Press, ed., Who speaks for Plato? (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000) for a thorough treatment of this question. Ahrensdorf 1997, p. 95. I follow, but make significant changes in, the translation of W. Lamb (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975). See David Roochnik, “Metaphorical Immortality,” in If I should die (Notre Dame, 2001), 155–170. Francis Cornford, The republic of Plato (London: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1941), p. xxvii. I.M. Crombie, An examination of Plato’s doctrines (NY: Humanities Press, 1962), p. 363. Of course, Plato is absent from all the dialogues, but in no other does he draw attention to his absence in this fashion. Furthermore, his absence is peculiar. How sick was he? Would he have missed this last occasion to be with his beloved “mentor” only because he had a cold? Finally, note that Phaedo qualifies this description by saying Plato, “I think,” was sick.

Can Wisdom Be Taught? Kant, Sage Philosophy, and Ethnographic Reflections from the Swahili Coast Kai Kresse

What Kant said about philosophizing, is true of wisdom itself: it ‘can be learned only through practice and the use of one’s own reason’, (cf. Kant 1974: 29)

Introduction This chapter seeks to develop some general reflections on wisdom while using the Swahili coast as a regional example in an African setting. This region displays a specific intercultural context which is also part of wider Indian Ocean networks. It has its own historically grown discursive traditions within which ‘wisdom’ may be displayed, socially appreciated, and observed. I will sketch out an ethnographically informed case study of the Swahili context, to reflect on wisdom as discursive performance and social practice. In the process, I will draw from Immanuel Kant and Henry Odera Oruka as relevant philosophers for orientation. On strictly ethnographic terms, the sequence of my reflections, from Kant via Oruka to Swahili case studies, may seem problematic, as they start with a working-definition of ‘wisdom’ coined outside the ethnographic setting itself. The main purpose here, however, is to contribute to a general and comparative discussion on ‘wisdom’. As a result, and within the given limits and parameters of presentation here, I have interspersed my own reflections with references to philosophical accounts and ethnographic descriptions. Also, the development of my overall argument here is based on the assumption of intercultural comparability of ‘wisdom’. It would be a separate task to critically investigate and consolidate this assumption.

Kant: Philosophy as ‘Doctrine of Wisdom’ In the history of Western philosophy, as is well known, wisdom is at the heart of a classic understanding of philosophy and indeed the meaning of ‘philosophy’ itself, as literally the ‘love of wisdom.’ Even though philosophy has developed im-

Kai Kresse University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, UK

M. Ferrari and G. Potworowski (eds.), Teaching for Wisdom.  C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

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mensely as a body of thought and as an academic discipline over many centuries— developing sub-fields with highly technical languages within this process—this characterization has not lost its appeal when it comes to general reflections of what philosophy is, and how it is connected to the world of everyday life. Among German mainstream philosophers in the 1980s, wisdom was still discussed as immanently at the core of philosophy, despite the conceptual uncertainties that modernity and postmodernity brought with them (Oelmueller 1989). This discussion was led largely with reference to Kant, and from him I want to pick up one particular expression, namely his characterization of philosophy as a ‘doctrine of wisdom.’ I will try to explain why I find this expression helpful for thinking about wisdom as a universal capacity of humans, which, as specific intellectual practice, is nevertheless shaped and influenced by the concrete social, cultural, and historical contexts that individuals are embedded in. It is crucial for an adequate intercultural understanding of wisdom to balance the points for a shared human ability and practice with an emphasis on the specific and diverse features that may qualify someone as wise in different societies around the world. Kant provides a useful conceptual approach to this issue, and other thinkers from Western and non-Western contexts could probably provide us with a similar basis. The point here is to present an exemplary starting-point to draw on from later in the discussion. This section simply seeks to support one particular case in point: the characterization of wisdom at the heart of philosophy. In his Logik, Kant emphasizes the interplay between two major sub-aspects of philosophy, a scholarly conception of philosophy, Philosophie im Schulbegriff, and a worldly conception of philosophy, Philosophie im Weltbegriff. The latter, as a ‘doctrine of wisdom’, ultimately characterizes the character of true philosophical thinking and reflection, Kant says.1 Philosophy, linked to wisdom in this sense and constantly connected to it, is not at its core about ‘historical knowledge’—this, for Kant, is factual knowledge of empirical events that can easily be taught and learned. Philosophy as doctrine of wisdom is characterized by the effort of a rational synthesis within one’s thinking while trying to orient oneself in the world—thus the ‘worldly conception’ (Weltbegriff) of philosophy. As such it refers to an original attempt at making sense, of creating an intellectual guideline for oneself where no secure pathways can be found. Importantly, this also means that a certain level of education (such as being an academic, trained within a particular school of thought, or even being literate) is not a necessary condition for this ability per se, even if it may have a crucial input. This is because, strictly speaking, these are not preconditions for producing a new insight of synthetic knowledge which we call ‘wisdom’. More bluntly, there is no privileged shortcut from education to wisdom. Thus Kant’s conception helps us to reject an elitist understanding of philosophy which is exclusivist, both in social and in intercultural respects. Wisdom, from this general perspective, then, cannot be taught—but only sought. It is achieved as a synthesis in reflection by individuals who are facing a practical need or a theoretical challenge of orientation that potentially applies to all human beings within their common world. This is what I take Kant to mean when he says that philosophy in the Weltbegriff, i.e. as linked to and determined by ‘wisdom’ (as we saw above), addresses what is ‘of necessary interest to everyone’.2

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As to the use of ‘wisdom’ in this chapter, I will go along with Kant’s implications: that wisdom is, first of all, linked to reflections on a common world, addressing a practical need of orientation within this world; and that, secondly, wisdom is indiscriminate in that it is not necessarily linked to a certain level of education, or a degree of literacy. The relevant knowledge that is recurred to, is, above all, life-experience, i.e. being able to make good sense of the common world and the challenges it poses. Linking the two implications one can say that people from any social background can be considered as wise, as far as they provide good and useful advice for orientation and/or problem solving vis-à-vis the challenges in the world of everyday life.

Oruka’s ‘Sage Philosophy’: Exploring African Philosophical Traditions Within recent discussions in the field of African philosophy, we can find documentation of individuals who have achieved a socially acknowledged position as wise people. From the 1970s onwards, the Kenyan philosopher Henry Odera Oruka developed and applied his approach for the exploration of philosophical traditions in Africa, which he called ‘sage philosophy’. While regionally and historically far away from Kant—a pinnacle of Western philosophy—the way that wisdom is generally understood in this project is remarkably similar. Oruka’s sage philosophy project addressed the debate about the existence of African philosophy with the intention of providing empirical proof of the existence of contemporary philosophical thinkers in contexts that were characterized by indigenous values and education, and by orality as a primary means of knowledge transmission and communication. For this, the concept of wisdom—in Oruka’s usage, ‘sagacity’—was crucial. Oruka was probably the first academically trained African philosopher to embark on empirical fieldwork to investigate philosophical discourse in African settings, and in this way to take African conceptions and discourses of wisdom seriously. He used fieldwork as a tool to identify potential philosophical thinkers. Those who were acknowledged as particularly knowledgeable in general matters of life in their communities, and as such consulted for advice, were the ‘sages’ that became central to Oruka’s inquiries.3 Oruka followed popular local opinion to lead him to sages whom he then interviewed about matters of belief, knowledge, and fundamental principles, trying to elicit philosophical reflections (using the Socratic dialogues as a paradigm). Later on, he would discuss the documented interviews to determine which sages should be regarded as philosophers. He distinguished between ‘philosophic sages’, who were able to reflect critically on commonly held beliefs and develop independent arguments for or against them, and ‘folk sages’, whose qualities lay in the preservation and perpetuation of cultural knowledge and practices, and who did not critically engage with the subject matters under discussion in the interview. Accordingly, Oruka classified two sub-divisions of wisdom, in parallel to the division of sages: ‘popular

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wisdom’ was linked to the folk sage, while ‘didactic wisdom’ was exhibited by the philosophic sage. In other words, independent, original, and critical thinking qualified philosophic wisdom, wisdom in an emphatic sense. On the other hand, popular wisdom referred to commonly accepted social knowledge which remained within the realm of ‘tradition’, the folk sages somewhat acting as its custodians. This is a lesser wisdom, in Oruka’s qualification, and according to Kant’s line of thought as employed above may be qualified as historical knowledge. In practice, Oruka’s differentiation does not always hold very tight. In his discussions, the borderline between the two categories is rather blurred and unclear; some folk sages seem to display ‘critical’ attitudes while some of the philosophical sages don’t, but rather seem to reiterate ‘traditionalist’ opinions. Thus, even a compassionate reader of Oruka, who acknowledges the conceptual need for this differentiation is left to wonder about its applicability.4 Finally, while we should note and appreciate the path-breaking significance of Oruka’s start of empirical research on knowledge, wisdom, and philosophy in African contexts among academic African philosophers, we also have to concede that his accounts do not provide enough depth to acknowledge and understand the social and cultural specifics: intellectual practices, histories, and educational contexts of the portrayed individual sages are not really integrated into the account. Also, we have little sense of regional intellectual histories, or historically grown paradigms that matter locally for what wisdom is, and how wise people are socially identified. Oruka’s project was rather centred around the idea of identification and documentation of indigenous thinkers, who could be shown to be ‘wise’ and ‘philosophical’. These were then presented as counter-proofs to Eurocentric assumptions of a Western exclusivity of philosophy, and would also instil pride and further interest in Africa’s intellectuals and intellectual traditions. While this is certainly a very valuable point, it does not help us to gain further ground in understanding what ‘wisdom’ actually is, either for Oruka’s sages, or for the communities within which they are regarded as wise. To be sure, Oruka presents us with some brief definitions and discussions of ‘wisdom’ by his sages (e.g. Oruka 1991: 116, 129f, 154f); but they stand without context, and we get very little sense of how they relate to everyday practice and discourse in the respective communities. This would need to be followed up, in order to address the general question of whether wisdom can be taught. The following section will present more context, and allow us to take these issues up again. Based on my own ethnographic research which was inspired by Oruka and his project, it will briefly introduce the East African Swahili context, in terms of general setting and regional history, before presenting selected case studies to provide a sense of how ‘wisdom’ can be contextualized and discussed in Swahili everyday life.5

The Swahili Context The Swahili coast extends along East Africa, from northern Mozambique to southern Somalia. As a cultural region, it includes the islands close to the mainland within this corridor (e.g. Zanzibar, Pemba, and the Lamu archipelago). It was shaped

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through ancient and well-established trade networks in the Indian Ocean, with strong links to the Hadramaut, Oman, and Western India. For many centuries Islam has been the prevailing religion of the region; and different kinds of Islamic networks (educational, spiritual, missionary, philanthropic) continue to extend across the Ocean and along the coastal cities. Swahili culture has been characterized by urbanity. The traders and citizens in their port towns that linked them to the world thought of themselves as civilized (waungwana), while behind the city walls and immediate hinterland the wilderness began, which they saw inhabited by ‘savages’ (washenzi). This stark ethnocentric opposition went hand in hand with a strict ideology of social hierarchy within the town. Yet the social dynamics were actually open enough for outsiders to integrate themselves into society, and in exceptional cases even attain leading positions. Also, despite the rhetorical emphasis of difference between the urban population and that of the hinterland, there existed a mutual interdependence: the town needed agricultural produce, and manpower (for production and protection), while the hinterland gained access to imported products, and, more importantly for individuals, to become integrated into the extended networks of city life, whether as farmers, fishermen, or servants, with a prospect of gradual integration and upward social mobility. The Swahili language is a Bantu language with many regional dialects whose vocabulary is enriched by loanwords from Arabic, and also Hindi, Gujarati, Portuguese, English, German, and other languages, reflecting historical phases of intercultural interaction, through trade, kinship ties, religion, and colonial domination. Historically, the Swahili trading port towns were city-states in rivalry with each other. Until today, the attitudes of citizens and the various dialects of the important porttowns continue to reflect this. The social framework is Muslim (with a plurality of sub-groups), multi-ethnic, and multi-lingual (with Swahili as the overarching lingua franca). And while these details hardly concern ‘wisdom’ directly, they provide a sense of the kind of long-grown intercultural society within which wisdom has to be understood. Overall, the historical diversity of language, religion, and ethnicity, undoubtedly feeds into the ways that ‘wisdom’ is socially acknowledged and identified, emulated or performed by individuals. There are a number of Islamic scholars and intellectuals who, for different reasons and achievements, are acknowledged as ‘wise men’ in Swahili history.6

Wisdom and Intellectual Practice in Swahili Everyday Life7 Above, wisdom was introduced as the ability of individuals to convincingly address issues which require clarification and orientation as a matter of general concern— which, as Kant said, are ‘of necessary interest to everyone’—and who are successful in making some headway in this direction. Thus wisdom would be a quality subject to social identification, which individuals cannot claim for themselves; it is always attested by others, from the outside. Still, it is gained by self-reliant efforts to come to grips with the world, and it is illustrated by discursive and performative evidence. This kind of contextual description of what wisdom consists of can also be applied to

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the Swahili context (and possibly many others), even though there is no equivalence of vocabulary. In the Swahili language, hekima (wisdom, knowledge, judgment) and busara (good sense, wisdom, sagacity), often used as a joint idiomatic phrase, may be the terms most closely related to it. There are numerous words for different kinds of knowledge in Swahili, often originating in Arabic loanwords, and it would be a task in its own right to sketch out the interrelationships of semantic fields of ‘knowledge’ in the Swahili context. Ujuzi (knowledge, wisdom, experience), maarifa (knowledge, information, intelligence) and elimu (education, knowledge, learning) are three more of the most commonly used terms, within a multiplicity of words for ‘knowledge’. To add more social dimensions to the way that wisdom as intellectual-cum-moral ability is usually qualified and appreciated in the Swahili context, age has to be mentioned as a category. It is generally older people who, through their longer life experience, are associated with wisdom. This is also reflected in the use of the term wazee (elders, old people), where the connotations of being honourable, respectable, and knowledgeable are inherently part of the meaning itself. Furthermore, mzee (sing. of wazee) can also be used as an honorific term for someone who is not an elder or old in terms of age. For this person, mzee may be used as a kind of title, marking an achievement or a certain status (e.g. intellectual or political leadership), and inherently ascribing or invoking wisdom as a characteristic quality of that person. In this way, we may find presidents, mayors, educational or religious leaders being addressed as mzee by people who are older than them—it is a discursive marker to mark the achievement (and/or superiority) of the addressee.

The Swahili Baraza To understand wisdom as a discursive capacity, we need to look at appropriate social contexts. These may be settings where discursive agents have sufficient time, and ease of mind, to develop and formulate their thoughts, which may well have to do with, and comment on, everyday life. But they are not determined or conditioned by its demands or pressures. A wise statement is not necessitated by anything, but once it is recognised and acknowledged as ‘wise’ (within a community or by an individual), it may be seen in retrospect as the ultimate, only possible, and thus ‘necessary’ answer to a social problem or human quest. In Swahili everyday life, there is one particularly prominent setting in which wisdom as discursive capacity and social performance can potentially be observed— albeit only among men, in a gendered space. This is the evening baraza of men of a neighbourhood, i.e. their meeting-points (literally, the integrated stone benches) in front of the houses on the streets, an informal social institution that provides space for reflection, discursive focus and attention, and intellectual exchange in a familiar surrounding and leisurely atmosphere. After evening prayers, regular groups of neighbours and friends would assemble at their baraza to exchange the day’s news, comment on recent events, and generally to socialise and enjoy each other’s

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company. These groups would be small, consisting of three to eight persons or so. They would be characterised by familiarity, and next to gossip, joking, and the exchange of news, serious discussions could emerge or be taken up again at any stage of the evening’s conversation. Such discussions could cover any topic, with politics or proper Islamic conduct perhaps as the most common ones for any baraza, no matter what age group. People use and display their abilities of reasoning and rhetoric, of thinking and speaking, making the baraza a setting in which we can observe how ‘wisdom’ is displayed and appreciated in the Swahili context.8 Observable in baraza communication are the ways in which the art of speaking, the level of knowledge, experience and education, and the habitus in which people shape and present themselves as knowledgeable and reasonable, together shape a kind of wisdom performance. The collective wisdom performance of a baraza consists of the specific complementary ways in which individuals act, speak, and argue. A baraza typically consists of neighbours and friends who are very familiar with each other but may have different characters, educational and ethnic backgrounds, and possibly vary in social status. We can commonly identify an internal order in which participants follow to fill out complementary roles. To illustrate this, we have to be aware that the factors that matter in baraza discussions are quite differently personified in each participant. For instance, a sharifu (a descendant of Prophet Muhammad)9 would normally have a high social status and be treated with corresponding respect; but in his baraza, this may not matter as much as elsewhere in social interaction. What matters more is the input that people have to discussions, the impact they have (in the mid- and long term) on the thinking of the others. In this sense, a sharifu, like anyone else, may have to prove himself as knowledgeable and thoughtful, as an entertaining or otherwise admirable speaker. In each case he would have to have a significant impact on knowledge-based or insight-seeking discussions, in order to attain a highly respected position in the baraza. Speaking of complementary roles, for baraza discussions to make knowledge-related and wisdom-oriented progress, we can anticipate the need for a balanced combination of different types of thinkers and speakers—critical listeners and sceptics, questioners and educated readers (in religious, scientific, and worldly affairs), of enthusiastic commentators and well informed citizens on politics and world news. From my experience during fieldwork, members of neighbourhood barazas typically do fill out such roles and thus contribute in distinct ways. What about wisdom as linked to individual members of a baraza? Let me approach this through a perspective on those who appreciate and admire others as wise. Based on a significant amount of shared time spent with each other, their judgement is based on experience. They have observed how someone approaches and discusses tricky issues, and have been able to correlate the comments, statements, and predictions made on such issues by this person, to the way that these issues then developed further. In a way then, they have been looking at the validity and success of the evaluations of their baraza peers. Aspects and ways of behaviour and discursive performance that are particularly appreciated, and associated with wisdom are the following: independent thinking, the ability to speak well and convincingly, being well-informed on worldly and religious matters. More to the point, as for the concrete synthesis being shaped in each respective event of reflective

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inquiry, making convincing arguments from unconventional and unexpected angles or positions is particularly appreciated, even (or perhaps, specifically) when this runs against established modes of thinking. This may have to do with a certain amount of surprise when listeners realise that conceptual frameworks are not as restricted as assumed, that discursive transgression beyond common conceptions is possible while adhering to moral values and demands that one regards as important. If someone, at a baraza or elsewhere, has thus been acting as a kind of ‘eye-opener’ for others, that person would be regarded as wise.10 We could probably say that the person having gained a fundamental new insight through interaction with the other person, perceived as ‘wise’, has undergone a significant transformation of self. The general framework of perceiving and relating to one’s world of everyday life has shifted; things have changed. In correspondence to the new insight, life is no more what it used to be, and a return to one’s previous level of consciousness is no more possible. People who have been transformed by such a fundamental intellectual experience facilitated through someone else, may well regard themselves as liberated and more mature after such a shift, while ascribing the quality of wisdom to those who initiated this transformation and made a new perspective on life possible.11 If this makes sense, we may also say that gaining a conscious awareness about this self-transformation, as instigated, nurtured, or facilitated through someone else, leads to the identification of wisdom in others. Wise people are thus identified as wise a posteriori, after the experience of others, because of their power to make them see the world in a different light, to gain a fundamentally changed perspective on life. In this sense, ‘making people think’ could be seen as a label for what ‘wise’ people do, and thus show us how they can be identified.

An Islamic Scholar My first example of an individual thinker leads us over to Islamic discourse. As described in more detail elsewhere, I attended the daily Ramadhan lectures of a local Islamic scholar in Mombasa, Sheikh Abdilahi Nassir.12 Making people think, I concluded, is what his lectures were all about, and I feel he should be identified as a ‘wise’ person according to the criteria above. Furthermore, the discursive situation of his lectures shared some significant features with the baraza, as far as the appreciation and transmission of wisdom is concerned. The lectures were given in a small hall which had been built in a simple neighbourhood of Mombasa, through the initiative of local youths. The purpose was to provide an educational support centre for children of the neighbourhood, assisting them with their homework and other school related tasks during the afternoon. The project was also started partly in response to the fact that local drug users had begun frequenting the open plot (where the hall was to be built), to hang out and pass the day. The educational initiative had invited the Sheikh to deliver his Ramadhan lectures in their hall: he accepted, and a mixed audience of different age, ethnic and

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educational background, and Islamic sub-faction, attended, with numbers varying between thirty to seventy listeners, all of whom were men. Sheikh Abdilahi’s lectures were special in comparison to others, not only because of his particular gift for public speaking (slow, thoughtful, and clear), which kept younger and older listeners equally attentive, but also because he used particularly memorable phrases, humorous idioms, and vivid illustrations while developing his overall arguments. He also combined his commentaries on the Qur’an (which constituted the lectures on weekdays) with reflections on the current social and political situation in Kenya, particularly as it affected coastal Muslims; so these lectures were not just historical or doctrinal exercises. During the weekends his lectures engaged even more explicitly with the audience, as he discussed topics requested by them beforehand.13 At the end of these weekend lectures, he would be available to the group for further questions. With these features, his lectures provided a rare example of a local Islamic scholar engaging openly in discussion and debate, in mutual exchange, and—at least theoretically—on an equal level with his audience. This intention was also exemplified in his way of speaking, as he included himself and his audience in the same ‘narrative we’, together facing problems and reflecting upon them—very much in contrast to ways of lecturing common among Islamic scholars, where the audience was addressed from above, in a combative and antagonistic language, presenting unquestionable dogmas that had to be obeyed. Sheikh Abdilahi’s lectures, on the contrary, encouraged the questioning of dogmas, and questioning oneself, as Muslims and moral beings. As far as I can see, following this process of open-ended engagement with questions that were of concern and importance to all present, was what made listening to Sheikh Abdilahi’s lectures such a special experience for all involved. The lectures inspired listeners to begin with a process of self-questioning by including them in his own reflections from the beginning. This inclusion marked the lectures as a discursive space of common reflection, and in turn supported the acknowledgement of the Sheikh as someone who could provide meaningful insight into matters that mattered. And as the process of questioning oneself opens up the possibility of selftransformation, both of these aspects are related to the appreciation and transmission of ‘wisdom’, as described above. Comments on Sheikh Abdilahi and his lectures by members of the audience support this impression. Various people of different age, status, and educational background expressed to me that they were most impressed by the Sheikh as an independent thinker who was not repeating the common appeals and rhetoric so frequently used in Islamic speeches, but rather engaging with issues that mattered to everyone, in ways—and through words—that were accessible to everyone. There are some common features here with the baraza, as far as the discursive setting vis-à-vis an understanding of ‘wisdom’ is concerned. In both cases, there is a learning (or thinking) process set in motion for those who are seeking knowledge and advice. They are sitting-in, listening-in, at discursive events which are concerned with shaping out clearer perspectives of orientation in the world, learning through presence and observation. They observe how elders and intellectual superiors are dealing with social concerns, how they argue, how they phrase their advice, and how they present themselves altogether in terms of overall behaviour. They may

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copy and try to emulate those features which they find most convincing, manner of speaking and reflecting about things, as well as ways of behaving appropriately in such contexts (potentially making an impression on others). This, then, goes along with a general Islamic pattern of becoming a better person, or increasing one’s moral status: that of following the role model of Prophet Muhammad (or other prophets). An admirable example of good and decent behaviour is copied and internalized, so as to make oneself a better person, and in terms of the application of one’s knowledge to the particular setting in which one is situated, more wise. Wisdom, as I have tried to characterise it here, with supporting evidence from the Swahili context, is the capacity to generate valuable insight. This is always an internal process within an individual human being and cannot be taught as such. But through conscious interaction with other people whose moral, intellectual, and interpersonal skills one admires, one can shape oneself to become more adept at generating meaningful insights about life for oneself. This means, one can teach oneself to take some steps forward on the path towards wisdom.

Swahili Poetry My final example concerns Swahili poetry, and its relevance for documenting or transmitting wisdom. Both in written form and as oral performance, poetry has been an intrinsic element of Swahili culture and social life for many centuries, and a variety of poetic genres has been prominently used for different social occasions. Common elements with related Bantu languages and cultures are traceable, as well as influences from Arabic traditions, and there is also a significant tradition of Islamic poetry in Swahili. Swahili poetry is richly documented and researched, and even though poetic composition is nowadays no longer part and parcel of common education, the ability to compose poetry according to the classic rules of composition is still highly admired, if barely rewarded. Notably, specially composed poems for specific festive occasions (such as weddings, religious holidays, or political rallies) are still recited in public; they are usually requested from qualified poets for the event. Historically, didactic poetry has been an important genre of social and moral education. One famous example for this is the ‘Utenzi wa Mwanakupona’, a nineteenth century poem in which a patrician mother reminds her daughter of all aspects of proper conduct towards her future husband.14 To be sure, the transmission of moral knowledge through poetry does not as such already entail ‘wisdom’ of the poet in an emphatic sense of the word: reiterating existing descriptions of social values does not specifically characterize someone as ‘wise’. So, if, in the Swahili context, poetry as didactic education means it has to do with the perpetuation of moral knowledge in society, where does a link between poetry and wisdom come in? We have to look at the composition of a poem, the creative act of the individual poet. It would be in and through the formulation of insights that are relevant for a wide variety of members that wisdom comes into play. This can be in the sense that a piece of common social knowledge is phrased in such an extraordinarily beautiful and memorable way that this now becomes a

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common expression; or, a new and relevant insight is brought into light through a creative and innovative use of language within a poem. The example I want to discuss here concerns a long epic poem of the utenzi genre, written in the 1960s by Ahmad Nassir Juma Bhalo, then in his twenties.15 His poem Utenzi wa Mtu ni Utu (Utenzi about ‘a human being is humanity’) consists of a long explanation of ‘utu’—which is the Swahili concept for humanity in a general sense, and also a term for moral goodness itself. It provides over fourhundred stanzas of illustrations, exemplifications, and reflections. The poem picks up from common social knowledge in the form of proverbs, as shown in the title, and presents the poet’s specific interpretation of them, contributing to a general account of utu. Internal sub-aspects of utu are treated and illustrated in interrelating parts. They concern the codes of good moral behaviour in true friendship, the marital relationship, intergenerational relationships, and social relationships in general. Here as well, proverbs are picked up upon as starting-points for reflection and commentary. Furthermore, utu as a central moral concept is explored through its relationship to relevant subsidiary ones, like upendano (mutual love) and usawa (social equality). The result is a universalist account of moral goodness, framed and formulated from a Swahili perspective, but notably that of a specific critical individual, the poet Ahmad Nassir, and thus not representing communal ‘Swahili wisdom’ as such. Interestingly, the particular position put forward here contrasts with some common social understandings of utu, which assume that true moral goodness can only be achieved by Muslims, or members of the Swahili community. In this way, the poem goes beyond local ethnocentric conceptions of morality while using local colour for its general portrayal. Generally speaking, this poem could be qualified as part of local wisdom literature in two ways. Conventionally, this could be done because the poet is engaged in a commentary and interpretation of Swahili folk wisdom. But I believe it is more useful to appreciate as wisdom the specific way in which Ahmad Nassir here goes beyond commonly held beliefs about values and morality; thereby, he has generated new insights, and thus provides us with a wider perspective on utu than was previously available. This is accessible to all potential addressees, the members of the Swahili speaking community. Within their circle, the interpretation of utu that Ahmad Nassir presents in his poem may be characterized as ‘of necessary interest to everyone’: it is of concern for all of them, providing orientation on how to behave as a good human being. Kant’s phrase ‘of necessary interest to everyone’ links us back to a ‘doctrine of wisdom’ that characterizes the Weltbegriff, the worldly conception, of philosophy. I believe that this is applicable to the poem Utenzi wa Mtu ni Utu: accessible to all members of a discursive community, the text has generated an expanded horizon of what utu means, and how and why it needs to be adhered to. There are further links to the general reflections raised above, in that listeners or readers of the poem are made to re-think the familiar. In reading or listening to the poem, they are urged to compare the explanations and characterizations here with their own understanding of utu. For them, as for the poet, their conceptions are linked to proverbs as residuaries of social knowledge which usually remain implicit and unreflected. But confronted with the poem, the audience is pushed to make their own understandings explicit and reassess them with a view to the interpretation

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presented to them here. In a similar way to the dynamics in Sheikh Abdilahi’s Ramadhan lectures reviewed above, the poet here makes people think—makes them question some of the values and standards and self-conceptions that they would normally take for granted in their everyday life. Vis-à-vis a particular (if long and complex) explanation of moral goodness, they are challenged to confirm or modify their own personal vision or interpretation. And, as described above, this may lead them to more fundamental reflection about themselves, i.e. potential instances in which intellectual self-transformation could be set in motion. This may actually be welcomed by the audience, and even lead to a sense that the author was ‘wise’, as he managed to provide a ‘true’ and ‘complete’ account of utu. Either in being able to pinpoint and put into words exactly what utu was all about (as people implicitly had always known it to be), or in opening up a new, wider, and richer perspective on it, the poet would be recognised as thoughtful and accomplished. Making them able to see more clearly what had not been visible before, either buried within one’s assumptions or just generally out of sight, is a poet’s achievement that is explicitly appreciated by many in the Swahili context. In this region, the poet has throughout history been seen as a teacher of society, thus already implicitly ascribing the capacity of wisdom to them. It can be said that this teacher is acknowledged all the more as ‘wise’ by their Swahili peers, the more ‘complete’, ‘true’, and ‘clear’ their poetic account or moral and didactic message has been perceived to be. Ahmad Nassir’s Utenzi wa Mtu ni Utu did well on all these counts. Comments on the poem that I could gather particularly appreciated the ‘completeness’ of aspects covered, next to the fact that they thought a true picture was being drawn in a clear and enjoyable language. But most admired was the fact that the author of such a profound and all-encompassing poem had still been in his twenties when composing the poem. This also proved that even if old age and much life experience was usually deemed to be associated with, or even seen as a condition of, wisdom, this was not always necessarily so. The poetic composition itself could make evident that a relevant and helpful insight into human life had been generated—wisdom.

Conclusion For the Swahili context, I have discussed the cases of two thinkers who were socially acknowledged and praised for their wisdom. Both illustrate that independence in one’s thinking is an important element for being perceived as wise. In both cases, it was the non-conformity of their discourses, linked to the questioning, reassessment, and qualification of commonly assumed truths, that made their reflections remarkable to their Swahili peers, offering wider, further avenues of perceiving the world, and oneself within it. However, such independence does not imply being cut off from local traditions. On the contrary, it is embedded in them, makes use of them, and consciously positions itself toward them. In both cases, the chosen medium for reflection—and if you want, ‘transmitting wisdom’—was an established means of intellectual communication within the East African coastal society.

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We have also seen that the social embeddedness of such individual thinkers within the discursive dynamics of society is crucial for the identification of their thoughts as ‘wise’, and for the possibility of them having an impact on others around them. For Sheikh Abdilahi’s lectures, an immediate link to the audience assisted in this, as he could be directly observed and experienced by everyone present. He also made sure to address social issues that his audience wanted to hear about, issues about which they were seeking a clearer picture and more intellectual orientation. By doing that he picked up from discussions that were currently on everyone’s minds, thus making sure that his reflections were closely linked to the thoughts and concerns of his listeners. Thus the discursive situation in his lecture hall in several respects resembled that of the common baraza, with a particularly knowledgeable person as a senior member of a group reflecting, in interaction with his listeners, on current events and concerns, and how best to deal with them. In a different way, the discusive context of Ahmad Nassir’s poem on humanity also resembles the baraza: the poet addresses his audience as his peers, and is himself a member of the group. He too seeks to clarify and provide orientation on common matters of moral judgement that are encountered by everyone in the social community. In doing this, he picks up from previous pronouncements on these issues that have shaped the thinking of members of society, namely proverbs. Thus in all three cases, the discourses of knowledge, the questioning of social knowledge, and the reconstitution of perspectives for knowledge in the future, as fields, efforts and projects that individual intellectuals are engaged in, are inextricably linked to common social discourses of knowledge and the channels and forms of discursive interaction that the Swahili context provides. As a bottom line, social interaction or sociality may be emphasized as a condition for wisdom in an emphatic sense. If no shared moral or practical concern is addressed in intellectual discourse, there is no way that discourse can qualify as ‘wise’. If people do not share moral or practical concerns when seeking orientation in the world, they are in no position to identify each other as ‘wise’. This may be supported by a common experience in societies which are technologically over-determined and socially alienated. The less common social discourse there is for human beings about basic issues of orientation in life, taking place face-to-face with real people, and the less forms of interaction exist that bring together, through personal contact, members of a community (interest group, neighbourhood etc.) as a community, i.e. with no immediate function or instrumental goal other than socializing itself, the less wisdom will be identifiable as part of social practice by common people in their everyday lives. Concurrently, wisdom as a holistic social performance by individuals will be on the wane, and the same will apply to the experience of wisdom as a fundamental self-transforming process (for both of which verbal discourse is crucial, but not the one, single determinant factor). The question is whether we, or future generations, can learn to be wise at all, living under conditions in which the ‘social’ in social life is under pressure or neglected, leading to a situation where all acceptable forms of socializing would have to serve an immediate instrumental purpose. So, in conclusion, is wisdom actually taught? Our reflections from the Swahili context seem to make the point that informal social interaction is the soil nurturing

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wisdom. Discursive expression, through speech, is the necessary—but not exclusive or sufficient—mediator of wisdom. It is through the practice of an overall social performance that a reputation of ‘being wise’ is acquired. If wisdom refers to the capacity, through such an overall performance, to make oneself and others gain more insight into fundamental issues of life, this cannot really be taught. Teaching oneself is the only way to acquire wisdom. But this will only happen in social contexts where one can constantly and informally learn from others, as role-models, counter-examples, and those in-between, who combined constitute the community and, through their interaction, determine the parameters of ‘knowledge’ and ‘morality’.

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Kant 1974: 28. In contrast, the Schulbegriff of philosophy is qualified as a ‘doctrine of skill’, characteristic of a particular school of thought (ibid.). Kant 1990: 701 (Kritik der reinen Vernunft: B868, footnote); my emphasis Oruka’s characterization of his approach and methodology is best to be found in Sage Philosophy (Oruka 1990/1), Introduction and Chapter 2. The latter is reprinted in Graness/Kresse (1997), along with samples of sage-interviews; commentaries and critical essays on his project are also included, as well as an interview making the case that philosophy overall should become sagacious (Kresse/Oruka 1997). Further strengths and weaknesses in Oruka’s approach (e.g. the conduct of the interviews, and the final qualification who among the sages is, and who is not, a philosophical thinker) have been raised and treated elsewhere (e.g. van Hook 1995, Masolo 1994: 233–246; Presbey 1997, 1999; Kresse/Oruka 1997; Janz 1998). I would like to mention some further relevant works in which individual African sages, or traditional intellectuals renowned for their wisdom, are documented and discussed. Griaule (1965) provides a lengthy documentation of Dogon cosmology, accumulated in conversations with one particular elder; Brenner (1984) provides the life history and spiritual discourses of Tierno Bokar, a significant West African Sufi during French colonialism; Johnson (1994) provides vivid socio-historic accounts of prominent Nuer prophets, including their stance vis-à-vis the British colonial administration; Turner (1967) provides a brief and vivid account of a central African thinker, living on the fringe of his society; finally, furthering Oruka’s sage philosophy project, Presbey has provided numerous in-depth studies based on discussions with African sages (e.g. Presbey 1997, 1999, 2000, 2002a, 2002b). E.g. Sayyed Habib Saleh, Sayyed Ahmed bin Sumayt, Sheikh al-Amin Mazrui, Sheikh Abdallah Saleh Farsy, and Sheikh Muhammad Kasim Mazrui (see e.g. el-Zein 1974, Bang 2003, Pouwels 1981, Farsy 1989, Kresse 2003).—This qualification would also apply to some Swahili poets, e.g. Muyaka, or Sayyid Abdalla bin Ali Nasir (cf. Abdulaziz 1979, Nasir 1977). The following ethnographic passage are, in slightly varied from, also included in my article “Knowledge and intellectual pratice in a Swahili context: ‘wisdom’ and the social dimensions of knowledge” (forthcoming in Africa 79:1, 2009). I have written about the baraza more extensively elsewhere (Kresse, 2005); here I would like to provide some further wisdom-specific illustrations, observations and comments. Here one should be aware that actual descendancy can hardly be verified. What matters socially is that there are local families who are recognised as such descendants. See for instance, the way in which Sheikh al-Amin Mazrui was praised by A.S. Farsy (1989). Obviously, I have slipped into general reflections here. Let me add that the process just described may just as well apply to our significant reading experiences and the way we regard the authors, or

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teachers, who have helped us to transform and widen the fundamental perspective of our thinking: they must be wise because they led us somewhere we didn’t know existed. I have described and discussed this in more detail elsewhere (Kresse 2004, and Kresse 2007: Chapter 6) Topics he covered in this way included a) local controversies about the beginning and end of Ramadhan; b) how a new constitution would affect Kenyan Muslims; c) political controversies about the Middle East. See Allen 1971; cf. Biersteker 1991. I have treated this in much more detail elsewhere (Kresse 2007: Chapter 5).

References Abdulaziz, Mohamed H. 1979: Muyaka. 19th century Swahili popular poetry. Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau. Allen, J.W.T. 1971. Tendi (edited and translated into English by J.W.T. Allen). London: Heinemann. Bang, Anne K. 2003. Sufis and scholars of the sea. The Sufi and family networks of Ahmad ibn Sumayt and the tariqa Alawiyya in East Africa c. 1860–1925. London: RoutledgeCurzon. Biersteker, Ann 1991: “Language, poetry, and power: a reconsideration of ‘Utendi wa Mwana Kupona”’ , in K.W. Harrow (ed), Faces of Islam in African literature. London: James Currey, 59–77. Brenner, Louis 1984. West African Sufi. The religious heritage and spiritual search of Cerno Bokar Saalif Taal. London: Hurst. Farsy, Abdallah S. 1989 (1970). The Shafi’i ulamaa of East Africa, c. 1830–1970: a hagiographic account (translated, edited, and annotated by Randall L. Pouwels). Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin-Madison, African Studies Program. Griaule, Marcel 1965. Conversations with Ogotemeli. Oxford: University Press. Janz, Bruce 1998. ‘Thinking wisdom: the hermeneutical basis of sage philosophy’ in African Philosophy, vol.11 no.1, 57–72. Johnson, Douglas H. 1994. Nuer prophets. Oxford: Clarendon. Kant, Immanuel 1974 (orig. 1800). Logic (translated by R.S. Hartman and W. Schwarz). New York: Dover Publications. —— 1990. Kritik der reinen Vernunft (edt. by W. Weischedel). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Kresse, K./H.O. Oruka 1997. ‘Philosophy must be made sagacious—an interview’ in A. Graness/K. Kresse (eds), Sagacious Reasoning: Henry Odera Oruka in memoriam. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. —— 2007. Philosophising in Mombasa: Knowledge, Islam and intellectual practice on the Swahili coast. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press for the International African Institute. —— 2003. ‘ “Swahili Enlightenment?” East African reformist discourse at the turning point: the example of Sheikh Muhammad Kasim Mazrui’, Journal of Religion in Africa vol. 33 (3), 279–309. —— 2004. “Making people think: the Ramadhan lectures of Sheikh Abdilahi Nassir in Mombasa, 1419 A.H.”, S. Reese (ed), The transmission of learning in Islamic Africa. Leiden: Brill, 212–243. —— 2005. “At thebaraza: socializing and intellectual practice at the Swahili coast”, in T. Falola (ed), Christianity and social change in Africa: Essays in honor of J.D.Y. Peel. Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 613–631. Masolo, D.A. 1994. African Philosophy in search of identity. Bloomington: Indianapolis. Nasir, Sayyid Abdalla bin Ali 1977. Al-Inkishafi—Catechism of a Soul (translated and annotated by J. de Vere Allen). Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau. Oelmueller, Willi (ed) 1989. Philosophie und Weisheit. Munich et al.: UTB. Oruka, H. Odera (ed) 1990/1991. Sage philosophy. Indigenous thinkers and modern debate on

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African philosophy. Leiden: Brill/Nairobi: ACTS Press. Pouwels, Randall 1981. ‘Sheikh al-Amin b. Ali Mazrui and Islamic modernism in East Africa, 1875–1947’, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies vol.13, 329–345. Presbey, Gail 1997. ‘Is Elijah Masinde a sage philosopher? The dispute between H. Odera Oruka and Chaungo Barasa’, A. Graness/K. Kresse (eds), Sagacious Reasoning: Henry Odera Oruka in memoriam. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. —— 1999. ‘Should women love “wisdom”? Evaluating the Ethiopian wisdom tradition’, Research in African Literatures, 30/2, 165–181. —— 2000. ‘Contemporary African sages and queen mothers: their leadership roles in conflcit resolution’, in J. Presler/S. Scholz (eds), Peacemaking: lessons from the past, visions for the future. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 231–245. —— 2002a. ‘African sage philosophy and Socrates: midwifery and method’, International Philosophical Quarterly 42/2, Issue 166, 177–192. —— 2002b. ‘Maasai concepts of personhood: the roles of recognition, community, and individuality’, International Studies in Philosophy 34/2, 57–82. Turner, Victor 1967. ‘Muchona the hornet, interpreter of religion’, The forest of symbols. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 131–150. Van Hook, Jay 1995. ‘Kenyan sage philosophy: a review and critique’, in The Philosophical Forum vol. 27, 54–65. El-Zein, A.H. 1974. The sacred meadows. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Part IV

Conclusion

Developing Expert and Transformative Wisdom: Can Either Be Taught in Public Schools? Michel Ferrari

Historically, public schools have always reflected the societies that established them, because they are designed to teach particular skills and particular ways of thinking (Cole, 2005). Skills taught in public schools today include writing, math, and science, but increasingly, researchers and policy makers are saying that schools should teach skills that foster both moral and cognitive development (Reznitzkaya and Sternberg, 2004). Of course, there are religious schools and specialized schools to teach skills like meditation, yoga, music, and many other things that people believe will improve their quality of life. Such efforts draw on wisdom traditions from around the world. Our original intention in proposing this volume was to promote dialogue between different traditions that propose to teach for wisdom in different ways. In some ways, we succeeded too well: the range of complex traditions presented in these chapters is vast, and even so the chapters represent merely a few sparks illuminating them, seen through the lenses of scholarly disciplines with very different styles of scholarship. Still, despite the very different schools of thought and different styles of research in these chapters, readers who takes the time to consider them will see that many share deep connections that are all the more surprising given their very different starting points. This concluding chapter will point out some of those similarities. No conclusion can show all the richness of the chapters in this book. What I have attempted here is simply to point out some surprising agreements in their conceptions of wisdom and some of the major fault lines that the chapters also lay bare. I consider three different conceptions of wisdom and the different kinds of education that each proposes. In contemporary cognitive science, wisdom is often considered as a kind of knowledge. Debate over what sort of knowledge wisdom requires includes knowledge of deep principles of the world or of human nature, a knowledge that unites mind and character (Baltes and Staudinger, 2000), one that balances competing interests over the short and long term (Sternberg, 2001, this volume). Several chapters subscribe to this view, but others claim that knowledge alone will not reach the deepest or most subtle layers of human consciousness, aspects of which we often remain personally unaware.

Michel Ferrari OISE University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

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Confucianism is an interesting case that focuses on real-world activity; it sees wisdom as expressed in people’s actions and reactions toward events, rather than as a special type of knowledge. In this way, it is closer to theories like that of Staudinger (2005) which consider personal wisdom to be an expression of personality and something distinct from general wisdom-related knowledge. Most ancient philosophical schools and religious traditions (Buddhism, Sufism, and Christianity), in different ways emphasize enactive features of wisdom (e.g., prudence, discretion, mindfulness) through which people transform character and personality, not just train it. On this view, what is needed is a realization of the human condition that reaches such heights or depths of awareness that it moves people to lead different kinds of lives. Such knowledge allows them to have a good life (ars vivendi) and a good death (ars moriendi). There was a whole tradition of such literature in the middle ages in Europe (Plotzek, Winneskes, Kraus, & Surmann, 2002), and we can still find very moving examples of something like this today in the books of Susan Sontag (2001), Harold Brodkey (1996), and especially autobiographical comics like those of Harvey Pekar (1994). Transformative theories sometimes rely on a metaphysics that requires acting according to the will of a personally-intervening God (a religious association that excludes their being integrated into secular Western public school curricula). They also tend to emphasize adult development, at least at their most advanced levels. However, the spiritual insights from these traditions and their practices (considered independently of their religious affiliation) can be of great benefit to students, as recent efforts at ‘contemplative education’ described by Rosch clearly show. Developmental efforts, especially as augmented by contemporary developmental theories that embrace a dynamic- and dual-systems conception of human experience, seem the most promising way to integrate knowledge and transformative views of wisdom. Developmental theories suggests that wisdom is an expression of knowledge and skill that emerges from lived experience and training, dynamically varying from moment to moment, depending on biological and cultural conditions— knowledge and skill that are embodied by particular people in particular contexts, often with social support from others (Fischer & Bidell, 2006; Pascual-Leone, 1990, 2000; Varela, 1992/1999). In proposing this, I go beyond the chapters in this volume, drawing on my own background as a developmental psychologist: and some contributors, like Rosch, strongly object. These points will become clear as we consider each of these views in more detail.

Wisdom as Expert Knowledge Some historical understandings of wisdom value conceptual insights. For the ancient Egyptians, as Curnow reminds us, wisdom involved essentially a scientific knowledge of the natural and social world. This was also true of the Greek sophos. However, today, wisdom typically refers to knowledge of the social world and of one’s own life within it. For example, in the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm (Stange

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& Kunzmann) and Sternberg’s Balance theory of Wisdom, wisdom is essentially an acquired expertise about life problems, or what Baltes calls “the fundamental pragmatics of life”—that is the sense in which Sternberg notes that wisdom is a tacit knowledge. (Note that, as Stange and Kunzmann remind us, the Berlin model argues that wisdom is declarative and procedural knowledge about fundamental life problems. It is not necessarily knowledge about the self or one’s own problems—a point important to Staudinger’s ‘personal wisdom,’ as we shall see shortly.) Because it is tacit, it is also highly contextual and emotionally charged. Wisdom as expert knowledge is claimed to be a more comprehensive knowledge than mere conceptual understanding. This sort of knowledge is sometimes captured in proverbs, and some like Schwartz (2002) claim that proverbs are one of the central ways that children absorb the wisdom and moral teachings of their culture. But wisdom involves knowing in what circumstance to apply contradictory sayings. To the extent that proverbs are simply pronounced as a maxim and not something that is a distillation of lived experience, they will not often sway people, or even seem wise. Mark Twain gives a wonderful parody of this in Puddi’Head Wilson. Reacting to proverbial advice, he says: “Behold the fool saith, ‘Put not all thine eggs in the one basket’—which is but a manner of saying, ‘Scatter your money and your attention’; but the wise man saith, ‘Put all your eggs in the one basket and—WATCH THAT BASKET.’ ”

How is Wisdom as Expertise Developed? In principle, the fundamental pragmatics of life are something that everyone can learn, and will learn to some degree through life experiences. Wisdom as knowledge is developed through everyday problem-solving and a critical examination of life experience, as well as through exercises that foster them. Sternberg claims that thinking that promotes wisdom can be taught in public schools, and has developed a curriculum to do so. His Balance Curriculum has infused exercises to develop wisdom into a history curriculum by encouraging middle school children to consider the implications of historical (often unjust) decisions and policies like the practice of slavery, famous sayings (e.g., by Benjamin Franklin), and the relation of history to decisions and sayings to their own young lives. They are encouraged to think through the decisions made by others historically and consider whether they are wise and balance the needs of all parties. The idea is that, by considering history, students will not be doomed to repeat it. Stange and Kunzmann have a similar sort of curriculum in mind, although not as fully articulated. In contrast, Scardamalia and her colleagues encourage children to advance their understanding of the world in social communities linked through technology. Scardamalia claims that school curricula must center around ideas and their improvement: it would be fascinating to discover how students would develop the idea of personal character or wisdom. But more important is the idea that, by participating in social communities, they will develop both deep understanding and social sensitivity and so acquire foundational wisdom. These two approaches are contemporary expressions of a historic debate

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over whether it is best to use direct or indirect methods to train character in public schools (Lapsley & Narvaez, 2006). Sternberg and his colleagues propose a direct method of wisdom training clearly connected to character education in the broad sense; for example, they recommend six procedures for assuring that students develop wisdom within his curriculum that capture some of the main points made in other chapters: 1. Study not only epistemic truth, but values and how to foster them in one’s own character. This resembles Park & Peterson’s call to develop character by fostering core values. (Echoing stoics like Epictetus, one might add, who encouraged students to consider the logical coherence of particular sets of values and to explore why they consider them to be true and necessary.) 2. Have students consider the final end (good or bad) to which knowledge developed can be used—emphasizing that the same knowledge is often used for both. 3. Emphasize critical, creative, and practical thinking in the service of the common good—e.g., as in environmental or humane education or peace education. 4. Have students engaged in class discussions, projects and essays that encourage them to discuss the lessons learned. In particular, Sternberg advocates dialectical and dialogical thinking. Dialogical thinking allows students to see the situation from many points of view; dialectical thinking helps people integrate opposing points of view into a more comprehensive synthesis (integration). 5. Use the teacher as a role model, by having them adopt a Socratic approach to teaching that encourages students to actively construct and refine their own knowledge. Teachers who model wisdom will create communities in which wisdom is practiced, not preached—this is clearly what Scardamalia also hopes schools can accomplish. 6. Read classic works of literature and reflect on them (perhaps especially wisdom literature from different traditions). Such classic works often need to be arranged and interpreted to make them understandable to new generations. Zhu Xi did this for Confucian scholarship, arranging classic texts to make students’ entry into this literature easy and productive. Roochnik makes the further point that some wisdom texts, like those of Plato’s Phaedo, may require a deeper dramatic reading than they commonly receive. It is not just a matter of reading them to understand some philosophical idea, but rather reading them in their entire dramatic context to understand just what is involved in how particular actors seek wisdom by conversing toward that end. A careful reading of the Phaedo thus involves considering what Socrates had to say to Pythagoreans on his deathbed, and also surprisingly leads us to appreciate how much his view of wisdom is a matter of our own hope and creation, not just insight into some immutable realm of ideas, as is commonly supposed—Plato’s wisdom is entirely of this world and its conversations. (Whether Plato even had a single theory that underlies all his dialogues is still debated—as is the authenticity of some dialogues that don’t fit what we currently consider to be the theory.) Such teaching for wisdom can be infused not only in history but also in science, literature and foreign language classes. Sternberg’s recommendations are important

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and I agree with this agenda, but I also think teaching for wisdom goes beyond realizing that different historical times cultures take different things to be true or appropriate. Students need to see the ethical stakes in different practices. For example, Carol Okamoto (2006) asked biomedical researchers, activist, and high school students whether biomedical research that involves giving the AIDS virus to Great Apes is justified given all we know about their close biological relationship to human beings. It turns out that the biomedical researchers drew on utilitarian claims, while the activists drew on ideas of personal welfare. Both were more articulate than high school students, who agreed with the activists in grade 9, but agreed more with the researchers in grade 12. This raises the issue of whether there is such a thing as moral expertise (in the sense of being a moral authority others should defer to). Perhaps not. But there can be moral expertise in the sense that people who have a deep understanding of the issues and principles at stake and even different moral frameworks that can be applied to these issues and argue their own decisions in light of them are clearly more expert. This study also shows that such moral expertise goes beyond mere logical reasoning to include the fine details of the case under consideration—something that younger participants in grade 9 and 12 could do less well than either professional group because they lacked both content knowledge and sophisticated reasoning skills. Thus, in addition to public school curricula, specific training in working with illdefined problems, perspective taking, moral philosophy, or therapeutic techniques, should all contribute to educating students to think more wisely. In fact, training in clinical psychology is associated with greater wisdom-related knowledge. On therapists were equivalent to those nominated as wise, and superior to equally welleducated adults in other professions not concerned with human welfare problems used to empirically assess wisdom (Baltes et al., 1995).

Wise Character and Personality In Erikson’s (1963) sense—followed by Staudinger and Takahashi—wisdom comes from having resolved life’s challenges. And to do so often means that one has resolved earlier challenges and has already become a certain kind of person. The importance of personality variables (person-related factors) to wisdom has been empirically assessed by the Berlin Wisdom Group, as reviewed by Stange and Kunzmann. Developing wisdom may reflect a concern to develop one’s own and others’ personal potential (Kunzmann & Baltes, 2003); for example, people with more wisdom-related knowledge valued personal insight and environmental protection, as well as interpersonal balance/cooperation in conflict resolution, more than they did hedonistic values. Studies also found that greater openness to experience, and creativity are important for emerging wisdom in adolescence. Thus, these personality dispositions may be gate-keepers for developing wisdom in young people and perhaps at all ages—something that still needs to be explored in longitudinal studies (Staudinger & Pasupathi, 2003).

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Character Education Clearly, one important aspect of what needs to be trained is personality and particularly character, but how to do so? For over a century a wide variety of teaching approaches have been developed to teach for character—many clearly related to teaching for wisdom (Ferrari, 2006, in press; Lapsley & Narvaez, 2006). For example, programs to teach for wisdom exist that focus on developing character by having students, in effect, become expert in their own character or personality. Park and Peterson emphasize developing wisdom by directly training certain character traits, rather than through moral reasoning, but the sort of educational tasks they imagine seem quite similar to those advocated by Sternberg’s Balanced Curriculum—they note that interventions should be consistent and span many weeks and months, suggesting some sort of infused curriculum or initiative such as we find in the Ontario program Character Matters! or in Project Wisdom, a large-scale effort to teach for wisdom through character education that runs in all 50 US states. Yet training out of context, characteristic of formal schooling, can generate huge errors that result from borrowing instead of building knowledge (Cole, 2005; Scardamalia, this volume; Schwartz & Fischer, 2004). And this is the main danger of a ‘bag of virtues’ approach (as Kohlberg called it), in which children are trained in particular virtues, with no grounding or rational justification for those values in the depths of their own experience. Although Park and Peterson labor to prevent this, it seems a real danger for the Values in Action approach they propose to developing character as a prerequisite to wisdom. What we need is not a ‘bag of virtues’, but virtue as an authentic expression of character or personality. However, if the VIA approach can foster wisdom through self-cultivation in the Confucian sense (as in Berthrong’s discussion of Zhu Xi), then the appeal of this sort of approach is much stronger. The Confucian ideal as that of self-cultivation is captured in the phrase neisheng waiwnag (“a sage within and a king without”)—something that is only possible in a community of learners wherein one is or strives at least to emulate at exemplars in that community, and ideally to advance knowledge within it. Zhu Xi prepared 4 books from the 13 of the Confucian canon as a ladder to access the entire Confucian doctrine. He even prepared a book of sayings, Reflections on things at hand, as a gate by which students might understand the entire tradition—even those in isolated villages without teachers, if they reflected on the sayings in this book, could find a gate to enter the tradition. He also wrote many commentaries and reformed family ritual to make it accessible to anyone with a little formal education, not just the imperial court. In this way, Zhu Xi was a public educator. In the end, for him, wisdom involves not just personal or family obligations, but also social wisdom that could be put to the service of the community (xiangyue), a point Scardamalia and others in the volume would endorse wholeheartedly. For Zhu Xi, wisdom (zhi) refers to discernment or knowledge—more specifically, it is knowledge that matches reality and reflects its deepest principles; the ruling traits of wisdom are collecting and discriminating information in order to become more discerning. However, in the Confucian tradition, wisdom is only one of the four cardinal virtues needed to become an exemplary person (junzi)—something

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accomplished through self-cultivation. But unlike the linear progression toward greater wisdom of many Western views, Confucian virtues are engaged in a cycle or spiral, analogous to the changing seasons: Humaneness or benevolent action (ren) is associated with spring and is yin; righteousness (yi) is associated with summer, also yin; propriety or ritual action (li) is associated with fall, and is yang; and finally wisdom (zhi) is an intelligent awareness without action associated with winter, also yang. Wisdom in turn prepares us to be more humane. Humaneness and righteousness are characterized as outward moving, Ritual action and Wisdom as inward moving, but these tendencies are dynamically related; after maximal travel inward to become wisdom, the movement again returned outward to be expressed in humaneness. Here we see a real affinity between Park and Peterson’s positive psychology of virtue and Confucianism. This approach to wisdom as knowledge suggests a gradual acquisition of wisdom through developing wise habits of thought. No matter the details, all these approaches claim that we are all, in principle, equally capable of developing the knowledge we need to be wise, if we cultivate ourselves using the right methods or are exposed to the right examples or ‘wisdom curriculum’—perhaps one needing social interaction (or even imagined interaction). It is not necessarily a matter of imparting wisdom, but of having students think in ways that are wise about events—not what to think, but how to think. Still, the focus here remains on ‘thinking’—not on experiencing or doing. The expertise approach, whether focused on training dialectical thinking or cultivating particular character traits, is a view that implies that practical and conceptual knowledge is all there is to wisdom— there is nothing transcendent about it, and in that sense this view is characteristic of modern society generally (Taylor, 2002). The outcome of developing wisdom is simply a deeper understanding of one’s self and others in particular sociocultural contexts, which can lead to more skillful problem-solving in everyday living. This lack of transcendence is one of the most striking differences between contemporary cognitive science and religious and ancient philosophical approaches to developing wisdom, considered next.

Wisdom as Personal Transformation According to an alternative view, wisdom is transformative of human consciousness and points beyond mundane human understanding—as Paul wrote in his 1st letter to the Corinthians (I.20), “God made foolish the wisdom of the world.” In the Christian and Sufi schools, but also in Buddhism, wisdom is not just an objective expert knowledge divorced from the person espousing it, but rather transformative of that person. Furthermore, wisdom may not be picked up tacitly from everyday experience; it may need very special kinds of attention and practice (e.g., mindfulness meditation, fasting, prayer) that transform people’s mind and personality in ways that give them insight or a more mature understanding that others lack. The image in Augustine is of greater depth, while in Stoicism and the Buddha’s Dhamapada it is of seeing from a greater height. Typically, this involves integration of perspectives,

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but also detachment and purification of the mind—or at least calming it through careful attention or mindfulness to life experience. Transformative approaches to teaching for wisdom affect one’s entire personality and character (Ardelt, 2004). Obedience (from the latin ob-audiens—to listen intently ‘with the ear of the heart’) speaks to the notion that we must move people emotionally, not convince them intellectually. This is the spirit behind many early monastic and philosophical communities (see Foucault 2004 for details). Gregory of Nazianzus said it well, “The principal wisdom is a life worthy of praise and purified for God—. . . who asks that our only sacrifice be purification, which is a contrite heart, a sacrifice of praise, a new creation in Christ, a new person, and those things that the scripture tells us are the objects of his love.” (cited in Bright, p. 164, this volume). Some scientific studies support this approach as well. For example, studies by Alexander show the positive effects of Vedic transcendental meditation for general well-being and for supposedly transforming personality and consciousness, manifested as stress reduction, more success at treating substance abuse, and lower rates of recidivism among prisoners (see Orme-Johnson, 2000, for an overview). More modestly, a meta-analysis has shown mindfulness to be very effective in therapeutic interventions that aim to relieve suffering (Grossman, Niemann, Schmidt, & Walach, 2004). Mindfulness also has been shown to help prevent relapse into depression once the person is feeling better and medication to treat that depression has been withdrawn (Ma & Teasdale, 2004; Segal, 2004).

How is Such Transformative Wisdom Fostered or Taught? Ancient schools of thought were no more homogenous than are modern ones. The Neo-Confucianism of Zhu Xi was developed partly in response to the challenge posed by rival philosophies of Buddhism and Taoism (Ames & Rosemont, 1998). Even within Buddhism, Shen (this volume) shows the wealth and subtlety of the debate between three rival schools within Mahayana Buddhism about the best techniques and aims of Buddhist practice: the consciousness-only School (Weishi— faithful to the Indian Yogacara tradition), the three treatises School (Sanlun), and the Chan School (later inspiring Japanese Zen)—each increasingly hospitable to the Chinese mind. Likewise, early Christian communities disagreed on how best to prepare one’s soul for God (Bright, this volume). Still, despite very real differences, the various approaches seem to agree that wisdom is developed by specific exercises that transform the practitioner’s state or level of consciousness. Unlike the expertise view, the aim here is personal transformation of mind through a series of steps or stages. These are often captured in ‘wisdom texts’, sometimes considered divinely inspired, or handed down by great people in the past whose lives and practices deserved to be emulated. Rosch begins her chapter with a story that illustrates the difference between this transformative approach and expertise. Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli, founder of the Shadhiliyya Sufi order in the 13th century, was a practicing Muslim and promising student at a leading madras in Fez. Told to follow a light that will lead him

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to his true teacher, he arrived at the holy mountain of Jabal ‘Alam. There he made the standard ritual ablution (wudu) by a stream at the bottom and climbed the steep mountain. At the top, the master Shaykh greeted him as though he has not done so, and asked him to go back down and return only when he had purified himself. Repeating this sequence several times to the point of despair, he is finally accepted after having emptied himself of everything he knew or thought he knew, leaving only a vast space that was waiting: only then, having achieved this ‘beginner’s mind’ could true teaching begin. Rosch points out striking parallels between the very different traditions of Buddhism and Sufism in how they describe beginner’s mind and the path achieving it; although other chapters show that there is a debate over whether wisdom is achieved gradually, through self-cultivation, or suddenly through insight (perhaps given by divine grace) and what stages are involved in this teaching. Rosch identifies four Sufi stages: 1. personality stations, 2. heart/mind stations, 3. soul stations, and 4. secret stations, in which one knows that one is united with god. These stages, she claims, are (roughly) paralleled by a Buddhist path in outlined in more detail in Shen’s chapter, especially developed by the Weishi school. The Weishi (consciousness-only) school of Chinese Buddhism emphasized yogic practices aimed at transforming eight ever more subtle kinds of consciousness. Consciousness (1–5) are sense experiences (seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling); the three additional kinds of consciousness are proposed to reflect deeper levels of experience: (6) consciousness of the senses themselves; (7) thought-centered consciousness, from which all thinking and willing originates— often illusorily considered by individual as ‘their true self’ (perhaps what William James’ considered the ‘spiritual self’ and (8) ‘storehouse consciousness’, containing all the potentialities of good/evil thoughts and deeds manifested in the other seven. However, ultimately, for Shen these distinctions are abandoned as practitioners gain an appreciation of ‘ultimate reality’ and shift their concern from their own experience to benefiting others. Once this happens, heart/mind consciousness (8) is transformed into ‘the wisdom of the ‘grand perfect mirror’—seeing things most purely and authentically; consciousness (7) is transformed into the wisdom of equality—seeing oneself and all things as equal and treating them with compassion (analogous to Sternberg’s balanced view); consciousness (6) is transformed into ‘marvelous observation’ that let’s one teach people according to their own nature. Finally, sense consciousness (1–5) is transformed into wisdom on the level of deeds, words, and intentions. Another important Christian set of transformations, described by Bright, is that of Augustine, who proposed seven stages in the development of wisdom: 1. Humility is the ground of the ascent to spiritual life (‘fear of God is the beginning of wisdom’). 2. Piety (holiness) is the next step, and leads one to consider and believe that what is in the scriptures is truer than what we can uncover by our own efforts. 3. Knowledge, makes us not boastful but remorseful; by prayer we ask for divine assistance so not to be crushed by despair.

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4. Fortitude brings hunger and thirst for justice. (These four are also a process of detachment from the charms of transient things, to the love of eternal ones). 5. Misericordia (the ‘resolve of compassion’) purifies the mind, which now fights itself because of impurities that stem from the desire of what is inferior. (God is approached with a deep appreciation of the great gap between oneself as pilgrim and the goal of the ascent—union with the Trinity.) We are called to love our neighbor and our enemies. 6. Purity of heart is needed to serenely contemplate God with the eye of those who die to this world as much as they can; this is tightly linked to the 5th stage. Now one has a heart so single-minded and pure that it will not be deflected from contemplating God by wanting to please other people or avoid troubles in this life. 7. Those who can do this attain the last stage, becoming calm and peaceful. In his Confessions, Augustine gives another seven-step allegory of spiritual progression modeled on the seven days of creation. Thus Augustine’s teachings urge a continuous spiritual maturing—a ladder metaphor that suggests one is developing to a very particular state of mind that is a union with God. Rosch makes a further point (less clearly evident in Shen), that the best image is not a line or ladder (or even alternative pathways), but rather, like Confucianism, a circle in which one returns to one’s starting point transformed; having traced consciousness to its source and being transformed by that insight, that transformation changes to every other aspect of personal experience and action. This resembles the point made by Bright that at the heart of the project of developing Christian wisdom is the paradox of whether we ascend or descend to wisdom. In this sense, Rosch considers it misleading—if not false—to call these approaches ‘transcendent’, since the insight they proclaim is that the truth is ‘closer than your eyes’ and is nothing more than your natural mind, undistorted and free from delusion. As Perkins (2002) points out with regard to Sternberg’s Balance theory, unwise dispositions and behaviors like procrastination can be diminished with deliberate conditioning or self-management techniques/self-regulation. For example, consider Stoic exercises—spiritual exercises designed to promote just such conditioning— like preparing your favorite meal, and then giving it to servants and eating their meal. These exercises were often developed within the mentoring relationship like that documented in the letters between Seneca and Lucius, in which Seneca advised paying careful attention to one’s life and learning better self-control. St. Benedict’s instruction, by contrast, advised that we should learn to be obedient, and included the following rule: “What is not possible for us by nature, let us ask the Lord to supply by grace.”: A spiritual instruction that points beyond pedagogy. There are many beneficial effects claimed for these practices, such as integration of perspectives and detachment from the stresses of daily life. Chief among them, though, are ‘purification of the soul’ that results in greater personal authenticity or flourishing—not socially sanctioned productivity. The ultimate aim of these practices was to teach an ars vivendi and an ars moriendi that is how to live well and die well, what the Ancient Greeks called an art of living (techne tou bio) (Foucault,

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2004). We see this not only in the Greek view, but also in the East. For example, Buddha talks with regular citizens about how to diminish suffering in their lives (Bodhi, 2005). Although these ideas are not completely foreign to psychology, witness humanistic psychology, these schools provide little sense of how such wisdom might develop or have precursors in childhood: What precursors might be identified to help teach children to become wise?

Wisdom as Personal Development Developmental psychology understands the development of expertise as providing new kinds of new mental structures and associated understandings during development. Personal development is one way to integrate both expertise and transformative views of developing wisdom. It is the approach adopted, for example, by Varela (1992/1999) and Pascual-Leone (1990, 2000). On this view, wisdom develops through knowledge building that reaches the deepest levels of understanding of both the world and of human nature—knowledge that is personally built from experience by coordinating mental structures, not borrowed from the past. This elaboration of the expertise view claims knowledge is not merely an organization of isolated facts, but is an increasingly sophisticated re-organization of our understanding of lived experience. It elaborates the transformative view by explaining how integration of perspectives and detachment abstracted from contextual concerns occurs through coordinating and refineing more basic lived experience, allowing greater scope of understanding—a coordination and integration not only of cognitive understanding, but also of a skilled action that coordinates reflection, affect, and activity (Ardelt, 2004; Fischer & Bidell, 2006; Fowler, 1980; Johnson, 2007). Any technique that fosters the development of expert knowledge will also develop the potential for wiser use of that knowledge (as it will allow knowledge to become more coherent and less embedded in particular contexts). For example, Stange and Kunzmann are intrigued by the method of loci originally developed by Böhmig-Krumhaar. This technique is interesting because it is a relatively simple and effective laboratory technique that may help to activate wisdom-related knowledge in everyday life. I must confess that this method seems a little unconvincing to me, since expert knowledge is not just a collection of facts placed here and there to be remembered (as proverbs might be thought to be) but a coherent set of interlocking facts supported by deep principles of which they are particular instances; experts are known to recognize patterns as expressions of principles, and not to be swayed by surface features. However, there may be a developmental threshold to fully developing wisdom as expertise. Age and wisdom-knowledge are highly correlated in adolescence, but not in adulthood (Baltes & Staudinger, 2000; Pasupathi, Staudinger & Baltes, 2001). Still, wisdom is sometimes attributed to young children. ‘Wisdom from the mouths of babes’ acknowledges an authenticity in children that adults often admire but do not allow themselves, because they can imagine (not always accurately) the effect on others and the possible long-term future consequences of it, whereas children often cannot.

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Developing and demonstrating wisdom is also highly contextualized and does not occur in a social vacuum, as the two previous approaches sometimes imply. This suggests that one way to promote wisdom is to find ways of activating relevant knowledge needed for wise-decision making—and one of the most useful ways to do that is to engage in social interaction through external or even internal dialogue (Staudinger & Baltes, 1996). This is in line with work on scaffolding in cognitive psychology, in which scaffolding by peers, especially more knowledgeable peers, was found to lead to superior performance (Fischer & Bidell, 2006). Microgenetic studies of learning also suggest that learning and wisdom are initially tied to specific tasks and particular conditions, as least as they are forming. Knowledge is created in a way that is at first very fragile and easily lost when new or unusual conditions arrive (Fischer & Bidell, 2006). This fact may help to explain the disturbing behavior of people in famous studies like that of Milgram, where people following orders thought they were shocking someone to death. Abandoning their own moral principles, they acted in ways that some later acknowledged was unwise and reprehensible. For a developmental approach to really address the topic of wisdom, it needs to be augmented to include a dual-systems theory such as that proposed by Stanovich (2004) and others. Indeed, illusions of will (Wegner, 2005) are critical to understanding wisdom, or lack of wisdom. People often reason clearly about the foolishness of giving in to basic biological motivators like fear or lust, but give into them anyhow. Other more basic biological systems—less personally accessible parts of their mind—often seem to have a will of their own, leading people to act in base ways that they themselves later repudiate consider how powerfully stereotypes effect us as shown by the work of Steele or Banaji. From this perspective, wisdom must developed in ways that reach the most profound aspects of human consciousness, aspects perhaps are not always be articulated—perhaps that cannot be. This depth is what is implied by transformative approaches that teach for wisdom.

The Result: Wise People The most basic and ancient way to understand wisdom is to point to particular people who embody it and then consider their words and actions, or their specific advice or leadership under particular circumstances. Such advice is often transmitted as proverbs, sayings or stories. The Wisdom of Solomon is paradigmatic in this sense in Western literature, but likewise that of Socrates or Jesus (often compared) or Confucius, Zhu Xi, or the Buddha. We hear less of the ancient Egyptians these days, but Curnow reminds us that Imhotep—probably the vizier of Djoser (ruler of Egypt, about 2668–2649 BC) and architect of the step pyramid at Saqqara, was one of the earliest historically recorded figures to be so revered. Wise people are emulated, even deified. Many historical figures like Imhotep and Epicurus were considered Gods by those who knew them or by their later followers (Curnow, this volume). Jesus is still considered an aspect of God by Christians (Bright, this volume)—one of the best-known historical examples of deification of

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extraordinary people. Historically, many also considered the Buddha an incarnation of a God—likewise, for the Dali Lama, to take a well-known contemporary Buddhist example. But for others, such individuals, inspiring as they are, simply set a profound example of how to live life well. Confucius and Zhu Xi, for example, claim that the wise man is the one who set an example that others strive to follow (Berthrong, this volume.). Sometimes it seems that life itself teaches us things and makes us wiser. Certainly, people often follow the example of those close to them that they most admire—or sometimes we aspire just to be ourselves on our best days, recalling the microgenetic nature of developing wisdom in which wisdom is achieved under certain conditions and can be lost under others. (Everyone asked to describe a moment in their lives when they acted wisely, has some personal example that taught them something (Bluck and Glück, 2005)). When we think of wisdom in this everyday sense, we also think of elders and influential people in important conversations, like the African sages described by Kai Kresse. All these examples call on people to act based on deep insight into the human condition, as expressed in their local contexts (Kresse, this volume), or even in particular conversations (Roochnik, this volume). Any of these approaches must ultimately result in improved personal lives, if they are to matter at all as examples of wisdom.

Can Personal Wisdom be Taught? Can such personal wisdom be taught? It is hard to say. But the hope, at least, is that wisdom can be fostered by reflecting on one’s own life experiences, especially in conversation with those who are wise or even with anyone willing to discuss these issues. If there is no living person to interact with, one may still reflect on wisdom texts that tell stories of wise people, or learn particular skills like clinical psychology. One can engage in specific training or exercises that cultivate mindfulness or compassion, consider logical arguments that try to provoke deeper understanding about oneself and others or the ultimate nature of lived experience. Wisdom itself is sometimes personified, for example, in Buddhist stories, in Ecclesiastes, and in medieval Europe—perhaps in the hope of making the effect of such teachings more personally and socially engaging. It may be just as important to go beyond one’s own experience to engage in social service and other efforts in the self-cultivation of virtue. Confucian self-cultivation is only thought possible in a community of others in which one strives to be or at least to emulate exemplars of that community. Something very similar to this Confucian approach is also seen in the African sages described by Kresse, who cites Oruka’s study that found both philosophic sages (distinguished by an ability to reflect on common beliefs) and folk sages (who preserved cultural traditions) in Africa. Social Engagement is essential to wisdom so construed. It is not enough to achieve some superior insight that is of personal benefit; one must also find a way to engage others and lead them to wisdom. We also see this in Scardamalia and Sternberg’s chapters and in several others.

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One of the oldest means of acquiring wisdom (however defined) is through observation and emulation. It is in this sense that wise people of the past are remembered and held up as examples as are people we admire in our own life. Usually, such influences are not measured in any standardized way. Rather, we tell stories and judge the effects of emulation on our lives as we try to rise to the standard and example that they uphold. Still, one of the hallmarks of the human species is that we are able to directly model and teach others, and that we have developed institutions to teach the next generation the hard-won knowledge of those of generations past. Historical accounts of developing wisdom are often accounts of mentoring or apprenticeship—for example in Socratic dialogues, or other foundational texts, especially ancient texts like the Bible or those of the Buddha or Confucius. We find this in letters written for example by Seneca to Lucius, or earlier, Kagemni to his son, as a means of imparting teachings that promote wisdom (Kresse, Curnow, this volume).

Exercises and Institutions for Teaching Wisdom Whether in person or in writing, wisdom is often nurtured through a more or less well-articulated curriculum of specific exercises. Hence Seneca tells Lucius how he examines his conscience at the end of each day, or St. Benedict writes to say how one should learn to be obedient. Rosch points out that historically these teachings were often secretive, passed on only from teacher to a student deemed ready to profit by this knowledge—in fact, they are self-secret, since, unless one is ready, the teaching cannot be undertaken. Sometimes efforts are made to develop curricular materials applicable to any one, and this is certainly the case for current attempts to teach for wisdom in modern public schools. Peterson is interested in programs to develop character, while Sternberg has infused exercises to develop wisdom within the history curriculum. Often, the aim is not to impart wisdom, but to have students become able to think wisely about events. Certainly, for Sternberg and Peterson, there is no sense that anything is hidden in how to teach for wisdom—although Sternberg’s dialectic view might suggest that some prior synthesis may be needed before a later one is accessible; or Park and Peterson may grant that certain basic character skills might be needed as a foundation for other more sophisticated ones. Early philosophical schools in the West and East emerged that had a more or less articulated curriculum to teach for transformative wisdom. We see this in the Buddhist and Socratic Schools, and later Christian Monasteries or small communities, like that of 6th century ascetic Benedict of Nursia (Foucault, 2004; Bright, this volume). Different schools and traditions of teaching for wisdom often were and remain historical rivals. Different schools sometimes even propose very similar methods, but lead to different results because they rely on different assumptions about human nature. We see this in Ancient Greece and Rome with rival philosophical schools, and we see it in ancient China among rival schools of Buddhism, let alone their Confucian and Taoist rivals. Still, today, we have religious retreats, like those following

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St. Ignatius’s spiritual exercises. And modern schools of therapy—using scientific ‘evidenced-based practice’ (e.g., Mindfulness Training; Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy) within institutions like hospitals or clinics, or meditation retreats—even ‘new age’ spiritual groups—all of which aim to foster personal insight and understanding. Maybe ultimately we need to aim for wisdom that becomes implicit; that is, a self-regulation of inborn dispositions that bypasses any reasoned judgement about what matters most in life and is experienced as our natural original mind. if so, then perhaps the deepest wisdom transcends our efforts to achieve it, and occurs only by surrender in the fullest sense to our original nature—some say it takes the grace if God. Whether or not that is true, such wisdom is certainly not something one expects to be taught in public schools.

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Contributors

John Berthrong Boston University Boston USA [email protected]

Psychology Lab Seeburgstraße 14–20 04103 Leipzig [email protected]

Pamela Bright Concordia University Montreal, Canada [email protected]

Richard Messina Institute of Child Studies University of Toronto Toronto Canada [email protected]

Trevor Curnow St. Martin’s College Lancaster University of Cumbria UK [email protected]

Nansook Park University of Rhode Island Kingston USA [email protected]

Linda Jarvin Tufts University New Haven USA [email protected] Kai Kresse University of St. Andrews St. Andrews UK [email protected] Ute Kunzmann University Leipzig Department of Psychology I Life-Span Development

Christopher Peterson University of Michigan Ann Arbor USA [email protected] Richard Reeve Assistant Professor, Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario Canada [email protected] Alina Reznitskaya Montclair State University Montclair USA [email protected] 223

224

David Roochnik Boston University Boston USA [email protected] Eleanor Rosch University of California Berkeley USA [email protected] Marlene Scardamalia Institute for Knowledge Innovation and Technology OISE, University of Toronto Toronto Canada [email protected]

Contributors

Vincent Shen University of Toronto Toronto Canada [email protected] Antje Stange Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta USA [email protected] Robert J. Sternberg Tufts University Medford/Somerville USA [email protected]

Author Index

A Abdullah, M. M., 139, 142, 144, 145, 153–154 Adams, M. J., 65 Alexander, C. N., 24, 214 Alexandria, V. A., 10, 168, 172, 174 Al-Jamal, M. S., 139, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 153–154 Alvermann, D. E., 47 Ames, R. T., 15, 103, 214 Ardagh, A., 158 Ardelt, M., 23, 214, 217 Arlin, P. K., 24 Asanga, 120–122, 128 Augustine, 11, 15, 152, 164–165, 168–171, 172, 174, 213, 215, 216 B Baltes, P. B., 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 34, 38, 61, 63, 65, 90, 91, 207, 209, 211, 217, 218 Barber, C., 24 Barks, C., 151 Barron, K. E., 65 Baumann, K., 32 Bazemore, G., 67 Bereiter, C., 79–80, 83, 88, 90–91 Berkowitz, M. W., 67 Bernhard, T., 154 Berthrong, J., 24, 93, 212, 219 Bhagavan, S., 137 Bidell, T. R., 208, 217, 218 Birren, J. E., 23, 24, 38, 60 Biswas-Diener, R., 64 Bodhi, B., 217 Böhmig-Krumhaar, S. A., 31, 217 Bok, S., 69 Bonaventure, 11–12 Bordia, M., 60 Boyce, B., 156 Braungart, M., 156

Brenner, H. G., 38 Brenner, L., 202 Brodkey, H., 208 Brown, K. W., 158 Buber, M., 146 Burrell, B., 71 C Campbell, J., 91 Carns, A. W., 66 Carns, M. R., 66 Carter, S. M., 65 Caswell, B., 79 Chan, Win-tsit, 106, 116, 117, 118, 120, 125, 126, 128 Chandler, M. J., 24, 38 Charness, N., 25 Charron, J., 13 Chen, C., 104–105, 108 Chessick, R., 65 Chu Hsi [Zhu Xi], 93, 94–98, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108–109 Clayton, V. P., 23, 24 Clayton, V., 38 Clements, R. E., 10 Clifton, D. O., 69 Cole, M., 207, 212 Costello, P. J. M., 65 Cotterell, N., 66 Covington, M. V., 65 Coyle, C. T., 67 Crenshaw, J. L., 9 Creswell, J. D., 158 Csikszentmihalyi, M., 41, 60 Curnow, T., 1, 8, 14, 15, 208, 218, 220 D Dahlsgaard, K., 61 de Bary, 98 de Bono, E., 65

225

Author Index

226 DeVries, R., 64 Dewey, J., 90, 91 DiClemente, C., 70 Diogenes, L., 6, 7, 8 Dittmann-Kohli, F., 24, 25 Dixon, R. A., 23–24, 25, 31 Dweck, C. S., 47, 66 E Eccles, J. S., 73 Eisenberg, N., 66 Eisenberger, R., 66 Elliot, A. J., 65 Enright, R. D., 67 Epictetus, 8, 210 Ericsson, K. A., 25, 27 F Fallah, E., 154, 159 Farsy, A. S., 202 Felton, M., 47 Ferrari, M., 188, 207, 212 Ficino, M., 12 Fischer, K. W., 208, 212, 217–218 Flavell, J. H., 44 Fludd, R., 13 Fontane, T., 1 Forbes, D., 155 Foucault, M., 214, 216, 220 Fowler, J. W., 217 Franklin, B., 44, 46, 48, 54, 209 Fung, Yulan, 119–120 G Geaves, R., 141 Gibbs, J. C., 67 Gillham, J., 68 Glück, J., 219 Golka, F. W., 6 Gollwitzer, P. M., 68 Gootman, J. A., 73 Gordon, M., 156 Gould, O. N., 31 Graham, A. C., 107 Gregory, J., 9, 177 Griaule, M., 202 Griffin, S., 74 Grigorenko, E. L., 48 Grossman, J. B., 66 Grossman, P., 214 Guenther, H. V., 138 Gyamtso, T., 160 H Hadot, P., 9, 14, 38 Halewood, C., 83

Hall, D. L., 103 Harackiewicz, J. M., 65 Hart, T., 155 Harter, J. K., 69 Heckhausen, J., 35 Higgins, A., 64, 67 Holliday, S. G., 24, 38 Homer-Dixon, T., 91 Hookham, S. K., 160 Hoppe, S. L., 155 Hu Shi, 121, 128 Huebner, E. S., 74 Hyman, A., 11 I Iamblichus, 9, 15 J James, W., 11, 135, 159, 215 Jaycox, L., 68 Johnson, D. H., 202, 217 Jordan, J., 38

K Kachorek, L. V., 70 Kahn, C. H., 7 Kant, I., 99, 189, 190, 191–192, 193, 199, 202 Kaster, J., 2–4 Kessler, R., 155 Khentse, D., 153 Kilpatrick,W., 71 Kitchener, K. S., 38 Klee, M. B., 68 Knysh, A. D., 141 Kohlberg, L., 64, 67, 212 Kramer, D. A., 23, 24, 38 Kraus, S., 208 Kresse, K., 81, 189, 202–203, 219–220 Kuhlman, D. M., 66 Kuhn, D., 47 Kunzmann, U., 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 34, 209, 211, 217 L Labouvie-Vief, G., 24, 38 Langer, E. J., 24 Lantieri, L., 155 Lapsley, D. K., 210, 212 Larkin, G., 64 Latham, G., 73 Legge, J., 132 Leggett, E. L., 47 Lehto, A. T., 65 Lennon, R., 66

Author Index Li Qingde, 103 Liebenthal, W., 116–117 Linden, M., 32 Linn, M. C., 47 Livey, R., 155 Lloyd, A. C., 9 Locke, E. A., 73 Lopez, D. F., 28 Lü Tsu-ch’ien, 97 Lucretius, 9 M Ma, S. H., 214 McDevitt, T. M., 47 McDonough, W., 156 McGhee, P. E., 68 Maciel, A. G., 63 McKee, P., 24 McKeon, R., 12 McKirahan, R., D. jr., 7 Maercker, A., 29, 61 Marcus, A., 8–9 Massad, P., 66 Meacham, J. A., 24 Messina, R., 79, 80, 87 Miller, T., 37, 68 Moreau, M. J., 79 Murphy, M., 64 N Narvaez, D., 210, 212 Nasir, Sayyid Abdalla bin Ali, 202 Nation, J. R., 66 Needham, J., 102 Niemann, L., 214 Noddings, N., 64, 81 Nucci, L. P.64 O Odera, O. H., 189, 191–192, 202, 219 Oelmueller, Willi, 190 Orme-Johnson, D. W., 214 Overton, W. F., 66 P Palmer, P., 155 Panek, J., 14 Paris, S. G., 42 Park, N., 59, 60, 61, 69, 70, 73, 210, 212, 213, 220 Pascual-Leone, J., 41, 208, 217 Pasupathi, M., 28, 29, 32, 211, 217 Pekar, H., 208 Perkins, D., 42–43, 216

227 Peterson, C., 59, 60–61, 63, 64, 69, 70, 71, 73, 80, 210, 212–213, 220 Piaget, J., 38 Pico della Mirandola, G., 12–13 Pitts, R. C., 60 Plato, 6, 7, 9–10, 11, 15, 16, 82, 159, 179–180, 181–182, 184–187, 188, 206, 210 Plotinus, 9, 165 Plotzek, J. M., 208 Polanyi, M., 39 Porkert, M., 102 Power, F. C., 64, 67 Presbey, G., 202 Pritchard, J. B., 3, 5 Prochaska, J., 70 Proclus, 9–10, 15 Q Qian, G., 47 Qian, Mu., 102 R Rad, G. von, 1, 6 Rathunde, K., 41 Reeve, R., 79 Reivich, K., 68 Rice, E. F., 13, 23 Riegel, K. F., 24 Robinson, D. N., 132 Roger, T. A., 15, 103 Romer, D., 64 Ronen, R., 66 Rosch, E., 81, 135, 137, 154, 158, 159, 208, 214, 215, 216, 220 Rosemont, H. jr., 214 Roth, K., 66 Ryan, R. M., 158 S Saari, L. M., 73 Santideva, 154 Scardamalia, M., 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 88, 91, 209, 210, 212, 219 Schippan, B., 32 Schkade, D., 65 Schmidt, S., 214 Schwartz, M. S., 209, 212 Segal, I. E., 214 Seligman, M. E. P., 59, 60–61, 63–64, 68, 69–70, 71 Seneca, 8, 9, 216, 220 Senge, P. M., 156 Shaw, K. N., 73 Shaw, V., 47 Sheldon, K. M., 66

Author Index

228 Shen, V., 113, 140, 160, 214–216 Simon, H. A., 27 Sinnott, J. D., 24 Slavin, R. E., 66 Smith, J., 23, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 38, 61, 63 Snellgrove, D., 141 Snyder, H. G., 8 Soden, W. von, 3 Sondag, G., 11 Songer, N. B., 47 Sontag, S., 208 Sowarka, D., 24 Speck, B. W., 155 Stange, A., 23–24, 208, 209, 211, 217 Stanovich, K. E., 218 Staudinger, U. M., 23, 24, 25, 26, 27–29, 30, 31–32, 34, 61, 63, 65, 207–208, 209, 211, 217–218 Staudinger, U., 38 Steele, C. M., 65, 218 Steen, T. A., 60, 70 Sternberg, R. J., 23, 24–25, 28, 33, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 52, 59–60, 65, 81, 82, 207, 209, 210, 212, 215, 216, 219, 220 Stroker, W. D., 10 Surmann, U., 208 Suzuki, S., 135 Suzuki, T., 128 T Takahashi, M., 60, 61, 211 Takakesu, J., 121 Taylor, C., 41, 213 Teasdale, J. D., 214 Thagard, P., 88 Theodore, Wm., 98

Thompson, J., 67 Tierney, J. P., 66 Trungpa, C., 135, 145, 147, 151, 153 Turner, Victor, 202 V van den Boom, D. C., 66 Varela, F., 208, 217 Victor, J., 13 W Walach, H., 214 Walgrave, L., 67 Walker, L. J., 60 Walsh, J. J., 11 Wegner, D. M., 218 Westermann, C., 6 Wind, E., 13 Winneskes, K., 208 Witherington III, B., 10 Wolfe, G., 71 Wolfe, S. M., 71 X Xuanzang [Hsuan Tsang], 114, 122, 123–125 Y Yao, X., 125 Yates, M., 67 Yogev, A., 66 Youniss, J., 67 Yukl, G., 67 Z Zaccaro, S. J., 67 Zan, B., 64 Zhang, D., 103, 105–106

Subject Index

A Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhdhuli, 139, 153, 214 Action, 24, 30, 38, 41, 42, 44, 45, 47, 48, 60–63, 67, 71, 99, 103, 106, 107, 109, 124, 128, 143–144, 145, 150, 153, 157, 158, 159, 208, 213, 216, 217, 218 Aesthetic sense, 15 African baraza, 194–195, 196–197, 201, 202 Age adolescence, 28, 29, 32, 63, 73, 211, 217 adulthood, 30, 69, 217 childhood, 130, 155, 183, 217 Antony of Egypt, 11, 167, 168, 172, 174 Apollo, 6, 9, 16 Aristotle, 6, 7, 10, 59–60, 71 ¯ Aryadeva, 115 Augustine of Hippo, 11, 164, 168 Confessions, 165, 168, 170, 216 De doctrina christiana, 168–169, 171 B Bacon, Roger, 12 Balance balance theory of Wisdom, 33, 42, 43, 52, 53, 209 Beginner’s mind, 81, 135–161, 215 Benedict of Nursia, 163, 165, 220 Berkeley Three Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous, 182 Berlin Wisdom Paradigm/Model, 23–24, 25, 26–27, 30, 32–34, 208–209 Bible, 4, 140, 220 Biblical Wisdom Books Corinthians, 10, 170, 173, 213 Ecclesiastes, 4–5, 11, 219 Ecclesiasticus (i.e., The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, or Ben Sira), 4–5, 11 Job, 4–6, 7, 10–11

Letter of James, 10 New Testament, 10, 167 Proverbs, 3, 4 Solomon, 5–6, 10, 15 Wisdom of Solomon, 4–5, 218 Bonaventure, 11–12 Bovelles Book of the Wisdom, 13 Buddhism bodhisattvas, 113 Buddha nature, 124, 125–127, 160 Compassion, 121–122, 128, 144, 145, 146, 147–148, 151, 152, 153, 155–156, 167, 169, 170, 192, 215–216, 219 emptiness, 96, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118–119, 128, 131, 146, 160 enlightenment, 44, 113, 116–117, 121, 125–128, 130, 137, 143, 144, 145, 153, 160 Mahayana Buddhism (Great vehicle), 113–131, 147, 160, 214 Chan school, 113, 125, 214 Sanlun school, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 119 Weishi school, 113–114, 119–120, 122, 123–125, 215 Theravadan Buddhism, 140 Vajrayana Buddhism (Diamond vehicle), 140, 147–148 Tibetan, Kagyu-Nyingma, 135, 137, 139–140, 152, 160 C Centrality, 100, 108–109, 117, 163, 168, 169, 173–174 Character character strengths authenticity, 10, 16, 62, 63, 65, 69, 210, 216, 217 curiosity, 60, 62, 63, 65, 68

229

230 love of learning, 62, 65 open-mindedness, 62, 63, 65, 69 Charron The Wisdom, 13 Christianity charismatic tradition, 167 contemplative tradition, 167–168 evangelical tradition, 167 holiness tradition, 167 incarnational tradition, 167 social justice tradition, 167–168 Collaboration, 31, 65 Columbanus, 165 Comenius, 14 Common good, 23, 25, 33, 38, 39, 40–41, 43, 45, 46, 48, 51, 210 Community, 40, 43, 46, 52, 55, 62, 66, 67, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 88, 96, 98, 99, 104, 136, 144, 163, 164, 170, 172, 194, 199, 201–202, 212, 219 Confucianism, 93–94, 104, 208, 213, 216 Confucius (Kongzi), 93–94, 95, 96, 97, 98–99, 124–125, 218–219, 220 Consciousness structure, 122–123 transformation, 120, 122, 123–125, 127, 130 Contemplation, 9, 11, 15, 19, 94, 97, 169, 170 Context, 1, 3, 4, 11, 13, 15, 25, 26, 27–28, 30–31, 32–34, 39, 42, 43–44, 53, 64, 65, 70, 71, 80, 82, 88, 90, 130–131, 138, 141, 157, 158, 168–169, 172, 174, 180, 187, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 198, 200, 202, 208, 210, 212–213, 217, 219 Conversation, 30, 31, 84, 155, 181–182, 186, 195, 202, 210, 219 Coping, 166 Creativity, 5, 27, 28, 38, 39, 59, 62, 65, 67, 69, 98, 102, 103, 104, 156, 161, 211 D Dao, 98, 100, 101, 105, 116, 117, 127, 131 Death, 7, 8, 95, 97, 128, 150, 152–153, 155, 156, 159, 165, 172, 180, 181, 208, 218 Decision-making, 42 Descartes, 14, 123 Development, 2, 3, 5, 27–30, 32–34, 38, 43–44, 47, 54, 59, 60–61, 64, 67, 69, 73, 80, 84, 91, 103, 105, 113, 115, 130, 132, 140, 156, 157, 189, 207–208, 215, 217–218 Dharmas Asamskrta-dharma (non-created elements), 120–121 Caitasika-dharma (mental contents), 120 Citta-dharma (mind), 120

Subject Index Citta-viprayukta-samsk¯ara (things not associated with mind), 120 R¯upa-dharma (material elements), 120 Dialectic negative dialectics, 114, 117–118, 129 Dialogue, 30, 31, 82, 99–100, 106, 131, 179–180, 182, 186–187, 188, 191, 207, 210, 218, 220 Discernment, 93–94, 105–107, 168, 172–174, 212 Disposition, 42, 59, 60, 80, 100, 101–102, 108, 166, 185, 211, 216, 221 Duty, 5, 95, 166 E Education Admonitions of Ipuwer, 4 character education, 60–61, 67, 73, 210, 212–213 contemplative Education, 135, 155, 156–158, 208 curriculum, 33, 37, 43–44, 46–47, 48, 52, 53–54, 93, 209–210, 212 didache2 (The Instruction), 163 instruction of Kagemni, 2 instructions of Amenemope, 3 knowledge Building Communities, 79, 81, 83–86 Knowledge Forum , 80, 82, 83–86, 88, 89 learning, 16 mastery, 12, 94 practice compassion practices, 156 mantra recitations, 147 meditations, 8, 14, 96, 119, 143, 145, 147, 154, 156, 164, 207, 213–214, 221 relaxation and mindfulness, 155, 156 rituals, 61, 67, 68, 94, 97–98, 147 visualizations, 147 Rule, 163, 164, 165 schooling madrasa, 139 monastery, 11, 96, 165 set of instructions, 166 teaching for Wisdom Program, 65 ‘training’ (askesis), 9, 11 yoga praxis, 120, 121, 123 Egypt, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6–9, 31, 168, 172, 174, 208, 218 Emulation role model, 33, 45, 46, 52, 64, 65, 66, 198, 202, 210 Environment adaptation, 39, 41, 42, 45, 174

Subject Index selection, 39, 42, 45, 95, 97 shaping, 10, 39, 41–42, 45, 197 Epictetus, 8, 210 Existence, 6, 7, 52, 118, 129, 138, 154, 174, 179–181, 187, 191 Experience examined, 29 mental–, 142 sense–, 24, 40, 123, 141, 156 unexamined, 141 Expertise knowledge building, 80, 81, 82, 217 F Faith, 5, 10, 68, 94, 104, 119–120, 143, 150, 151, 163, 164, 165–168, 171, 173, 181, 214 Family, 35, 37, 60, 64, 68, 96, 97–99, 103–104, 212 Ficino, 12 G Gnostics Gospel of Thomas, 10 God, 2–4, 5, 6, 7–9, 10–12 [The] Good life ascetic, 11, 145, 163, 164, 172, 173, 220 happy, 8, 16, 19, 23, 43, 138, 166 mystic, 9–10, 13, 135, 138, 140, 163, 175 Governance ruling others, 107, 212 self-regulation, 62, 66, 68, 69, 216, 221 self-reliant, 193 Greek seven Sages, 6–7, 10 Gregory of Nazianzus, 166, 214 Guidance self-questioning, 44, 197 H Happiness, 8, 29, 54, 61, 70, 74, 145, 166 Harmony, 7, 38, 100, 108–109, 127, 129, 181 Hesiod, 6 Hinduism, 140 Homer, 6, 91, 181 Huineng, 126–127, 132 Humanity Utu, 199–200 I Ignorance, 8–9, 11, 81, 113, 137, 142, 147, 151, 154, 159 Imhotep, 2, 4, 218 Inji-gyo (performing secret good deeds), 64 Injunction, 69 Innate, 135–136

231 Inner path stations, 215 Insight surprise, 104, 196 Inspiration, 6, 29, 127, 129, 131, 136, 161 Integration, 25, 38, 47, 54, 193, 210, 213, 216, 217 Intelligence crystallized, 28, 32 fluid, 28–29, 47, 103 Intuition, 5, 15, 63, 116, 156, 165 Islam Shadhiliyya Sufi order, 135, 139, 214 Sufism, 140, 141, 208, 215 J James, William, 135, 159, 215 Jesus Jesus as Incarnate Wisdom, 167 Jizang, 115, 117–119 John of the Cross, 137, 163, 164, 174 John Scotus Eriugena, 11 Junzi (exemplary person), 94, 212 K Kagemni, 2, 5, 220 Kant Logik, 190 Knowledge encyclopaedic knowledge, 8 illusory, 136 levels, 195 limits to knowledge, 24, 26 necessary, 33, 83 prajñ¯a, 114–116, 119, 120, 126, 127, 132 procedural knowledge, 25, 26, 31, 40, 209 self-knowledge ‘Know thyself!’, 6, 16 self revealing truth, 135–136 social knowledge, 192, 198–199, 201 tacit knowledge, 24, 33, 39, 40, 43, 209 ungraspable, 146, 151 unknowable, 151 wisdom-related knowledge, 25–26, 27–29, 30–31, 32–34, 208, 211, 217 Knowledge building authoritative sources, 82, 83, 88–90 epistemic agency, 80, 84, 86–88 idea diversity, 81, 83–86 improvable ideas, 81, 83–86 knowledge building discourse, 80, 81–82, 84, 88 rise-above, 82, 83, 85, 88–89

Subject Index

232 L Laozi, 96, 115, 117, 132 Learning, 11, 16, 19, 24, 30, 38, 46, 47, 52, 54–55 Life satisfaction, 70, 74 Logos, 38, 185 Love Eros, 185 M Marcus Aurelius, 8–9 Maturity, 108, 168, 171 Maxims, 44, 46, 48, 54 Meditation, 8, 14, 96, 119, 143, 145, 147, 154, 156, 164, 207, 213–214, 221 Mencius (Mengzi), 93–95 Mesopotamia, 2, 3, 4, 6–9 Mirandola, Pico de, 12–13 Motivation, 49, 50, 53, 66, 73, 80, 142, 144, 152 Muhammad, 195, 198 Mysticism mythos, 38 N N¯ag¯arjuna, 115, 118, 128 Naropa, 138–139, 143, 151, 155 Neoplatonism, 9, 11 Nietzsche The Birth of Tragedy, 179, 188 Gay Science, 180, 188 Norms, 25, 68, 69 O Obedience, 5, 10, 14, 144, 152, 163, 214 Origen Peri Archon (On First Principles), 174 Oruka, Henry Odera, 189, 191–192, 202, 219 P Pansophy, 14 Paul, 10–11, 38, 213 Peace, 10, 14, 19, 47, 49, 129, 137, 147–148, 152, 158, 170, 173, 174, 210, 216 Personality, 27–28, 30, 32, 38, 60, 142, 149, 153, 154, 208, 211–212, 213–214, 215 Philosophy, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13–14, 38, 44, 46, 59, 61, 69, 93, 95–96, 99–100, 103, 104, 107, 115, 117, 119–121, 125, 128, 151, 179, 185–187, 188, 189–190, 191–192, 199, 202, 211 Philosophy Schools Academy of Plato, 7 Garden of Epicurus, 7 Stoa of Zeno, 7

Plato forms, 185–187 Meno, 16, 186 Phaedo, 179–187, 188, 210 Protagoras, 6 Symposium, 183–185 Theaetetus, 7, 9 Plotinus, 9, 165 Proclus, 9–10, 15 Prototype, 59–60, 179 Proverbs, 3, 4–5, 6, 199, 201, 209, 217, 218 Psychology (psychological), 9, 23, 24, 29, 33, 38, 40, 42, 54, 60, 64, 66, 70, 73, 126, 129, 130, 135, 136, 142, 143, 145, 147, 154, 159, 185, 187, 211, 213, 217, 218, 219 Ptahhotep, 2, 3, 5 Purification catharsis, 179 wudu, 139, 215 Pythagoras/Pythagoreans, 2, 7, 9, 12, 180, 181, 182, 186, 188, 210 R Rationality, 130, 180 Religious approaches sociological form, 141 S Samsara, 138–139, 141, 142–143, 151, 160 Satan, 145, 150 Science measurement of wisdom, 23 science of Wisdom, 59, 136, 138, 159, 207, 210 Self self-actualization, 40, 100, 101, 108–109 self-cultivation, 93, 95, 99, 102, 104, 105, 108, 116–117, 212–213, 215, 219 self-regulation, 62, 66, 68, 69, 216, 221 self-system, 38 xin (mind-heart), 96, 104, 106 Seneca, 8–9, 216, 220 Shenxiu, 125–126 Socrates, 2, 7, 9, 11, 24, 179–180, 181–187, 188, 206, 210, 218 Socratic method, 46, 52, 187, 191, 210, 220 Stoics, 8–10, 15–16, 210 Surrender, 136, 145, 149, 150, 152, 221 Swahili, 189, 192, 193, 194–196, 198–200 T Teacher Christ, 10, 144, 163, 165–168, 171, 174–175, 214 guru, 137, 144, 146, 152

Subject Index Shaykh, 135, 139, 142, 144, 215 Thales, 6–7 Theories of Wisdom explicit theories, 59, 73 implicit theories, 38, 59 Thinking perspective, 23, 26, 31, 32, 33, 38, 46–48, 49, 50, 52, 54, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 73, 84, 86, 88, 102, 131, 140, 141, 145, 150, 152, 153, 154, 156–157, 159, 160, 167, 174, 190, 195–196, 197, 199–200, 201, 211, 213, 216, 217–218 post-Formal, 38 reflective, 1, 29, 44, 46, 48, 53–54, 95, 106, 195 Tradition, 2, 4, 6–7, 10, 13, 15–16, 38, 60, 61, 64, 93–94, 96, 97, 98–99, 101, 103, 105, 108, 113–114, 119–120, 123–124, 126, 128, 130, 131, 135–138, 140, 141, 143, 144, 148, 150, 151–152, 155, 158–159, 161, 164–165, 167, 168, 174–175, 180, 189, 191–192, 198, 207–208, 210, 212, 214–215, 219–220 Transformation, 98, 102, 104–105, 107, 114, 116, 120, 122, 123–125, 127, 130, 138, 147, 181, 196, 197, 213–216 Truth, 7, 13, 46, 48, 62, 65, 81, 82, 117, 119, 127, 131, 138, 141, 142–143, 144, 150, 153, 163, 166, 170, 171, 182, 210, 216 U Ultimate Reality, 114, 116–117, 119, 123, 131, 215 Understanding, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13–14, 16, 24, 38, 40, 44, 49, 53, 54, 59, 79, 82, 87, 89,

233 91, 97, 99, 103, 105, 114, 116, 119, 121, 123, 128, 131, 138, 141, 144, 152, 153, 155, 167–168, 189–190, 192, 197, 199, 208, 209, 211, 213, 217, 218, 219, 221 V Vajrayogini, 138 Values values in action project, 60–61 Virtue Confucian cardinal virtues li (ritual action), 101, 102, 103, 104, 106–107, 118, 213 ren (humaneness), 102, 107, 108–109, 213 yi (righteousness), 107, 213 zhi (wisdom or discernment), 93–94, 105, 107, 212–213 Vives Introduction to Wisdom, 13 W Weltbegriff, 190, 199 Wisdom crazy wisdom, 153 didactic wisdom, 192 folk wisdom, 6, 107, 199 performative, 193 sagacity, 191, 194 Wisdom Texts, see Bible poetry, 99, 151, 161, 198 Z Zhu Xi, 93, 94–98, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108–109