Dear Reader,
In Plato’s Apology, Plato recounts the events of Socrates’ trial, including his speech to his accusers as they condemned him to death. Here, Socrates is contrasted with the politicians who excuse him. They believe themselves to be wise, wise enough to charge Socrates with “corrupting the youth and believing in strange gods.” Socrates, on the other hand, questions whether he is indeed wise, disbelieving the claims of the Oracle that he is indeed the wisest man in all of Athens. In fact, for Socrates, wisdom has very little to do with knowledge or the ability to comprehend the mysteries of the world. For Socrates, wisdom is knowing how little we know. He goes on to say, “I am wiser than that man. Neither of us probably knows anything worthwhile; but he thinks he does when he does not, and I do not and do not think I do.”
“I am wiser than that man. Neither of us probably knows anything worthwhile; but he thinks he does when he does not, and I do not and do not think I do.”
In the Information Age, when every factoid and data point is at our fingertips, knowledge seems to have trumped wisdom. We know more than previous generations about our world, its makeup, and the social forces at work in our societies, yet for all this knowledge, we seem to lack wisdom. Wisdom approaches the world as a grand mystery. It acknowledges how little can be known about the world. It is the difference between apprehension and comprehension. We can certainly apprehend great truths, understanding even the movement of planetary bodies and atomic particles. But this doesn’t mean we achieve full comprehension. We may understand the what and how, but the why remains remarkably elusive. In the Biblical tradition, wisdom is connected to right living. Mishpat is about the rendering of justice, making wise judgments that honor the dependent relationships of man, beast, and land. It is not enough to know how these things work but also how they relate. Acknowledging that these relations are often mysterious and must be honored.
My latest poem, Virtue Signaling, is a short meditation on this problem. Asking us whether knowledge is considered a virtue and if what we perceive to be wise is even wisdom at all.
As responsible citizens of the world, we are each of us called to consider our relationship to the knowledge we possess—what we do with it, how we use it, and the limits of our own knowing. Only in knowing how little we know will we learn to know wisdom, and only in becoming wise will we learn to wield our knowledge well.
Enjoy!
VIRTUE SIGNALING
The educated arrogance of mid-twenty-somethings
who for want of wisdom
seek knowledge
and are under the false impression
that facts and figures make for virtue.