The knowledge and experience that is gained through everyday life forms the basis of wisdom. Wisdom can be attained through numerous ways. For example, it can be created from performing a personal mistake. Lessons can be learned from those mistakes, which in turn, form knowledge and experience. The Sufi Masters’ parable “The Tale of the Sands” illustrates how knowledge can be attained from other people. The Stream of Life gains knowledge, experience, and morality from passing through the desert to its destiny.
Knowledge is one of the many building blocks of wisdom. For example, the sand gives information to the Stream of Life by telling it to “be absorbed by the wind” (930). The sand is providing advice to the stream on how to solve its predicament. Knowledge is being passed from the sand to the stream. The stream is now gaining more knowledge, which builds upon its growing wisdom. Furthermore, the sand advises the stream to “let the wind carry you over the desert and towards your destination” (930). The stream is expanding its own knowledge even more with the help of a supplementary set of instructions from the sand. The stream is constantly getting wiser after comprehending every piece of knowledge that has been given to it. Understanding builds upon insight of the individual that comprehends the actual knowledge.
Experience is an elemental unit of wisdom. For example, the Stream of Life runs through “the far-off mountains…and through the countryside” (929). The stream gains experience by going through the mountains and countryside. The wisdom of the stream is constantly growing from overcoming the obstacles of crossing the mountains and countryside. Moreover, the stream “raised his vapor into the welcoming arms of the wind… which gently carried it over the desert” (930). The stream is now conquering another obstacle in its path to its destination. It is gaining the experience of having the wind deliver it over the desert. Another essential part of wisdom is experience.
The morality of the situation is also a key part of wisdom, morality leads to wisdom overtime. For example, the Stream of Life asks itself, “ ‘how do I know if this is right’?” (930). The stream is questioning itself that if letting the wind carry it over is the right thing to do. It is not sure if the action that is about take place is moral. Furthermore, the sand gives moral thought before it “extends the riverside all the way to the mountain” (930).
The value attributed to the first virtue, wisdom, whose essence lay in “the perception of truth and with ingenuity,” concerns the comprehension of the nature of justice (7). In fact, Cicero asserts, within the public sphere, “unless learning is accompanied by the virtue that consists...
Wisdom: Is it worth the consequences that might come with it? In the eye-opening short story, “Flowers For Algernon” by Daniel Keyes, Charlie Gordon is a mentally challenged man who is given the choice of a surgery which will assist him in becoming exceptionally smart. He takes the offer because the chance to gain knowledge is all he has ever wanted. Adam and Eve are people living in literal paradise. Although they have all of the resources needed to live a life that is free of misfortune, they eat the fruit of a tree, knowing it will open their eyes beyond their current conscious state.
The Book of Job is one of the three books in the Hebrew bible whose genre is described as wisdom literature.1 Certainly the Book of Job satisfies the literary conventions that qualify a biblical book for such status. 2 Yet Job may be associated with wisdom in a much more literal sense. The Book of Job attempts to deal with a problematic question that confronts suffering humanity: why do bad things happen to good people? The variety and vehemence of commentators' contemporary responses to this chapter of the Bible is testament to the continued relevance of the Book of Job's wisdom thousands of years after it was written. Although the commentators examined herein arrive at differing and sometimes conflicting conclusions after reading the story of "the holy Arab"3, none are left indifferent.
Practical wisdom is changeable and involves desires, pleasures and pains, it is also the knowledge of the best action. “It follows that, in general a man with practical wisdom is he who has the ability to deliberate” (1140a28). Aristotle is arguing that practical wisdom generally instructs a person to live well and in service of what is good, because it is a truthful and rational characteristic. “But it is also clear that… no choice will be right without practical wisdom and virtue. For virtue determines the end, and practical wisdom makes us do what is conducive to the end” (1145a4). Acting out of practical wisdom allows a person to do just, noble and good things are what constitutes a good
what they to know to us but these can only show the way to attain our
Aristotle, one of the forefathers of agent morality, understood that universal and formalist rules alone could not sustain virtue. Practical wisdom, “a truth-attaining intellectual quality concerned with doing and with the things that are good for human beings” allows the moral agent to operate virtuously in a context-specific way. “[I]t is not possible,” Aristotle writes, “without practical wisdom to be really good morally.” Obedience to fixed rules cannot govern action “to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, for the right reason, and in the right way.” In order to cultiv...
thinking comes from that and then in the long run more knowledge comes. It is a continuous cycle that never stops.
Individuals are not born with an ability to understand moral values and apply moral standards. As people mature, their physical, emotional, and cognitive abilities develop and so does their ability to deal with moral issues. Aristotle, an early Greek thinker who proposed one of the most influential theories of ethical thinking in the West, argued that our moral abilities which he called virtues or morally good habits, develop solely through constant practice and repetition, in the same way, he argued, humans acquire their moral abilities and when they are taught and habituated by their families and communities to think, feel and behave in morally appropriate ways. Such vitally important human values as courage, generosity, self-control, temperance,
For example, when a graduate steps out of the school and enter the insurance company, he is well equipped with the fundamental mathematical and business knowledge, as well as the analytic skills and understanding of market behavior. Only when he is able to apply his knowledge and skills to his work after, he is starting to become an influential actuary. Moreover, he should learn from people around him by listening to their opinions and observe how they what they learn to deal with various situations at work. Even the great master Confucius had to reflect on himself that “Am I a learned man? No I am not. But if a farmer asks me a question and my mind is a total blank, I shall keep turning the question over in my mind until I come up with an answer” and “There are those people who can do without knowledge, but I am not one of them. I listen to many views and choose the sound ones to follow. I see many things and keep them in my memory. Knowledge attained this way is the second best” (passage 7.28, The Analects). Knowledgeable as Confucius is, he kept seeking and absorbing new ideas from people around him to improve himself. Learning is
In conclusion, in Naguib Mafouz’s Fountain and Tomb, we are faced with a central theme of Truth. It can be reasoned that most of the time the Truth (or knowledge) isn’t always something that it is necessary to know. The Truth can bring about happiness, prosperity, or a positive affect, but that seems to happen much less frequently. Sometimes being ignorant of the Truth is better because it makes lives easier and happier. People don’t necessarily need to know everything (the whole Truth), because what they don’t know can’t really hurt them. Truth comes with excess baggage, and it sometimes leads to conflict, hurt feelings, alienation, or broken hearts. As the old saying goes, “Ignorance is bliss.” Fountain and Tomb does an excellent job of illustrating that cliche.
The concepts of Morality and Immorality are discussed in many different ways. Glaucon, brother to Plato and Adeimantus, and apprentice to Socrates, takes a unique approach to showing the implications of both notions. Glaucon does this through his three-step argument that challenges Socrates by evaluating the benefits of being an immoral person versus one holding onto their morality. Glaucon’s argument dives into three segments, which leads to Glaucon’s conclusion that immorality is more beneficial than morality.
...ues of intellect and morality, this is possible, as they work together to create one conclusive result. Aristotle portrays many theories in his lectures and proposes many thought provoking ideas. Among these, his theory of practical wisdom. But, through all of the intricate connections, practical wisdom is the most valued and purposeful virtue, in Aristotelian Ethics.
There is this Chinese saying that my father always tells me: “I have tasted more salt than you have rice.” The rice symbolizes the whole experience and the salt, being wisdom, is what you learned from the experiences. The size of a single grain of salt is far smaller compared to a grain of rice. If one consumed more salt than another’s rice, then according to this saying, someone that is older than another will have more wisdom than that another’s experiences in total. This idiom is usually used when an elder, usually a wise member of a Chinese community, is teaching a young one a lesson. So why do people value and gather experience so much? In my personal viewpoint, I think that they are trying to prepare for the unknown
What kind of experience can be called an education? Is it the practice of stuffing knowledge or information into the brains of students? Or is it the activity in which the master shows their apprentices the proper skills to make delicate works? People are prone to accumulate possessions. For some, they stock up substantial materials. But others prefer to possess knowledge. There were many sophists who proclaimed themselves to be omniscient and gave instructions to anyone who sought for their help. As we have noticed, “certain professors of education must be wrong when they say that they can put a knowledge into the soul which was not there before, like sight into blind eyes” (Plato 4). Education can only be done when the restrictions are removed and the latent potentials of students are provoked. In the soul of everyone there already exists the power and capacity of learning. Education is to activate those powers and capacities so as to complete the ascent from becoming into being.
Natural science and indigenous knowledge systems both build areas of knowledge in today’s world and past societies as means of gathering data, building understandings, and making deductions about life. Information builds and evolves, revising itself as new data is understood, and both reason and memory must be applied to help this understanding. As the world changes at a brisk pace, knowledge does too, and knowing as a whole reflects these changes.