Thanks a million Wayfarer for starting what to me is a thread that provides a deep insight into what wisdom is. To put it simply, in line with the book titles that appear in the website you provided the link to, wisdom boils down to how to? guides. The underlying idea behind wisdom perceived in this manner is that of method and technique. This conception of wisdom has an Eastern analog viz. The Tao (The Way) but that's another story.

Everyone knows what the 6W1H is. Allow me to explain why how? is the mother of all questions and by doing that justify why how? underpins the holy grail of philosophy aka wisdom.

1. What is an elephant?
We must know how to identify an elephant.

2. Why does God exist?
We must know how to prove/disprove God exists.

3. Who is Aristotle?
We must know how to identify Aristotle

4. When is the right time to plant corn?
We must know how to find out the right time to plant corn.

5. Which is better, sex or food?
We must know how to determine better.

6. Where is Paris?
We must know how to find the location of Paris.

7. How to think? A contender for the title of the most important question of all time.

HOW?

Amateur:
a) Method: Any answer to how? will do. A child's method of solving problems involves guessing ( :chin: hmmmm). An adult's method might take that to a new level as in systematic but still guessing.


Pro:
b) Technique: Not any answer to how? will be accepted. Aspects like efficiency (spatial/temporal/others) :cool: , aesthetics :heart: , to name a few will matter.

I may have missed a spot here and there!

Not a bad explanation. And interesting OP, too.

But do we do that before or after we learn how to drink, how to be a farmer, and how to be a bad emperor?

And what about why?

A sophist's notion of 'wisdom' – a syllabus of self-help nostroms. :yawn:

Not a bad explanation. And interesting OP, too. — Apollodorus

A novice's best shot! If it makes sense at some level then I chalk it up to beginner's luck! The OP? Thank :point: @Wayfarer

But do we do that before or after we learn how to drink, how to be a farmer, and how to be a bad emperor? — Apollodorus

Great question! As I said,

I may have missed a spot here and there! — TheMadFool

For better or worse, I'm not omniscient!

And what about why? — Apollodorus

2. Why does God exist?
We must know how to prove/disprove God exists. — TheMadFool

A sophist's notion of 'wisdom' – a syllabus of self-help nostroms. :yawn: — 180 Proof

Point! However, you're a veteran philosopher and philosophizing is second nature to you, your middle name so to speak. For beginners, on the other hand, how to do philosophy? is a skill that has a steep learning curve, especially for those self-taught. Self-help books on philosophy are just what the doctor ordered!

To put it simply, in line with the book titles that appear in the website you provided the link to, wisdom boils down to how to? guides. — TheMadFool

I think that's a very shallow reading. Many of those kinds of texts are far from self-help or how-to in any modern sense. I put that link up for reference, it's a good source for those materials.

Del

*

Yeah, Seneca, Cicero, Aristotle - all hacks. I'm wondering why I bothered posting it. — Wayfarer

Don't let contrarian posts deter you. He's probably been imbibing too much of his namesake beverage. Which makes everything seem pointless. :joke:


Alcohol proof is a measure of the content of ethanol in an alcoholic beverage. The term was originally used in England and was equal to about 1.821 times the percentage alcohol by volume.
180 proof = 100% pure brain cell poison??? :100:

Which makes everything seem pointless. :joke: — Gnomon

In actual fact, I think his comment was directed at the post he replied to, which I realised after I made that snide remark, which is why I removed it. I know for a fact 180 holds those authors in high regard.

You will note that I amended my very snide post immediately after making it, I would be obliged if you removed the quotation of it. And please don't litter the thread with pointless youtube rubbish. — Wayfarer

Done! Youtube videos are more expressive than I can ever hope to be. Hence, my fondness for videos from said website and others. Your post wasn't snide enough to require an edit/deletion. Nevertheless, different strokes for different folks. :up:

In actual fact, I think his comment was directed at the post he replied to, which I realised after I made that snide remark, which is why I removed it. I know for a fact 180 holds those authors in high regard. — Wayfarer

Yeah. I know. I was just poking fun at his ancient philosophy of "how to drink like a Cynic". :cool:

Anyway - to try and get this back on track - I'm reading Pierre Hadot's well-known book, Philosophy as a Way of Life. I makes an excellent 'companion volume' to many of those weighty titles given in that original list.

In actual fact, I think his comment was directed at the post he replied to, which I realised after I made that snide remark, which is why I removed it. — Wayfarer

So, I can restore my post then!

Let's just leave it as-is for now.

I suppose, I can concede there is a sense in which these could be 'self-help' books, with the caveat that there is no 'quick and easy' method. Takes reading, concentration, and patience. Also interpretive skill - the ability to take into account the very different cultural background of ancient texts.

Let's just leave it as-is for now. — Wayfarer

Copy!

Well, I for one definitely think that ancient wisdom is better than no wisdom.

And it seems to me that wisdom is fast disappearing from both language and culture under the modernizing influence of "gangsta cultcha" and other progressive trends ....

I suppose, I can concede there is a sense in which these could be 'self-help' books, with the caveat that there is no 'quick and easy' method. Takes reading, concentration, and patience. Also interpretive skill - the ability to take into account the very different cultural background of ancient texts. — Wayfarer

As I tried to convey in my first post, as one advances from beginner to expert in any discipline, including philosophy, one realizes there's a difference between method (any ol' way of doing something) and technique ("...quick & easy..." = efficient & beautiful way). Self-help books are about the latter - reading them will enhance the reader's experience in whatever subject the books are on.

My two cents!

I think that's a very shallow reading. Many of those kinds of texts are far from self-help or how-to in any modern sense. I put that link up for reference, it's a good source for those materials. — Wayfarer

Noted for future reference! :up: :ok:

to try and get this back on track — Wayfarer

Now I know how fragile even the most robust of threads are. Derailment is just one shallow-minded poster away. Apologies.

And it seems to me that wisdom is fast disappearing from both language and culture under the modernizing influence of "gangsta cultcha" and other progressive trends .... — Apollodorus

:up: There's something about modernity that is inimical to the traditional idea of wisdom. I think it has to do with the fact that in liberal individualism, the ego is the sole arbiter of value. That said, I don't much care for corporatist or collectivist cultures either (which Chinese culture tends towards). I think the advantage of modern liberal culture is that it provides the complete freedom to pursue any path, which is definitely a freedom worth defending. But the standard modern outlook of consumerism, gratification, hedonism, materialism and instrumental utility, is worlds away from the traditional virtues, and so if you absorb those along with the freedom that secular culture provides, then they're inimical to the philosophical life.

One of the essays on my homepage discusses Jurgen Habermas' late-in-life re-evalution of religious metaphysics:

What secular reason is missing is self-awareness. It is “unenlightened about itself” in the sense that it has within itself no mechanism for questioning the products and conclusions of its formal, procedural entailments and experiments. “Postmetaphysical thinking,” Habermas contends, “cannot cope on its own with the defeatism concerning reason which we encounter today both in the postmodern radicalization of the ‘dialectic of the Enlightenment’ and in the naturalism founded on a naïve faith in science.”

Postmodernism announces (loudly and often) that a supposedly neutral, objective rationality is always a construct informed by interests it neither acknowledges nor knows nor can know. Meanwhile science goes its merry way endlessly inventing and proliferating technological marvels without having the slightest idea of why. The “naive faith” Habermas criticizes is not a faith in what science can do — it can do anything — but a faith in science’s ability to provide reasons, aside from the reason of its own keeping on going, for doing it and for declining to do it in a particular direction because to do so would be wrong. — Does Reason Know what it is Missing?

What is implicit in most of the ancient philosophies is 'the idea of the Good', whether that be concieved in explicitly theistic terms or not (and in Greek philosophy, it often wasn't). But it was simply the assumed background of philosophy, meaning that 'the good' was something that could be discovered or realised. That is generally absent from modern philosophy, post-Neitszche.

'the idea of the Good' — Wayfarer

Sold separately.

But do we do that before or after we learn how to drink, how to be a farmer, and how to be a bad emperor? — Apollodorus

:up:

I agree that consumerism, hedonism, etc. are contributing factors in the general decline of civilization and culture. However, I think there are reasons to believe that the main culprit is the movement to actively and systematically deconstruct traditional culture and society initiated in the late 1800's and early 1900's by Fabian Socialists and allied liberals, including the likes of G. B. Shaw who declared that good statesmanship was to blow to pieces every cathedral with dynamite, whilst he was praising Lenin and Stalin as great statesmen, Annie Besant, who believed that the Westminster Abbey should have its "barbaric psalms" replaced with Wagner, whilst she was busy promoting Freemasonry and Theosophy as a replacement for Christianity, and many others who simply hated Western civilization even as they were making the most of its achievements. But I think this is a topic for another thread, or forum.

Probably the latter.

As I said, I think it’s easy to be corrupted my modernity, but it’s definitely not all bad.

I’ve got a very interesting post by Aurobindo which I’ll find later.

Sri Aurobindo (born Aurobindo Ghose; 15 August 1872 – 5 December 1950) was an Indian philosopher, yogi, maharishi, poet, and Indian nationalist. He was also a journalist, editing newspapers like Bande Mataram. He joined the Indian movement for independence from British colonial rule, till 1910 was one of its influential leaders and then became a spiritual reformer, introducing his visions on human progress and spiritual evolution (Wikipedia).

Admit - for it is true - that this age of which materialism was the portentous offspring and in which it had figured first as petulant rebel and aggressive thinker, then as a grave and strenuous preceptor of mankind, has been by no means a period of mere error, calamity and degeneration, but rather a most powerful creative epoch of humanity. Examine impartially its results. Not only has it immensely widened and filled in the knowledge of the race and accustomed it to a great patience of research, scrupulosity, accuracy - if it has done that only in one large sphere of enquiry, it has still prepared for the extension of the same curiosity, intellectual rectitude, power for knowledge, to other and higher fields - not only has it with an unexampled force and richness of invention brought and put into our hands, for much evil, but also for much good, discoveries, instruments, practical powers, conquests, conveniences which, however we may declare their insufficiency for our highest interests, yet few of us would care to relinquish, but it has also, paradoxical as that might at first seem, strengthened man's idealism. — Sri Aurobindo, Materialism

I quote this from time to time as a counter-factual to what I myself often say.

@Wayfarer
@Apollodorus
@Gnomon
@anyone else ...

Please name your top five "ancient wisdom" reads for modern (beginner) philosophers. @The Mad Fool and I both could probably use the encouragement.

And it seems to me that wisdom is fast disappearing from both language and culture under the modernizing influence of "gangsta cultcha" and other progressive trends .... — Apollodorus

I’ve been under the impression that gangsta cultcha was pop rather than progressive or regarded as dispensing wisdom, though in some part authentically counter-cultural and validly so.

Please name your top five "ancient wisdom" reads for modern (beginner) philosophers. The Mad Fool and I both could probably use the encouragement. — 180 Proof

I second that motion!

Ancient "wisdom":

1. Slavery

2. Sexism

3. Tyranny

4. Child/Human sacrifice

5. Torture

6. Woo-woo

7. Genocide

etc.

wut?

wut? — 180 Proof

Wut wut? :chin:

This.