Good question!

I don't know whether "some desires" are "meant" to remain unfulfilled, but we are all better off if "some desires" remain unsatisfied. We don't have a "drive for wisdom" as much as it takes time for individuals to develop it. In my old age, I don't know whether I have developed all that much wisdom or not. Some people seem to find it earlier. Lucky them.

Children have the temporary advantage of not knowing much about the world; their quest to know and understand the world may or may not be successful, but fairly soon human minds become a warehouse of second and third hand goods--some of value, some ready for final recycling. It's dirty work sorting out all this crap.

What we call "innocence" is short lived. Kittens and puppies, figuratively. Literally, kittens and puppies grow up to be killer cats and wolves. Children lose their temporary innocence-advantage pretty quickly. Urges and wishes, kindly and not, start arising fairly soon.

Social historians tell us that "childhood and adolescence" is a very recent view of childhood. As far as we can tell, ancient people on up to the recent times thought of children as miniature adults--not especially innocent and capable of economic contribution.

We don't have a "drive for wisdom" as much as it takes time for individuals to develop it.

What gave you the idea that it was something worth finding to begin with?

Literally, kittens and puppies grow up to be killer cats and wolves. Children lose their temporary innocence-advantage pretty quickly. Urges and wishes, kindly and not, start arising fairly soon.

Would you equate these urges and wishes with wisdom? Almost all ancient philosophies worth caring about say something to the tune of wisdom is a level above simple animal urges and desires.

Social historians tell us that "childhood and adolescence" is a very recent view of childhood. As far as we can tell, ancient people on up to the recent times thought of children as miniature adults--not especially innocent and capable of economic contribution.

The more reason to think of it as a construction of Western reason. The way you word it sounds like you think it worth less because it's not a notion that has existed forever.

Would you equate these urges and wishes with wisdom? — kudos

No. "Wisdom" isn't a word I use very often. I don't like it. It's a Hallmark greeting card kind of word.

As we age, infancy to senescence, we discover the various costs that our urges and wishes impose on us. I don't regret having inconvenient urges and wishes -- I regret acting on some of them. Wisdom means "the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment". Those are better words to use.

What gave you the idea that it was something worth finding to begin with? — kudos

Well, "having experience, knowledge, and good judgment" allows one to avoid some of the errors we are prone to.

The more reason to think of it as a construction of Western reason. The way you word it sounds like you think it worth less because it's not a notion that has existed forever. — kudos

Well, western reasoning is all I have got. No, I don't think it worth less because it hasn't existed forever. A lot of very good ideas are very recent.

Well, "having experience, knowledge, and good judgment" allows one to avoid some of the errors we are prone to.

How did you learn what experience, knowledge and good judgement were, and where did you get the idea that they were better than the absence thereof? All solely from yourself?

Philosophers are nothing but curious children, and children are our purest philosophers. Do you agree? And if so, is this drive still a part of our collective will? — kudos

If you are asking about the impulse to philosophy, I would think it often seems to be connected to unhappiness or dissatisfaction. People who are content may not need to ask such questions.

Philosophy for me isn't just the asking of questions, more importantly, it involves the forensic examination of our presuppositions, along with an underlying suspicion that what we consider our foundations may be insubstantial and flawed.

Being exposed to the satisfaction of thought archetypes and to constantly reinforce them causes the will to be content in understanding and to go no further. All media must reinforce and preserve, whereas with wisdom we must seek it out against those as obstacles. But how are shown to seek? Isn't innocence just that initial separation of the concepts we must eventually come to terms with, so as to identify their necessity internally.

We must act out the process of finding wisdom, it cannot just be handed to us; and I can't believe we just 'pick it up' by nature. The same way the individual through their subjective actions in capitalistic society is intended to do good to others through their internal mechanisms of form.

...I can't believe we just 'pick it up' by nature. — kudos

It seems to me we pick up experience and knowledge by nature. Experience and knowledge are part of most definitions of wisdom I have seen.

Why think that people wouldn't tend to pick up wisdom by nature?

That makes sense because there's no way for philosophy to exist without experience and knowledge. But we 'can't go into Kant' (non-intended joke), we are assuming familiarity with Kant.

Or maybe we can... if you want to, don't mean to be bossy.

How did you learn what experience, knowledge and good judgement were, and where did you get the idea that they were better than the absence thereof? All solely from yourself? — kudos

"Experience" arises from existence. Once I existed (not my fault -- somebody else did it) experience began and started shaping my existence. The existence of any animal with some sort of central nervous system will be shaped by its experience--learning. If one's species has a big enough CNS it will develop a culture, and action of that culture will be one more type of experience shaping one's existence. There is a human "I" in the process. The "I" becomes conscious of its existence and becomes aware of self, existence, and experience, and begins to direct the process.

I never did get the idea that no experience, no knowledge, and no good judgement were even a thing. People "judge" their experience on the basis of how it affects their existence. "Good judgement" -- however one defines it -- leads to better existence and better experiences than bad judgement. Falling down drunk in the snow and losing one's fingers to frostbite is an example of exercising bad judgement -- drinking too much to manage one's existence.

there's no way for philosophy to exist without experience and knowledge — kudos

There's no way for us to exist without experience and knowledge, never mind philosophy.

There are a lot of dull-normals in the world, and most of them get along quite well without worrying about philosophy and wisdom. They sleep well, get up and go to work, produce the world's needs and wants. They go shopping, play with their children, make love, watch Fox News, drink beer, pay their rent or mortgage, dine at Olive Garden to celebrate important events. They get old and die. Life goes on.

The arch of life for very bright philosophers is not all that different than the lives of dull normals. They might not watch Fox News (preferring the BBC), but they drink beer. They may shop more carefully, or not, and may dine at an out-of-the-way ethnic restaurant preferred by food snobs. They may read more, and think interesting thoughts (or not). Otherwise, their lives are about the same as dull normals. They might very well have less money than dull normals. They might not even have a pot to piss in. They get old and die. Life goes on.

@BC should I jump off the bridge now or later?

Sorry I can’t follow most of your response.

If you are asking about the impulse to philosophy, I would think it often seems to be connected to unhappiness or dissatisfaction. People who are content may not need to ask such questions. — Tom Storm

It sounds like the point both BC and yourself are making is that when innocence tends to be insular and not ask questions of itself, it becomes plainly satisfied. That we need to be 'impelled' by something, no?

Isn't that simply a certain content and form of philosophy? What's wrong about living a simple life without worry or anxieties, supposing those questions bring with them those feelings?

↪BC BC should I jump off the bridge now or later? — kudos

At your convenience, of course. But what are you trying to say by mentioning a jump off the bridge?

It sounds like the point both BC and yourself are making is that when innocence tends to be insular and not ask questions of itself, it becomes plainly satisfied. That we need to be 'impelled' by something, no?

Isn't that simply a certain content and form of philosophy? What's wrong about living a simple life without worry or anxieties, supposing those questions bring with them those feelings? — kudos

"Innocence" is another word I don't like very much. It is a feature that belongs to children, presumably, but how long are they supposed to be "innocent"? Freud didn't think they were so innocent. Innocence fits puppies and kittens for only a while.

Experience impels us forward into the world. We find rich and interesting details in experience and we want more rich and interesting experiences. Curiosity, you know.

There's nothing wrong at all with living a simple life, if that's possible. But what does "simplicity" mean? In some ways, the simpler the life, the more anxiety and worry. Picture a family living simply on the land. No worries, except for providing shelter, fuel, food, water, clothing, etc from the land, with their labor. The fatal "simplicity" of that life is deceptive.

Picture a more complex life, one with a house, electricity, canned food, clothing, transportation, medical care, a telephone, etc. This more complex life tends to have more protections, more back-up systems, more help when we need it than a very simple life. Yes, complex lifestyles have significant vulnerabilities. What if electricity fails in a storm? What if the wind blows the roof off one's house? The likelihood of surviving these disasters are really pretty good. Having people to help you means complexity.

Was just getting a little sentimental with the talk of Fox News and self-decapitation. Not exactly care-bears material. Anyway, where is this opposition between innocence and experience coming from? As you say, it's not possible to leave the womb without having experience of some kind. And yet, we believe the quality of innocence is not automatically lost within a certain time-frame of experience, but is lost qualitatively. So, I'm interested, what type of experience qualifies as anti-innocent and what does not?

Experience impels us forward into the world. We find rich and interesting details in experience and we want more rich and interesting experiences. Curiosity, you know.

If you're saying that innocence means, in part, being open to rich and interesting experiences, then we are in full agreement. But certain experiences qualitatively bring about the loss of innocence and the development of wisdom. So innocence is simply a moment of wisdom, because the gain does not occur without the openness to it. To put it another way, someone who never stands outside the idea of the pursuit of philosophical wisdom can't actualize it. The actualization of wisdom and its attainment are two ways of saying the same thing.

You know little children and the "Terrible Twos"? Two year olds can be such a pain. Why is that? Because the cute little innocent child has discovered something that undermines innocence: He has become aware of himself and his measly bit of power. He doesn't have much power at all, but he can wield it; he can now say, "NO" to adults. NO! I won't eat that food. NO! I won't sit on the potty. NO! I won't go to sleep. Just that awareness of self, so essential to development, undermines innocence. And that's just one thing, Learning to talk undermines innocence. Learning to walk and run undermines innocence. All absolutely desirable things!

Innocence is the baby in the cradle. It's a lovely state in some ways, but we don't want to go back to being babies in cradles.

If you're saying that innocence means, in part, being open to rich and interesting experiences, then we are in full agreement. — kudos

Sorry. I don't think I said, and I didn't mean to say that innocence means being open to rich and interesting experiences.

I don't like the terms innocence and wisdom; they're way too loaded to mean much. And I don't think the boss of innocence leads to the gain of wisdom. Innocence is lost early on. Wisdom comes along a lot later and is the result of being 'refined' in the mills of experience.

Simultaneously, he or she has found the abstract notion of the self in language and it's essential quality of negation. Need I remind you that it is a philosophical idea that perpetuates it, they develop the idea of the self. Animals have this same notion, but it does not take the form of thinking for animals. What has happened is that an idea has being actualized in the child. But just because it is actual, doesn't make it deterministic.

In a similar vain, we have the idea of childhood innocence. It is a cultural idea, but that doesn't make it any less actual. And the main thesis of preserving innocence hinges on avoiding exposure to certain ideas and not allowing them to be actualized in the child because the effects are known to be negative to the subject and society. By preserving this transitional state, the innocent becomes more suggestible, because more content grows in the unconscious that isn't finding expression and actualization. I would argue that this process trains the user in desiring ideation and expression.

I guess you might call it the creative spark or the philosophical insight or the religious zeal or so forth. But I believe this process forms a positive idea in the innocent.

I don't like the terms innocence and wisdom; they're way too loaded to mean much.

And yet you find yourself on a philosophy forum, the word generally means 'love or pursuit of wisdom.' And we will happily watch reruns of Family Matters, but find innocence to be a dirty word...

Wisdom is the only word that really matters in philosophy, it's literally in the name.

I don’t think words like innocence or wisdom are particularly useful,

My point about dissatisfaction being the launching pad of much philosophy doesn’t imply that wisdom is achieved. I’m not sure that philosophy has a necessary connection to wisdom. In some cases, perhaps. And perhaps more so if you fetishise wisdom in some Platonic framework. For me wisdom is enhanced discernment or judgement generally based upon experience.

"Philosophia" meant "love of wisdom" to the Greeks. for us it means

the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline.
a particular system of philosophical thought.
plural noun: philosophies
"Schopenhauer’s philosophy"
the study of the theoretical basis of a particular branch of knowledge or experience.
"the philosophy of science"

I have never seen an episode of Family Matters.

A lot of words get abused and take on improper meanings. Take genocide. It is horrible. Take war. It is horrible. War and genocide are different things, even though they are both horrible. So I object to calling Israel's war on Gaza "genocide", especially when the word is tossed around in a facile chant, like "you can't run, you can't hide/we charge you with genocide" chanted at the city council of Helena, Montana. Total bullshit.

"Innocence" and "wisdom" have been abused and over used. It isn't the fault of the word, it's the fault of jabbering.

Yes, I find myself on this "love of wisdom" or "study of reality" site, and often think that many of the arcane posts I read have nothing to do with the price of potatoes--aka, reality. But, carry on, gentlemen.

I don't like the terms innocence and wisdom; they're way too loaded to mean much. And I don't think the boss of innocence leads to the gain of wisdom. Innocence is lost early on. Wisdom comes along a lot later and is the result of being 'refined' in the mills of experience. — BC

I think we agree.

“us”? I mean it’s great that we want to know:

the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence,

But why? And don’t just give me a vague “because we’re curious!” That’s like asking an alcoholic why they drink and getting “it tastes good.”

So counting curiosity out... "The world" is not self-explanatory. Life is difficult. Bad things happen to good people. Inexplicable events happen, without warning, and with usually bad (but sometimes good) consequences. We feel a need to explain the inexplicable and to control nature.

Unlearnéd humans have sought explanations to avoid harms. Over the millennia we didn't make a lot of progress in understanding how nature worked. Then within the last several hundred years we discovered more about the world, and devised more theories about how the world actually worked that turned out to be correct.

Vaclav Smils points out that Newton, et al who extracted some solid principles of understanding the world would not understand much about the modern world, even though gravity, for instance, is still a challenge. The 19th century scientists who probed deeper and developed an understanding of electricity and magnetism, chemistry and atomic structure would be very surprised by the modern world, but they would understand a lot about what we are doing now.

We are safer now in a world we understand much better. Vaccines, storm prediction, quake-proof architecture, and so on make us safer. Of course understanding how to suck up an ocean of oil and burn it has huge down-sides--global warming. But at least we understand WHY there is global warming, and we know WHAT we should do, even if BP, Exxon, Ford, GM, Toyota, and Trump et al stand in the way.

Making life better (or more richly interesting) and survival is why we strive to understand the world.

Making life better (or more richly interesting) and survival is why we strive to understand the world. — BC

Yes, I'd go along with this - which fits with my idea that dissatisfaction is often the fillip for philosophy.

I think a generic 'curiosity' is a fairly inchoate or unsophisticated path to knowledge or philosophical acumen. The real skill is in questioning the assumptions the answers one encounters. This seems quite sophisticated and requires rigorous critical reflection. I’m not good at this past a certain point.

Yes, I find myself on this "love of wisdom" or "study of reality" site, and often think that many of the arcane posts I read have nothing to do with the price of potatoes--aka, reality. But, carry on, gentlemen. — BC

Bullshit certainly seems to get a run on this site. But I also think there are a range of arcane explorations of subjects here that are simply beyond my interest or capacity. But if I did understand, they might well be transformative and enlightening.

In the end, I fear that all of us, no matter how well educated in this subject, still need to piss and eat and still need to treat the world as though realism were true, which means avoiding the worst of the cold, trying to dodge cancer and scrounging enough money to live comfortably into old age.

Wisdom means "the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment".

Your description of why you are interested in philosophy matches almost exactly with your definition of love of wisdom that is its etymology. I personally don’t agree this captures the essence of the idea of wisdom, but for one person, sure.

Hasn’t this understanding of wisdom, and the accompanying tendency that it is good, done you any good? Or perhaps you dislike certain people’s wisdoms you believe are false, finding that the name has lended a false credibility? The belief of it as learned and experienced qualities to you makes them arbitrary?

In the end, I fear that all of us, no matter how well educated in this subject, still need to piss and eat and still need to treat the world as though realism were true, which means avoiding the worst of the cold, trying to dodge cancer and scrounging enough money to live comfortably into old age. — Tom Storm

On the other hand, psychologist George Kelly makes some good points about the dangers of a realistic attitude being taken too far:

…the notion finally struck me that, no matter how close I came to the man or woman who sought my help, I always saw him through my own peculiar spectacles, and
never did he perceive what I was frantically signaling to him, except through his. From this moment I ceased, as I am now convinced every psychotherapist does whether he wants to admit it or not, being a realist. More important, I could now stop representing psychology to clients as packaged reality, warranted genuine and untouched by human minds. Perhaps"realism" is not a good term for what I am talking about. It is obvious, of course, that I am not talking about Platonic realism. Nobody talks about that any more. The realism from which my clients and I are always trying to wriggle loose might possibly be called "materialistic realism." At least it is the hardheaded unimaginative variety nowadays so popular among scientists, businessmen, and neurotics.

What actually jarred me loose was the observation that clients who felt themselves confronted with down-to-earth realities during the course of psychotherapy became much like those who were confronted with downright dogmatic interpretations of either the religious or psychological variety. On the heels of this observation came the notion that dogmatism -the belief that one has the word of truth right from the horse's mouth-and modern realism -the belief that one has the word of truth right from nature's mouth-add up to the same thing. To go even further, I now suspect that neither of these assumptions about the revealed nature of truth is any more useful to scientists than it is to clients.

If one is to avoid dogmatism entirely he needs to alert himself against realism also, for realism, as I have already implied, is a special form of dogmatism and one which is quite as likely to stifle the client's creative efforts. A client who is confronted with what are conceded to be stark realities can be as badly immobilized as one confronted with a thickheaded therapist. Even the presumed realism of his own raw feelings can convince a client that he has reached a dead end. I am not a realist-not any more and I do not believe either the client or the therapist has to lie down and let facts crawl over him. Right here is where the
theoretical viewpoint I call the psychology of personal constructs stakes out its basic philosophical claim.
There is nothing so obvious that its appearance is not altered when it is seen in a different light. This is the faith that sustains the troubled person when he undertakes psychotherapy seriously.

To state this faith as a philosophical premise: Whatever exists can be reconstrued. This is to say that none of today's constructions-which are, of course, our only means of portraying reality is perfect and, as the history as the faith expressed of human thought repeatedly suggests, none is final. Moreover, this is the premise upon which most psychotherapy has to be built, if not in the mind of the therapist, at least in the mind of the client. To be sure, one may go to a therapist with his facts clutched in his hand and asking only what he ought to do with them. But this is merely seeking technical advice, not therapy. Indeed, what else would one seek unless he suspected that the obstacles now shaping up in front of him are not yet cast in the ultimate form of reality? As a matter of fact, I have yet to see a realistic client who sought the help of a therapist in changing his outlook. To the realist, outlook and reality are made of the same inert stuff. On the other hand, a client who has found his therapeutic experience helpful often says, “In many ways things are the same as they were before, but how differently I see them!"

This abandonment of realism may alarm some readers. It may seem like opening the door to wishful thinking, and to most psychologists wishful thinking is a way of coming unhinged. Perhaps this is why so many of them will never admit to having any imagination, at least until after they suppose they have realistically demonstrated that what they secretly imagined was there all the time, waiting to be discovered. But for me to say that whatever exists can be reconstrued is by no manner or means to say that it makes no difference how it is construed. Quite the contrary. It often makes a world of difference. Some reconstructions may open fresh channels for a rich and productive life, Others may offer one no alternative save suicide.

Great post. If wisdom is something we desire, then do all desire it equally? Or maybe it is something only certain people desire. And when we say things like "I learned that the hard way", aren't we confessing that wisdom may have been thrust upon us? And some of the wisest people I know strike me as people who have never been in search of wisdom per se. Instead, their wisdom seems to be a matter of profiting from their experiences, both good and bad. Great post.

Philosophers are nothing but curious children, and children are our purest philosophers — kudos

I am more likely to agree with the latter than the former. Much of philosophy strikes me as anti-curious and focused more upon shutting down the curious rather than seriously considering their questions.

Socrates may be a good example of the philosopher as curious child but we know what happened to him. His incessant questioning was not well received.