WIS-LV-NLG

A Tentative Definition of Philosophy: Wisdom, Love, and Knowledge
(LIBERTY)
UNCATEGORIZEDACCEPTANCE, ANALYZATION,EUDAIMONIA, FINAL END, GOD,HUMAN, JUSTICE, KNOWLEDGE,KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT, LOVE,MEANING, PHILOSOPHY, POETRY,PROSE, PURPOSE, RECOGNITION,RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY, SOPHIA,THOUGHT, TRUTH, VERITAS, VIRTUE,WISDOM6 COMMENTS

What is Philosophy? Previously I described it as the love of wisdom, and that is the famous, literal meaning. Philia, to love, and Sophia, Wisdom. PhiliaSophia, or properly conjugated Philosophy. Putting aside how we all need to study Etymology to get a better grasp of the concepts that dominate our reality, what does it mean to love wisdom?

It raises yet more questions, what does it mean ‘to love’, what does ‘wisdom’ mean? They are of course, the domain of Philosophy.

This is a deep rabbit hole, one I’m not prepared to go down with all my readers just yet. For now bear with me as we descend one vaguely noticeable foothold as a time.

One thing is sure though, this metaphorical rabbit hole is our source of light, it is that light through which all meaning is interpreted; To consider the lack of it would be impossible. Can anyone imagine a world devoid a meaning? Such a thing is impossible, like the existence of nothingness.

But anyways, I’m going to put forward a tentative definition of Wisdom.

Wisdom: The right use of knowledge toward attaining one’s Final End.

Naturally this entails a few things. I’ll skip the most basic premises, and skip to the immediate ones. Human beings have Final Ends, they have purposes. Human beings can know things. Knowledge can contribute to attaining one’s Final End. The right use of knowledge towards this final end constitutes wisdom.

Thus we can have wisdom without knowing what we are doing, without knowing our final end. But knowing our Final End, our purpose and objective, can contribute greatly towards the development of wisdom.

I use the word ‘can’ because knowledge does not necessarily bring us to our Final End, the absolute reference by which we define things as good and evil. My knowledge of cultural conflict, in the absence of knowledge of ethics, may lead me to do things that are contrary to my Final End.

Fortunately I study ethics that I may avoid such detriment, though I may not always succeed.

Second, I will propose a tentative definition of love.

Love: To accept something as it is, fully.

Acceptance is akin to recognition. I see a fire, I recognize it as hot, burning oxygen for fuel, and potentially transformative to adjacent material. This recognition in itself is not love of course; My senses cannot perceive the inner nature of a fire, everything that it is and how it operates. For that I require knowledge and the intellect. Only the combination of the two, sense recognition and intellectual understanding in its entirety can be considered love. What follows is a tentative definition of Knowledge.

Knowledge: To understand, in the sense of grasping the processes of a thing.

Thus, knowledge is a necessary constituent of Love. To Love requires to know, though to know is not necessarily to love. For we can turn our back on what we know for trifling reasons; we can be unsure of what we know, for rational reasons.

To Love is to know something fully, with certainty, to grasp its purpose and its processes and to accept the reality of it. It is to see a painting and see it all, its meaning and its material beauty together, and to recognize it as such.

It is for this reason that I may say that I seek to love all things, but that I do not necessarily love all things.

Philosophy is for me, tentatively, the love of ways that I may attain my final end.

Whether this definition is absolutely true is something I am not yet true of. I’ll only find out by going deeper down this rabbit hole in my search for meaning.