Wisdom and Philosophy: Contemporary and Comparative Approaches PDF
Preview Wisdom and Philosophy: Contemporary and Comparative Approaches
Wisdom and Philosophy Also available from Bloomsbury The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Chinese Philosophy and Methodologies, edited by Sor-hoon Tan The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, edited by Arindam Chakrabarti The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Epistemology and Metaphysics, edited by Joerg Tuske The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Ethics, edited by Shyam Ranganathan Comparative Philosophy without Borders, edited by Arindam Chakrabarti and Ralph Weber Confucius: A Guide for the Perplexed, Yong Huang Doing Philosophy Comparatively, Tim Connolly Landscape and Travelling East and West, edited by Hans-Georg Moeller and Andrew K. Whitehead Understanding Asian Philosophy, Alexus McLeod Wisdom and Philosophy Contemporary and Comparative Approaches Edited by Hans-Georg Moeller and Andrew K. Whitehead Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2016 Paperback edition fi rst published 2017 © Hans-Georg Moeller, Andrew K. Whitehead, and Contributors, 2016 Hans-Georg Moeller and Andrew K. Whitehead have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the editors. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-4869-3 PB: 978-1-3500-4550-7 ePDF: 978-1-4742-4870-9 ePub: 978-1-4742-4868-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wisdom and philosophy : contemporary and comparative approaches / edited by Hans- Georg Moeller and Andrew Whitehead. -- 1 [edition]. pages cm Includes index. ISBN 978-1-4742-4869-3 (hb) -- ISBN 978-1-4742-4868-6 (epub) -- ISBN 978-1-4742-4870-9 (epdf) 1. Philosophy, Comparative. 2. Wisdom. I. Moeller, Hans-Georg, 1964- editor. B21.W57 2016 109--dc23 2015030969 Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN Contents Introduction Andrew K. Whitehead and Hans-Georg Moeller vii Part 1 Chinese Wisdom 1 The Wisdom of Charioteering (Yu 御): Old Practice, New Perspectives 3 Robin R. Wang 2 Lessons from Stupidity: Wisdom and the Man from Song 15 Jim Behuniak 3 The Wisdom of the Unsayable in the Chinese Tradition 25 Karl-Heinz Pohl Part 2 Wisdom Compared 4 The Philosopher or the Sage? Apophaticism in Europe and China 55 William Franke 5 Wisdom as Knowledge and Wisdom as Action: Plato, Heidegger, Cicero, and Confucius 75 Paul Allen Miller 6 Anonymous Sages: Wisdom and Fame in Greco-Sino Philosophy 93 Geir Sigurðsson 7 Seeking Wisdom with Aristotle and Zhu Xi 111 May Sim 8 Wisdom as Realization: Heidegger and Zhuangzi on Belonging in the World 125 Steven Burik Part 3 Contemporary Wisdom 9 Philosophy as a Spiritual Practice: An Old Idea Whose Time has Come 149 Sean J. McGrath vi Contents 10 Wise Questions 163 C. Wesley DeMarco 11 Future-Oriented Philosophy and Wisdom East and West 187 Martin Schönfeld 12 Conceptual Metaphors and the Goals of Philosophy 205 Victoria S. Harrison Index 223 Introduction Andrew K. Whitehead and Hans-Georg Moeller One of the perennial questions philosophers have been asking themselves is what it actually means to do philosophy. According to the ancient Greek term— philosophia (φιλοσοφία)—philosophy is the “love of wisdom.” The ambiguity of the phrase as rendered in English affords alternative meanings. The philosopher, as the “lover of wisdom,” can be understood either as the object of wisdom’s love, and therefore as fortunately blessed as wise, or as the subject who strives towards, and desires, wisdom. But if, as the suspicion goes, those in love are not necessarily in the best position to perceive accurately the object of their affection, the question may be raised: has the actual nature of wisdom so far evaded many philosophers? Particularly in the context of contemporary academic philosophy, the association between philosophy and wisdom is, arguably, more problematic than ever. Already, we find one potential source for the divergences and antagonisms among schools of thought concerning the meaning of philosophy in the Greek conception of sophia (σοφία), which carries the alternative senses of “skill,” “knowledge of,” “acquaintance with,” and even “sound judgment.” In fact, as is shown throughout this volume, these different senses each serve as cornerstones and guideposts for distinct contemporary philosophies. Despite significant changes in meaning, over time, the term philosophy has an unbroken history of several millennia and links not only the postmodernists and analytic philosophers of our day with the Presocratics and Platonists of ancient times but also Western with Eastern traditions which have now entered the sphere of world philosophy. In contemporary academia, these links tend to focus on the meaning of sophia as judgment or knowledge of: wisdom as epistemology. This should not be surprising, if only in light of how wisdom— and in turn the love of wisdom—is conceived in different languages. The English term “wisdom” stems from the Old High German Wistuom, combining (and thereby conflating) “wise” with the abstract suffix of state— tuom (judgment). Philosophy is therefore—and rather appropriately in light viii Wisdom and Philosophy of the contemporary academic philosophical landscape—“the love of wise judgments.” Curiously, before the term Philosophie was taken up, the traditional German term for philosophy during the Enlightenment was Weltweisheit, which translates as “wisdom of the world” or “world-wisdom.” Those who nowadays search for a philosophy living up to the name of “love of wisdom” tend to look specifically to “oriental” traditions to reconnect the discipline with its “true” or “original” mandate. Trying to account for this tendency requires caution, however, and a deliberate overlooking of the treatment of “philosophy” in contemporary China and Japan. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Japanese philosopher Nishi Amane coined the neologism tetsugaku (哲學) to translate what he had encountered as philosophy in the academic institutions of the West. While the term was originally left untranslated and merely transliterated as hirosohi (ヒロソヒ), Nishi’s move in 1874 to tetsugaku marked a deliberate removal of wisdom (ken 賢) from the Japanese conception of philosophy. In its place, Nishi posited “clarity” (tetsu 哲).1 Nishi explicitly chose this formulation in order to emphasize that philosophy was to be understood as an applicable science grounded in the reality of the world. Through Western sources, where it was used to describe the practices of academic philosophers, the term was later given to the Chinese as zhexue (哲学). The contemporary academic locution for philosophy in China and Japan is therefore the “science of clarity”—a far cry from the “love of wisdom.” The inclination of Western philosophers to look to the ancient classics of the East, however, is mirrored by the inclination of Eastern philosophers to look to the ancient classics of the West. In other words, there is a driving need to re-engage with wisdom in its classical sense. Philosophers have become dissat- isfied with the epistemological emphasis, at least as this emphasis has been construed for the last several centuries. In its current state, the academic meaning of philosophy might best be expressed in the subtleties of its Flemish rendering as Wijsbegeerte, where begeerte carries the multiple meanings of “want,” “greed,” and “covetousness.” In this light, it might be said that this volume therefore reflects a broader tendency in the field, finding dissatisfaction in coveting wise judgments, and a resurgent aspiration to return to the “love of wisdom.” Both the overwhelming compulsion to treat wisdom as a commodity that one lacks and trades and the intellectual derivatives built on its epistemological exchange value are to be left by the wayside. The consensus that it is high time that we should return to the embrace of wisdom’s love in the lived world continues to grow.
The list of books you might like
