On Wisdom, or Prudence

SOCRATES: You’re Lis, aren’t you?
LIS: Yes, that’s me. Who are you, and how do you know my name?
SOCRATES: I’m Socrates, and I was directed here by our mutual friend Kurt.
LIS: Ah, Kurt! Yes, he is a good friend of mine, and I think he’s mentioned your name a few times. What is it you want?
SOCRATES: Well, Kurt told me that you know quite a bit about wisdom, so I came to see what you might have to say. I’ve brought along my friend Meno, who’s also interested. You see, we both think that we’re rather foolish on the whole, and we’d like to learn more about what wisdom is and how we can become wise.
LIS: It seems that Kurt has gone praising me again to others more than I deserve, for I don’t think I really know any more about wisdom than an average person.
SOCRATES: What! Are you sure you aren’t just being overly humble? Kurt was pretty adamant that you would know a lot about wisdom.
LIS: I can’t say I do. But wait, aren’t you the Socrates who likes to go around asking questions and discussing with people?
SOCRATES: I guess some people might say that of me, but why are you wondering?
LIS: Perhaps we could have a discussion right now, the three of us, and see what conclusions we can come to about wisdom? I would certainly be willing to do that.
SOCRATES: That’s a wonderful idea! Meno, what do you think?
MENO: I’ll stay and discuss if you would like to, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then it’s settled. Where shall we start our discussion?
MENO: Oughtn’t we to start it where everyone usually starts it?
SOCRATES: Where’s that?
MENO: With knowledge.
SOCRATES: What do you mean?
MENO: Well, isn’t wisdom a lot like knowledge? In fact, I think it might even be the same thing.
LIS: No, that can’t be right, Meno. Or don’t you know that it’s completely possible to possess great knowledge of things and still be foolish?
MENO: I hadn’t heard that before, Lis. How so?
SOCRATES: Yes, Lis, I would like to know the same thing. It seems to me that the more a man knows, the less foolish he will be. Why do you think that this is not the case?
LIS: If you don’t see it, I feel I’m going to have a hard time explaining it, but I’ll give it a shot. Think about it this way. Can’t a man have a great deal of knowledge about the science of medicine—that is, the facts involved with bodies and what kinds of plants do what things, and the like—but have no idea whatsoever of how to apply that sort of thing to actual bodies? Such a man would know a great deal of things, but would be completely foolish, because he would use the wrong remedies at the wrong times. Thus, wisdom seems to me to be a sort of application of knowledge, not simply the possession of it.
SOCRATES: Hmm. I think I understand. So would we say that a wise man knows how to apply his knowledge?
LIS: I suppose so.
SOCRATES: Then that would mean that wisdom is a kind of knowledge, correct? For how else could he “know” how to apply his knowledge unless wisdom were also knowledge?
LIS: You’ve stumped me already, Socrates. I don’t know how to answer.
SOCRATES: That’s alright. Don’t think I’m trying to defeat you in an argument, or anything like that. I only want to reach a good answer, with your help, and you have certainly been helpful so far. So, it seems that if wisdom is application of knowledge, than wisdom must also be a sort of knowledge, even if it’s a different sort of knowledge than the knowledge which it knows how to apply.
MENO: That’s a bit convoluted, but I think what you’ve said is right so far.
SOCRATES: Then we must figure out what kind of knowledge it is. For I think we must agree that whatever it is, it is a different sort of knowledge than the knowledge it applies. If it were the same sort of knowledge, how could it be of itself? Does this happen in any other sorts of knowledge? Is medicine the knowledge of medicine, or of bodies?
MENO: Of bodies.
SOCRATES: And is carpentry the knowledge of carpentry, or of how to build things out of wood?
MENO: How to build things out of wood.
SOCRATES: So I would say that wisdom cannot be said to be knowledge of knowledge in a strict sense, but the two uses of “knowledge” must apply to different kinds of things. And yet, we must still say that they are both knowledge.
LIS: I follow you, Socrates, but I also have a question.
SOCRATES: Yes, Lis?
LIS: If we say that these are two different kinds of knowledge, oughtn’t we to give one of them a different name? For it seems that otherwise we are likely to confuse ourselves.
SOCRATES: You’re probably right.
LIS: Then we can simply call the knowledge of application, wisdom. Isn’t that we were doing in the first place? So it seems that wisdom and knowledge are still two different things.
SOCRATES: You’ve got me there! I see that you want to be practical about this, which is a good idea. Very well. Let’s say that, though wisdom seems to be a sort of knowing, it is quite distinct from that knowledge which it knows how to apply, and so we will continue to call it wisdom rather than knowledge, leaving the term “knowledge” to refer to that which is applied by wisdom.
MENO: I agree.
SOCRATES: Then, what shall be our next step? Or do we think that we have learned enough about wisdom now?
LIS: By no means, Socrates! There are still many more things to discover about wisdom. That is, unless you think that a man who has knowledge of statesmanship and knows how to apply that statesmanship, and then goes on to become a tyrant, is wise?
SOCRATES: What! Of course not. But you have a point, and I see that there is certainly more to discuss.
LIS: What, then, shall we say? This is a question that has stumped me for some time.
MENO: I can’t say that I see an answer, either. It seems to me that such a man would have wisdom, in the way that we have just defined wisdom, but I can’t agree that a man who uses knowledge of statesmanship to become a tyrant is actually wise.
SOCRATES: You’re absolutely right, Meno, so let’s see what we can do. It seems that these two kinds of knowledge, the one which we have left with the name knowledge, and the other which we have called wisdom, deal with two different sorts of things. The first seems to be knowledge of facts. Would you agree?
MENO: I think so, but can you give some examples?
SOCRATES: Certainly. Think about the examples we used before. Knowledge of medicine is knowledge of how bodies work, and of how various plants affect bodies, and other similar things like that.
MENO: Of course.
SOCRATES: And likewise, knowledge of carpentry is knowledge of what kinds of woods are good for making chairs or tables or houses, and then how to make those various things out of the right kinds of wood.
MENO: I suppose I see that, too. But then what room is left for wisdom?
SOCRATES: Well, in medicine, wisdom is clearly knowing when to apply which treatments. For without such knowledge, wouldn’t we say that a man is not a wise doctor, but a foolish one, no matter how much he knows about bodies?
LIS: But Socrates, I think I see the same difficulty here that we had before, when we were trying to distinguish wisdom from knowledge. For wouldn’t the knowledge of when to apply a certain kind of treatment simply be an amalgamation of the knowledge of bodies and the knowledge of medicines? Say, if a doctor saw a dirty, shallow wound, he would know from his knowledge of bodies that such a wound would be likely to get infected if left untreated, so it should be cleaned with water and then bound with a bandage and probably some sort of plant which would help the body resist infection. This sort of knowledge doesn’t seem to me to be any different from the knowledge of bodies and the knowledge of medicines, when combined.
SOCRATES: That’s a good point, Lis, so let’s look it over. Remember that we said earlier that wisdom is, indeed, a sort of knowledge, so finding that a good doctor makes use of knowledge when we think he is making use of wisdom is not truly a problem. I don’t think that’s your main concern, but I want to remind you of it anyway. Now, this is what I think you’re wondering about. See if I’m right: You think that applying medicine, as a good doctor would, is no different from adding together the knowledge of bodies and the knowledge of various kinds of treatments, and you think that this sort of addition doesn’t really create a new kind of knowledge, as it must if it were to be wisdom as we want to define wisdom, but that it is only the same sort of thing all over again. Is that right?
LIS: That’s just about it, I think.
SOCRATES: But now I have a question for you.
LIS: Fire away.
SOCRATES: Might not wisdom be this very thing, this addition of the two different kinds of knowledge so that they now relate to each other? Or, more precisely, wisdom is the knowing of when to bring two different branches of knowledge together.
LIS: I could see that being the case. Then what about the adding together of the two kinds of knowledge, as a thing in itself?
SOCRATES: That might remain a kind of knowledge in the knowledge sense, rather than in the wisdom sense, but the appropriate adding together of them is done by wisdom, which knows when to add two together and when not to. For example, it would not be wisdom to add together, say, the art of navigation and the art of baking. These two, as far as I can tell, have next to nothing to do with each other, so putting them together does little or no good. But the wise man knows when to add together two things which ought to go together, like the knowledge of navigation and the knowledge of astronomy.
LIS: Yes, I agree. So we seem to have come across some idea of what wisdom is: The knowing when to put two branches of knowledge together. Is this the whole of wisdom, then?
MENO: I wouldn’t think so. I’d wager there is still more to find, as that seems insufficient for what I have always taken wisdom to be.
SOCRATES: I think so, too, Meno. But tell us, do you have any ideas of what to do next?
MENO: Well, Socrates, I’ve always thought, and I think you’ll agree with me here, that wisdom is a part of virtue, along with moderation, courage, and justice.
SOCRATES: By Zeus, you’re right! And virtue, as I’ve heard before, is the thing that, when a man possesses it, makes him good. Isn’t that right?
LIS: Isn’t that part of a conversation you had with my friend Llyren?
SOCRATES: Yes, it was, Lis. That’s where we came to a sure conclusion in that respect. So let’s take this idea now, and see how it applies to wisdom. For I feel compelled to agree with Meno, that wisdom is a part of virtue.
LIS: I’ll try to start us off. If wisdom is part of what makes a man good, then it seems that knowing when two things ought to go together is part of what makes a man good. For that is what we said wisdom is, right?
SOCRATES: Indeed. Now we must see how such an ability truly makes a man good. For it seems that some “appropriate” pairings of knowledge are not good. Take this example: A man brings together knowledge of dancing, which enables him to be light on his feet, with gymnastics and boxing, which make him strong and able to fight others, and also adds in a cunning mind and perhaps some knowledge of locks. Wouldn’t such a man make a good thief? And yet such a pairing of knowledge would not be good, even though those sorts of knowledge do fit together in that way.
LIS: Why can’t we say that they don’t truly fit?
SOCRATES: What do you mean?
LIS: You said that the pairings of knowledge which make a good thief are “appropriate,” but couldn’t we say that they’re actually inappropriate, because they enable a man to do bad things? In this case, they would be just as inappropriate as the pairing you mentioned before, navigation and baking, though in a different way, since those two simply have nothing to do with each other, while the others enable a man to do wicked things.
SOCRATES: That’s a good point. We’ll need to make the right kinds of distinctions here if we’re going to come to a true understanding of wisdom. We could say that pairing navigation and baking is nonsensical, while the pairings of knowledge that make up thievery are sensical, but that both are inappropriate or bad pairings of knowledge.
LIS: That sounds good to me, Socrates.
MENO: And to me. Then, if I may make a conclusion, I would suppose that only sensical pairings belong to wisdom—that is, no nonsensical pairings do—yet not all sensical pairings belong to wisdom, since some of them are wicked.
SOCRATES: Agreed, Meno. Now, here’s another question which seems rather difficult to me: How do we know which pairings are sensical? I suppose what I’m asking is this: If wisdom is the thing which knows how to pair various branches of knowledge in the appropriate ways, how do we obtain wisdom?
LIS: That’s what I’ve wanted to know from the beginning, but I have no idea how to approach it. It seems to be something that you either have or you don’t, and I can’t figure out how someone who doesn’t have it would ever be able to learn it.
MENO: Why not, Lis? We agreed that wisdom is a kind of knowledge, didn’t we? Even though we did say that it’s a different kind of knowledge from the knowledges which it knows how to apply. But if it’s knowledge, it seems like we ought to be able to learn it.
LIS: I would agree that we ought to be able to learn it, but I simply can’t think of a way that it might work. Socrates, do you have any ideas?
SOCRATES: Well, let’s start from the beginning. How do we learn anything?
LIS: From a teacher, I suppose.
SOCRATES: Yes, at least in part. I think we also need something to learn about, but we’re already assuming that wisdom is that thing. Is there anything else we need?
MENO: Nothing comes to mind.
SOCRATES: Alright, then let’s move on. If we’ve forgotten anything, hopefully it will become apparent as we go on. Now, it seems we need a teacher if we’re going to learn to be wise. Who shall we learn from?
LIS: A wise man.
SOCRATES: Very good! But where shall we find one? Who do we think is a wise man?
LIS: I’m not sure what to say.
SOCRATES: How can we tell a wise man from other men?
LIS: I suppose he’ll be the one who makes the best choices.
MENO: Why do you say that, Lis?
LIS: Wouldn’t a wise man know more than anyone else which kinds of knowledge ought to be brought together? So it seems that he would make the best choices regarding any kind of knowledge, because he would understand them the best; and not only that, but he would simply make good choices in life, because he will have always brought together the right kinds of knowledge.
SOCRATES: That seems perfectly correct to me, and it reminds me of something that I’ve heard before on this same subject. Haven’t you heard that wisdom is sometimes called prudence?
LIS: Now that you remind me, I have indeed. What of it?
SOCRATES: Prudence, I think, indicates more clearly the making of good choices. Isn’t the term often used that way?
LIS: Yes, it is.
SOCRATES: So it seems that we have come around to a fuller understanding of wisdom by saying that it consists of making good choices. Now then, how do we learn which choices are good to make? Would we still say it’s by learning from a wise man—that is, one who makes the best choices?
MENO: I don’t see why not.
SOCRATES: Then, how do we learn such a thing from him?
LIS: Perhaps by observing him as he makes good choices?
SOCRATES: Would this be enough, Lis, or would we have to comprehend why he is making the choices he is?
LIS: I think we would have to comprehend why. Otherwise, we would not be wise ourselves, because I think being wise involves making the best choices ourselves, not just copying someone who makes the best choices.
SOCRATES: Then it seems that we must do more than simply observe a wise man.
LIS: Yes, it does. Perhaps he could tell us which choices to make, and which not to make?
SOCRATES: This might be helpful; but how many choices would you say there are in the world?
MENO: Oh, very many.
SOCRATES: Then how could any man, even the wisest, have time to explain all the best choices one by one to someone whom he was teaching?
LIS: I don’t see how that would be possible.
SOCRATES: Neither do I. I think we must learn wisdom from wise men in a different way.
MENO: What other way would you suggest, Socrates?
SOCRATES: It’s hard to say. Let’s go over what we’ve discovered so far, and perhaps we can come to an answer. Wisdom, we said at first, was a sort of knowledge which was able to apply other kinds of knowledge, and we decided that wisdom consisted of bringing together appropriate branches of knowledge. “Appropriate” here means that the pairing is both sensical and good, as opposed to those that are nonsensical, or sensical and wicked. Then, we determined that what this really means is that the wise man knows how to make the best choices in any situation. We thus equated wisdom with prudence, as many people often do. Does this all seem right so far?
MENO: Yes, I think so.
SOCRATES: Then, has it revealed anything about how we ought to learn wisdom?
LIS: No, I still can’t see anything new.
SOCRATES: I wonder if we ought to approach wisdom from a different direction.
LIS: What do you mean?
SOCRATES: It seems that we’ve hit something of a dead end in our current discussion, or at least we don’t have enough light to see which way to go next. But perhaps if we enter the maze from a different point, as it were, we can join up with what we’ve already said while illuminating more of the path.
LIS: That sounds good to me, if we can. What did you have in mind?
SOCRATES: Think about this. If a man knows arithmetic, as one of the branches of knowledge over which wisdom has a sort of dominion, don’t we say that such a man knows how to count?
MENO: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if a man knows carpentry, don’t we say that he knows how to make things out of wood?
MENO: Of course.
SOCRATES: And the same with baking and navigation and geometry and anything else like it. In these cases, we always say that a man knows how to do something.
LIS: What of it?
SOCRATES: It seems to me that all of these basic kinds of knowledge have to do with the how.
MENO: But how does this relate to wisdom?
SOCRATES: I’m getting there. Do you think that wisdom also has to do with the how?
MENO: What else?
SOCRATES: Let’s examine it more closely. Remember that we said wisdom is, in a way, the art of making good choices.
LIS: I think I see where you’re going.
SOCRATES: Would you like to continue in my place, then?
LIS: I’ll try. When we make good choices, don’t we have to know why the choice is good? Specifically, in the way we started our discussion on wisdom, oughtn’t we to know why the different branches of knowledge go together?
SOCRATES: You’ve hit it exactly, Lis.
LIS: So it seems that the basic kinds of knowledge have to do with the how of things, while wisdom has to do with the why.
MENO: Does this help us understand wisdom as a whole any better?
LIS: Let’s see. If we are to learn wisdom from a wise man, then does that mean we must learn why the best choice is best, rather than how it is best?
MENO: It seems to me that both would be useful.
SOCRATES: I agree, Meno. Then ought we to say that there is even a knowledge of wisdom? For it seems that would be how we know how the best choice is best.
LIS: Now I’m confused again. For if we have knowledge of wisdom, oughtn’t there to be a wisdom which reigns over wisdom, telling us why the best choice is best? But then we’ll have an infinite series of wisdoms and knowledges, and that’s obviously impossible.
SOCRATES: Very true, Lis. We’ll have to be a bit more careful with how we describe this, it seems. I think you were right in the first place, and I sent us off course a bit. Looking back, I think it’s correct that we must learn both why the best choice is best and how it is best, but that these are simply the first wisdom and knowledge which we found, not a wisdom of wisdom and a knowledge of wisdom. Let’s look at an example to see if this makes sense. When a doctor combines his knowledge of medicines and his knowledge of bodies, he knows how the knowledge will help the sick body, right? That’s why people come to him: to be cured.
LIS: Yes, certainly.
SOCRATES: But does he know why he ought to put those kinds of knowledge together?
LIS: Aha! Do you mean that this is wisdom, namely, the knowing why one ought to make a certain choice?
SOCRATES: It seems that way to me, at least. But I think I might not leave it at that. What is it that shows a doctor why his knowledge of medicine actually goes with his knowledge of bodies? Surely, he knows that it does, but how does he know why it does?
LIS: I think it must be through wisdom, Socrates, but I can’t explain how wisdom is able to do such a thing. It seems almost miraculous, that wisdom can explain such difficult and obscure concepts as knowing not only how something works, but also why it works.
SOCRATES: Yes, that’s a difficult subject, so let’s leave it aside for now, and go back to wisdom as the knowing why one ought to make a certain choice. We would say that this is because one choice is certainly better than the other, right?
LIS: Of course.
SOCRATES: Well, what makes one choice better than another?
LIS: I’ve thought about it, and I can’t say. That is, I can’t pick out anything that would make some choices better than others. I want to say that it’s just because they’re better, but isn’t that going around in a circle?
SOCRATES: I don’t think it is. For if we say that one choice is better than another, we’re saying that it partakes of the good than the other choice does, aren’t we?
LIS: Yes, I see that.
SOCRATES: And remember, we said before that wisdom is a part of virtue, and virtue is that which, when a man has it, makes him good, right?
MENO: Certainly. What then?
LIS: Don’t you see, Meno? I think I’m starting to understand. If wisdom is a part of virtue, and virtue is what makes a man good, then of course wisdom would tell us which choices are better than others, for wisdom itself is a knowledge of what is good. Isn’t that right, Socrates?
SOCRATES: Just about, but let’s make sure we’re careful of exactly how we say this. We’ve already seen that we need to word our definitions correctly here to distinguish between knowledge and wisdom, between the how and the why, so let’s make sure that we don’t slip up now.
MENO: Agreed. Did you want to change Lis’s definition, then?
SOCRATES: Only slightly, I think. I would say that wisdom is understanding both that the pairing of certain kinds of knowledge is good, and also why such a pairing is good. Those are two very similar ideas, but I think they ought to be distinguished. The first, understanding that a choice is good, is what we’ve been talking about, and the second, understanding why a choice is good, is the one that we passed over just a moment ago, because it was difficult.
LIS: I think we must come back to that now, for it seems to me that we cannot understand that a choice is good unless we understand why it is good.
SOCRATES: Right, Lis, so let’s see if we can now make any progress at all with this idea. In fact, let me know what you think of this: Some choices are good because they are closer to the nature of God than other choices. For don’t you think that a thing is better the more like God it is?
LIS: I think that must be the case.
SOCRATES: Then it seems that we have our answer, don’t we?
MENO: Can you go over that again, Socrates? I’m afraid I didn’t quite follow it all.
SOCRATES: I’ll see if I can make it clearer. We said first that wisdom was the appropriate pairing of two different kinds of knowledge. Then, we noted that such a thing was a lot like prudence, so we decided that wisdom was, more properly, the making of the best choices. We also found that this had more to do with the why than with the how of things. Finally, we realized that why one choice is better than another has to do with how far each choice participates in what is good, and what is good is determined by the nature of God. Therefore, if I can offer one final conclusion, it would be that the wise man is the one who most fully knows God.
LIS: I think that concludes our discussion, gentlemen.