wise person essay

The 5 Character Strengths of Wisdom in Positive Psychology

How do you define wisdom?

Aristotle believed in two types of wisdom: theoretical and practical. The former involves the exploration of things we can’t change, but about which we seek truth. The latter explores that which we can change through making good choices (Lacewing, n.d.).

Descartes viewed wisdom as good judgment in everyday life and seeking knowledge in all things one is able (Rutherford, 2017).

Confucius said:

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

Do you agree with the heavy-hitters like Aristotle, Descartes, Confucius, and others? Or do you believe wisdom only comes with old age? Let’s discuss it for ourselves. Leave your definition of wisdom in the comments.

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This Article Contains

Wisdom as a virtue and the definition of wisdom, the psychology of wisdom, wisdom and positive psychology, the 5 types of character strengths in wisdom, how can we best use them as strengths, 8 resources, a take-away message, frequently asked questions.

Drop by drop is the water pot filled. Likewise, the wise man, gathering it little by little, fills himself with good.

A single definition of wisdom is difficult to find in psychological research. Some view it as an integration of two forms of knowledge: logos and mythos. Logos comes from formal structures employing logic. Mythos comes from “speech, narrative, plot, and dialogue” (Compton & Hoffman, 2013, p. 200).

Other researchers see wisdom as encompassing a transcendent quality. More openness and the ability to wrestle with life’s greatest questions are hallmarks.

Philosophers Valerie Tiberius and Philip Kitcher and psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett share their definitions of wisdom.

Positive psychologists are exploring what it means to be wise. They’re also curious about how wisdom affects wellbeing.

Although a definition is difficult to come by, agreement on what wisdom is not , have been much easier. Researchers agree that wisdom isn’t a result of aging. They also believe that higher IQ scores don’t equal increased wisdom.

What role does age play in attaining wisdom? Can a child be wise? Current research indicates that the “optimal age to attain wisdom is about 60 years old” (Compton & Hoffman, 2013, p. 201).

Within psychological research, there are a handful of theories about wisdom. One is Robert Sternberg’s Balance Theory of Wisdom . He defines wisdom as “using one’s intelligence, creativity, common sense, and knowledge” to balance three life domains. They are interpersonal, intra-personal, and extra-personal interests. People do this over the short and long-term. The goal is to achieve balance among:

adaptation to current environments,
shaping of those environments, and
choosing a new environment

Baltes and Staudinger (2000, p. 124) define wisdom as “expertise in the fundamental pragmatics of life.” This is further defined as “knowledge and judgment about the essence of the human condition and the ways and means of planning, managing, and understanding a good life.”

Through their research, they developed five criteria for evaluating wisdom-related performance.

Factual (declarative) knowledge which asks, ‘What does one know about human nature, interpersonal relations, and social norms?’
Procedural knowledge criteria answers, ‘What strategies does one use to navigate the twists and turns of life?’
Lifespan contextualism criteria consider questions like, ‘Where does everything fit?’ ‘How are things interconnected?’ and ‘How are the various roles – education, family, etc. connected?’
The relativism of values and life priorities allows for the tolerance of differences in values between people.
Recognition of and management of uncertainty criteria acknowledges that we don’t know everything. There are limits to human processing.

Ardelt (2004, p. 257) in contrast to Baltes and Staudinger (2000), viewed wisdom as an “ integration of cognitive, reflective, and affective personality characteristics .” She argues that preserved wisdom (writings) represent theoretical (intellectual) knowledge. This knowledge doesn’t become wisdom until or unless the person internalizes it. For this to happen a person must experience the truth contained in the preserved wisdom. Doing this leads to the person becoming wise(r).

Meeks and Jeste (2009) reviewed the wisdom literature and identified common areas. From their review, they created the six sub-components of wisdom:

Prosocial attitudes/behaviors: promotion of common good, empathy , social cooperation, and altruism
Social decision making/pragmatic knowledge of life: understanding others’ emotions and motivations and using the information to make “wise” social decisions
Emotional homeostasis: self-control and impulse control; ability to manage oneself in challenging situations
Reflection/self-understanding: Self-knowledge
Value relativism/tolerance: perspective-taking behavior
Acknowledgment of and dealing effectively with uncertainty/ambiguity: navigating uncertainty and acknowledging/accepting the limits of what one knows.

Their review also is interesting for its inclusion of specific brain regions believed to play a role in the six sub-components.

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Peterson and Seligman (2004, p. 39) define wisdom as “ knowledge hard fought for, and then used for good. ” They describe it as a noble virtue or trait — one that people appreciate in others.

To date, five strengths fall beneath the wisdom umbrella in their research:

Love of Learning

Perspective.

Each of these strengths exists in every person to some degree. They also can increase in prominence as you learn to use them more. These strengths are part of a larger list consisting of twenty-four.

You can learn about all 24 of your character strengths and see how each rank. Here are two resources:

Read Seligman’s (2011) book, Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and wellbeing . Beginning on p. 243 of the appendix, you can take a condensed version of the VIA character strengths test .
Visit ViaCharacter.org .

After you discover your top five strengths (the ones you use most often), take a look at your bottom five. These represent the strengths you don’t use as often. Some consider these weaknesses, but this isn’t necessarily true. They could be areas you don’t think much about or don’t value. For example, are you an Atheist? If so, then spirituality might be in your bottom five.

You use the strengths in the middle on an “as needed” basis. For example, if leadership is in the middle of your list, what situations call it forth? Do you use it when no one else will “step up,” and you feel the situation is important?

Revisit your results. Where do the five “wisdom” strengths fall in your list?

Wisdom/Knowledge includes some of the most dominant character strengths (VIA Character Institute, 2015a).

As of 2015, The VIA Institute on Character analyzed 655,000 results. They learned the following (VIA Character Institute, 2015a):

93% of respondents have either fairness, curiosity, love, judgment, or kindness among their top-5 ranked character strengths.
87% of respondents have either fairness, curiosity, love, or judgment as one of their top-5 strengths.
77% of respondents have either fairness, curiosity or love as one of their top-5 strengths.
61% of respondents have either fairness or curiosity as one of their top-5 strengths.
All the Temperance strengths (self-regulation, modesty, prudence, and zest) appear least often. They’re usually ranked at the bottom.
The 10 most frequent “go-to” strengths fall into either Wisdom/Knowledge or Transcendence.

You might be curious, and most of you are according to the previous stats if your “go-to” strengths change. Suppose you take the assessment and then retake it 6 months or a year later — what might happen?

The test has good reliability which means that things aren’t likely to change much if at all. You could see a bit of shifting. Some results are close to others so they could flip. What is less likely is that your top five will become your bottom five.

Your strengths also could move around if you’ve experienced significant personal growth. Later, you’ll read about specific activities you can do so that you can develop your strengths.

Visit the VIA Institute’s FAQ page for more information.

Like wisdom, a definition of creativity is difficult to find. Researchers tend to refer to Big C and Little c creativity as a way to ferret out differences. Big C creativity is those works that transform whole groups of people. The impact of Big C creativity remains throughout history. It’s transformative.

Little creative endeavors impact the person but also can affect others on a smaller scale. The originality associated with this type of creativity involves solving common problems. You also might apply creative originality to everyday routines.

Creativity, as defined by Peterson and Seligman (2004), is “ thinking of novel and productive ways to conceptualize and do things; includes artistic achievement but is not limited to it ” (p. 29). The essential elements of creativity are originality plus adaptiveness.

Measuring creativity is difficult, but that hasn’t prevented researchers from trying. In fact, many have developed original scales and assessments to do it.

The Remote Association Test (RAT), Alternative (Unusual) Uses Test, and Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking all are process measures. All these tests seek to answer how creativity happens.

The first test asks subjects to form an association between a set of words. For example, try these:

Swiss, cake, cottage
man, glue, star

The Alternative (Unusual) Uses Test requires subjects to find as many possible uses for an ordinary object. Fluency, flexibility, and originality factor into the scoring. The purpose of the test is to measure divergent thinking.

The last test, used primarily with children, measures creativity, e.g., divergent thinking. Creativity Explained has a helpful explanation of this test.

Three assessments are useful in assessing creativity related to outcome:

The first is the Lifetime Creativity Scale. It’s a self-assessment. The second is the Consensual Assessment Technique. Both of these measures Little c. The latter being a more objective measurement tool. A Big C creativity measurement is the Creative Achievement Scale. It evaluates a person’s lifework.

The Creative Achievement Scale questionnaire is available in Carson, Peterson, and Higgins’ (2005) Reliability, validity, and factor structure of the Creative Achievement Questionnaire. You can download the article at Researchgate.net .

For more information about these assessments, read Character Strengths and Virtues by Peterson and Seligman (2004).

If you’re told to “be creative” then you will be. Open, supportive, informal, and reinforcing environments increase creativity (Peterson & Seligman, 2004.) The opposite doesn’t. In fact, it is easier to create an unsupportive, constrained environment that suffocates creativity.

Highly creative people tend to allow ideas to marinate while they’re working on other projects. You’ll notice that these people work on many problems simultaneously (Peterson & Seligman, 2004).

Peterson and Seligman (2004) point out three areas needing more research. They are:

the genetic basis of creativity
the relationship between little c and Big C creativity, and
the relationship between creativity and other human virtues

Creativity correlates highest with curiosity, bravery, perspective, zest , and judgment/critical thinking (Niemiec, 2018).

Have you ever wondered what’s happening in your brain when you’re curious? Researcher Matthias Gruber explains this beautifully.

Curiosity is taking an interest in ongoing experience for its own sake; finding subjects and topics fascinating; exploring and discovering (Peterson & Seligman, 2004).

There’s extensive research, dating back to the late 70s, about curiosity. The tools developed and used to assess this trait are all self-report questionnaires. Some have inadequate psychometric properties, but others provide useful information.

Peterson and Seligman offer insights into each, concluding with the Curiosity and Exploration Inventory (CEI). This tool consists of seven items. The researchers state that this assessment has “good psychometric properties and construct validity” (p. 133). You can access the CEI-II , a ten-item scale from MIDSS. It takes less than two minutes to complete.

Current research is asking a slightly different question. Rather than “ How curious are you? ” Kashdan, Disabato, Goodman, and Naughton (2018) are asking, “ How are you curious? ”

They’ve identified five dimensions of curiosity using a 25-item questionnaire. They are:

Deprivation Sensitivity – Deep need to fill knowledge gaps.
Joyous Exploration – Finding the world to be a fascinating place.
Social Curiosity – Wanting to know what others are thinking and doing.
Stress Tolerance – Accepting and using the anxiety associated with new experiences.
Thrill Seeking – Risk-taking behavior that gives “varied, complex, and intense experiences” (Kashdan et al., 2018)

The team uncovered a few interesting results while working with two large organizations. For instance:

intense positive emotions have a strong link with joyous exploration
competency, autonomy, and belongness have a strong link to stress tolerance
being kind, generous, and modest has a strong link to social curiosity
four of the dimensions improve work outcomes, particularly stress tolerance and social curiosity
84% of the people in their Merck KGaA study believe curiosity leads to new ideas

The study of curiosity isn’t a “one size fits most” endeavor. Scientists like Kashdan advocate taking what he calls a nuanced approach.

Curiosity correlates highest with zest, love of learning, creativity, hope , and perspective (Niemiec, 2018).

Also called open-mindedness or critical thinking, judgment is thinking things through. Peterson and Seligman emphasize that it’s “not jumping to conclusions” (2004, p. 29). Judgment is the ability to take in new evidence and change one’s mind if necessary. It’s weighing information fairly.

Researchers approach the assessment of judgment in three ways:

Self-report surveys
Content analysis of verbal statements
Expert analysis of arguments

You can find several examples in Character Strengths and Virtues (Peterson & Seligman, 2004, p. 147). Here are three, one from each category:

Dogmatism Scale (self-report survey) – Read: Dogmatism updated: A scale revision and validation
Integrative Complexity (content analysis of verbal statements) – See: University of Montana Automated Integrative Complexity
Argument Evaluation Test (expert analysis of arguments) – See: Critical Thinking Worksite : Argument Evaluation

Exercising good judgment isn’t easy even when it’s a person’s strength. It requires one to identify personal biases, and work against them to assess the situation fairly; be less self-centered, and understand the impermanence of many decisions. Oftentimes, people forget that course-corrections are possible after a judgment error.

Judgment/critical thinking correlates highest with perspective, prudence, honesty, love of learning, and fairness (Niemiec, 2018).

Peterson and Seligman (2004) describe a love of learning as “ mastering new skills, topics, and bodies of knowledge .” Formal or informal education isn’t important. Love of learning involves systematically adding to one’s knowledge base.

You might have this in your top five if you strongly agree with the following statements (Peterson & Seligman, 2004, p. 163):

I can’t do the task now, but I think I’ll be able to do it in the future.
I like to learn new things
I’ll do whatever it takes in order to do a task correctly.
Learning is a positive experience
I care more about doing a thorough job than whether I receive a good grade.

Love of learning doesn’t typically fall in the top five for most people. In fact, it shows up about 27% of the time placing it in the top ten.

Having a love of learning translates into a motivational superpower. People with this strength tend to persist in the face of challenges (VIA Character Institute, n.d.). Learning invigorates them.

There are five conditions that affect a person’s ability to find connections so that content is more easily learned. Think about a subject with which you struggled in school. If you were able to master it, what factors helped you do that? If you were unable to succeed, what was missing?

Peterson and Seligman (2004) highlight the following characteristics or traits:

positive feelings about the specific content area
knowledge about the content area relative to the other involvements they have
belief that a task is doable
curiosity about a task that manifests itself in the asking of curious questions
the ability to identify and make use of resources in order to work on a task.

There are several measurement tools available to determine one’s love of learning (Peterson & Seligman, 2004, p. 165). They fall into four categories:

Motivational orientation
Well-developed individual interest

Love of learning is universal, but the way it takes shape isn’t. Culture does play a role in how it comes to fruition. There aren’t necessarily gender differences either. Males don’t have a stronger predisposition for a love of learning than females (Peterson & Seligman, 2004, p. 172-73).

Love of learning correlates highest with curiosity, appreciation of beauty/excellence, judgment/critical thinking, creativity, and zest (Niemiec, 2018).

Wise counsel is the trademark of perspective. It’s the ability to look at the world and see your role, as well as the role of others, in it. From the standpoint of onlookers, how this person views things clicks. It makes sense.

The Vlogbrothers, John and Hank Green offer a steady supply of wisdom laced with perspective. Here’s an example you might enjoy.

As we discovered with the previous aspects of wisdom, measurement is challenging, but not impossible. Most research falls into one of three areas:

wise process
wise product, or
wise persons

It’s the combination of these three that yields what researchers now agree about: Wise products are generated by wise persons using wise processes .

How do researchers determine the wiseness (measure of being wise) or perspective of subjects? The most often used scales highlighted by Peterson and Seligman (2004) are:

ACL Practical Wisdom Scale, a self-report questionnaire
Transcendent Wisdom Scale, open-ended question format
CAQ Wisdom Scale, observer-based
Acquired Wisdom Scale, open-ended question format
CPI Wisdom Scale, self-report tool

One interesting note about perspective is that it’s not only available from the elderly. Some people, according to Hartman (2000, p. 101) “attain higher levels of wisdom earlier in the life course than is expected [the 40].” She called this precocious wisdom.

She conducted a longitudinal study of women in midlife that revealed that a “wide range of adult experiences precedes the development of wisdom” (Peterson & Seligman, 2004, p. 191).

Five factors enable or inhibit perspective, according to Peterson and Seligman (2004):

Life tasks – Pursuing career tasks in the late 30s and 40s, for example, led to the development of precocious wisdom by age 43.
Adjustment – Wisdom isn’t simply about adjusting to societal norms and expectations.
Coming to terms with life choices – People who are able to do this by age 53 are wiser at age 53. This was true when compared to people having no regrets. It also was true when compared to people with unresolved regrets (Hartman, 2000).
Life changes – Hartman (2000) found that women who experienced more major changes in love and career developed more wisdom by midlife.
Stressful life experiences – Higher rates of negative stressors inhibit the development of wisdom.

You might recall one of the questions posed at the beginning of this article, “Can a child be wise?” How does reading about perspective influence your judgment of this?

Perspective correlates highest with social intelligence, judgment, hope, bravery, and honesty (Niemiec, 2018).

As promised, here are several activities you can try for each of the five wisdom strengths. You can find these, and much more in, Character Strengths Interventions: A field guide for practitioners .

In what situations are you most creative?
How does creativity help you solve problems?
What holds you back from expressing your creativity?
Engage in divergent thinking about a problem or situation. How many alternate solutions can you generate?
Before getting started on a problem, remind yourself to “be creative.” You could use the Creative Whack Pack to jumpstart your ideas.
How does your curiosity present across the different domains of your life?
Where do you feel most comfortable being curious?
In what situations does your curiosity get you into trouble?
What blocks or interferes with your curiosity?
Consider an activity you don’t like. Find three novel features of it while you do it.
Practice active curiosity. Actively explore your environment instead of responding only when something new pops up.
What are some ways you use judgment/critical thinking in an automatic way that is also productive for you?
As judgment is a strong “mind” strength, in what situations is it best to combine it with a “heart” strength?
When are you most vulnerable to overusing this strength?
Challenge your personal biases by seeking out information that is counter to your beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.
When in an argument, practice taking an approach that embodies the belief that truth emerges from a process of critical inquiry in which all important sides should be considered.
What is a new area you could apply this strength to?
In what situations does your curiosity lead you to dig deeper and systematically learn a new skill/topic and in what situations is curiosity not a driving force?
What topic areas of your learning are most important to you?
Choose a subject matter that you are most curious about learning more. Pursue this interest area as you dig deeper and wider on the topic.
When faced with learning something that might be boring to you, consider how learning it might benefit you and the world beyond you.
In what situations do you feel most/least comfortable in sharing your perspective?
How has this character strength helped you in your relationships and work?
Name instances when you have missed opportunities to share a bigger picture view. How might you learn from this?
Name a life problem. Imagine yourself traveling around the world speaking about it with people from different cultures. Gather information about differences in life contexts, values, and perspectives.
Talk with a wise person or imagine the conversation. What questions do you ask? What answers are given? What advice is offered?

General Strength-boosting

Use a signature strength in a new way. Take the VIA assessment. Choose one of your top 5 and use it in a different way. For example, for creativity, turn an inanimate object into something meaningful (Niemiec, 2018, p. 41).
Acting “as if” – Choose a strength you want to improve. Using all the synonyms for it, practice that strength in real situations.
Create a strengths habit – Think about a strength you want to build. Establish a cue, routine, and reward for it. Initially, try keeping it to something you can do in 30 seconds or less. For example, maybe you want to increase humor. Place a joke book near your bed. When you get up in the morning choose a page and read one joke. Tell yourself “good job!”
Boost a lower strength – Choose a strength from your bottom 5. Use it in a new way every day for a week.

Character strengths can be over/underused. The goal is to achieve optimal use of each of the 24 as needed. Following are examples of issues arising from over/under use of particular strengths (Niemiec, 2018).

Extreme creativity leads to eccentricity, but a lack of it leads to conformity. We strive for adaptive originality.
Someone who is overly curious is nosy, but a lack of curiosity leads to disinterest. Strive for a balance between exploration/seeking novelty.
Narrow-mindedness and cynicism are judgment “gone bad.” People who lack good judgment tend to skip reflecting on situations.
Balanced use marries critical thinking and rationality.
Know-it-alls flaunt their love of learning. Complacent people don’t care. Strive for deepening your knowledge systematically.
Extreme use of perspective is overbearing, and a lack of it is shallowness. A wider view is optimal.

17 Exercises To Discover & Unlock Strengths

Use these 17 Strength-Finding Exercises [PDF] to help others discover and leverage their unique strengths in life, promoting enhanced performance and flourishing.

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

Positive Psychology: The science of happiness and flourishing by William C. Compton and Edward Hoffman ( Amazon )
Character Strengths and Virtues by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman ( Amazon )
Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and well-being by Martin Seligman ( Amazon )
Character strengths Interventions: A field guide for practitioners by Ryan M. Niemiec ( Amazon )
Philosophy: An illustrated history of thought by Tom Jackson ( Amazon )
Researcher Francesca Gino’s article , Why curiosity matters: The business case for curiosity offers great insights. Among them are five ways employers can encourage this trait.
Five-Dimensional Curiosity Scale ( Docx )
What if affect – our mood – could be a source of wisdom? Lisa Feldman Barrett explains how mood (not emotions) can inform our actions and allow us to make better choices in this video . She encourages us to take a breath before acting so that negative affect doesn’t take control.

Each of the 5 character strengths of wisdom can, like all 24 strengths, develop over time. Think of every strength as a perennial seed planted in your garden. The ones you feed, water, and weed, will thrive. The ones you don’t will wither, but not necessarily die. When you decide to give that little withered plant a bit more attention, it’ll perk back up and start anew.

Which wisdom strength will you feed today?

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Strengths Exercises for free .

We need wisdom to;

make better decisions,
navigate complex situations, and
find meaning in our lives.

Wisdom can also help us cultivate positive relationships, cope with challenges, and promote personal growth (Ardelt, 2016).

The three types of wisdom identified by some scholars are (Jeste & Vahia, 2008);

cognitive wisdom – involves knowledge and the ability to think critically,
reflective wisdom – involves introspection and self-awareness, and
compassionate wisdom – involves empathy and concern for others.

Wisdom is a form of knowledge that involves more than just factual or theoretical knowledge. It also involves practical knowledge and the ability to apply knowledge in a way that promotes personal and social wellbeing (Sternberg, 2003).

Ardelt, M. (2004). Wisdom as expert knowledge system: A critical review of a contemporary operationalization of an ancient concept. Human Development , 47 (5), 257-285.
Ardelt, M. (2019). Wisdom as expert knowledge system and its development in adulthood. In The Routledge Handbook of Wisdom Studies (pp. 117-129). Routledge.
Baltes, P. B., & Staudinger, U. M. (2000). Wisdom: A metaheuristic (pragmatic) to orchestrate mind and virtue toward excellence. American Psychologist , 55 (1), 122-136.
Carson, S. H., Peterson, J. B., & Higgins, D. M. (2005). Reliability, validity, and factor structure of the creative achievement questionnaire. Creativity Research Journal , 17 (1), 37-50.
Compton, W. C., & Hoffman, E. (2013). Positive psychology: The science of happiness and flourishing (2nd ed.). Cengage Learning.
Gough, H. G. (1979). A creative personality scale for the adjective check list. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 37 (8), 1398-1405.
Hartman, P. S. (2000). Women developing wisdom: Antecedents and correlates in a longitudinal sample. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Jeste, D. V., & Vahia, I. V. (2008). Comparison of the conceptualization of wisdom in ancient Indian literature with modern views: Focus on the Bhagavad Gita. Psychiatry, 71(3) , 197-209.
Kashdan, T. B., Disabato, D. J., Goodman, F. R. & Naughton, C. (2018, September-October). Why curiosity matters: The five dimensions of curiosity. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2018/09/curiosity
Lacewing, M. (n.d.). Practical wisdom. Retrieved from http://s3-euw1-ap-pe-ws4-cws-documents.ri-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/9781138793934/A22014/ethical_theories/Aristotle%20on%20practical%20wisdom.pdf
Meeks, T. W., & Jeste, D. V. (2009). Neurobiology of wisdom: A literature overview. Archives of General Psychiatry , 66 (4), 355-365.
Niemiec, R. M. (2018). Character strengths interventions: A field guide for practitioners. Hogrefe Publishing.
Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification (Vol. 1). Oxford University Press.
Rutherford, D. (2017). Descartes’ ethics. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-ethics/
Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and well-being. Atria Books.
Shearman, S. M., & Levine, T. R. (2006). Dogmatism updated: A scale revision and validation. Communication Quarterly , 54 (3), 275-291.
Sternberg, R. J. (2003). Wisdom, intelligence, and creativity synthesized . Cambridge University Press.
Sternberg, R. J. (n.d.). Balance theory of wisdom. Retrieved from http://www.robertjsternberg.com/wisdom
VIA Character Institute (2015a, August 18). Signature strengths-frequency analysis. Retrieved from http://www.viacharacter.org/blog/signature-strengths-frequency-analysis/
VIA Character Institute (n.d.). Love of learning. Retrieved from https://www.viacharacter.org/www/Character-Strengths/Love-of-Learning

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What our readers think.

The Root of Wisdom is knowing what an asshole we really are.

Truly excellent. Thank you.

Interesting

Good for clarity n learning.

Here’s a definition of wisdom that I like. Wisdom is the application of the right principle at the right time, as a response to difficult circumstances, that furthers a life affirming outcome.

Wisdom is seeing things as they are and doing things as they should be done.

My top 5 strength are Creativity, Love of learning, Judgment,Curiosity and Perspective. I’m HVAC technician.Seems like i need to change my career. What do you think?

lol then you should be wise enough to decide what’s best for you…

Love this. Thank you for sharing!

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What is Wisdom? How Truly Wise People Act—and What You Can Do to Become More Like Them

By Mike DuBose

The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of wisdom is “the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment.” When it comes to ourselves (and those around us), however, the concept of wisdom can be a bit trickier to pin down. Well-educated people are often wise, but some people who have no formal education are very wise as well. Intelligent people may be wise, but there are also plenty of very smart people who lack basic common sense, much less true wisdom! People who have gone through many different experiences may become wiser by doing so…but only if they look to find lessons within their experiences and apply them in their lives.

Is Wisdom in Decline?

True wisdom is a precious thing, and listening to the news and looking around on social media today, it’s easy to believe that wisdom is in very short supply. Some people intentionally spread lies and misinformation to further their agendas, even if what they’re saying is so blatantly wrong as to be comical, and others are happy to spread these falsehoods without taking the time to examine the statements and discern whether or not they are true (which is certainly something that a wise person would do). Indeed, Steven Pinker, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and psychology professor at Harvard University, wrote in his book Rationality, “Today’s humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding—and also appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that developed vaccines for COVID-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, medical quackery, and conspiracy theorizing?”

Although it is deeply troubling that so many people these days seem unconcerned with real knowledge and understanding, plenty of wise people do exist. Although these folks may not be as loud as their foolish counterparts, they are still present in our families, groups of friends, workplaces, and churches, where they can be relied upon to thoughtfully examine ideas and give good advice based on their knowledge and experience.

The Habits, Activities, and Characteristics of Truly Wise People

When we recognize wisdom in others and seek to emulate their behaviors, we can gain wisdom ourselves. But what does real wisdom look like?

Wise people look inward, and they do so honestly. Aristotle once said, “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” Wise people are reflective. They are able to recognize their own faults and limitations without becoming defensive, and they also extend this tolerance to others.

Wise people don’t shy away from making mistakes. The truly wise are the first to acknowledge when they have erred. They know that mistakes, failures, and difficulties are actually valuable opportunities from which they can draw more wisdom. They don’t dwell on the past, but they do utilize lessons learned from their past disappointments (and successes) to continuously improve themselves and their decision-making. Because they are not afraid of failure, they passionately strive to implement their visions, even when facing major obstacles.

Wise people “underpromise and overdeliver.” Because they are realistic about their own capabilities, wise people don’t overcommit themselves. They don’t make promises that they can’t keep.

Wise people don’t hold grudges. Just as they accept their own mistakes without shame, wise people accept others’ imperfections and failures. They look for the good in everyone, even those with whom they disagree, focusing on understanding and compassion rather than judgment.

Wise people seek to lift others up. Because of their ability to empathize, wise people are often first in line to assist those in need, especially by sharing their knowledge and experiences. They tend to look beyond their personal needs and desires to find compromises that are best for everyone. Although they don’t take joy in arguing, they will challenge the status quo if they feel that something is wrong.

Wise people think before they speak or act. Wise people tend to be calm and reserved. As recommended in James 1:19, wise people are “quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.” Wise people are able to look at arguments rationally rather than basing their opinions on emotions. They do more listening than talking, and when they speak, others tend to listen.

Wise people know that there is always more to learn. The wise are always seeking new knowledge. They push themselves outside of their comfort zones to learn, achieve, and experience more, always believing in their potential. However, they aren’t know-it-alls…no matter how intelligent, experienced, or educated they are. They know that “The only wisdom is in knowing you know nothing,” as Socrates once said!

Wise people surround themselves with those who are smarter, wiser, and more experienced than they are. The wise don’t seek to be the “big fish in the small pond;” rather, surround themselves with positive individuals who challenge them to grow. Many wise individuals also seek help from a higher power in guiding their lives, believing that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10).

Wise people welcome and respect thoughts and opinions different from their own. Rather than relying on friends, media outlets, and conversations that simply confirm the beliefs they already have, wise people look outside the “echo chamber.” While they may discard some opinions after careful thought and consideration, wise people are willing to entertain all fact-based, rational arguments from people with a wide variety of perspectives, regardless of political affiliation (although they avoid one-sided discussions with those who refuse to compromise). As Aristotle said, “It’s the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

Wise people make choices based on facts, evidence, and experience. The wise strive to analyze all facets of a situation before coming to a timely conclusion. They base their decisions on facts rather than emotion or hearsay, and they remain open to reconsidering their stances if and when new information arises.

Wise people look to the future and plan ahead. Although they “hope for the best and plan for the worst,” wise people are strategy-driven. They craft detailed plans so that they know where they are going and how to get there.

Wise people value teamwork. Wise people recognize and appreciate the knowledge and talents of other individuals. They know that they are more likely to succeed when working as part of a talented, passionate team toward common goals.

Wise people live within their means. Plato noted, “The greatest wealth is to live content with little.” Wise people avoid debt, and they value relationships, spirituality, knowledge, and personal growth over worldly success and expensive things.

The Bottom Line : Real wisdom is a rare and precious treasure, but it is one within our reach. If we look at the habits and characteristics of wise people with the desire of learning from them and improving ourselves, we can all become wiser! As Plato once said, “Excellence is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice.”

Mike DuBose has been a staff member with USC’s graduate school since 1986, when he began his family of companies, and is the author of The Art of Building a Great Business. Visit his nonprofit website www.mikedubose.com for free copies of his three books and additional published business, travel, and personal articles, as well as health columns written with Surb Guram, MD. Contact Mike at [email protected] .

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What is wisdom? Philosophers, psychologists, spiritual leaders, poets, novelists, life coaches, and a variety of other important thinkers have tried to understand the concept of wisdom. This entry will provide a brief and general overview, and analysis of, several philosophical views on the topic of wisdom. It is not intended to capture the many interesting and important approaches to wisdom found in other fields of inquiry. Moreover, this entry will focus on several major ideas in the Western philosophical tradition. In particular, it will focus on five general approaches to understanding what it takes to be wise: (1) wisdom as epistemic humility, (2) wisdom as epistemic accuracy, (3) wisdom as knowledge, (4) a hybrid theory of wisdom, and (5) wisdom as rationality.

1. Wisdom as Epistemic Humility

2. wisdom as epistemic accuracy, 3. wisdom as knowledge, 4. hybrid theory, 5. wisdom as rationality, other internet resources, related entries.

Socrates’ view of wisdom, as expressed by Plato in The Apology (20e-23c), is sometimes interpreted as an example of a humility theory of wisdom (see, for example, Ryan 1996 and Whitcomb, 2010). In Plato’s Apology , Socrates and his friend Chaerephon visit the oracle at Delphi. As the story goes, Chaerephon asks the oracle whether anyone is wiser than Socrates. The oracle’s answer is that Socrates is the wisest person. Socrates reports that he is puzzled by this answer since so many other people in the community are well known for their extensive knowledge and wisdom, and yet Socrates claims that he lacks knowledge and wisdom. Socrates does an investigation to get to the bottom of this puzzle. He interrogates a series of politicians, poets, and craftsmen. As one would expect, Socrates’ investigation reveals that those who claim to have knowledge either do not really know any of the things they claim to know, or else know far less than they proclaim to know. The most knowledgeable of the bunch, the craftsmen, know about their craft, but they claim to know things far beyond the scope of their expertise. Socrates, so we are told, neither suffers the vice of claiming to know things he does not know, nor the vice of claiming to have wisdom when he does not have wisdom. In this revelation, we have a potential resolution to the wisdom puzzle in The Apology .

Although the story may initially appear to deliver a clear theory of wisdom, it is actually quite difficult to capture a textually accurate and plausible theory here. One interpretation is that Socrates is wise because he, unlike the others, believes he is not wise, whereas the poets, politicians, and craftsmen arrogantly and falsely believe they are wise. This theory, which will be labeled Humility Theory 1 (H1), is simply (see, for example, Lehrer & Smith 1996, 3):

Humility Theory 1 (H1) : S is wise iff S believes s/he is not wise.

This is a tempting and popular interpretation because Socrates certainly thinks he has shown that the epistemically arrogant poets, politicians, and craftsmen lack wisdom. Moreover, Socrates claims that he is not wise, and yet, if we trust the oracle, Socrates is actually wise.

Upon careful inspection, (H1) is not a reasonable interpretation of Socrates’ view. Although Socrates does not boast of his own wisdom, he does believe the oracle. If he was convinced that he was not wise, he would have rejected the oracle and gone about his business because he would not find any puzzle to unravel. Clearly, he believes, on some level, that he is wise. The mystery is: what is wisdom if he has it and the others lack it? Socrates nowhere suggests that he has become unwise after believing the oracle. Thus, (H1) is not an acceptable interpretation of Socrates’ view.

Moreover, (H1) is false. Many people are clear counterexamples to (H1). Many people who believe they are not wise are correct in their self-assessment. Thus, the belief that one is not wise is not a sufficient condition for wisdom. Furthermore, it seems that the belief that one is not wise is not necessary for wisdom. It seems plausible to think that a wise person could be wise enough to realize that she is wise. Too much modesty might get in the way of making good decisions and sharing what one knows. If one thinks Socrates was a wise person, and if one accepts that Socrates did, in fact, accept that he was wise, then Socrates himself is a counterexample to (H1). The belief that one is wise could be a perfectly well justified belief for a wise person. Having the belief that one is wise does not, in itself, eliminate the possibility that the person is wise. Nor does it guarantee the vice of arrogance. We should hope that a wise person would have a healthy dose of epistemic self-confidence, appreciate that she is wise, and share her understanding of reality with the rest of us who could benefit from her wisdom. Thus, the belief that one is not wise is not required for wisdom.

(H1) focused on believing one is not wise. Another version of the humility theory is worth considering. When Socrates demonstrates that a person is not wise, he does so by showing that the person lacks some knowledge that he or she claims to possess. Thus, one might think that Socrates’ view could be better captured by focusing on the idea that wise people believe they lack knowledge (rather than lacking wisdom). That is, one might consider the following view:

Humility Theory 2 (H2): S is wise iff S believes S does not know anything.

Unfortunately, this interpretation is not any better than (H1). It falls prey to problems similar to those that refuted (H1) both as an interpretation of Socrates, and as an acceptable account of wisdom. Moreover, remember that Socrates admits that the craftsmen do have some knowledge. Socrates might have considered them to be wise if they had restricted their confidence and claims to knowledge to what they actually did know about their craft. Their problem was that they professed to have knowledge beyond their area of expertise. The problem was not that they claimed to have knowledge.

Before turning to alternative approaches to wisdom, it is worth mentioning another interpretation of Socrates that fits with the general spirit of epistemic humility. One might think that what Socrates is establishing is that his wisdom is found in his realization that human wisdom is not a particularly valuable kind of wisdom. Only the gods possess the kind of wisdom that is truly valuable. This is clearly one of Socrates’ insights, but it does not provide us with an understanding of the nature of wisdom. It tells us only of its comparative value. Merely understanding this evaluative insight would not, for reasons similar to those discussed with (HP1) and (HP2), make one wise.

Humility theories of wisdom are not promising, but they do, perhaps, provide us with some important character traits associated with wise people. Wise people, one might argue, possess epistemic self-confidence, yet lack epistemic arrogance. Wise people tend to acknowledge their fallibility, and wise people are reflective, introspective, and tolerant of uncertainty. Any acceptable theory of wisdom ought to be compatible with such traits. However, those traits are not, in and of themselves, definitive of wisdom.

Socrates can be interpreted as providing an epistemic accuracy, rather than an epistemic humility, theory of wisdom. The poets, politicians, and craftsmen all believe they have knowledge about topics on which they are considerably ignorant. Socrates, one might argue, believes he has knowledge when, and only when, he really does have knowledge. Perhaps wise people restrict their confidence to propositions for which they have knowledge or, at least, to propositions for which they have excellent justification. Perhaps Socrates is better interpreted as having held an Epistemic Accuracy Theory such as:

Epistemic Accuracy Theory 1 (EA1) : S is wise iff for all p , ( S believes S knows p iff S knows p .)

According to (EA1), a wise person is accurate about what she knows and what she does not know. If she really knows p , she believes she knows p . And, if she believes she knows p , then she really does know p . (EA1) is consistent with the idea that Socrates accepts that he is wise and with the idea that Socrates does have some knowledge. (EA1) is a plausible interpretation of the view Socrates endorses, but it is not a plausible answer in the search for an understanding of wisdom. Wise people can make mistakes about what they know. Socrates, Maimonides, King Solomon, Einstein, Goethe, Gandhi, and every other candidate for the honor of wisdom have held false beliefs about what they did and did not know. It is easy to imagine a wise person being justified in believing she possesses knowledge about some claim, and also easy to imagine that she could be shown to be mistaken, perhaps long after her death. If (EA1) is true, then just because a person believes she has knowledge when she does not, she is not wise. That seems wrong. It is hard to imagine that anyone at all is, or ever has been, wise if (EA1) is correct.

We could revise the Epistemic Accuracy Theory to get around this problem. We might only require that a wise person’s belief is highly justified when she believes she has knowledge. That excuses people with bad epistemic luck.

Epistemic Accuracy 2 (EA2) : S is wise iff for all p , ( S believes S knows p iff S ’s belief in p is highly justified.)

(EA2) gets around the problem with (EA1). The Socratic Method challenges one to produce reasons for one’s view. When Socrates’ interlocutor is left dumbfounded, or reduced to absurdity, Socrates rests his case. One might argue that through his questioning, Socrates reveals not that his opponents lack knowledge because their beliefs are false, but he demonstrates that his opponents are not justified in holding the views they profess to know. Since the craftsmen, poets, and politicians questioned by Socrates all fail his interrogation, they were shown, one might argue, to have claimed to have knowledge when their beliefs were not even justified.

Many philosophers would hesitate to endorse this interpretation of what is going on in The Apology . They would argue that a failure to defend one’s beliefs from Socrates’ relentless questioning does not show that a person is not justified in believing a proposition. Many philosophers would argue that having very good evidence, or forming a belief via a reliable process, would be sufficient for justification.

Proving, or demonstrating to an interrogator, that one is justified is another matter, and not necessary for simply being justified. Socrates, some might argue, shows only that the craftsmen, poets, and politicians cannot defend themselves from his questions. He does not show, one might argue, that the poets, politicians, and craftsmen have unjustified beliefs. Since we gain very little insight into the details of the conversation in this dialogue, it would be unfair to dismiss this interpretation on these grounds. Perhaps Socrates did show, through his intense questioning, that the craftsmen, poets, and politicians formed and held their beliefs without adequate evidence or formed and held them through unreliable belief forming processes. Socrates only reports that they did not know all that they professed to know. Since we do not get to witness the actual questioning as we do in Plato’s other dialogues, we should not reject (EA2) as an interpretation of Socrates’ view of wisdom in The Apology .

Regardless of whether (EA2) is Socrates’ view, there are problems for (EA2) as an account of what it means to be wise. Even if (EA2) is exactly what Socrates meant, some philosophers would argue that one could be justified in believing a proposition, but not realize that she is justified. If that is a possible situation for a wise person to be in, then she might be justified, but fail to believe she has knowledge. Could a wise person be in such a situation, or is it necessary that a wise person would always recognize the epistemic value of what he or she believes? [ 1 ] If this situation is impossible, then this criticism could be avoided. There is no need to resolve this issue here because (EA1) and (EA2) fall prey to another, much less philosophically thorny and controversial problem.

(EA1) and (EA2) suffer from a similar, and very serious, problem. Imagine a person who has very little knowledge. Suppose further, that the few things she does know are of little or no importance. She could be the sort of person that nobody would ever go to for information or advice. Such a person could be very cautious and believe that she knows only what she actually knows. Although she would have accurate beliefs about what she does and does not know, she would not be wise. This shows that (EA1) is flawed. As for (EA2), imagine that she believes she knows only what she is actually justified in believing. She is still not wise. It should be noted, however, that although accuracy theories do not provide an adequate account of wisdom, they reveal an important insight. Perhaps a necessary condition for being wise is that wise people think they have knowledge only when their beliefs are highly justified. Or, even more simply, perhaps wise people have epistemically justified, or rational, beliefs.

An alternative approach to wisdom focuses on the more positive idea that wise people are very knowledgeable people. There are many views in the historical and contemporary philosophical literature on wisdom that have knowledge, as opposed to humility or accuracy, as at least a necessary condition of wisdom. Aristotle ( Nichomachean Ethics VI, ch. 7), Descartes ( Principles of Philosophy ), Richard Garrett (1996), John Kekes (1983), Keith Lehrer & Nicholas Smith (1996), Robert Nozick (1989), Plato ( The Republic ), Sharon Ryan (1996, 1999), Valerie Tiberius (2008), Dennis Whitcomb (2010) and Linda Zagzebski (1996) for example, have all defended theories of wisdom that require a wise person to have knowledge of some sort. All of these views very clearly distinguish knowledge from expertise on a particular subject. Moreover, all of these views maintain that wise people know “what is important.” The views differ, for the most part, over what it is important for a wise person to know, and on whether there is any behavior, action, or way of living, that is required for wisdom.

Aristotle distinguished between two different kinds of wisdom, theoretical wisdom and practical wisdom. Theoretical wisdom is, according to Aristotle, “scientific knowledge, combined with intuitive reason, of the things that are highest by nature” ( Nicomachean Ethics , VI, 1141b). For Aristotle, theoretical wisdom involves knowledge of necessary, scientific, first principles and propositions that can be logically deduced from them. Aristotle’s idea that scientific knowledge is knowledge of necessary truths and their logical consequences is no longer a widely accepted view. Thus, for the purposes of this discussion, I will consider a theory that reflects the spirit of Aristotle’s view on theoretical wisdom, but without the controversy about the necessary or contingent nature of scientific knowledge. Moreover, it will combine scientific knowledge with other kinds of factual knowledge, including knowledge about history, philosophy, music, literature, mathematics, etc. Consider the following, knowledge based, theory of wisdom:

Wisdom as Extensive Factual Knowledge (WFK) : S is wise iff S has extensive factual knowledge about science, history, philosophy, literature, music, etc.

According to (WFK), a wise person is a person who knows a lot about the universe and our place in it. She would have extensive knowledge about the standard academic subjects. There are many positive things to say about (WFK). (WFK) nicely distinguishes between narrow expertise and knowledge of the mundane, from the important, broad, and general kind of knowledge possessed by wise people. As Aristotle puts it, “…we think that some people are wise in general, not in some particular field or in any other limited respect…” ( Nicomachean Ethics , Book 6, 1141a).

The main problem for (WFK) is that some of the most knowledgeable people are not wise. Although they have an abundance of very important factual knowledge, they lack the kind of practical know-how that is a mark of a wise person. Wise people know how to get on in the world in all kinds of situations and with all kinds of people. Extensive factual knowledge is not enough to give us what a wise person knows. As Robert Nozick points out, “Wisdom is not just knowing fundamental truths, if these are unconnected with the guidance of life or with a perspective on its meaning” (1989, 269). There is more to wisdom than intelligence and knowledge of science and philosophy or any other subject matter. Aristotle is well aware of the limitations of what he calls theoretical wisdom. However, rather than making improvements to something like (WFK), Aristotle distinguishes it as one kind of wisdom. Other philosophers would be willing to abandon (WFK), that is, claim that it provides insufficient conditions for wisdom, and add on what is missing.

Aristotle has a concept of practical wisdom that makes up for what is missing in theoretical wisdom. In Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics , he claims, “This is why we say Anaxagoras, Thales, and men like them have philosophic but not practical wisdom, when we see them ignorant of what is to their own advantage, and why we say that they know things that are remarkable, admirable, difficult, and divine, but useless; viz. because it is not human goods they seek” (1141a). Knowledge of contingent facts that are useful to living well is required in Aristotle’s practical wisdom. According to Aristotle, “Now it is thought to be the mark of a man of practical wisdom to be able to deliberate well about what is good and expedient for himself, not in some particular respect, e.g. about what sorts of thing conduce to health or to strength, but about what sorts of thing conduce to the good life in general” ( Nichomachean Ethics , VI, 1140a–1140b). Thus, for Aristotle, practical wisdom requires knowing, in general, how to live well. Many philosophers agree with Aristotle on this point. However, many would not be satisfied with the conclusion that theoretical wisdom is one kind of wisdom and practical wisdom another. Other philosophers, including Linda Zagzebski (1996), agree that there are these two types of wisdom that ought to be distinguished.

Let’s proceed, without argument, on the assumption that it is possible to have a theory of one, general, kind of wisdom. Wisdom, in general, many philosophers would argue, requires practical knowledge about living. What Aristotle calls theoretical wisdom, many would contend, is not wisdom at all. Aristotle’s theoretical wisdom is merely extensive knowledge or deep understanding. Nicholas Maxwell (1984), in his argument to revolutionize education, argues that we should be teaching for wisdom, which he sharply distinguishes from standard academic knowledge. Similar points are raised by Robert Sternberg (2001) and Andrew Norman (1996). Robert Nozick holds a view very similar to Aristotle’s theory of practical wisdom, but Nozick is trying to capture the essence of wisdom, period. He is not trying to define one, alternative, kind of wisdom. Nozick claims, “Wisdom is what you need to understand in order to live well and cope with the central problems and avoid the dangers in the predicaments human beings find themselves in” (1989, 267). And, John Kekes maintains that, “What a wise man knows, therefore, is how to construct a pattern that, given the human situation, is likely to lead to a good life” (1983, 280). More recently, Valerie Tiberius (2008) has developed a practical view that connects wisdom with well being, requiring, among other things, that a wise person live the sort of life that he or she could sincerely endorse upon reflection. Such practical views of wisdom could be expressed, generally, as follows.

Wisdom as Knowing How To Live Well (KLW) : S is wise iff S knows how to live well.

This view captures Aristotle’s basic idea of practical wisdom. It also captures an important aspect of views defended by Nozick, Plato, Garrett, Kekes, Maxwell, Ryan, and Tiberius. Although giving an account of what it means to know how to live well may prove as difficult a topic as providing an account of wisdom, Nozick provides a very illuminating start.

Wisdom is not just one type of knowledge, but diverse. What a wise person needs to know and understand constitutes a varied list: the most important goals and values of life – the ultimate goal, if there is one; what means will reach these goals without too great a cost; what kinds of dangers threaten the achieving of these goals; how to recognize and avoid or minimize these dangers; what different types of human beings are like in their actions and motives (as this presents dangers or opportunities); what is not possible or feasible to achieve (or avoid); how to tell what is appropriate when; knowing when certain goals are sufficiently achieved; what limitations are unavoidable and how to accept them; how to improve oneself and one’s relationships with others or society; knowing what the true and unapparent value of various things is; when to take a long-term view; knowing the variety and obduracy of facts, institutions, and human nature; understanding what one’s real motives are; how to cope and deal with the major tragedies and dilemmas of life, and with the major good things too. (1989, 269)

With Nozick’s explanation of what one must know in order to live well, we have an interesting and quite attractive, albeit somewhat rough, theory of wisdom. As noted above, many philosophers, including Aristotle and Zagzebski would, however, reject (KLW) as the full story on wisdom. Aristotle and Zagzebski would obviously reject (KLW) as the full story because they believe theoretical wisdom is another kind of wisdom, and are unwilling to accept that there is a conception of one, general, kind of wisdom. Kekes claims, “The possession of wisdom shows itself in reliable, sound, reasonable, in a word, good judgment. In good judgment, a person brings his knowledge to bear on his actions. To understand wisdom, we have to understand its connection with knowledge, action, and judgment” (1983, 277). Kekes adds, “Wisdom ought also to show in the man who has it” (1983, 281). Many philosophers, therefore, think that wisdom is not restricted even to knowledge about how to live well. Tiberius thinks the wise person’s actions reflect their basic values. These philosophers believe that being wise also includes action. A person could satisfy the conditions of any of the principles we have considered thus far and nevertheless behave in a wildly reckless manner. Wildly reckless people are, even if very knowledgeable about life, not wise.

Philosophers who are attracted to the idea that knowing how to live well is a necessary condition for wisdom might want to simply tack on a success condition to (KLW) to get around cases in which a person knows all about living well, yet fails to put this knowledge into practice. Something along the lines of the following theory would capture this idea.

Wisdom as Knowing How To, and Succeeding at, Living Well (KLS) : S is wise iff (i) S knows how to live well, and (ii) S is successful at living well.

The idea of the success condition is that one puts one’s knowledge into practice. Or, rather than using the terminology of success, one might require that a wise person’s beliefs and values cohere with one’s actions (Tiberius, 2008). The main idea is that one’s actions are reflective of one’s understanding of what it means to live well. A view along the lines of (KLS) would be embraced by Aristotle and Zagzebski (for practical wisdom), and by Kekes, Nozick, and Tiberius. (KLS) would not be universally embraced, however (see Ryan 1999, for further criticisms). One criticism of (KLS) is that one might think that all the factual knowledge required by (WFK) is missing from this theory. One might argue that (WFK), the view that a wise person has extensive factual knowledge, was rejected only because it did not provide sufficient conditions for wisdom. Many philosophers would claim that (WFK) does provide a necessary condition for wisdom. A wise person, such a critic would argue, needs to know how to live well (as described by Nozick), but she also needs to have some deep and far-reaching theoretical, or factual, knowledge that may have very little impact on her daily life, practical decisions, or well being. In the preface of his Principles of Philosophy , Descartes insisted upon factual knowledge as an important component of wisdom. Descartes wrote, “It is really only God alone who has Perfect Wisdom, that is to say, who has a complete knowledge of the truth of all things; but it may be said that men have more wisdom or less according as they have more or less knowledge of the most important truths” ( Principles , 204). Of course, among those important truths, one might claim, are truths about living well, as well as knowledge in the basic academic subject areas.

Moreover, one might complain that the insight left standing from Epistemic Accuracy theories is also missing from (KLS). One might think that a wise person not only knows a lot, and succeeds at living well, she also confines her claims to knowledge (or belief that she has knowledge) to those propositions that she is justified in believing.

One way to try to accommodate the various insights from the theories considered thus far is in the form of a hybrid theory. One such idea is:

S is wise iff S has extensive factual and theoretical knowledge. S knows how to live well. S is successful at living well. S has very few unjustified beliefs.

Although this Hybrid Theory has a lot going for it, there are a number of important criticisms to consider. Dennis Whitcomb (2010) objects to all theories of wisdom that include a living well condition, or an appreciation of living well condition. He gives several interesting objections against such views. Whitcomb thinks that a person who is deeply depressed and totally devoid of any ambition for living well could nevertheless be wise. As long as such a person is deeply knowledgeable about academic subjects and knows how to live well, that person would have all they need for wisdom. With respect to a very knowledgeable and deeply depressed person with no ambition but to stay in his room, he claims, “If I ran across such a person, I would take his advice to heart, wish him a return to health, and leave the continuing search for sages to his less grateful advisees. And I would think he was wise despite his depression-induced failure to value or desire the good life. So I think that wisdom does not require valuing or desiring the good life.”

In response to Whitcomb’s penetrating criticism, one could argue that a deeply depressed person who is wise, would still live as well as she can, and would still value living well, even if she falls far short of perfection. Such a person would attempt to get help to deal with her depression. If she really does not care at all, she may be very knowledgeable, but she is not wise. There is something irrational about knowing how to live well and refusing to try to do so. Such irrationality is not compatible with wisdom. A person with this internal conflict may be extremely clever and shrewd, one to listen to on many issues, one to trust on many issues, and may even win a Nobel Prize for her intellectual greatness, but she is not admirable enough, and rationally consistent enough, to be wise. Wisdom is a virtue and a way of living, and it requires more than smart ideas and knowledge.

Aristotle held that “it is evident that it is impossible to be practically wise without being good” ( Nicomachean Ethics , 1144a, 36–37). Most of the philosophers mentioned thus far would include moral virtue in their understanding of what it means to live well. However, Whitcomb challenges any theory of wisdom that requires moral virtue. Whitcomb contends that a deeply evil person could nevertheless be wise.

Again, it is important to contrast being wise from being clever and intelligent. If we think of wisdom as the highest, or among the highest, of human virtues, then it seems incompatible with a deeply evil personality.

There is, however, a very serious problem with the Hybrid Theory. Since so much of what was long ago considered knowledge has been abandoned, or has evolved, a theory that requires truth (through a knowledge condition) would exclude almost all people who are now long dead, including Hypatia, Socrates, Confucius, Aristotle, Homer, Lao Tzu, etc. from the list of the wise. Bad epistemic luck, and having lived in the past, should not count against being wise. But, since truth is a necessary condition for knowledge, bad epistemic luck is sufficient to undermine a claim to knowledge. What matters, as far as being wise goes, is not that a wise person has knowledge, but that she has highly justified and rational beliefs about a wide variety of subjects, including how to live well, science, philosophy, mathematics, history, geography, art, literature, psychology, and so on. And the wider the variety of interesting topics, the better. Another way of developing this same point is to imagine a person with highly justified beliefs about a wide variety of subjects, but who is unaware that she is trapped in the Matrix, or some other skeptical scenario. Such a person could be wise even if she is sorely lacking knowledge. A theory of wisdom that focuses on having rational or epistemically justified beliefs, rather than the higher standard of actually having knowledge, would be more promising. Moreover, such a theory would incorporate much of what is attractive about epistemic humility, and epistemic accuracy, theories.

The final theory to be considered here is an attempt to capture all that is good, while avoiding all the serious problems of the other theories discussed thus far. Perhaps wisdom is a deep and comprehensive kind of rationality (Ryan, 2012).

Deep Rationality Theory (DRT): S is wise iff S has a wide variety of epistemically justified beliefs on a wide variety of valuable academic subjects. S has a wide variety of justified beliefs on how to live rationally (epistemically, morally, and practically). S is committed to living rationally. S has very few unjustified beliefs and is sensitive to her limitations.

In condition (1), DRT takes account of what is attractive about some knowledge theories by requiring epistemically justified beliefs about a wide variety of standard academic subjects. Condition (2) takes account of what is attractive about theories that require knowledge about how to live well. For example, having justified beliefs about how to live in a practically rational way would include having a well-reasoned strategy for dealing with the practical aspects of life. Having a rational plan does not require perfect success. It requires having good reasons behind one’s actions, responding appropriately to, and learning from, one’s mistakes, and having a rational plan for all sorts of situations and problems. Having justified beliefs about how to live in a morally rational way would not involve being a moral saint, but would require that one has good reasons supporting her beliefs about what is morally right and wrong, and about what one morally ought and ought not do in a wide variety of circumstances. Having justified beliefs about living in an emotionally rational way would involve, not dispassion, but having justified beliefs about what is, and what is not, an emotionally rational response to a situation. For example, it is appropriate to feel deeply sad when dealing with the loss of a loved one. But, ordinarily, feeling deeply sad or extremely angry is not an appropriate emotion to spilled milk. A wise person would have rational beliefs about the emotional needs and behaviors of other people.

Condition (3) ensures that the wise person live a life that reflects what she or he is justified in believing is a rational way to live. In condition (4), DRT respects epistemic humility. Condition (4) requires that a wise person not believe things without epistemic justification. The Deep Rationality Theory rules out all of the unwise poets, politicians, and craftsmen that were ruled out by Socrates. Wise people do not think they know when they lack sufficient evidence. Moreover, wise people are not epistemically arrogant.

The Deep Rationality Theory does not require knowledge or perfection. But it does require rationality, and it accommodates degrees of wisdom. It is a promising theory of wisdom.

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics , in The Basic Works of Aristotle , Richard McKeon, New York: Random House, 1941, pp. 935–1112.
Garrett, R., 1996, “Three Definitions of Wisdom,” in Lehrer et al . 1996, pp. 221–232.
Descartes, R., Meditations on First Philosophy , in The Philosophical Works of Descartes , Volume 1, E. Haldane and G. Ross (trans. and eds.), London: Cambridge University Press, 1979, pp. 131–199
Descartes, R., Principles of Philosophy , in Philosophical Works , E. Haldane and G. Ross (trans. and eds.), London: Cambridge University Press, 1979, pp. 201–302.
Kekes, J., 1983, “Wisdom,” American Philosophical Quarterly , 20(3): 277–286.
Lehrer, Keith, B. Jeannie Lum, Beverly A. Slichta, and Nicholas D. Smith (eds.), 1996, Knowledge, Teaching, and Wisdom , Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers
Lehrer, K., and N. Smith, 1996, “Introduction,” in Lehrer et al . 1996, pp. 3–17.
Maxwell, N., 1984, From Knowledge to Wisdom , Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Norman, A., 1996, “Teaching Wisdom,” in Lehrer et al . 1996, pp. 253–265.
Nozick, R., 1989, “What is Wisdom and Why Do Philosophers Love it So?” in The Examined Life , New York: Touchstone Press, pp. 267–278.
Plato, The Apology , in The Collected Dialogues of Plato , Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (eds.), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978, pp. 3–26.
Plato, The Republic , in The Collected Dialogues of Plato , Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (eds.), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978, pp. 575–844.
Ryan, S., 1996, “Wisdom,” in Lehrer et al . 1996, pp. 233–242.
–––, 1999, “What is Wisdom?” Philosophical Studies , 93: 119–139.
–––, 2012, “Wisdom, Knowledge, and Rationality,” Acta Analytica , 27(2): 99–112.
Sternberg, R., 2001, “Why Schools Should Teach for Wisdom: The Balance Theory of Wisdom in Educational Settings,” Educational Psychologist , 36(4): 227–245.
Tiberius, V., 2008, The Reflective Life: Living Wisely With Our Limits , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Whitcomb, D., 2010, “Wisdom,” in Routledge Companion to Epistemology , S. Bernecker and D. Pritchard (eds.), London: Routledge.
Zagzebski, L., 1996, Virtues of the Mind , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Some say wisdom and intelligence apply to different types of problems—wisdom to human problems and intelligence to abstract ones. But that isn't true. Some wisdom has nothing to do with people: for example, the wisdom of the engineer who knows certain structures are less prone to failure than others. And certainly smart people can find clever solutions to human problems as well as abstract ones. ]

Another popular explanation is that wisdom comes from experience while intelligence is innate. But people are not simply wise in proportion to how much experience they have. Other things must contribute to wisdom besides experience, and some may be innate: a reflective disposition, for example.

Neither of the conventional explanations of the difference between wisdom and intelligence stands up to scrutiny. So what is the difference? If we look at how people use the words "wise" and "smart," what they seem to mean is different shapes of performance.

"Wise" and "smart" are both ways of saying someone knows what to do. The difference is that "wise" means one has a high average outcome across all situations, and "smart" means one does spectacularly well in a few. That is, if you had a graph in which the x axis represented situations and the y axis the outcome, the graph of the wise person would be high overall, and the graph of the smart person would have high peaks.

The distinction is similar to the rule that one should judge talent at its best and character at its worst. Except you judge intelligence at its best, and wisdom by its average. That's how the two are related: they're the two different senses in which the same curve can be high.

So a wise person knows what to do in most situations, while a smart person knows what to do in situations where few others could. We need to add one more qualification: we should ignore cases where someone knows what to do because they have inside information. ] But aside from that, I don't think we can get much more specific without starting to be mistaken.

Nor do we need to. Simple as it is, this explanation predicts, or at least accords with, both of the conventional stories about the distinction between wisdom and intelligence. Human problems are the most common type, so being good at solving those is key in achieving a high average outcome. And it seems natural that a high average outcome depends mostly on experience, but that dramatic peaks can only be achieved by people with certain rare, innate qualities; nearly anyone can learn to be a good swimmer, but to be an Olympic swimmer you need a certain body type.

This explanation also suggests why wisdom is such an elusive concept: there's no such thing. "Wise" means something—that one is on average good at making the right choice. But giving the name "wisdom" to the supposed quality that enables one to do that doesn't mean such a thing exists. To the extent "wisdom" means anything, it refers to a grab-bag of qualities as various as self-discipline, experience, and empathy. ]

Likewise, though "intelligent" means something, we're asking for trouble if we insist on looking for a single thing called "intelligence." And whatever its components, they're not all innate. We use the word "intelligent" as an indication of ability: a smart person can grasp things few others could. It does seem likely there's some inborn predisposition to intelligence (and wisdom too), but this predisposition is not itself intelligence.

One reason we tend to think of intelligence as inborn is that people trying to measure it have concentrated on the aspects of it that are most measurable. A quality that's inborn will obviously be more convenient to work with than one that's influenced by experience, and thus might vary in the course of a study. The problem comes when we drag the word "intelligence" over onto what they're measuring. If they're measuring something inborn, they can't be measuring intelligence. Three year olds aren't smart. When we describe one as smart, it's shorthand for "smarter than other three year olds."

Perhaps it's a technicality to point out that a predisposition to intelligence is not the same as intelligence. But it's an important technicality, because it reminds us that we can become smarter, just as we can become wiser.

The alarming thing is that we may have to choose between the two.

If wisdom and intelligence are the average and peaks of the same curve, then they converge as the number of points on the curve decreases. If there's just one point, they're identical: the average and maximum are the same. But as the number of points increases, wisdom and intelligence diverge. And historically the number of points on the curve seems to have been increasing: our ability is tested in an ever wider range of situations.

In the time of Confucius and Socrates, people seem to have regarded wisdom, learning, and intelligence as more closely related than we do. Distinguishing between "wise" and "smart" is a modern habit. ] And the reason we do is that they've been diverging. As knowledge gets more specialized, there are more points on the curve, and the distinction between the spikes and the average becomes sharper, like a digital image rendered with more pixels.

One consequence is that some old recipes may have become obsolete. At the very least we have to go back and figure out if they were really recipes for wisdom or intelligence. But the really striking change, as intelligence and wisdom drift apart, is that we may have to decide which we prefer. We may not be able to optimize for both simultaneously.

Society seems to have voted for intelligence. We no longer admire the sage—not the way people did two thousand years ago. Now we admire the genius. Because in fact the distinction we began with has a rather brutal converse: just as you can be smart without being very wise, you can be wise without being very smart. That doesn't sound especially admirable. That gets you James Bond, who knows what to do in a lot of situations, but has to rely on Q for the ones involving math.

Intelligence and wisdom are obviously not mutually exclusive. In fact, a high average may help support high peaks. But there are reasons to believe that at some point you have to choose between them. One is the example of very smart people, who are so often unwise that in popular culture this now seems to be regarded as the rule rather than the exception. Perhaps the absent-minded professor is wise in his way, or wiser than he seems, but he's not wise in the way Confucius or Socrates wanted people to be. ]

For both Confucius and Socrates, wisdom, virtue, and happiness were necessarily related. The wise man was someone who knew what the right choice was and always made it; to be the right choice, it had to be morally right; he was therefore always happy, knowing he'd done the best he could. I can't think of many ancient philosophers who would have disagreed with that, so far as it goes.

"The superior man is always happy; the small man sad," said Confucius. ]

Whereas a few years ago I read an interview with a mathematician who said that most nights he went to bed discontented, feeling he hadn't made enough progress. ] The Chinese and Greek words we translate as "happy" didn't mean exactly what we do by it, but there's enough overlap that this remark contradicts them.

Is the mathematician a small man because he's discontented? No; he's just doing a kind of work that wasn't very common in Confucius's day.

Human knowledge seems to grow fractally. Time after time, something that seemed a small and uninteresting area—experimental error, even—turns out, when examined up close, to have as much in it as all knowledge up to that point. Several of the fractal buds that have exploded since ancient times involve inventing and discovering new things. Math, for example, used to be something a handful of people did part-time. Now it's the career of thousands. And in work that involves making new things, some old rules don't apply.

Recently I've spent some time advising people, and there I find the ancient rule still works: try to understand the situation as well as you can, give the best advice you can based on your experience, and then don't worry about it, knowing you did all you could. But I don't have anything like this serenity when I'm writing an essay. Then I'm worried. What if I run out of ideas? And when I'm writing, four nights out of five I go to bed discontented, feeling I didn't get enough done.

Advising people and writing are fundamentally different types of work. When people come to you with a problem and you have to figure out the right thing to do, you don't (usually) have to invent anything. You just weigh the alternatives and try to judge which is the prudent choice. But can't tell me what sentence to write next. The search space is too big.

Someone like a judge or a military officer can in much of his work be guided by duty, but duty is no guide in making things. Makers depend on something more precarious: inspiration. And like most people who lead a precarious existence, they tend to be worried, not contented. In that respect they're more like the small man of Confucius's day, always one bad harvest (or ruler) away from starvation. Except instead of being at the mercy of weather and officials, they're at the mercy of their own imagination.

To me it was a relief just to realize it might be ok to be discontented. The idea that a successful person should be happy has thousands of years of momentum behind it. If I was any good, why didn't I have the easy confidence winners are supposed to have? But that, I now believe, is like a runner asking "If I'm such a good athlete, why do I feel so tired?" Good runners still get tired; they just get tired at higher speeds.

People whose work is to invent or discover things are in the same position as the runner. There's no way for them to do the best they can, because there's no limit to what they could do. The closest you can come is to compare yourself to other people. But the better you do, the less this matters. An undergrad who gets something published feels like a star. But for someone at the top of the field, what's the test of doing well? Runners can at least compare themselves to others doing exactly the same thing; if you win an Olympic gold medal, you can be fairly content, even if you think you could have run a bit faster. But what is a novelist to do?

Whereas if you're doing the kind of work in which problems are presented to you and you have to choose between several alternatives, there's an upper bound on your performance: choosing the best every time. In ancient societies, nearly all work seems to have been of this type. The peasant had to decide whether a garment was worth mending, and the king whether or not to invade his neighbor, but neither was expected to invent anything. In principle they could have; the king could have invented firearms, then invaded his neighbor. But in practice innovations were so rare that they weren't expected of you, any more than goalkeepers are expected to score goals. ] In practice, it seemed as if there was a correct decision in every situation, and if you made it you'd done your job perfectly, just as a goalkeeper who prevents the other team from scoring is considered to have played a perfect game.

In this world, wisdom seemed paramount. ] Even now, most people do work in which problems are put before them and they have to choose the best alternative. But as knowledge has grown more specialized, there are more and more types of work in which people have to make up new things, and in which performance is therefore unbounded. Intelligence has become increasingly important relative to wisdom because there is more room for spikes.

Another sign we may have to choose between intelligence and wisdom is how different their recipes are. Wisdom seems to come largely from curing childish qualities, and intelligence largely from cultivating them.

Recipes for wisdom, particularly ancient ones, tend to have a remedial character. To achieve wisdom one must cut away all the debris that fills one's head on emergence from childhood, leaving only the important stuff. Both self-control and experience have this effect: to eliminate the random biases that come from your own nature and from the circumstances of your upbringing respectively. That's not all wisdom is, but it's a large part of it. Much of what's in the sage's head is also in the head of every twelve year old. The difference is that in the head of the twelve year old it's mixed together with a lot of random junk.

The path to intelligence seems to be through working on hard problems. You develop intelligence as you might develop muscles, through exercise. But there can't be too much compulsion here. No amount of discipline can replace genuine curiosity. So cultivating intelligence seems to be a matter of identifying some bias in one's character—some tendency to be interested in certain types of things—and nurturing it. Instead of obliterating your idiosyncrasies in an effort to make yourself a neutral vessel for the truth, you select one and try to grow it from a seedling into a tree.

The wise are all much alike in their wisdom, but very smart people tend to be smart in distinctive ways.

Most of our educational traditions aim at wisdom. So perhaps one reason schools work badly is that they're trying to make intelligence using recipes for wisdom. Most recipes for wisdom have an element of subjection. At the very least, you're supposed to do what the teacher says. The more extreme recipes aim to break down your individuality the way basic training does. But that's not the route to intelligence. Whereas wisdom comes through humility, it may actually help, in cultivating intelligence, to have a mistakenly high opinion of your abilities, because that encourages you to keep working. Ideally till you realize how mistaken you were.

(The reason it's hard to learn new skills late in life is not just that one's brain is less malleable. Another probably even worse obstacle is that one has higher standards.)

I realize we're on dangerous ground here. I'm not proposing the primary goal of education should be to increase students' "self-esteem." That just breeds laziness. And in any case, it doesn't really fool the kids, not the smart ones. They can tell at a young age that a contest where everyone wins is a fraud.

A teacher has to walk a narrow path: you want to encourage kids to come up with things on their own, but you can't simply applaud everything they produce. You have to be a good audience: appreciative, but not too easily impressed. And that's a lot of work. You have to have a good enough grasp of kids' capacities at different ages to know when to be surprised.

That's the opposite of traditional recipes for education. Traditionally the student is the audience, not the teacher; the student's job is not to invent, but to absorb some prescribed body of material. (The use of the term "recitation" for sections in some colleges is a fossil of this.) The problem with these old traditions is that they're too much influenced by recipes for wisdom.

I deliberately gave this essay a provocative title; of course it's worth being wise. But I think it's important to understand the relationship between intelligence and wisdom, and particularly what seems to be the growing gap between them. That way we can avoid applying rules and standards to intelligence that are really meant for wisdom. These two senses of "knowing what to do" are more different than most people realize. The path to wisdom is through discipline, and the path to intelligence through carefully selected self-indulgence. Wisdom is universal, and intelligence idiosyncratic. And while wisdom yields calmness, intelligence much of the time leads to discontentment.

That's particularly worth remembering. A physicist friend recently told me half his department was on Prozac. Perhaps if we acknowledge that some amount of frustration is inevitable in certain kinds of work, we can mitigate its effects. Perhaps we can box it up and put it away some of the time, instead of letting it flow together with everyday sadness to produce what seems an alarmingly large pool. At the very least, we can avoid being discontented about being discontented.

If you feel exhausted, it's not necessarily because there's something wrong with you. Maybe you're just running fast.

[ ] Gauss was supposedly asked this when he was 10. Instead of laboriously adding together the numbers like the other students, he saw that they consisted of 50 pairs that each summed to 101 (100 + 1, 99 + 2, etc), and that he could just multiply 101 by 50 to get the answer, 5050.

[ ] A variant is that intelligence is the ability to solve problems, and wisdom the judgement to know how to use those solutions. But while this is certainly an important relationship between wisdom and intelligence, it's not the them. Wisdom is useful in solving problems too, and intelligence can help in deciding what to do with the solutions.

[ ] In judging both intelligence and wisdom we have to factor out some knowledge. People who know the combination of a safe will be better at opening it than people who don't, but no one would say that was a test of intelligence or wisdom.

But knowledge overlaps with wisdom and probably also intelligence. A knowledge of human nature is certainly part of wisdom. So where do we draw the line?

Perhaps the solution is to discount knowledge that at some point has a sharp drop in utility. For example, understanding French will help you in a large number of situations, but its value drops sharply as soon as no one else involved knows French. Whereas the value of understanding vanity would decline more gradually.

The knowledge whose utility drops sharply is the kind that has little relation to other knowledge. This includes mere conventions, like languages and safe combinations, and also what we'd call "random" facts, like movie stars' birthdays, or how to distinguish 1956 from 1957 Studebakers.

[ ] People seeking some single thing called "wisdom" have been fooled by grammar. Wisdom is just knowing the right thing to do, and there are a hundred and one different qualities that help in that. Some, like selflessness, might come from meditating in an empty room, and others, like a knowledge of human nature, might come from going to drunken parties.

Perhaps realizing this will help dispel the cloud of semi-sacred mystery that surrounds wisdom in so many people's eyes. The mystery comes mostly from looking for something that doesn't exist. And the reason there have historically been so many different schools of thought about how to achieve wisdom is that they've focused on different components of it.

When I use the word "wisdom" in this essay, I mean no more than whatever collection of qualities helps people make the right choice in a wide variety of situations.

[ ] Even in English, our sense of the word "intelligence" is surprisingly recent. Predecessors like "understanding" seem to have had a broader meaning.

[ ] There is of course some uncertainty about how closely the remarks attributed to Confucius and Socrates resemble their actual opinions. I'm using these names as we use the name "Homer," to mean the hypothetical people who said the things attributed to them.

[ ] VII:36, Fung trans.

Some translators use "calm" instead of "happy." One source of difficulty here is that present-day English speakers have a different idea of happiness from many older societies. Every language probably has a word meaning "how one feels when things are going well," but different cultures react differently when things go well. We react like children, with smiles and laughter. But in a more reserved society, or in one where life was tougher, the reaction might be a quiet contentment.

[ ] It may have been Andrew Wiles, but I'm not sure. If anyone remembers such an interview, I'd appreciate hearing from you.

[ ] Confucius claimed proudly that he had never invented anything—that he had simply passed on an accurate account of ancient traditions. [ VII:1] It's hard for us now to appreciate how important a duty it must have been in preliterate societies to remember and pass on the group's accumulated knowledge. Even in Confucius's time it still seems to have been the first duty of the scholar.

[ ] The bias toward wisdom in ancient philosophy may be exaggerated by the fact that, in both Greece and China, many of the first philosophers (including Confucius and Plato) saw themselves as teachers of administrators, and so thought disproportionately about such matters. The few people who did invent things, like storytellers, must have seemed an outlying data point that could be ignored.

to Trevor Blackwell, Sarah Harlin, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.

5 Qualities of a Wise Person (and How to Gain Them)

A wise person does not accumulate a lot of knowledge or experience. They are the ones who know how to effectively use everything they have learned and ignore useless things that do not allow them to develop as a person.

One thing that separates a “wise” person, is their ability to understand and only pay attention to what is important. Most of us don’t seem to apply this simple rule and people have developed an amazing ability to distract themselves with unimportant information, which consequently undermines our ability to be happy , present, and most of all: wise.

We decided to dedicate an article on what it means to be wise and the top qualities of a wise person. So, with that said, let’s keep reading.

Who is a Wise Person?

The common belief is that wise people are able to make better decisions. More often than not, they understand the world better than others and can offer valuable insight into many of life’s problems.

Although wisdom can be synonymous with intelligence or intuition, one thing is certain – wisdom does not mean knowledge nor is it related to education. Also, it doesn’t necessarily come with age. Someone can live to a late age, and it will be only empty years, while someone can acquire wisdom even at a young age.

Even if wisdom cannot be measured or quantified, there are certain behaviors and thought patterns common to all wise people. As such, we have listed five of the most common characteristics that a person with great wisdom might exhibit. Let’s check these out and see if we can learn something from them.

1. Wise People Set Priorities

To learn to set priorities, it is necessary to assign values to everything that surrounds us based on our needs and desires. On the surface, assigning priorities to certain tasks, objects and people in your life can look easy, but to be able to do this, we must understand the following issues and their solutions.

If we find it a burden to decide between important and unimportant things, usually it is because of an internal conflict between what we want and what we know is not appropriate. As such, we are afraid of “harming ourselves,” or getting rejected by society because of our controversial opinions and behaviors.

With higher levels of stress and anxiety , we would have difficulty prioritizing. In these situations, we should consider situations and people that offer real value in our life. During these moments, we shouldn’t be afraid to face criticism or worry about what others are thinking.

You have to understand that prioritizing is not just about ignoring the things that hurt us, but also about reorganizing our lives and finding personal spaces where we can be happy.

2. Wise People Do Not Pick Up Every Vibration

Personal relationships that cause stress or suffering can affect our mental health . After experiencing prolonged periods of intense stress and trauma, our cortisol and blood pressure levels can rise, so much so that there could be a risk of heart problems. It’s not worth it.

It’s not about using bad manners or ultimatums or blackmail. Being able to ignore is an art that can be achieved with elegance and without resorting to extremes.

You should keep these ideas in mind when dealing with volatile relationships:

Don’t worry about things you can’t change. Accept the fact that the family member will continue to have that closed attitude and that your co-worker will always continue to interfere. Avoid bottling up negative emotions like anger or frustration. Just accept them, and instead, use all that energy for something that will put a smile on your face.

Ignore external criticism and increase your self-confidence . It’s possible that you might run into hot water when you decide to distance yourself from those that don’t care about you.

Understand that criticism does not define you. Strengthen your self-esteem and enjoy every step as a personal triumph. These small feats, no matter how uncomfortable or stressful they are, imply that you’re slowly moving towards freedom, away from those who hurt you.

It’s better to work towards freedom and be more relaxed. In life, it is not about accumulating friends, so choose your priorities: let go of irritations, anger, and frustrations, that instead of bringing you joy , only bring you pain and keep you away from a peaceful state of mind.

3. Wise People Accept Failures and Are Not Loud

A wise person experiences failures , like any other person, but does not identify them as anything fatal. They use failure to enrich their experience. I.e., every experience is useful for them and helps them learn, even if it was a mistake.

A wise person talks little and stays silent more, unlike ignorant people who always brag about how they know something. Wise people don’t reveal their intentions because they know that too much boasting causes envy. They work, create, and live in silence, unobtrusively.

Wise people are also cunning but in a positive sense. They know how to make use of circumstances and think ahead, considering all the consequences of their decisions and actions.

4. Wise People Do Not Impose Their Opinions and Do Not Dwell on the Past

A wise person does not impose their opinion but always considers others. However, this does not mean that they will change theirs. They stick to your stance consistently and only change their opinion when faced with the truth. A wise person will have no problem admitting that they were wrong.

Although they seem to be tied to the past, a wise person is always looking to the future. He keeps the past only as a treasure of experience and knowledge.

5. Wise People Interpret Wisdom as a Personal Good

Many thinkers in the past emphasized the fact that wisdom represents good in itself, here and now. There are two main reasons for this claim:

Without wisdom, none of the other benefits fill the individual with satisfaction because it is needed to enjoy health, material well-being, and relationships with other people.

Wisdom is motivating because thinking about the universal order gives the individual supreme satisfaction. Wisdom is considered an advanced, if not final, stage of personal development. In this context, wisdom can be compared with “optimal maturity”.

One of the characteristics of a wise person is the integration of information that relates to him, in such a way as to harmonize the opposites of personal problems, internal conflicts, issues, and priorities, considering external contents.

Wisdom – A Bit of History

The first records of wisdom were found in ancient Egyptian writings dating back to around 3000 BC. There is probably no philosopher or theologian who did not deal with this question at some point in their life. At the same time, of course, they did not always agree on what wisdom is or is not.

Thus, Confucius argued that wisdom can be learned in three ways: by reflection (the noblest way), by imitation (the easiest way), and by experience (the hardest way).

In Metaphysics, Aristotle defined wisdom as knowledge about causes – as such, wise people are those who know why something is the way it is.

In the whole array of opinions, two basic orientations can be singled out. One is down-to-earth and interested in practical, worldly wisdom and how to live well and successfully (ancient Greeks and ancient Middle Eastern and Middle Eastern civilizations).

The other Christian theologians, like St. Augustine, were more focused on transcendental, divine wisdom, and the overcoming of everything earthly.

However, there is a third (like Descartes) that tried to reconcile the previous two: they believed that worldly wisdom is the way to the transcendental, and divine.

The Science of Being “Wise”

Stressful events in our lives help develop wisdom, but only to a certain extent. It seems that people can benefit from stressful events, especially if they have reacted well in such difficult situations. But, if the number of negative events in life exceeds the number of positive ones, it negatively affects the development of wisdom.

Intelligence and wisdom are not the same.

A high IQ does not guarantee you wisdom. Intelligent and highly educated people are especially susceptible to mistakes that prevent them from acting wisely in life and making wise decisions.

Wisdom as an Abstract Concept

Because of its abstract nature, wisdom is the focus of numerous research for experts around the world. Thanks to the efforts in the research work, numerous interesting facts about wisdom have been found, with the help of this research some of its aspects are easier to understand.

It was found that wisdom can be predicted based on four factors, namely intelligence, personality traits, cognitive styles, and life experiences.

Age is not significantly related to wisdom, and the results show that wisdom increases rapidly during adolescence and young adulthood (from 15 to 25 years). However, on average it remains stable in middle age and younger old age (between 25 and 75). Wisdom seems to reach its peak between the ages of fifty and sixties.

Although age is a necessary condition for the development of wisdom, it is not sufficient for it.

Wisdom as a Virtue

If wisdom is a form of knowledge that tries to understand the final consequences of events in a complete, systematic way, then it becomes the best guide for the “greater good”. Knowledge of the connection between cause and effect, which shows the path to the right action, is the foundation of morality.

Wisdom helps a person decide what the optimal sequence of action steps is, mediating between the environment and the often-conflicting knowledge provided by instincts, habits, and reason.

Plato is one of the first, but many other thinkers in the past emphasize the importance of wisdom over wealth, power, and honor. Without wisdom, a person will not know how to make good use of anything else.

The Intentions Behind Wisdom

The task of wisdom is to find out what the best outcome for that person is, and by extension for all people. It follows that wisdom is the most important virtue because it is the only approach that considers the long-term consequences for the entire system.

Analytical psychology claims that our interpretation of reality is heavily influenced by early experience, which distorts it. It can be said that great “width” (empathy), “height” (intelligence) and “depth” (reflexivity) enable a wise person to create a more complex perspective concerning a problem and thus enable them to achieve the ability to see all the possible strategies and outcomes.

Nowadays, when modern society is facing numerous important challenges, one-dimensional technical thinking is not enough to find solutions.

Without a doubt, we can all agree that, in today’s times, a comprehensive and long-term understanding of actions and events is necessary to avoid the consequences of narrow interests and ways of knowing.

Because of wisdom’s characteristics of comparing, asking questions, and putting up counterarguments, it is rarely appreciated and isn’t the most popular virtue.

A Simple Assignment for Improving Your Wisdom

So, if you’re interested in exercising your “wisdom muscles,” there are a handful of small exercises that you can carry out in your spare time. We recommend checking these out and also documenting them in a journal for the following days and months.

If you manage to be consistent with these, you are bound to notice a positive change in your mindset and outlook on life.

1. Carefully Pick Your Friends and Your Fights

While we cannot choose our colleagues and family , we can choose our friends. Wise people surround themselves with positive, wise people, who are open-minded, and tolerant

The right group of friends will. inspire us, motivate us to strive for higher, and encourage us on our way to realizing our dreams.

2. Pay Attention to Physical and Mental Hygiene

Wise person understands that they need strong mental and physical health to live a quality life. That is why they not only work on the development of their intellect but also take care of their body, live healthily, and try to be in harmony with nature and her being.

3. Focus on Being More Resourceful

A wise person can handle every moment, knows when to make peace, when to be a little sloppy, and let others think differently. You should use this to discover the true intentions of the people you communicate with.

4. Focus on Art

A wise person doesn’t buy something because others are wearing it. Instead of quantity, choose quality, whether it’s clothes, food, books , travel , or art . Don’t let yourself get carried away by what’s popular and mainstream. Develop your own taste and appreciate creativity, authenticity, and true values.

5. Define Your Goals

Not everything can be planned to a tee, but start thinking of a rough plan of what you want to achieve in life and work towards it. Stick to your plan and keep coming back to it.

Wrapping Up

Wisdom does not guarantee intelligence, nor vice versa. You can have both, but we get them in different ways. Wisdom is mostly subconscious, so many do not even know that they possess this quality.

Many have tried to answer the question of what wisdom is and failed. We certainly did our best and gave you five qualities of a wise person. Even if only one of these applies to you then you have a basis to keep searching for it.

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I am a writer and a teacher of rhetoric, international humanitarian law, and entrepreneurship. As a writer, I specialize in writing about history, politics, and finding quirky ways to elevate all the great selling points of a product/service. I obtained my bachelor's degree in International Relations at the University of Montenegro and completed my master' s studies at the Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary where I studied diplomacy. I believe studying diplomacy and politics sets you up for knowing how to craft a sentence, how to fill it with content and ensure that your audience understands the message.

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Essay on Wisdom: Top 4 Essays on Wisdom

Essay on Wisdom

Essay on Relationship Between Wisdom and Knowledge

Essay on wisdom is power, essay on true wisdom come from experience.

Wisdom is one of the highest forms of human characteristics. Through wisdom, virtues can be brought to life. The beauty of wisdom is that it is not dependent on the theories that are written in books, or the curriculum in the schools and colleges. It is not something that can be transferred just by talking about it. Wisdom is how life shapes us. It is about the impacts that we have upon our soul while going through all sorts of pleasant and unpleasant experiences of life.

Various Versions But One

Many philosophers, religious institutions, and educationalists have defined wisdom in their own definite ways. Some try to relate it to the right way of living, some say that wisdom is acknowledging and being answerable to God for all the deeds. It has also been known to associate with decision-making between right and wrong, habits like speaking truth, following the moral values.

Intelligence is Not Always Wisdom

Although, on a more spiritual note, or a generic note, as we may say, wisdom is not confined to some rules or paths. A collection of experiences and virtues shape our wisdom. One may have a wide range and depth of knowledge but that doesn’t necessarily make her/him wise.

Illustrations

There are so many beautiful illustrations reflecting light on the uniqueness and significance of wisdom. It is very simple and possible for almost anybody to learn to fire a gun. But not everybody is capable of making the right decision about when to and when not to fire the gun. This decision-making requires wisdom.

The Importance of Wisdom

But why so much fuss about wisdom? How does it make our life different or change it? Well, wisdom takes us above the loop of feelings, emotions, and the whirlpools of envy, restlessness, and anger. It brings peace to the heart and to the mind as well. It is only through wisdom, that one may realize that forgiving others bad deeds, ignoring their faults, and being kind and accepting to all is the highest and truest virtues of all human beings.

Wisdom is the germination of the seeds of empathy, compassion, and kindness. It is the eruption of unconditional love toward every soul, whether human beings, animals, or trees. Wisdom gives us the ability to see the beauty and real power of nature. In true words, this is the real way of being close to God.

It is only through wisdom that one understands and realizes that religions, rules of worshipping, and confining God to being a particular person or version are nothing but just a human way of interpretation of the power of nature. To a wise person, they look mere concepts to him and he/she is able to go beyond these things. The definition of God, the right path, the understanding of the whole universe changes to him. Wisdom gets us out of the chains of the societal norms and allows us to look past them. It shows us the real purpose of life and gifts us with the power to attain and live with that true purpose.

Many of us may get confused when asked about the difference or relationship between wisdom and knowledge. On the surface level, both look similar, if not the same. But the thing is, wisdom is more abstract in nature and knowledge is somewhat technical.

Knowledge comes from reading, exploring, learning, and educating oneself. In order to increase the knowledge, one can turn toward reading more books or learning and specializing in a skill. In other words, it is measurable up to a certain extent.

Wisdom is what life and its experiences teach us. Being wise is not the same as being intelligent. It is about much more than just the skills and mastery of a subject. In fact, wisdom is about human virtues, that makes us different from other animal species. These virtues are developing empathy, having compassion and kindness, becoming more self-aware of our thoughts, emotions, and feelings.

Wisdom and Knowledge

The difference between the two is very subtle. However, if put into simpler words, it is not that difficult to understand either. One can gain knowledge and know what is right and wrong, what is healthy and what is unhealthy, how to perform a task, how to drive, how to cook. All these things can be learned and specialized in. But, the ability to decide what is right and what is wrong, the capacity to choose the right and skip the wrong, comes from wisdom.

In another way, the ability to use the learned knowledge in the best and most ethical way is called wisdom. Knowing how to use the knowledge is wisdom. Knowledge can be given but wisdom cannot. Knowledge can be learned but wisdom can only be attained.

An example would be the best way to understand the concepts deeply. So, for instance, all kinds of thoughts, whether positive or negative, healthy or toxic, happy or sad come to our mind. We feel them and know that these feelings are a very natural part of human beings. This is knowledge. But understanding, observing, and staying aware and detached of these thoughts requires wisdom. Wisdom takes us to a much higher level and answers the riddle of why we are feeling in a particular way and whether we should act on those feelings or not. That judgment call depends on our wisdom.

There have been many philosophical, religious, and educational versions and definitions of wisdom and knowledge. Nonetheless, all lead to the same conclusion. Everybody knows and has been taught about the right way of living but not all can do it really. That is where a fine demarcation comes between knowledge and wisdom. To be able to apply the knowledge, to be able to think, and acknowledge why things are the way they are, makes us wise.

Thus, it is only through wisdom that we begin to behave beyond the petty attributes like self-obsession, jealousy, anger and instead, learn to grow as a human being filled with compassion, empathy, acceptance, and love for all.

The human race has wondered and marveled for a long time for its distinguished ability to behave and think differently than other animal species. We have highly evolved emotional, mental, and social etiquette. But is that the end of the list? Of course not. There is something very peculiar about us which makes us stand out as a species, which transforms us from Homo Sapiens into human beings. And that is called wisdom.

Seeking Wisdom

There is a reason why people do not find peace in spite of being surrounded by all kinds of materialistic pleasures. There is also a reason why many people living a highly comfortable and rich life, leave it just like that and set out to explore something that is still unknown to them.

In India, such ways of life are not new to us. We have always been surrounded bys saints and celibates. The culture in India has long been enriching. It has always focused less on physical pleasures and more on the seeking nature within us. After a certain point, we all begin to realize that the worldly amusements can only satisfy us on a superficial level but cannot quench our soul. For our spiritual growth, something deeper is needed.

What is not Wisdom

All around us, we see the world burning with feelings of competition, unsparing greed, unforgiveness, jealousy, anger, and what not. And this is not the story of those who lack basic amenities to a dignified life. This is the case of people who have everything in abundance but peace and gratitude.

Wisdom takes us from this path of uncertainty and shallowness and brightens up with the light of truth. And that same truth would liberate us. This is the power of wisdom. Wisdom is not restricted to listening to some discourses or following the religious rites and rituals. It is about realizing the darkness of greed, that the constant need for competing with each other is nothing but just a bottomless pit. A whirlpool of desires.

Wisdom is Empowering

Through our experiences comes a realization that the peace of our mind is in our hands. This is the most empowering thing that can happen to us and no book can teach this to us. It is like reaching and activating the seeds and portals of consciousness which were dormant within us till now. The whole phenomenon enriches us at a much deeper level and calms down the inside chaos. After which, we start to see the beauty in everything and learn to accept life the way it is. Our heart is filled with forgiveness and compassion.

Wisdom frees us from the chains of a limited mind so that we do not remain the slaves of our own desires. Books can teach us what is just and what is unjust. But the power of standing and walking down that just path is provided by our wisdom. This spiritual and emotional advancement is irreplaceable and can only become possible through wisdom.

They say that life changes you and shapes you like nothing else can. That there is a great difference between knowing something and living it. Well, it is quite true in the case of wisdom. True wisdom comes only from experience.

What the Life Phases Teach Us

Let us recall how we felt when we were just a kid. Life looked so uncomplicated and manageable at that time. Then, came teenage. Our own definition of life was metamorphosed a bit. We realized that after all, life is not that simple. It is not confined to having your favorite meals and dresses.

When we crossed teenage and entered into adulthood, even the young age years looked dreamy and we again felt that life is more than just having a relationship. It is more about making yourself independent, taking care of ourselves and our loved ones. Being responsible and accountable for our decisions and choices topped the list of our way of living.

How Experience Shapes Us

We all travel different paths of life. The ups and downs of our lives are unique. It is interesting to observe that same event or experience can be perceived in a completely non-identical way by two different persons. The impacts and effects of a trauma, a joy, or any other major change of events may not be the same for both of them. This is the reason, even after going through the same phases and stages of living in this world, we may end up having dissimilar perceptions of life.

Wisdom is Independent

There is no specific set of rules to becoming wise. What’s more intriguing is that having the same age, gender, or ethnicity does not make two people wise in the same way. Wisdom is independent of these factors. A person may attain wisdom at the age of 20, that doesn’t in any way mean that another person of age 40 would be double wise.

True Wisdom

Truth is, true wisdom can only be attained through experiencing life and that means having experienced it in its fullest form. Understanding that life is not always about being happy, satisfaction, or running for temptations. In fact, sorrow, pain, tragedy, self-restraint are a part of it. True wisdom teaches us that if life has to be embraced, then, the only way to do that is through acceptance, self-observation, and with full consciousness.

With practice, wisdom takes us above the basic instincts. It doesn’t let us be reduced to mere puppets in the hands of our instant gratification. Wisdom gives our mind the power to differentiate between justified and unjustified and act accordingly. Experiencing the bright and dark, both faces of life, are we filled with love, kindness, compassion, and non-judgment toward others and also ourselves. And there is no shortcut to that. Every event in the life has a purpose. It is trying to teach us something. Opening our mind and soul to it fully is what wisdom teaches us.

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Older and Wiser?

“Older and Wiser” is a common adage, but is it correct, asks Christine Overall

It’s obvious not all old people are wise. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are outstanding examples. Some old people, like people of any age, are simply foolish, inconsiderate, self-absorbed, or even outright malicious or cruel. On the other hand, some younger people, in their forties, thirties, or twenties are wise. As Robert Nozick remarks in his book The Examined Life , “Wisdom need not be geriatric.” Are there good reasons to think that wisdom is more likely to develop at later stages of life?

I will not attempt to give a precise definition of “wisdom”, but I agree with many philosophers who suggest that wisdom has both reflective and practical aspects. These two aspects are, I believe, tightly interwoven. The wise person is wise not only because of her beliefs, but also by virtue of insights, traits, choices, and behaviours. That is, wisdom is neither one-dimensional nor simply propositional, though it includes knowing and embodying certain truths.

Most people also have a general impression of what a wise person is like. We can draw upon that impression to describe some of the characteristics associated with wise people. Wise individuals are not born with wisdom. Their wisdom is acquired, over time, and often with difficulty. They have a broad perspective. That is, they don’t focus on what is trivial or superficial; nor do they confine themselves to just one aspect of human thought or activity.

The wise person is able to take the long view and has a sense of the meaning and value of living a human life. She concerns herself not only with her own wellbeing, but with the wellbeing of other sentient beings. The wise person is committed to generativity: fostering the wellbeing of those who will have a future longer than her own.

Oscar Wilde said, “With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.” There are several reasons for scepticism about the idea that ageing makes us wiser. There’s the already-mentioned fact that it’s easy to think of old people who are not wise. And if wisdom does come with age, why is this supposed fact not more widely recognised? Instead, old people are subjected to condescension (“Ok, Boomer”); are regarded as burdens, or as withholding jobs, money, housing, and health care (“bed-blockers”) from those who are young; as avaricious and self-centred; as out of touch and unable to understand contemporary culture; or as helpless, demented, and living of necessity in “nursing homes”.

Another reason for scepticism that wisdom comes with age derives from the fact that the claim has been tested empirically. For example, in their paper, “The Relation Between Age and Three-Dimensional Wisdom”, Monika Ardelt and colleagues show, by surveying other studies and drawing on their own research, that the truth of the claim about age and wisdom is, unsurprisingly, partly dependent on what is meant by “wisdom”. They distinguish between cognitive, reflective, and compassionate wisdom dimensions, and suggest that although non-cognitive elements show some evidence of increasing in old age, cognitive elements of wisdom decline after mid-life. They also suggest that a connection between age and wisdom might be more likely among people who are highly educated. So, the sceptic’s case may be bolstered depending on which aspects of the empirical evidence are emphasised.

Moreover, there are reasons to think it might be even more difficult to acquire wisdom in old age than at a younger age. For example, most old people must deal with one or more changes in their physical health - chronic illness, pain, diminished vision or hearing, weakened bones, or loss of strength, balance, flexibility, or stamina. This waning of bodily faculties may, of necessity, be highly preoccupying for the old person, thus distracting her from the acquisition and exercise of wisdom. The old person, it might be argued, may well be absorbed in taking care of herself, with medical appointments, medications, and her generally slower pace. In addition, it could be argued, the possible cognitive changes of old age - memory loss, struggles to find words, diminished ability to solve problems, difficulties with attention and focus, or inability to learn new information or skills - may compromise the acquisition of wisdom.

Old persons may be preoccupied with other things as well. Many old people are engaged in care for others, such as a spouse or partner, adult children, grandchildren, or friends. Perhaps such intense work precludes the acquisition of wisdom. And many old people are focused on protecting themselves from exploitation and abuse, or insecurity in their housing, food, health care, or finances.

Though these arguments appear persuasive, there are good counterarguments for them all. Even if not all old people are wise, and not only old people are wise, it is still the case that wisdom tends to come with age and some aspects of wisdom are more readily absorbed in old age.

The fact that there is little cultural recognition that old people are wise may be the result of several factors. In the so-called “developed” world, to be old is to lose authority - if one ever had it. Often, it means being systematically cut off from the outside world, or at least, for those who are retired from paying jobs, no longer having as much opportunity to make one’s ideas known. Because of these two factors - the loss of authority and the lack of opportunity - old people may not be speaking out about the wisdom they have acquired. Then, when old people do manage to speak out, they may not be heard. “Oh, that’s just Grandma going on about the same old thing”. Or, if they are heard, their wisdom may seem banal. “Everyone knows that”. Or it may not be recognised. “Don’t worry about what Grandpa says; his ideas are old-fashioned [or unrealistic or crazy]”. This failure of uptake may be partly the result of ageism. If you assume that old people aren’t good for much, then you won’t be prepared to hear or witness wisdom from old people.

However, despite the low regard for old people in much of the “developed” world, some people do think that age brings wisdom. Many indigenous cultures in North America are said to value the wisdom of old people, whom they may call “wisdom-keepers”. In my own experience, as a co-chair of what was then called the Aboriginal Council of Queen’s University, every Council meeting began with a reverent invitation to the elders of the past, the grandmothers and the grandfathers, to join the circle and contribute their wisdom. In addition, when I spent half a year teaching at a university in Japan, I found that while being a woman was something of an academic liability, to my surprise, being old, in my sixties, was an advantage. It’s also noteworthy that on the third Monday of every September, Japan celebrates what it calls Respect for the Aged Day.

And recently, some western authors, such as David Chernikoff and Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, and organisations, such as The Center for Conscious Eldering and Sage-ing International, have argued that wisdom can be a particularly significant benefit of old age. These authors and organisations try to show how old people’s wisdom can be recognised, developed, and exercised. As the American organisation Elders Action Network says, “Within our American society, elders’ talents and experiences are generally untapped; their collective wisdom gained over decades of living largely lies fallow. This is an unfortunate waste of invaluable human resources that could be applied to addressing the serious societal and environmental problems of our nation.”

Significantly, the people who are widely revered for their wisdom, even in the “developed” world, are usually old. Just in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, some possible examples are Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, David Suzuki, Kofi Annan, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Margaret Atwood, Jane Goodall, Pema Chödrön, and Mary Rose O’Reilley.

While physical, psychological, and cognitive challenges may make the acquisition of wisdom more difficult, people can also learn and grow from arduous, challenging, and painful experiences - such as vision loss, cancer, or the death of a partner - and may acquire wisdom thereby. Similarly, while caregiving for self and others may take up a lot of time and attention, such experiences can be important sources of wisdom. These responsibilities are not always liabilities. And experiences of disadvantage, including discrimination and disrespect, can lead to insights that may not be attainable in other ways. The limitations posed by being privileged, with robust health, no caregiving responsibilities, no financial need, and being able to assume that one is always competent and always respected, may very well prevent one from becoming wise.

In a paper entitled simply “Wisdom”, John Kekes writes, “Growth in wisdom and self-direction go hand in hand. They are tasks for a lifetime, hence the connection between wisdom and old age. One can be old and foolish, but a wise man is likely to be old, simply because such growth takes time.” I think he’s right. There are reasons in the general structure and development of human life to anticipate that the acquisition of wisdom becomes more likely as we get old. Consider the trajectory for people in the “developed” world. Although the dividing line between life stages is flexible, generally in the first fifteen or twenty years of life, young people are engrossed in acquiring physical competence, language-learning, playing, identity-building, relationship-development, and maturation, along with the acquisition of skills, general knowledge, social patterns and culture, and perhaps how to earn a living. The next three or four decades of early and middle adulthood are spent in more learning, working, engaging in romantic, sexual, and/or love relationships, socialising, leisure, taking care of self and family often including children, and community involvement. In the seventh, eighth, nineth, and even tenth decades, many of these activities may well continue.

It is not merely being old or getting old that creates wisdom. What creates wisdom is the accumulation of experiences, choices, decisions, mistakes, observations, suffering, thoughts, conversations, actions, and so on, through life stages over the course of a lifetime, along with the willingness to be open to absorbing their significance, and then processing, evaluating, and integrating the insights that they offer. The experiences that can generate wisdom are no mere passive events. As Nozick observes, “to be wise, a person not only must have knowledge and understanding - have wisdom, if you will - but also use it and live it.”

Old age is the opportunity, to use Schacter-Shalomi’s word, for “harvesting” the wisdom that is the fruit of a lifetime. For many people, the greater freedom and time in old age allow them to contemplate, remember, assess, and engage in life review. Moreover, old age may offer additional routes to wisdom: continuing paid work or engaging in volunteer work; devoting one’s freer time to partners, friends, children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces; mentoring young people; travelling near or far; and continuing to learn, formally or informally. Thus, because of the structure and patterns of human life, it is more likely that wisdom will be acquired in old age, and more difficult to acquire it earlier.

Couldn’t a younger person who is particularly adept at learning from experience also acquire wisdom? They could. After all, the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment at the age of thirty-five. But in the words of a character in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time , “We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.”

Many, perhaps most, old people have undergone the journey and passed through the wilderness. Except in rather unusual cases, younger people have not. That is why wisdom tends to come with age.

With thanks for the comments and questions from the audience at the Stapledon Colloquium, University of Liverpool, on February 23, 2023, when a longer version of this article was first presented.

Christine Overall is professor emerita of philosophy at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. Most of her publications are in the areas of feminist philosophy, applied ethics, philosophy of ageing, and philosophy of religion. She is particularly interested in the social aspects of human identity, such as sex/gender, sexuality, race, age, (dis)ability, class, and religion.

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A neuroscientist on wisdom vs. intelligence & why they both matter.

Wisdom and intelligence are both great qualities to have—but they certainly aren't mutually exclusive. Intelligence doesn't guarantee wisdom , and vice versa. In fact, while they may seem like similar traits, they're actually quite different, though it is possible to have both.

How is wisdom different from intelligence?

First things first: What do the two actually mean? By definition, wisdom (the quality of being wise) is described as "the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment." To be wise is to have deep insight and understanding, and wise people may be thought of as old souls .

As neuroscientist and author of The Source Tara Swart, M.D., Ph.D., explains to mbg, "Wisdom is the life lessons you pick up through experience and store in your neurons but don't consciously recall."

Intelligence, on the other hand, is defined as "the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills." It's about intellect and the application of that intellect. Swart notes intelligence can be defined in several ways, including emotional intelligence , "But the traditional definition is about using your logic to solve problems and make decisions."

So the difference then is where these qualities come from and how we use them. Wisdom comes through experience, perhaps without us even realizing it, and intelligence, in all its many forms, is often something inherent (or something we consciously work on improving).

Wisdom "allows you to recognize patterns and make decisions based on intuition ," Swart says, adding that it's more of a "felt" sense that something is right or wrong. Intelligence, she explains, "is more about data and 'knowing.'"

Is one more important?

Some people may favor intelligence over wisdom, or wisdom over intelligence, depending on their values, goals, and so on. But according to Swart, both are equally important.

However, she says, "As you grow in wisdom and experience, intuition can become far more powerful than logic alone."

Ideally, you can exercise both, so you can not only approach a situation logically (intelligence) but tap into your deeper sense of wisdom or intuition to read between the lines or see the big picture.

As Swart puts it, it's great when your wisdom and intelligence are aligned, "but when logic tells you one thing and intuition tells you another, you have to learn which leads to better outcomes for you."

How to discern wisdom from intelligence.

So, when the moment strikes, how can you know whether certain thoughts are coming from a place of wisdom or a place of intelligence (both in yourself and in another)? Here are a few strategies:

Notice where it's coming from.

Swart explains that logic tends to "come from your head and is based on gathering facts and making a decision that you know the reasons behind."

Wisdom, on the other hand, "is felt usually in the gut or heart and comes with a deep sense of feeling that this is right for you, not just right in general," she says. It can often be accompanied by visceral sensations like goose bumps or even tears, she adds.

Notice how you reached the conclusion you came to; was your thought process more linear and logical? That's intelligence. Or was it more big picture, and allowed you to draw on past experiences and patterns? That's wisdom.

Write on it.

Further, if you want to get better at distinguishing between the two, Swart says journaling can help . Try reflecting on the times your intelligence may have served you better than your wisdom, and vice versa. You may find one is stronger than the other or leads to better outcomes when you follow it.

Ask others how they make decisions.

And the next time you're speaking with someone and want to know whether they're showing wisdom or intelligence, Swart says you can simply ask them directly where their reasoning is coming from and what it's based on.

You can usually get a sense from their answer, as they may say something that's clearly more logical (intelligence) versus something more big picture that's related to their own experience (wisdom).

The bottom line.

While one is no better than the other, both wisdom and intelligence are helpful qualities to have. Throughout our lives, wisdom is gained over the years, and on top of that, we're always presented with opportunities to exercise our intelligence by learning new information. The key is learning to hone both so they can work in tandem, and you can approach any situation with both logic and a deeper understanding .

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How can you recognize a wise person when you meet one.

On Tuesdays I write about the top voted question on Ask Berkun (see the archive ). This week’s question is from Mike: How can you tell a wise person when you meet one?

“It is by no means uncommon to find men whose knowledge is wide but whose feelings are narrow. Such men lack what I am calling wisdom.” – Bertrand Russell

If you can’t judge a book by its cover, how can you judge a person on their first impression? I’ve never liked the cliche about “you never get a second chance…” because it’s rarely true. Sure, if you spill a large coffee on someone’s lap, or set an entire dining room on fire, that would be hard to recover from on a first date, but most first interactions with people are terribly bland, no matter how wise either of you are. There just is no secret wise-person handshake nor a wise-person detection app for your phone.

Instead it takes an actual conversation with someone to learn who they are and how wise they might be. Starting conversations isn’t that hard, but there is a stupor that comes over most of us when we meet new people. Mostly, it goes like this: “Hi, how are you?” “I’m fine, you?” “I’m fine, thanks” <silence>. There’s not much chance to notice a wise person here. Our questionable social skills with strangers means there are hundreds of wise people we have met at parties, or stood next to at the bus stop, and never knew it.

I understand social anxiety and fear of embarrassment, but yet it’s still mystifying that after 10,000 years of civilized life our species still hasn’t recognized how little there is to lose in talking to strangers (in safe situations). Why not just assume they are wise or interesting? What is there really to lose if you’re wrong? It’s easy to end conversations with strangers and they likely didn’t even expect you to start one. Therefore, why not make an offer to get outside of the boring conventions of daily life we so often complain about? More to my point, it takes a bit of wisdom about wisdom to find wise people .

Wisdom means not only experience , but an understanding of how to apply life experience to the present. This means the most likely way to identify a wise person is to have a conversation about life, which likely means to talk about a shared, or personal, event that has already taken place. It’s in their own observations that their wisdom or insight will be revealed (or not). This could take the shape of lessons learned, of attitudes about relationships or work, or thoughts about regrets and future dreams.

Now it’d be weird to go up to a stranger, introduce yourself, and demand “tell me a personal story that reveals how wise you are.” Don’t do that. But in most social situations there is a fast path towards sharing stories. For example, at a party you can always ask anyone you don’t know: “how do you know <name of host of party>” which almost always has some kind of story as an answer (and you can show your curiosity by asking interesting questions about their story). And then you can reply with your own answer, but add some leading context that hints at a story, or question, of your own. Perhaps “We went to college together a decade ago, but I have to admit I’m not sure I belong here. There’s just too many people I don’t know.” Or even ask for advice about how to meet new people at events like this, a fun meta-trick (as by asking this to a new person you are using the question itself to solve them problem).

Perhaps my party socializing advice seems bound to fail, and you might be right. Maybe it’s easier to start with people we already know, like friends, coworkers and family. But even then there must be some kind of ignition event to wake another person up out of their daily routines and pay attention to the fact you are offering a more interesting kind of conversation. There is no guarantee they’ll be interested, or even understand that this is what you are offering. Yet if you don’t try, you’ll never know if you just overlooked a wise person. Someone has to (kindly) spark the chance for insight. To find wise people, you have to be wise enough, or perhaps just sufficiently bold, to reach out for them.

Part of the challenge in finding wise people is what we perceive as wisdom is filtered by the chemistry created by our personality meeting the personality of another. Someone can be very wise, but also irritating. For example I suspect Socrates, for all his wisdom, wasn’t particularly easy to get along with (yet the meetup group that bares his name can be a great way to meet wise people). Maybe you meet someone wise, but they offer their wisdom in a way that makes you feel belittled. Or they have bad breath, which you despise. Or maybe you don’t like their sense of humor, which diminishes your interest in their sage like thoughts. Just because they are wise doesn’t mean their wisdom will be palatable, or even comprehendible, to you.

If I had to list traits of someone wise, they’d include:

Experienced – they’ve had interesting life experiences, both successes and failures, and they’ve asked good questions about them
Humble confidence – they have clarity to share, or to challenge my thinking, but without a strong need to convince me of their view
Insightful opinions – their thoughts invite consideration or raise my curiosity (even if I don’t agree with their conclusions)
(I very much want to list a good sense of humor, but I’m convinced that reflects my own biases)

Which leads to the observation that wisdom isn’t a universal attribute. Some people are very wise about business, but are terribly ignorant about how healthy relationships work. Or they can give fantastic advice about life to others that they fail to practice in their own lives (a notorious failing of gurus, experts and authors too ). The singular word wisdom doesn’t stretch to cover the complexities of how it, or it’s absence, plays out in a person’s life, or in the advice they give. People in their later years certainly have more life experience to work from, but that by no means guarantees they possess any more wisdom about life than someone much younger than they are: a person might accumulate ignorance, or bitterness, at the same, or a faster, rate than wisdom.

In the end, mostly what we want are interesting people who are interested in us. Who are friendly, perhaps charming, willing to share what they know and perhaps willing to listen for wisdom they don’t have in new people they meet. Framed this way the titular question of this essay is less daunting. Once you befriend one person with these attributes, it’s easier to find more. And who knows, maybe while we’re trying to find what we need, now and then we can be the “wise person” someone we meet (at a party) is looking to find.

Where have you met the wisest people you know? How did you recognize them? Leave a comment.

20 Responses to “How Can You Recognize a Wise Person When You Meet One?”

My comment is that you happily ended with two questions to give this blog conversation a little focus. In conversations with wise people, and groups, that works. I was perusing the classic The Organization Man where some company tried the (then new) fad of breaking a meeting down into groups, and got no results, without ever realizing the groups needed a focus question.

I once considered joining a racket ball club simply because the guy I sometimes talked to in the lobby seemed so wise.

At college I kept meeting someone in the big cafeteria who had become liberated in various areas, including learning to model nude. This was back when society did not know the word patriarchy. How wise? Once when she and another lady were examining failed relationships that they had learned from, one said, after checking that I wasn’t freaked out, “You will learn more from us than going to class.”

In the real world my wise CEO is too busy, but I can learn snippets in passing.

At parties I do much like you say above, Scott, complete with “fast path towards sharing stories.” Interestingly, when a once-a-year-for-coffee friend became a meet-by-random-chance friend, during our conversation to say “let’s meet less,” I said I realized that I had never told him any stories, even though I could tell his wife a story (anecdote) over the phone. Meaning, I guess, that stories can’t happen unless you feel leisurely, not rushed. Meaning, too, that my friend wasn’t into receiving knowledge from me personally.

“You will learn more from us than going to class.”

I think about this often at the professional events I attend – I tend to gravitate towards the people hanging out in the hallway, mostly ignoring the lecture or workshop or whatever ‘official’ thing is going on. I presume (perhaps projecting) that they are more interested in stories and conversations you can’t have in big rooms with dozens or 100s of people.

Most wise people in my experience are willing to help in some way as it is likely they have also had the luck of someone helping them.

I’m not sure. Can you be wise, but not kind? I think so. I want to believe that being wise makes you a nicer, more compassionate person – but I wonder about that. Perhaps being wise makes you realize that you *should* be compassionate, but the ability to deliver on that is something other than wisdom.

Maybe this is a Boulder CO thing as most wise people in town seem quite willing to help with things even if it’s a 5 min chat or quick email. Now you got me wondering how I can get a less local sample.

Don’t get me wrong – compassion and empathy are high ideals and I wish more people had them. I’m just not sure acting kindly, on it’s own, is wise. Good? yes. Noble? for sure. But if a person is naturally inclined to be kind, or has an ideal they’ve never questioned that blindly calls them to be kind, can we call that wise? I’m not sure.

Perhaps a component of being wise is not being a self-sabateur, as in: having your act together. By this I mean IF having empathy, compassion, kindness and helpfulness is True, Good and Beautiful, and if such a state is not reached, THEN there are obstacles in the way.

I’m thinking of a self-help writer who taught future teachers at university. Jesse Lair, Ph. D., often wrote in I’m Not Much Baby, But I’m All I’ve Got that, after graduation, the lousy school teachers knew what a good teacher was, but they just couldn’t do it. As Scott put it, they didn’t have the ability to deliver. (I wonder if they felt horrible and helpless? Naw, they’d rationalize quite quickly)

My first impressions on the link between wisdom, compassion and empathy, are that there is one (a link). I believe compassion and empathy are implicit in one’s willingness to accept input from others openly without judgement. And I don’t think it is possible to be wise, without some ability to accept input openly and without judgement.

I won’t go as far as to say you can’t be wise without a strong sense of compassion/empathy, but for me there is a firm connection between them. Implicit, if not explicit.

What a wise person is, or what the word “wise” means, will vary from person to person. For me its enough to say a wise person is compassionate and empathetic. I acknowledge that is not a strict equivalence, but its close enough – for me.

Being wise means you understand not always compassionate on the situation

Scott: I hope you don’t mind that your readers are getting into the human characteristics of a wise person. Humans are quite interested in humans.

Jim Hunt: I like what you said.

My contribution: For the existence of wise people, and trees, I refer to Bruce Cockburn’s line, “If a tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear?”

To me, kindness is even more important than smarts, and so if a man did not have the characteristics that Jim notes, I would never hear him, because we would never converse.

An interesting post, Scott. Just as while interviewing, I evaluate candidates based on the questions they ask me and NOT on their response to the interview questions – the best judgment about a person’s wisdom (or wavelength of like-mindedness, awareness, expertise, or common sense) comes from listening, and how they steer the discussions’ direction.

In professional community, the first step in knowing an individual is to see what they are writing (blog, or even social media posts if any), or what they are speaking (conferences). If they are neither writing not speaking, I find it difficult to connect – I may sound a bit harsh, but either writing or speaking (better if both) are so important for any professional in tech now.

Socrates was almost certainly insufferable. I just re-read The Apology and, even when arguing for his life, he can’t help but slip in some obvious humblebrags that would have totally irritated those who were sitting in judgment over him. Interestingly, that speech also reveals h

… that speech also reveals his sense of humour, which would have endeared him to those (like Plato) who ‘got’ him.

Indeed – and this all assumes that Socrates was real and not a character invented by Socrates.

Just as it is easy to figure out who happens to be a fool, so as it is easy to tell when someone is wise. Their words and actions conclude it all. I like someone who is full of wisdom such as King Solomon and the pioneer of modern-day philosophy(Socrates)

I am absolutely going with humor. But not just sense of humor but the art of knowing how and when to dispense it. Like you mentioned about experiences, humor is a great indicator of how someone has dealt with life.

I personally think, that a wise person has got: insight, councell and knowledge.

Wise people are despised most of the time because it takes wisdom to understand them and many people aren’t wise. You know a wise person by their lifestyle.

When you wise you could be knowledgeable of the present n the wisdom is perhaps the forthcoming action then your understanding could avoid to the minimal, the least consequences to the situation

Thank you very much dear teacher for this nice sharing.

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What Does It Mean to Be Wise?

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The ability to use knowledge and experience intelligently
Capable of determining what is wise and what is unwise (Assmann,1994)
Seek knowledge: Ready to start a journey towards knowledge. Seek to acquire knowledge from anywhere like- books, podcasts, documentaries, or anything else. It will be helpful but always one must think critically and be open to change.

Learn from mistakes: In Appling knowledge, one can make plenty of mistakes. Making mistakes is helping us to become better problem solvers. By showing what is right from wrong, allowing us to make better choices in life.

Wisdom can be a target of science

Wisdom can be studied scientifically, wisdom cannot be studied scientifically.

Knowledge or Information found in books or experiences can help someone expand knowledge on a topic. It can be explicit and implicit knowledge. It will make a person wise.
Wisdom comes from observing experiences, learning, and gaining knowledge.
Wisdom is passed down in cultures. Culture gives the knowledge to become wise
Wisdom is absorbed, believed, and applied depends on knowledge.
Wisdom is enhanced by knowledge and the ability to acquire knowledge effectively.
Wisdom is also the ability to use knowledge in a practical and productive manner.
Wisdom requires knowledge to choose the right action to avoid the wrong action
Wisdom is an internal source of one’s thinking, analysis, and judgment by using knowledge. (Staudinger,1992)
Assmann, A. (1994). Wholesome knowledge: Concepts of wisdom in a historical and cross-cultural perspective. In D. L. Featherman, R.
Baltes, P.B., Staudinger, U.M., Maercker, A., & Smith, J. (1995). People nominated as wise: A comparative study of wisdom-related knowledge. Psychology and Aging, 10, 155-166.
Staudinger, U. M., Smith, J., & Baltes, P. B. (1992). Wisdom-related knowledge in a life review task: Age differences and the role of professional specialization. Psychology and Aging, 7, 271-281

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7 Do's and Don'ts for Becoming a Wise Person

6. make decisions based on facts, not hopes..

Updated April 9, 2024 | Reviewed by Ray Parker

Most people wish they had wisdom, and it is certainly one that’s valued when seeking advice.
A new view of wisdom breaks it down into the 7 key areas of philosophy, showing what is wise and what is not.
By examining these 7 branches of philosophy, you can make wiser and more fulfilling decisions.

When you think about wisdom , your mind might immediately race to some qualities such as having extensive knowledge and the perspective to use that knowledge. You might have an older relative who your family agrees is the go-to person any time there’s a problem. Need help deciding how to handle an argument between two of your in-laws? You’ll sit down and have a heart-to-heart with this family elder to plan a way out of the dilemma.

Wisdom might also strike you as a quality based on a wealth of world knowledge. For this, it’s not that older relative you seek wise counsel from but another family member who can help you sort through the ins and outs of planning a vacation to a new and exotic place. You know you’ll get great advice, from figuring out how to get where you’re going to discovering places to visit that aren’t in any online guide.

As you consider these two examples, perhaps it occurs to you that someone could be wise about one area of life but not particularly good at giving advice in another area. In fact, why would advice even come into the picture? Maybe it’s enough to know a great deal of information without ever having to apply it to practical situations.

You can also see from these examples why it’s useful to characterize the quality of wisdom. Beyond being an intellectual exercise, this search for wisdom’s definition can help you think about ways to become a better person yourself. If you think of the expression “older and wiser,” you know you’ll definitely get older with time, but it would be nice to get wiser, too.

Psychology’s Latest Way to Tackle Wisdom

Cornell University’s Robert J. Sternberg (2024), known for his extensive work in the area of human intelligence , first dabbled in the wisdom field in 1998 with his “ balance” theory of wisdom , a view that proposed the three basic qualities of wisdom of balancing your own needs, the needs of other people, and the needs of the world at large. The wise person, essentially, is motivated to make the world a better place.

Sternberg now sees this theory as a manifestation of only one component of wisdom, the “process” view that reflects the way that people handle information. His new approach represents a more all-encompassing theory based on the main branches of philosophy . Lest you think this might be too esoteric, the “Tree of Philosophy (TOP)” is actually highly relatable. Its main thrust is that wisdom goes beyond a particular process or even, as some other theories propose, a quality that comes from within the individual, such as a personality trait or level of intelligence.

Wisdom’s 7 Branches Within the Tree of Philosophy (TOP)

Philosophy becomes a useful way to address the qualities of wisdom because, as Sternberg maintains, its main branches each correspond to important traditions in understanding what’s wise and what’s not. Below is a brief summary of each, along with examples of its positive and negative possibilities:

Epistemology: Knowing what you know and what you don’t know. The wise person may seem to be all-knowing, but this branch of philosophy suggests it’s as important to make room for the possibility that you don’t. For example, it’s wise to confess to your own limitations but unwise to fake knowing something you don’t (or can never know). When you make an “educated guess,” be sure not to claim you’re 100% sure.

Ontology: Keep the good of others at the forefront of your decisions . The wise person tries to mend fences, but the unwise person tries to build them.

Ethics : Have a clear sense of right and wrong and stick to it. To be wise means that you work hard to follow through on decisions that will further a worthwhile cause. Unwise people will do everything in their power to get ahead, regardless of the consequences to others.

Logic: Be able to make decisions based on analytical judgments, not gut feelings . This could be as simple as trying to figure out why your cellphone won’t charge properly. Stabbing away at it by plugging the cord into the outlet will not get to the root of the problem, as you will need to go through a set of more rational steps.

Aesthetics: Promote harmony and grace in the world. A wise person pursues beauty for its own sake, such as enjoying a calm and peaceful shoreline at sunset. Lack of aesthetic wisdom becomes toxic, such as when people make decisions that lead to outrage (such as designing an ugly building) or cause a lack of harmony in the world (such as a dictator invading another country).

Hermeneutics : Evaluating situations based on facts and not wishes . Wise people might wish that their families got along better but be resigned to the situation as it is. The unwise person will continue to hope and dream that, somehow, their families will miraculously decide to get along.

Axiology: Use logic to make decisions. To be wise means that you rely on facts determined through analyses of evidence (which could also mean they can be disconfirmed). Unwise people let their beliefs, religious or otherwise, determine what they believe to be true.

If you were keeping score of your own wise qualities, what stuck out as your greatest strengths? Are there times when you hope for the best or when you discard an idea because you didn’t like where it came from? As you think about the people you might approach for advice, whose word are you more likely to trust?

Turning Philosophy Into Action

As you can see, although philosophy may not seem to be the most practical approach to defining a psychological quality, these 7 branches of the field each contain useful pointers to becoming wiser yourself. They also can help you figure out who the best person is to ask for help when you need advice, especially of a sensitive nature, but even in practical situations. You want someone with a level head who can look at all angles and not throw out ideas that have no basis in fact.

As Sternberg points out, the problems that require wisdom tend not to have right or wrong answers but are ill-structured. “They often are a mess, and the available solutions may be messy as well.” And although even answers based on knowledge gained in school are usually either right or wrong, any problem can become “emotionally laden.” How many arguments have you had with people that, although settled by a Google search, still left you feeling a bit deflated?

To sum up , becoming wise may be thought of as a process, potentially one gained only by life experiences as you fumble your way through problems that life throws at you. By breaking wisdom down into these components, you can at least fumble a bit less and flourish a bit more.

Facebook image: Bricolage/Shutterstock

LinkedIn image: Cast Of Thousands/Shutterstock

Sternberg, R. J. (2024). What Is Wisdom? Sketch of a TOP (Tree of Philosophy) Theory. Review of General Psychology , 28 (1), 47-66. https://doi.org/10.1177/10892680231215433

Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D. , is a Professor Emerita of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her latest book is The Search for Fulfillment.

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What makes a person wise?

Please grade my essay 1 - 12:)

In my opinion, no one has pure wisdom. Each person has wisdom in a different way. One can have wisdom of common knowledge. Another can have wisdom of beauty. Everyone is wise, but in a different way. The wisest person defined thinks before they act. No one is wise if they dont think before they act. Here is an example.

Three pigs went to seek there fortune. The first was the smartest, second was the normal one, and the third one had special needs. The first pig thought that the hay house would be cheap, safe, and easy to build, even when the two other pigs protested. So they left him and continued on.

The second pig found branches, and thought of them to be safe and cheap, although when the third pig protested. The second pig was not convinced by him. So the third pig left.

The third pig walked and walked till he found nice sturdy bricks and stones. Even when they were heavy and expensive he still constructed himself a house and so did the other pigs. The first two pigs house blew down by a strong gush of wind and they eventually died.

<pre><code>This shows that wisdom has to be all around you, in order to survive. This also shows that the third pig was concerned for his brothers. This shows that the first and second pig lack wisdom. </code></pre>

Wisdom is all around you just look and see. No one has all the wisdom, but everyone can equal to be the wisest.

their and there are very different words. Be careful and watch your grammar!

I mean, I really wasn’t following this. I know the story of the three pigs fairly well and honestly, your conclusions are rather…simple to say the least. If not repetitive. Maybe you can rework this to be a bit more interesting and as sophisticated as you intended it to be.

Instead of focusing on the three pigs story, maybe focus on something personal where beautiful statements like, “Wisdom is all around you just look and see.” seem much more in the correct context. This has the potential to be fantastic. But for now, I’d put you on the much lower end of the spectrum.

Well I am just in middle school!

Excellent essay. Probably a ten. Some small errors and one medium error. The medium error was in your conclusory statement that the first two pigs lacked wisdom. This statement, as written, contradicts your theme that there are different types of wisdom possessed by different individuals. What you probably intended to write in your conclusion was that the first two pigs may have a different type of wisdom than the third pig and that the type of wisdom shown by the third pig was the type of knowledge, experience and learning needed to best address the problem.

But why does e-rater keeps on giving me a 4 out of 6. Please give me some tips.

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Essay on Wisdom

April 17, 2018 by Manasi Shewale Leave a Comment

Table of Contents

What is Wisdom?

To be wise or a person is said to be wise when he has proper knowledge, experience, good judgment and confidence. When a person develops and gains all these qualities then only, will a person experience true wisdom.

Even though these qualities appear to be easily available or easily accessible, it depends immensely on the person’s character to obtain proper knowledge and still not become egoistic towards others.

We have often heard that some person gained a lot of knowledge via education and then started having pride or being proud of himself for becoming a successful person. But while he embraced his pride so fiercely he forgot to gain wisdom as we know ego or pride and wisdom can never go hand in hand.

The Path towards Wisdom

Before becoming a wise person, it is important to become a good and a skilled knowledgeable person. This can be done by becoming the expert of your knowledge which can be related to anything but at the same time should be of certain use to the mankind.

It is very important to understand that just gaining a degree or a certificate does not make a person knowledgeable. A person becomes knowledgeable only when he is able to understand the depth of his education and also his agenda behind acquiring that knowledge.

The second thing which comes after gaining proper knowledge is to gain proper experience in that field of work. Proper guidance and opportunity will make a person experienced in his field of work.

After a person has become knowledgeable and experienced then comes the crucial part. In this phase of his life, a person has to make his decision, one will be to follow the good path and be helpful to the society and the other will be the bad path where he will become greedy, selfish and egoistic about his achievements.

It is very in today’s date for a person to become selfless and work for the betterment of the society. In fact, we can see that every second person has succumbed to the darkness living inside him and therefore, become greedy and selfish. Such people can never become wise.

The brave or courageous person who shows the required self-restraint and does not fall victim to greed and ego has cleared the first step towards becoming a wise person. The next most important thing is proper judgement to judge good from bad and make proper choices in crucial or difficult situations.

A person should be able to judge the situation as there will be many other people around us who would be waiting to pounce of one weakness. It is his responsibility to not become the victim of these sharks. Therefore, proper judgement is very important to escape such problematic situations.

After acquiring proper judgement, confidence is the next important necessity. Gaining Confidence is also very tricky phase as here also that person will be tested if he succumbs to over-confidence and then pride and ego and automatically no wisdom.

When a person becomes successful then only will he be able to gain some self-confidence and this confidence will help him take the proper and difficult or tricky decisions in his life.

But there is a very thin line between confidence and over confidence. This thin line should not be crossed by that person otherwise, he would never be able to become wise.

All this knowledge and personality change will create a self-image which will be definitely helpful to provide help to the society. A person should never forget that every step towards wisdom will require more sacrifices than the previous steps.

Therefore, a person should be courageous, brave and mostly should have faith on himself that he could become a good man and be helpful towards the society. After all a wise person will always work for the betterment of the society and to help others become useful to the society.

A person who learns to apply all his good knowledge and judgement to escape the bad situations of life and also the person who is brave enough to accept his fault and show enough courage to improve or learn from his mistakes will become wise and only will he be somewhat helpful to the society.

Whenever we talk about wisdom or a wise person, we remember the story told to us in our childhood, the story of Socrates: the wise. Socrates was a Greek philosopher and was literally known as the “lover of wisdom”.

Socrates taught his students that wisdom and virtue are the two necessary requirements to live a happy and satisfactory life. According to Socrates, being wise meant that a person should help others become knowledgeable and gain wisdom.

That is what Socrates’ agenda in his life was, to give others knowledge to become wise and live a happy life. This is therefore, exactly what wisdom means. In today’s date, somewhere, man has lost to acknowledge the importance of wisdom and just run behind money and fame.

It is not that money and fame is bad or not good for the person to live a happy life. But the use of that money and fame to live a regret-free, tension free life is what is important.

When a person is selfish and egoistic, he will always have the greed to gain more money and fame and therefore, will never become wise and lead a happy life.

About Manasi Shewale

Manasi Shewale loves to read novels and review them inturn. She is an avid reader of various topics of scientific interest in Chemistry and Biology.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, getting college essay help: important do's and don’ts.

College Essays

If you grow up to be a professional writer, everything you write will first go through an editor before being published. This is because the process of writing is really a process of re-writing —of rethinking and reexamining your work, usually with the help of someone else. So what does this mean for your student writing? And in particular, what does it mean for very important, but nonprofessional writing like your college essay? Should you ask your parents to look at your essay? Pay for an essay service?

If you are wondering what kind of help you can, and should, get with your personal statement, you've come to the right place! In this article, I'll talk about what kind of writing help is useful, ethical, and even expected for your college admission essay . I'll also point out who would make a good editor, what the differences between editing and proofreading are, what to expect from a good editor, and how to spot and stay away from a bad one.

What Kind of Help for Your Essay Can You Get?

What's Good Editing?

What should an editor do for you, what kind of editing should you avoid, proofreading, what's good proofreading, what kind of proofreading should you avoid.

What Do Colleges Think Of You Getting Help With Your Essay?

Who Can/Should Help You?

Advice for editors.

Should You Pay Money For Essay Editing?

The Bottom Line

What's next, what kind of help with your essay can you get.

Rather than talking in general terms about "help," let's first clarify the two different ways that someone else can improve your writing . There is editing, which is the more intensive kind of assistance that you can use throughout the whole process. And then there's proofreading, which is the last step of really polishing your final product.

Let me go into some more detail about editing and proofreading, and then explain how good editors and proofreaders can help you."

Editing is helping the author (in this case, you) go from a rough draft to a finished work . Editing is the process of asking questions about what you're saying, how you're saying it, and how you're organizing your ideas. But not all editing is good editing . In fact, it's very easy for an editor to cross the line from supportive to overbearing and over-involved.

Ability to clarify assignments. A good editor is usually a good writer, and certainly has to be a good reader. For example, in this case, a good editor should make sure you understand the actual essay prompt you're supposed to be answering.

Open-endedness. Good editing is all about asking questions about your ideas and work, but without providing answers. It's about letting you stick to your story and message, and doesn't alter your point of view.

Think of an editor as a great travel guide. It can show you the many different places your trip could take you. It should explain any parts of the trip that could derail your trip or confuse the traveler. But it never dictates your path, never forces you to go somewhere you don't want to go, and never ignores your interests so that the trip no longer seems like it's your own. So what should good editors do?

Help Brainstorm Topics

Sometimes it's easier to bounce thoughts off of someone else. This doesn't mean that your editor gets to come up with ideas, but they can certainly respond to the various topic options you've come up with. This way, you're less likely to write about the most boring of your ideas, or to write about something that isn't actually important to you.

If you're wondering how to come up with options for your editor to consider, check out our guide to brainstorming topics for your college essay .

Help Revise Your Drafts

Here, your editor can't upset the delicate balance of not intervening too much or too little. It's tricky, but a great way to think about it is to remember: editing is about asking questions, not giving answers .

Revision questions should point out:

Places where more detail or more description would help the reader connect with your essay
Places where structure and logic don't flow, losing the reader's attention
Places where there aren't transitions between paragraphs, confusing the reader
Moments where your narrative or the arguments you're making are unclear

But pointing to potential problems is not the same as actually rewriting—editors let authors fix the problems themselves.

Want to write the perfect college application essay? We can help. Your dedicated PrepScholar Admissions counselor will help you craft your perfect college essay, from the ground up. We learn your background and interests, brainstorm essay topics, and walk you through the essay drafting process, step-by-step. At the end, you'll have a unique essay to proudly submit to colleges. Don't leave your college application to chance. Find out more about PrepScholar Admissions now:

Bad editing is usually very heavy-handed editing. Instead of helping you find your best voice and ideas, a bad editor changes your writing into their own vision.

You may be dealing with a bad editor if they:

Add material (examples, descriptions) that doesn't come from you
Use a thesaurus to make your college essay sound "more mature"
Add meaning or insight to the essay that doesn't come from you
Tell you what to say and how to say it
Write sentences, phrases, and paragraphs for you
Change your voice in the essay so it no longer sounds like it was written by a teenager

Colleges can tell the difference between a 17-year-old's writing and a 50-year-old's writing. Not only that, they have access to your SAT or ACT Writing section, so they can compare your essay to something else you wrote. Writing that's a little more polished is great and expected. But a totally different voice and style will raise questions.

Where's the Line Between Helpful Editing and Unethical Over-Editing?

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether your college essay editor is doing the right thing. Here are some guidelines for staying on the ethical side of the line.

An editor should say that the opening paragraph is kind of boring, and explain what exactly is making it drag. But it's overstepping for an editor to tell you exactly how to change it.
An editor should point out where your prose is unclear or vague. But it's completely inappropriate for the editor to rewrite that section of your essay.
An editor should let you know that a section is light on detail or description. But giving you similes and metaphors to beef up that description is a no-go.

Proofreading (also called copy-editing) is checking for errors in the last draft of a written work. It happens at the end of the process and is meant as the final polishing touch. Proofreading is meticulous and detail-oriented, focusing on small corrections. It sands off all the surface rough spots that could alienate the reader.

Because proofreading is usually concerned with making fixes on the word or sentence level, this is the only process where someone else can actually add to or take away things from your essay . This is because what they are adding or taking away tends to be one or two misplaced letters.

Laser focus. Proofreading is all about the tiny details, so the ability to really concentrate on finding small slip-ups is a must.

Excellent grammar and spelling skills. Proofreaders need to dot every "i" and cross every "t." Good proofreaders should correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. They should put foreign words in italics and surround quotations with quotation marks. They should check that you used the correct college's name, and that you adhered to any formatting requirements (name and date at the top of the page, uniform font and size, uniform spacing).

Limited interference. A proofreader needs to make sure that you followed any word limits. But if cuts need to be made to shorten the essay, that's your job and not the proofreader's.

A bad proofreader either tries to turn into an editor, or just lacks the skills and knowledge necessary to do the job.

Some signs that you're working with a bad proofreader are:

If they suggest making major changes to the final draft of your essay. Proofreading happens when editing is already finished.
If they aren't particularly good at spelling, or don't know grammar, or aren't detail-oriented enough to find someone else's small mistakes.
If they start swapping out your words for fancier-sounding synonyms, or changing the voice and sound of your essay in other ways. A proofreader is there to check for errors, not to take the 17-year-old out of your writing.

What Do Colleges Think of Your Getting Help With Your Essay?

Admissions officers agree: light editing and proofreading are good—even required ! But they also want to make sure you're the one doing the work on your essay. They want essays with stories, voice, and themes that come from you. They want to see work that reflects your actual writing ability, and that focuses on what you find important.

On the Importance of Editing

Get feedback. Have a fresh pair of eyes give you some feedback. Don't allow someone else to rewrite your essay, but do take advantage of others' edits and opinions when they seem helpful. ( Bates College )

Read your essay aloud to someone. Reading the essay out loud offers a chance to hear how your essay sounds outside your head. This exercise reveals flaws in the essay's flow, highlights grammatical errors and helps you ensure that you are communicating the exact message you intended. ( Dickinson College )

On the Value of Proofreading

Share your essays with at least one or two people who know you well—such as a parent, teacher, counselor, or friend—and ask for feedback. Remember that you ultimately have control over your essays, and your essays should retain your own voice, but others may be able to catch mistakes that you missed and help suggest areas to cut if you are over the word limit. ( Yale University )

Proofread and then ask someone else to proofread for you. Although we want substance, we also want to be able to see that you can write a paper for our professors and avoid careless mistakes that would drive them crazy. ( Oberlin College )

On Watching Out for Too Much Outside Influence

Limit the number of people who review your essay. Too much input usually means your voice is lost in the writing style. ( Carleton College )

Ask for input (but not too much). Your parents, friends, guidance counselors, coaches, and teachers are great people to bounce ideas off of for your essay. They know how unique and spectacular you are, and they can help you decide how to articulate it. Keep in mind, however, that a 45-year-old lawyer writes quite differently from an 18-year-old student, so if your dad ends up writing the bulk of your essay, we're probably going to notice. ( Vanderbilt University )

Now let's talk about some potential people to approach for your college essay editing and proofreading needs. It's best to start close to home and slowly expand outward. Not only are your family and friends more invested in your success than strangers, but they also have a better handle on your interests and personality. This knowledge is key for judging whether your essay is expressing your true self.

Parents or Close Relatives

Your family may be full of potentially excellent editors! Parents are deeply committed to your well-being, and family members know you and your life well enough to offer details or incidents that can be included in your essay. On the other hand, the rewriting process necessarily involves criticism, which is sometimes hard to hear from someone very close to you.

A parent or close family member is a great choice for an editor if you can answer "yes" to the following questions. Is your parent or close relative a good writer or reader? Do you have a relationship where editing your essay won't create conflict? Are you able to constructively listen to criticism and suggestion from the parent?

One suggestion for defusing face-to-face discussions is to try working on the essay over email. Send your parent a draft, have them write you back some comments, and then you can pick which of their suggestions you want to use and which to discard.

Teachers or Tutors

A humanities teacher that you have a good relationship with is a great choice. I am purposefully saying humanities, and not just English, because teachers of Philosophy, History, Anthropology, and any other classes where you do a lot of writing, are all used to reviewing student work.

Moreover, any teacher or tutor that has been working with you for some time, knows you very well and can vet the essay to make sure it "sounds like you."

If your teacher or tutor has some experience with what college essays are supposed to be like, ask them to be your editor. If not, then ask whether they have time to proofread your final draft.

Guidance or College Counselor at Your School

The best thing about asking your counselor to edit your work is that this is their job. This means that they have a very good sense of what colleges are looking for in an application essay.

At the same time, school counselors tend to have relationships with admissions officers in many colleges, which again gives them insight into what works and which college is focused on what aspect of the application.

Unfortunately, in many schools the guidance counselor tends to be way overextended. If your ratio is 300 students to 1 college counselor, you're unlikely to get that person's undivided attention and focus. It is still useful to ask them for general advice about your potential topics, but don't expect them to be able to stay with your essay from first draft to final version.

Friends, Siblings, or Classmates

Although they most likely don't have much experience with what colleges are hoping to see, your peers are excellent sources for checking that your essay is you .

Friends and siblings are perfect for the read-aloud edit. Read your essay to them so they can listen for words and phrases that are stilted, pompous, or phrases that just don't sound like you.

You can even trade essays and give helpful advice on each other's work.

If your editor hasn't worked with college admissions essays very much, no worries! Any astute and attentive reader can still greatly help with your process. But, as in all things, beginners do better with some preparation.

First, your editor should read our advice about how to write a college essay introduction , how to spot and fix a bad college essay , and get a sense of what other students have written by going through some admissions essays that worked .

Then, as they read your essay, they can work through the following series of questions that will help them to guide you.

Introduction Questions

Is the first sentence a killer opening line? Why or why not?
Does the introduction hook the reader? Does it have a colorful, detailed, and interesting narrative? Or does it propose a compelling or surprising idea?
Can you feel the author's voice in the introduction, or is the tone dry, dull, or overly formal? Show the places where the voice comes through.

Essay Body Questions

Does the essay have a through-line? Is it built around a central argument, thought, idea, or focus? Can you put this idea into your own words?
How is the essay organized? By logical progression? Chronologically? Do you feel order when you read it, or are there moments where you are confused or lose the thread of the essay?
Does the essay have both narratives about the author's life and explanations and insight into what these stories reveal about the author's character, personality, goals, or dreams? If not, which is missing?
Does the essay flow? Are there smooth transitions/clever links between paragraphs? Between the narrative and moments of insight?

Reader Response Questions

Does the writer's personality come through? Do we know what the speaker cares about? Do we get a sense of "who he or she is"?
Where did you feel most connected to the essay? Which parts of the essay gave you a "you are there" sensation by invoking your senses? What moments could you picture in your head well?
Where are the details and examples vague and not specific enough?
Did you get an "a-ha!" feeling anywhere in the essay? Is there a moment of insight that connected all the dots for you? Is there a good reveal or "twist" anywhere in the essay?
What are the strengths of this essay? What needs the most improvement?

Should You Pay Money for Essay Editing?

One alternative to asking someone you know to help you with your college essay is the paid editor route. There are two different ways to pay for essay help: a private essay coach or a less personal editing service , like the many proliferating on the internet.

My advice is to think of these options as a last resort rather than your go-to first choice. I'll first go through the reasons why. Then, if you do decide to go with a paid editor, I'll help you decide between a coach and a service.

When to Consider a Paid Editor

In general, I think hiring someone to work on your essay makes a lot of sense if none of the people I discussed above are a possibility for you.

If you can't ask your parents. For example, if your parents aren't good writers, or if English isn't their first language. Or if you think getting your parents to help is going create unnecessary extra conflict in your relationship with them (applying to college is stressful as it is!)

If you can't ask your teacher or tutor. Maybe you don't have a trusted teacher or tutor that has time to look over your essay with focus. Or, for instance, your favorite humanities teacher has very limited experience with college essays and so won't know what admissions officers want to see.

If you can't ask your guidance counselor. This could be because your guidance counselor is way overwhelmed with other students.

If you can't share your essay with those who know you. It might be that your essay is on a very personal topic that you're unwilling to share with parents, teachers, or peers. Just make sure it doesn't fall into one of the bad-idea topics in our article on bad college essays .

If the cost isn't a consideration. Many of these services are quite expensive, and private coaches even more so. If you have finite resources, I'd say that hiring an SAT or ACT tutor (whether it's PrepScholar or someone else) is better way to spend your money . This is because there's no guarantee that a slightly better essay will sufficiently elevate the rest of your application, but a significantly higher SAT score will definitely raise your applicant profile much more.

Should You Hire an Essay Coach?

On the plus side, essay coaches have read dozens or even hundreds of college essays, so they have experience with the format. Also, because you'll be working closely with a specific person, it's more personal than sending your essay to a service, which will know even less about you.

But, on the minus side, you'll still be bouncing ideas off of someone who doesn't know that much about you . In general, if you can adequately get the help from someone you know, there is no advantage to paying someone to help you.

If you do decide to hire a coach, ask your school counselor, or older students that have used the service for recommendations. If you can't afford the coach's fees, ask whether they can work on a sliding scale —many do. And finally, beware those who guarantee admission to your school of choice—essay coaches don't have any special magic that can back up those promises.

Should You Send Your Essay to a Service?

On the plus side, essay editing services provide a similar product to essay coaches, and they cost significantly less . If you have some assurance that you'll be working with a good editor, the lack of face-to-face interaction won't prevent great results.

On the minus side, however, it can be difficult to gauge the quality of the service before working with them . If they are churning through many application essays without getting to know the students they are helping, you could end up with an over-edited essay that sounds just like everyone else's. In the worst case scenario, an unscrupulous service could send you back a plagiarized essay.

Getting recommendations from friends or a school counselor for reputable services is key to avoiding heavy-handed editing that writes essays for you or does too much to change your essay. Including a badly-edited essay like this in your application could cause problems if there are inconsistencies. For example, in interviews it might be clear you didn't write the essay, or the skill of the essay might not be reflected in your schoolwork and test scores.

Should You Buy an Essay Written by Someone Else?

Let me elaborate. There are super sketchy places on the internet where you can simply buy a pre-written essay. Don't do this!

For one thing, you'll be lying on an official, signed document. All college applications make you sign a statement saying something like this:

I certify that all information submitted in the admission process—including the application, the personal essay, any supplements, and any other supporting materials—is my own work, factually true, and honestly presented... I understand that I may be subject to a range of possible disciplinary actions, including admission revocation, expulsion, or revocation of course credit, grades, and degree, should the information I have certified be false. (From the Common Application )

For another thing, if your academic record doesn't match the essay's quality, the admissions officer will start thinking your whole application is riddled with lies.

Admission officers have full access to your writing portion of the SAT or ACT so that they can compare work that was done in proctored conditions with that done at home. They can tell if these were written by different people. Not only that, but there are now a number of search engines that faculty and admission officers can use to see if an essay contains strings of words that have appeared in other essays—you have no guarantee that the essay you bought wasn't also bought by 50 other students.

You should get college essay help with both editing and proofreading
A good editor will ask questions about your idea, logic, and structure, and will point out places where clarity is needed
A good editor will absolutely not answer these questions, give you their own ideas, or write the essay or parts of the essay for you
A good proofreader will find typos and check your formatting
All of them agree that getting light editing and proofreading is necessary
Parents, teachers, guidance or college counselor, and peers or siblings
If you can't ask any of those, you can pay for college essay help, but watch out for services or coaches who over-edit you work
Don't buy a pre-written essay! Colleges can tell, and it'll make your whole application sound false.

Ready to start working on your essay? Check out our explanation of the point of the personal essay and the role it plays on your applications and then explore our step-by-step guide to writing a great college essay .

Using the Common Application for your college applications? We have an excellent guide to the Common App essay prompts and useful advice on how to pick the Common App prompt that's right for you . Wondering how other people tackled these prompts? Then work through our roundup of over 130 real college essay examples published by colleges .

Stressed about whether to take the SAT again before submitting your application? Let us help you decide how many times to take this test . If you choose to go for it, we have the ultimate guide to studying for the SAT to give you the ins and outs of the best ways to study.

Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points? We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download them for free now:

Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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Woman dies after falling from overpass onto central Pa. highway

Updated: Jul. 02, 2024, 4:09 p.m. |
Published: Jul. 02, 2024, 10:35 a.m.
Jenna Wise | [email protected]

A woman was killed Tuesday morning when she fell off an overpass onto Route 30 in Lancaster County, the coroner’s office said.

The woman was seen sitting on the edge of the overpass over Route 30 around 5:30 a.m. when she fell onto the highway’s eastbound lanes near the New Holland Pike, according to the coroner’s office and county dispatch.

Several vehicles hit the woman after she fell onto the highway, the coroner’s office said, noting that she suffered “significant trauma.” She was pronounced dead at the scene at 6:49 a.m.

The woman’s cause and manner of death are pending additional investigation, the coroner’s office said.

Manheim Township police said the woman’s identity is unknown.

Route 30 east was shut down for hours after the crash but has reopened as of 10:30 a.m.

Police are asking anyone with information on her identity — or who saw her walking on or near the New Holland Pike Tuesday morning — to call 717-569-6401 or email [email protected] . Tips can be anonymously submitted through CrimeWatch .

Crime and court news

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The President Can Now Assassinate You, Officially

Under this new standard, a president can go on a four-to-eight-year crime spree and then retire from public life, never to be held accountable.

United States Supreme Court justices pose for their official portrait on October 7, 2022, in Washington, DC.

Welp, Donald Trump won. The Supreme Court today ruled that presidents are entitled to “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for official acts, then contended that pressuring the vice president and the Department of Justice to overthrow the government was an “official act,” then said that talking to advisers or making public statements are “official acts” as well, and then determined that evidence of what presidents say and do cannot be used against them to establish that their acts are “unofficial.”

The ruling from the Supreme Court was 6-3, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, on a straight party-line vote, with all the Republican-appointed justices joining to give the president the power of a king. While some parts of the federal indictment against Trump will be remanded back down to the district-court trial judge to determine whether any of Trump’s actions were “unofficial” (“unofficial” acts, the court says, are not entitled to immunity), Trump’s victory in front of the Supreme Court is total. Essentially, all he has to do is claim that everything he did to plot a coup was part of his “official” duties, and the Supreme Court provided no clear method or evidentiary standard that can be used to challenge that presumption.

Legally, there are two critical things to understand about the totality of the court’s ruling here:

The immunity is absolute
There is no legislative way to get rid of what the court has given

On the first point, the immunity granted to Trump in this case far exceeds the immunity granted to, say, police officers or other government officials, when they act in their official capacities. Those officials are granted “qualified” immunity from civil penalties. Because the immunity is “qualified,” it can be taken away (“pierced” is the legal jargon for taking away an official’s qualified immunity). People can bring evidence against officials and argue that they shouldn’t be given immunity because of the gravity or depravity of their acts.

Not so with Trump. Presidents are now entitled to “absolute” immunity, which means that no matter what they do, the immunity cannot be lost. They are always and forever immune, no matter what evidence is brought to bear.

Moreover, unlike other officials, presidents are now entitled to absolute immunity from criminal charges. Even a cop can be charged with, say, murder , even if they argue that killing people is part of their jobs. But not presidents. Presidents can murder, rape, steal, and pretty much do whatever they want, so long as they argue that murdering, raping, or stealing is part of the official job of the president of the United States. There is no crime that pierces the veil of absolute immunity.

And there is essentially nothing we can do to change it. The courts created qualified immunity for public officials, but it can be undone by state or federal legislatures if they pass a law removing that protection. Not so with absolute presidential immunity. The court here says that absolute immunity is required by the separation of powers inherent in the Constitution, meaning that Congress cannot take it away. Congress, according to the Supreme Court, does not have the power to pass legislation saying “the president can be prosecuted for crimes.” Impeachment, and only impeachment, is the only way to punish presidents, and, somewhat obviously, impeachment does nothing to a president who is already no longer in office.

The Nation Weekly

Under this new standard, a president can go on a four-to-eight-year crime spree, steal all the money and murder all the people they can get their hands on, all under guise of presumptive “official” behavior, and then retire from public life, never to be held accountable for their crimes while in office. That, according to the court, is what the Constitution requires.

There will be Republicans and legal academics and whatever the hell job Jonathan Turley has who will go into overdrive arguing that the decision isn’t as bad as all that. These bad-faith actors will be quoted or even published in The Washington Post and The New York Times . They will argue that presidents can still be prosecuted for “unofficial acts,” and so they will say that everything is fine.

But they will be wrong, because while the Supreme Court says “unofficial” acts are still prosecutable, the court has left nearly no sphere in which the president can be said to be acting “unofficially.” And more importantly, the court has left virtually no vector of evidence that can be deployed against a president to prove that their acts were “unofficial.” If trying to overthrow the government is “official,” then what isn’t? And if we can’t use the evidence of what the president says or does, because communications with their advisers, other government officials, and the public is “official,” then how can we ever show that an act was taken “unofficially”?

Take the now-classic example of a president ordering Seal Team Six to assassinate a political rival. According to the logic of the Republicans on the Supreme Court, that would likely be an official act. According to their logic, there is also no way to prove it’s “unofficial,” because any conversation the president has with their military advisers (where, for instance, the president tells them why they want a particular person assassinated) is official and cannot be used against them.

There will doubtless be people still wondering if Trump can somehow be prosecuted: The answer is “no.” Special counsel Jack Smith will surely argue that presenting fake electors in connection with his cadre of campaign sycophants was not an “official act.” Lower-court judges may well agree. But when that appeal gets back to the Supreme Court next year, the same justices who just ruled that Trump is entitled to absolute immunity will surely rule that submitting fake electors was also part of Trump’s “official” responsibilities.

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Elie mystal, a senior dnc member says there’s a way to replace biden and beat trump a senior dnc member says there’s a way to replace biden and beat trump.

There is no way to change that outcome in the short term. In the long term, the only way to undo the authoritarianism the court has just ushered in is to expand the Supreme Court . Democrats would have to win the upcoming presidential election and the House and the Senate. Then Congress would have to pass a law expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court; then the Senate would have to pass that law as well, which, at a minimum, would likely have to include getting rid of the filibuster. Then the president would have to sign such a bill, and appoint additional Supreme Court justices who do not think that presidents should be kings—and then those justices would have to be confirmed. And all of that would have to happen before the current Supreme Court hears whatever Trump appeal from his January 6 charges comes up next, because if court expansion happens after the current Supreme Court dismisses the charges against him, double jeopardy will attach and Trump can never be prosecuted again under a less-fascist court.

So, since that’s not going to happen, Trump won. He won completely. He tried to overthrow the government, and he got away with it. I cannot even imagine what he’ll try if he is actually given power again, knowing full well that he will never be held accountable for literal crimes.

If you ever wondered what you’d have done in ancient Rome, when the Roman Republic was shuttered and Augustus Caesar declared himself the “first” citizen of Rome, the answer is: whatever you’re doing right now. It’s what you would have done during the Restoration of King Charles II in England, and what you would have done when Napoleon declared himself emperor of France. This, right here, is how republics die.

And the answer that cries out from the abyss of history is that most people, in real time, don’t care. Republics fall because most citizens are willing to give it away. Most people think that it won’t be that bad to lose the rule of law, and the people who stand to benefit from the ending of republican self-government tell everybody that it will be OK. When the Imperium came to be, the Romans didn’t realize that they were seeing the last form of European self-government for 2,000 years, and the ones who did were largely happy about it.

For my part, I assume that like Mark Antony’s wife, Fulvia, defiling the decapitated head of Cicero, Martha-Ann Alito will be jabbing her golden hairpin into my tongue for criticizing the powerful soon enough. But I’m just a writer. I wonder what the rest of you will do as the last vestiges of democracy are taken away by the Imperial Supreme Court and the untouchable executive officer they’ve just created.

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Elie Mystal is The Nation ’s justice correspondent and the host of its legal podcast, Contempt of Court . He is also an Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center. His first book is the New York Times bestseller Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution, published by The New Press. Elie can be followed @ElieNYC .

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Guest Essay

Hillary Clinton: I’ve Debated Trump and Biden. Here’s What I’m Watching For.

Facing away from each other, Hillary Rodham Clinton stands onstage on the left and Donald Trump stands on the right.

By Hillary Rodham Clinton

Mrs. Clinton was the Democratic nominee for president in 2016.

Last week I had the time of my life at the Tony Awards introducing a song from “Suffs,” the Broadway musical I co-produced about the suffragists who won women the right to vote. I was thrilled when the show took home the awards for best original score and best book.

From “Suffs” to “Hamilton,” I love theater about politics. But not the other way around. Too often we approach pivotal moments like this week’s debate between President Biden and Donald Trump like drama critics. We’re picking a president, not the best actor.

I am the only person to have debated both men (Mr. Trump in 2016 and, in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary race, Mr. Biden). I know the excruciating pressure of walking onto that stage and that it is nearly impossible to focus on substance when Mr. Trump is involved. In our three debates in 2016, he unleashed a blizzard of interruptions, insults and lies that overwhelmed the moderators and did a disservice to the voters who tuned in to learn about our visions for the country — including a record 84 million viewers for our first debate.

It is a waste of time to try to refute Mr. Trump’s arguments like in a normal debate. It’s nearly impossible to identify what his arguments even are. He starts with nonsense and then digresses into blather. This has gotten only worse in the years since we debated. I was not surprised that after a recent meeting, several chief executives said that Mr. Trump, as one journalist described it, “could not keep a straight thought” and was “all over the map.” Yet expectations for him are so low that if he doesn’t literally light himself on fire on Thursday evening, some will say he was downright presidential.

Mr. Trump may rant and rave in part because he wants to avoid giving straight answers about his unpopular positions, like restrictions on abortion, giving tax breaks to billionaires and selling out our planet to big oil companies in return for campaign donations. He interrupts and bullies — he even stalked me around the stage at one point — because he wants to appear dominant and throw his opponent off balance.

These ploys will fall flat if Mr. Biden is as direct and forceful as he was when engaging Republican hecklers at the State of the Union address in March. The president also has facts and truth on his side. He led America’s comeback from a historic health and economic crisis, with more than 15 million jobs created so far, incomes for working families rising, inflation slowing and investments in clean energy and advanced manufacturing soaring. He’ll win if that story comes through.

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My internship at Bridgewater Associates felt like a 'Black Mirror' episode

Under Ray Dalio, everything was recorded and we constantly rated each other. I loved it.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Daria Rose, a 27-year-old lawyer and creator who interned at Ray Dalio's hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, in 2017 and 2018. Her employment has been verified and the following has been edited for length and clarity.

The first time I ever watched the " Black Mirror" episode "Nosedive" — about a world in which people constantly rate one another — I thought, wait, I've worked for a place like this before .

The summer after my sophomore and junior years at Harvard University, I interned at Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund. Its intense culture is not for everybody . Founder Ray Dalio once said around 30% of employees quit within the first 18 months .

And while I definitely see parallels between my time at Bridgewater and that "Black Mirror" episode, I look back fondly on my time there . If I hadn't gone to law school, I 100% would've returned to work there full-time.

I was drawn to Bridgewater's tenet of meaningful work

In my sophomore year, I heard about Bridgewater from another student in a social club I was in at Harvard . She'd been recruited as an investment associate and was looking for other people interested in working there.

I did some research and was drawn to the fact that one of Bridgewater's main tenets is about meaningful work and meaningful relationships . She told me about a management associate position and helped forward my résumé.

After applying, I had to take a Myers-Briggs Personality Type test and several other screening tests . Next, we had a full-day interview at the Bridgewater campus in Westport, Connecticut.

Authenticity is a big thing at Bridgewater, so I went into the interview wanting to be completely myself.

I was first put in a room with other applicants for a moderated debate-style interview. The rest of the day was spent in multiple rounds of interviews with managers. Some were case studies — kind of similar to consulting — and others involved deep intensive questions about who I was as a person. How did you grow up? Are you an only child? How do you think this affected you? How do you think this impacts your working style on a team? What wakes you up in the morning? How do you deal with criticism?

The interviewers I had were incredibly empathetic, and our conversation felt real and vulnerable.

About a week or two later, I got a call that I got the job. When I saw my offer package — I was like, whoa, this is a lot of money — and the great perks like housing, transportation, and a signing bonus, it was really a no-brainer. I thought, I'm 100% working there.

The internship was incredibly fun

Most of the interns lived together in dorms for the summer, which was really cool and special. To help us bond, we did fun activities like group dinners, our own version of Tough Mudder , and a scavenger hunt.

Every day, we would arrive at the campus by around 8 a.m. and leave around 7 p.m. I was a management associate intern in the office of the CEO, and we did basically any special project the CEO needed. I worked on a lot of diversity initiatives , figuring out how to make Bridgewater more streamlined and accessible to employees.

Ranking each other was a big part of Bridgewater's culture

We ranked people daily using numbered " dots ," a real-time check-in of how everyone was doing.

In each meeting, we'd each have an iPad in front of us, showing a list of everyone else present. Throughout the meeting, we'd give people dots for things like humility, composure, willingness to touch a nerve, openmindedness, and assertiveness. By the end of the meeting, our whole screen would just be filled with dots — some red, some green. It could get distracting sometimes — like, who gave me a three? — but we'd try to ignore it and stay in the moment.

Because we were constantly being evaluated on what we said, people were way more conscious when speaking. Instead of talking just to talk, people tried to make their points succinct and easily understandable, or they'd get a negative dot.

This criticism wasn't just limited to peers or supervisees. We were also encouraged to give dots to our bosses, managers, and even CEOs.

Dot outcomes went onto our " baseball cards ," which had information about each employee's role and their strengths and weaknesses, to create a more vivid picture of what each of us was like.

Everything was recorded

Radical truth and radical transparency were very important at Bridgewater. Everything was recorded. If I wanted to go back and see why I got a certain dot, I could go back to the recording and listen to what I'd said. I could even look up my friends' dots and see how they were doing each day, even if I wasn't in the meeting.

One time, my friend threw her water bottle in the trash rather than recycling it. I don't know who saw her, but someone gave her a negative dot. It made me realize, wow, people really do care on a microscopic level and they're paying attention to you .

Pain + reflection = progress

Getting so much constant feedback was difficult at first. At times I was like, oh, that's harsh . It's never great to hear that you didn't do something right or that someone didn't like something you said. We had a button on our iPads that we could press whenever we felt pain, and then we'd write a reflection about the situation. The idea was that pain plus reflection equals progress .

Depending on the severity of the pain or what had happened, sometimes we'd have a diagnostic session to get to the root of the problem, such as if someone's ego got in the way of them asking for help. These sessions could sometimes be uncomfortable, but ultimately were really helpful and led to growth and better day-to-day operations.

I was really good at receiving constructive feedback and was always really high on the humility scale. I like to improve and have a growth mindset rather than taking things personally. On the days when I felt a little bit more sensitive or more emotional, I didn't want to hear the more critical feedback. But when I was able to look back at it from a less emotional standpoint, I was like, oh, okay, they had a point here .

Dalio wanted us to try to take our egos out of our work as much as possible and really look toward a higher self. From time to time, we'd have to do something called "force rankings," where we ranked our team members based on who was the most and least helpful. It never felt good to be at the bottom of that scale, which happened to me multiple times.

A lot of smart people who go to elite schools are used to being the best at everything and being on top all of the time, but that's not realistic. There are going to be days where you're super on it, and then there are days that you might not be.

At Bridgewater, there was no hiding that fact.

Gossip was not allowed

It was a no-gossip environment. We weren't allowed to talk about other people behind their backs — a huge principle was that you speak up, say it to the other person's face, dot them, and be transparent.

If you were talking about someone in the context of work, you'd have to send that tape to them afterward . When I got my full-time offer to join Bridgewater, my manager sent me the tape of them deliberating and I got to hear what they genuinely thought about me while I wasn't in the room.

I think that's really valuable, especially these days when some corporate environments involve fakeness and niceties to your face and people aren't upfront about what they actually think about you and your work.

At Bridgewater, there was none of that. It sounds counterintuitive, but the constant recordings did encourage us to be more open and put everything on the table — there's no incentive not to.

I really appreciated the candidness. Now working in law, we have so much going on sometimes that we don't necessarily get direct feedback all the time. As with most companies, feedback usually happens during an annual or semi-annual review, and sometimes by that time, it's become a bigger problem.

With the dot system at Bridgewater, if there was an issue, we'd know that day, and it'd be diagnosed that week. I miss that part about it.

The best ideas won

We were really encouraged to push back on supervisors and superiors, because one of the tenets was that we were an idea meritocracy and the best idea will rise to the top, not based on the seniority of the person who put it forth.

Because debating and disagreeing with each other was encouraged, I learned so much from my colleagues. I had my viewpoints challenged and I challenged theirs. I can't imagine another workplace like that that allows for that type of growth and honest feedback.

My experience made me who I am today

I think Bridgewater's culture might be a little bit different now, especially because Ray Dalio isn't there anymore . But I can't emphasize enough how transformative and eye-opening my experience was. It helped shape who I am today, especially how I think about feedback, work, and the relationships I have at work.

I've never worked with a more brilliant group of unique people. There were poker stars, musicians, and people who wrote comedy. We all did so many different things but were united under this Bridgewater umbrella and really brought our full selves to work and gave it our all.

The experience prepared me for life, even more than just for a corporate career. It helped me grow a thicker skin; not a lot fazes me now.

A few years after working at Bridgewater, I was on "The Bachelor." People scrutinized me and said so many mean, horrible things.

My Bridgewater experience prepared me to understand that everyone will have judgments or perceptions about you, but you don't have to take them all in. We'd always say, "It's just one dot."

One dot doesn't make up the whole picture. You're going to get thousands and thousands of dots; take that criticism for what it is.

A representative for Bridgewater Associates declined to comment.

If you experienced a uniquely demanding workplace culture and would like to share your story, email Jane Zhang at [email protected] .

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