Wisdom
WISDOM. The term wisdom has been used with a great variety of meanings in the course of history. A survey quickly shows that every culture has or has had its ideal of wisdom and recorded it in oral or written sapiential literature. In particular, the relation, both historical and systematic, between wisdom on the one hand and religion and philosophy on the other, varies a great deal. This article can give only a limited selection from the broad range of sapiential traditions and ideas.
General Terminology
As far as we can judge from the terms used and their history, wisdom was originally a practical matter, namely "insight" into certain connections existing in human life and in the world and modes of behavior derived from this insight and put into the service of instruction and education. The Indo-European root of the word wisdom, *ueid-, connotes "perceiving, seeing" (compare Greek idein, "idea," and Latin videre, "to see"). The German language has preserved the ancient connection between Weisheit ("wisdom"), Wissen ("knowledge"), and Wissenschaft ("science"). A person's wisdom depends on what he or she has seen and thereby come to know. It is therefore a practical knowledge, the primordial shaper of human behavior toward the environing world (to the extent that this knowledge resists the pressures for immediate action).
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