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The Paradoxical Nature of Personal Wisdom and Its Relation to Human Development in the Reflective, Cognitive, and Affective Domains

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Abstract

The concept of wisdom has long defied easy definition and operationalization, although many scholars agree that one essential feature is its paradoxical nature. There is also a growing consensus that wisdom includes a combination of reflective, cognitive, and affective dimensions. In this chapter, we elaborate paradoxical aspects of the concept of wisdom by illuminating how divergent facets in its three dimensions come together. The paradoxes discussed are (1) “I know that I do not know,” (2) a will-not-to-will and an act of nonaction, (3) loss is gain, and (4) liberation through the acceptance of limitations in the reflective dimension; (1) wise judgment in the face of uncertainty, (2) the foolishness of the wise and the wisdom of fools, and (3) wisdom is timeless and universal yet relative and changing in the cognitive dimension; and (1) self-development through selflessness, (2) involvement through detachment, and (3) change through acceptance in the affective dimension. We suggest that people who follow the paradoxical path to wisdom ultimately will gain liberation, truth, and a sense of unlimited love. Narratives of the life of Buddha are used to illustrate the individual paradoxes.

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Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Michel Ferrari, Nic Weststrate, Caroline Bassett, R.G. Desai, Dietmar H. Kaul, Collin Roughton, Ting Tseng, and Tarynn Witten for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. Address correspondence to Monika Ardelt, University of Florida, Department of Sociology, 3219 Turlington Hall, P.O. Box 117330, Gainesville, FL 32611–7330. E-mail address: ardelt@ufl.edu.

A previous version of this chapter was presented at the 2004 Gerontological Society of America Annual Meetings in Washington, DC.

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  1. Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Monika Ardelt & Hunhui Oh

  2. Graduate School of Social Work, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA

    W. Andrew Achenbaum

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  1. Monika Ardelt
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  2. W. Andrew Achenbaum
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  3. Hunhui Oh
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Correspondence to Monika Ardelt .

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  1. OISE, Applied Psychology and Human Development, University of Toronto, Bloor Street West 252, Toronto, M5S 1V6, Ontario, Canada

    Michel Ferrari

  2. Ontario Inst. Studies in Education, Dept. Human Development &, University of Toronto, Bloor Street West 252, Toronto, M5S 1V6, Ontario, Canada

    Nicholas Weststrate

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Ardelt, M., Achenbaum, W.A., Oh, H. (2013). The Paradoxical Nature of Personal Wisdom and Its Relation to Human Development in the Reflective, Cognitive, and Affective Domains. In: Ferrari, M., Weststrate, N. (eds) The Scientific Study of Personal Wisdom. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9231-1_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9231-1_13

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