Wisdom

Wisdom is understanding of what matters most, joined to the ability to live by it. It differs from knowledge, which can be had without being lived, and from cleverness, which can serve any end. Philosophy, by its name, is the love of wisdom (sophia), and for the ancient schools it was a way of life, not only a body of theory.

The traditions give wisdom a central place. In the Hebrew Bible, Wisdom is personified as a woman present with God at creation, and the wisdom books teach that the fear of the Lord is its beginning. In Christian thought, Christ is called the Wisdom of God. In Buddhism, wisdom (prajñā), the direct insight into impermanence, non-self and emptiness, is with compassion one of the two wings of the path. The Daoist sage is wise by not grasping, and the Confucian by cultivating humaneness and ritual propriety.

Common to these accounts is the idea that wisdom transforms the one who has it, and shows itself in conduct, equanimity and compassion rather than in learning.