There are 3 types of "smarts".

There is Intelligence, Knowledge, and Wisdom.

Intelligence can tell you how to do a math problem, or how a certain event in history occured.

Knowledge can tell you what mathematical formula to use, or what battle something occured in.

But Wisdom, it tells you why you use that math problem. It tells you why that event in history occured, and how it caused things to happen.

Wisdom is being able to use your intelligence and knowledge, however limited, to look at them in a different way, and use them in a more meaningful way.

Albert Einstein was a wise man. He took basic physics laws, and looked at them a different way. All he ever did was take some simple laws of motion, light, and so on, and proved theories on time dialation and so on. That is what wisdom is. It is the ability to look at things in a different way, and use it. Einstein made relativity with an experiment. The experiment goes that if you fire a laser on a train, into a mirror, so that the laser beam hits back into the laser, you can look at it from 2 ways. You can be off the train, watching it move. Or you can be on the train, watching the laser move. This was never done before. He showed through some basic motions of the light from the two perspectives, that there is a difference in the time it takes for the laser to travel from either perspective.

Wise people always make a big impact, because they can change the world. Classically: Socrates. Very philosophical. Very wise.

Wisdom is the ability to take information, and look at it in a different way, and use it in that way.

As many may agree with me: "I would rather be dumb and wise, then smart and naive."

Wisdom is achieved by the gradual accumulation of variable criteria and other outside information that is not immediately pertinent to survival, and using that knowledge to enhance one's own thinking beyond the realm of most basic logic and knowledge. Most notably, wisdom applies to "gray" areas of life, such as human relations. I.E.: Is it logical that an emotionally distraught woman could misconstrue your failure to notice her new hair style as a failure of you caring for her emotionally? No, it isn't logical, but it very well may happen. Therefore, a WISE man will leave logic at the door and do his best to notice the minutia of the woman about whom he cares, as well as be understanding when other such cases of illogical behavior occur.

The philosophers who have responded to this query have been discussing the concept of wisdom as being something akin to discernment, which is a valid and helpful way of looking at wisdom. But wisdom has not always and is not always defined this way. In Judaism and Christianity, historic wisdom has to do with knowing the rules to live by and following them. The Wisdom Literature of the Hebrew Bible -- Proverbs and Ecclesiastes in particular -- are all about trying to figure out what kind of behavior pleases God, reducing that behavior to a series of rules to live by, and then doing your best to live by them. This sort of Wisdom has made a big comeback in evangelical Christianity in the last 20 or 30 years. Essentially, the point of Wisdom is retributive justice: if you would just follow the rules and behave yourself, nothing bad will ever happen to you. If something bad happens to you, it's because you deserve it. But as we see in the Book of Job and in real life, bad things do indeed happen to good people. When something bad happens to us, we wonder what we did to cause it or deserve it. The truly wise would answer: Nothing. We didn't necessarily do anything to cause or deserve a bad thing that happened to us. Life is chaotic, despite our best efforts to make it orderly. Without that intrinsic chaos, there would be no serendipity, no unscheduled joy. So perhaps the true Wisdom, in this sense, is to do the best you can with the challenges you face and rejoice in all that is good.

When true knowledge, collective or individual, matures to the point that it issues out in action, then it is called wisdom. When knowledge does not transform to wisdom, such a knowledge is useless to the self or mankind.

Wisdom is something that our species must strive to realize as an evolving collective mindset--an imperative for long-term species survival. While this collective set of beliefs, attitudes, and duties will always be challenged and opposed by colloquial, selfish, ignorant, and yes, even evil interests (be they individuals or groups), the overwhelming majority of humanity will inevitably reject Old Thinking (for example, Clauswitz, "war is another means of achieving political ends") and accept this global imperative. Species survival is dependent on group recognition that our fragile environment is not limitless and able to exploited without global consequences. Our survival depends on a global consensus that mankind's technology has made interstate, subnational, indeed any type of conflict an intolerable threat to the ecosystem and the interconnected world order. Long-term species survival requires surrender of penultimate (ability to wage war and interfere in other nations or subgroups affairs) nation-state sovereignty to a global Internet based (with appropriate backup and trickle down technologies reaching all populations) world governing authority (made up of representatives of all 6.6 billion inhabitants). Leadership of such authority would be temporary, limited, and egalitarian in nature and based on Ancient Greek models. While more idealistic and perhaps unrealistic (at least in the short-term) goals of wealth distribution might take quite a while to reach consensus, more immediate short-term goals can be realized within a few decades. Such goals would include (1)mitigating, managing and ultimately preventing human accelerated global warming and other harmful environmental threats (nuclear fission on the Earth's surface versus utilizing the largest natural nuclear fusion reactor we know-the Sun); (2) outlawing all forms of military aggression (which does not translate into world disarmament, at least not in the short-term--but focuses on reorienting resources and technologies to true defense and homeland security); (3) beginning to establish a world meeting of minds among all religious and pseudo-religious representatives and average citizen representatives to resolve that all belief systems have commonalities and that the global ethic demands a renunciation of hatred and conflict justified by religious misinterpretation; (4) establishing a species survival protocol for the entire planet (see William Burrows, NY Times science writer's 2006 book on this subject) that recognizes the need to utilize global humanitarian, civil, and formerly zero-sum military resources to address world natural disasters--from floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and asteroid strikes--assessing, mitigating, and ultimately preventing most disasters (an important subset is to establish Earth orbital and lunar safe caches to duplicate, hold and protect human knowledge sets, antiquities, and genome/DNA samples in the event of a global catastrophe either human-caused [terrorism, accidental nuclear war triggering Global Autumn/Winter, etc] or natural). While contemplating wisdom as an abstract construct of human philosophy is a valuable exercise in the field of logic and reasoning, we all too often discount the utilitarian need to realize wisdom in the context I've outlined above--working, talking, advocating, debating, and actualizing a future where humans will survive. If you take that to be overly idealistic, remember that Earth's history notes that countless species have become extinct, without any means to prevent it. Our intelligence and "wisdom", will win out and allow us to prevent extinction that is coming in the next few generations unless we begin to accept this concept as a realistic endeavor worth pursuing and prioritize it appropriately. If we don't get our heads out of the sand soon, it may be too late (Chicken Little). The arc of the moral universe is long, but it does not go on forever (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.). Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in the cradle forever (Konstantin Tsiolkovsky)

In the world we live in today I believe the word wisdom is misrepresented. Wisdom is not something that is found in a book. Being wise does not consist of rambling off past philosophical quotes. Wisdom is not gained by sitting in a classroom; wisdom does not come with a diploma. Wisdom is not gathered through the lives of other, it is in the quiet reflections of self. True wisdom is found in the man who understands that the world does not matter. Wisdom has nothing to do with any one else, and I believe that is where this society confuses the two, because the wise only keep company with themselves. The wise understand that nothing matters nor will it ever, so why does the majority of society believe that there is something they must do to garner this gift? When in truth wisdom is derived from doing nothing. Wisdom is not a gift, it is simply remembering simplicity. It is living peacefully with yourself, cause yourself is all you will ever have.

Wisdom is being able to recognize what you know to be best and then having the discipline to act on it.

Wisdom comes with experience, tolerance, and recognition. It should not be confused with knowledge, although the latter is a necessary part of wisdom.

Wisdom: understanding of all surrounding things as well as past experiences with the addition of the ability to apply what what been learned, usually by observation, in any application. I personally believe that understanding is the most essential part of wisdom.

Simply stated, wisdom is the process of becoming wise through experience-good, bad, and otherwise.
Unless we can differentiate right and wrong through having experienced the concept ourself or witnessed another’s event then we have no way to compare and contrast what is appropriate.
As John Locke believes, the mind is a blank slate until we put something in-good, bad or otherwise.
Descartes believed that we are innate creatures with most of our wisdom and perspective coming automatically almost from instinct. Had he forgotten that unlike other mammals—we have a cognitive reasoning power which enables us to think and analyze what is important and empowering in our lives?

Wisdom is simply put as realizing that you’re a dumbass and that you don’t truly know everything there is to know. If you knew everything, your brain would explode. Like, Whitehead said, “Not ignorance, but the ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge.” Knowledge is associated with wisdom. Not wisdom itself. Does knowledge preceed wisdom? Or does wisdom preceed knowledge? Confusing isn’t it? And mind you, ignorance and stupidity are different. Ignorance is saying, “I know everything there is to know.” Stupidity is simply, “Heyy! I know jumping off this bridge will hurt but…lets do it anyway! Cool!”

I think wisdom is intellectual insight which people gain from personal experiences and use it to solve problems. Wisdom is understanding the right way of doing things. I don’t think the smartest person is always the wisest person beacause even though you are smart you might not always make wise decisions. I think wisdom is a good indication of who we are and what separates us from just being smart.

Wisdom is the knowledge that one can only gain from life experiences, not textbooks or the internet. People always say that there is a difference between “book smarts” and “street smarts.” I believe that wisdom is any kind of smarts (books or street) that you can only learn on your own. Wisdom is something like how to plan for retirement, what to do in certain tough situations that most people go through later in life (like the death of a parent for example). Because wisdom cannot be learned from secondary sources, wisdom is knowledge that must be gained through experiences.

I believe wisdom is a tricky thing to put one’s finger on. In listening to Charlotte’s interview, it seemed liek the main component she was thinking about was problem solving which I completely agree with. If you don’t know how to think through a situation and determine the best course of action for it (or at least give it your best shot), you are by no means wise. Problem solving comes from experience and effort. Someone doesn’t become wise through just experiencing things, the person must do their best to try to learn from and use their experiences to make their life and lives around them better. I think knowledge is a small part of wisdom compared to problem solving but it does pay off to know things about a variety of things in life. After all, this is a type of experience and learnging from reading or being taught ,etc… is a major contribution to one’s wisdom.

I think that wisdom is learning from past experiences. Going through certain situations can change a person, and that experience makes them wiser. People learn from their mistakes, and thats how they gain wisdom. You can’t gain wisdom from reading a book; you gain it from real life.

I would say that wisdom is the ability to use the best way at the best time to complete the best ends. It is not what you know, but how you use it. It is not merely a matter of information or knowledge but of skillful and useful claims of the truth to the ordinary events of life. It is awareness to be sensitive to this situation, to this person, uninfluenced by any version of the past. I would even go a step further and say that wisdom relates to developing an endless view on life. I believe you do not have to be book smart, but common sense to have wisdom. It is not what you know, but how you use it in your daily life – continuing to learn something new every single day of your life. You have to experience daily life, make your own mistakes, and learn from it something that one cannot learn from a book.

Just because an indivudal is smart does not necessarily make them wise. I know many smart people who seem to repeatedly make bad decisions that a wise person would no make. A very smart individual can certainly be foolish, and foolish people aren’t wise. for example, a smart person can come up with a plan to rob a bank, but is not a very wise individual considering the chance of being caught. Wisdom comes from learned experience, whereas intelligence is generally innate. A smart person can know a lot of facts and not necessarily use them as a wise person could. I think wisdom involves having some brain smarts, but also having common sense to back up the intelligence. The wise individual needs to be able to make use of the information that they have in a reasonable manner in everyday life. Wisdom is not something that can be learned, but it is grown slowly over time.

I found this quote awhile ago and I don’t remember where, but I think it’s perfect to end with.

“The difference between a smart person and a wise person is that a wise person knows how not to get into situations that a smart person knows how to get out of.”

Wisdom is very tricky because we do not come across it as we come across other things such as ignorance and the people that are wise don’t go around screaming it ( I agree with Socrates with the point that wise people don’t claim to be wise). I believe that wisdom is achieved, as a mind set and a way of looking at life. Wisdom gives us no answers, but paths and choices to obtain the answers that we seek.

Wisdom is something that I feel, that only people that have experienced a lot in their lives can honestly say that they have. Like Charlotte said, wisdom is not all about being smart. Knowing a lot of about “book smarts” doesn’t mean that one is wise. Having knowledge of both, however, can make one wise. I feel that wisdom involves logic and reasoning as well as common sense.

In my opinon wisdom is more then just “smarts.” Wisdom is more of what you have experienced then what you have learned. Some people would say wisdom is booksmarts, but i would dissagree and say that its much more experience. I also think someone is wise when they make the “right” decision that causes more good then bad just like mills theory. Wisdom is not something you can just learn, and thats why i feel wise people are generally much older then younger (although vary rarely wise people can be young.)

Wisdom is something that one gains after having many life experiences, trying to learn new things constantly, and can deal with anything that life “throws” at you. People that have wisdom are good problem solvers, they can give good advice, and have a lot of general knowledge. Being “smart” is not a qualification, but they need to at least have knowledg about life and life experiences (this is coupled with “having many life experiences”).

Wisdom, something that only a select few truely have. Wisom is something gained overtime, something that one must work at to achieve. In working to acheive full wisdom, one must study books, live life to their fullest potential, and be ready to take critizisim and learn from it. When I say you need experiance to be wise, I am basically saying, you must have learned from your experiances and grown from them. Not only must someone with wisdome have basic knowledge, but as well as book smarts. I personally think one cannot study their way to wisdom, but they can help grow towards it. As well as being book smart, someone can be wise in their own right. One persons definition of wise is not always the same as someone else’s. Two people can have to very differant ideas to who is wise and why. I believe it is all about taking your own experiances and realizing truely what you don’t know, and that is how you can determine who is truely wise.

Wisdom can be gained through life experiences. It’s not only life experiences though. Intelligence is required. A wide variety of subjects should also be known. People that are wise should also think rationally, want to learn more, and willing to share their wisdom with others. I think older people have more wisdom because they have been around longer and have experienced more. It’s harder for a child to have wisdom.

I agree with many of the ideas raised here. I think wisdom is something that is almost always gained over time due to life experiences. That is why people we think of as wise tend to be older. When I think of wisdom, I generally think of having a good amount of proficiency in many areas of intelligence, knowledge, etc. I disagree with the opinion that “book smarts” are not a part of wisdom. I think that extensive knowledge is a large part of wisdom. Another, and possibly the biggest, condition for wisdom in my book is the ability to share your wisdom and pass it on to others. I don’t mean by flaunting it, but by offering it when others ask. How wise can someone be if they are not able to help others when they need it?

I agree with the young philosopher Charlotte about the idea that wisdom is knowing a lot about a lot of differnt things, but the one thing that I have to add is that knowing all those things is nothing if the peron who is “wise” cannot aply them or understand what it is that makes them wise. Because in my personal opinion it would be impossible to be wise if the person could not know how they became that “wise” person that everyone wants to be.

I like the way Charlotte defines wisdom. I also believe that wisdom comes from experiencing a lot. I don’t think that being wise comes from being intelligent, but you do need to be somewhat intelligent with some subjects. I think wisdom is based on making good decisions, thinking things out carefully(thinking before makings actions).

I think someone that is wise, is someone who is good at giving advice. I may be swayed in my view of a wise person, because this is the only way I feel that wisdom has displayed itself to me in my life. This has been by way of my parents, grandparents, and (what I feel is most important) by way of random “good” people. Usually parents and grandparents are good at giving advice, but other people? You need to be selective. For instance, on the way home from spending Thanksgiving break in Florida, I sat next to a guy who was from my home town: Pittsburgh, PA. We talked for what seemed to be five or ten minutes, when in actuality we had talked the whole flight. The entire time, we shared insights and thoughts. And although we may have differed in some aspects and may have had different opinions on things, I really understood what he said about life. I believe that this man was wise. The only evidence that I have is the feeling of accomplishment and fulfillment I had after leaving the airport. That, I thought, was wisdom at it’s finest.

Wisdom, what is it? When someone thinks of a wise person(s) some might look at their parents, since they have experienced so much. But, is experience enough to be wise? Some might say yes, although I say no. To me a person does have to have experience to be wise, but also a person have to have book smarts too, and know how to use the information they have learned in real life situations. A person has to know how to live life to the fulliest, strive to be successful, and appreciate what they have.

(WP10) S is wise iff A knows how to live well and has a general appriciation of the true value of living well.

In the philosophy reading, 11 year old Charlotte stated that having knowledge in football or fashion isn’t wisdom at all. I disagree, sure its fun topics to think about, but having knowledge in fashion or football has made many people rich in those types of buisness. Therefore, they are appriciating their life with having the wisdom they have. I feel one of the main parts of being wise is having knowledge, along with experience. To me being wise is having knowledge, experience, and understanding and appreciating life and live it well.

Wisdom and knowledge are often used interchangeably, but to me this seems inaccurate. True, wisdom and knowledge may be similar, they certainly are not synonymous. Knowledge is about the facts in life, the truth of certain matters, and cold hard evidence. While wisdom challenges a person to think outside the box, to consider why or how something has happened for example. Wisdom is an aspect that is gained through extensive experiences throughout life and sometimes even through lack of experience. For a person to be wise, I don’t feel as though they necessarily have had to have lived a long, enduring lifestyle; a person can be wise simply through picking up bits of knowledge as they go along. Some of the people I consider the wisest I know are only in their forties and fifties. Wisdom is a concept that many people have different views on its exact definition and how it is obtained, but the one universal aspect that I think most people can agree with is that wisdom requires patience.

Wisdom is comprised of several things. It is made up of knowledge of a variety of subjects, experience, and knowing how to live well. However, I think it applies to some cases differently than others. For example, I think that my mother is wise. However, she doesn’t fill the criteria for “knowledge of a variety of subjects”. She is very intelligent, don’t get me wrong, but she isn’t an extremely “book smart” person. But she is wise, nonetheless. This is because she learns from her experiences and changes her life accordingly in order to “live well”. That is what I think a wise person does. They may not be the smartest person in the world, but they are living their life well and have an appreciation for the wellness they have. However, in a way I think this makes wisdom sound too easy to come by. It is still a prestigious characteristic that you don’t come across everyday. Yet still any person, genius or not, can become wise. It is a matter of how you live your life.

Wisdom is the ability to apply, and pass on knowledge. A wise person has knowledge on a lot of life experiences, though actually experiencing them first hand is not necessary. A wise person keeps his/her eyes and ears open to what is going on around them, and then in turn uses these observations to form conclusions based on a rational process of thought. A wise person has the patience to observe and comprehend situations, and than analyze them in order to gain a truer understanding of said situation, and on a grander scale life.

I disagree with the fact that a wise person must deny their own wisdom in order to be considered wise. This seems almost pretentious to me. You know if you’re wise, you know if you have a wide bredth of knowledge and can help people with a variety of problems. There’s nothing wrong with accepting these abilities. Acknowledging the skills or wisdom you have does not negate them.

Or lets even look at it in a different light. If wise men know they are not wise, then we have to assume (because they’re so wise) that they are not in fact wise. Well if they’re not wise how can we even trust their opinion that their not in fact wise. But they can’t be wise because by their own admission they are not. There is a clear paradox. Or perhaps this; if even the wisest men on earth are by their own admission not wise, than there is no wisdom, thus this question is ridiculous to even consider. But wisdom does exist as it has been a term used for thousands of years. Therefore, a wise man saying he is not wise proves nothing and qualifies nothing.

Wisdom is simply the applied usage of previously gained knowledge, due to prior experience, in order to create a situation within which a greater good occurs as a result of the application.

Wisdom to me is a slightly complicated issue. This is because I feel that there should be more to a person than just “book smarts” to gain the title of a wise; there should also be experience. Experience is important because when people make mistakes and learn from them they are bettering their lives. In bettering their own lives, they are also bettering other people’s lives because they are communicating their knowledge of life to others. They give advice and have confidence to tell others what they believe like Maya Angelou, MLK jr, and Ghandi. Another part of wisdom is “book smarts.” I believe that to have wisdom you need to live long enough to have a bunch of experiences. Another important aspect of wisdom is that you imply all that “smarts” you know and live well. What I also feel is important about wisdom is that those who are wise don’t flaunt it in front of people. They are humble about what they know.

Wisdom is the ability to apply knowledge, experience, or understanding. Wise people seem sincere and direct with others. A wise person’s actions are consistent with his/her ethical beliefs. A wise person must be able to share their knowledge with others effectively.

Part of me feels that wisdom is unattainable. That’s because society tells us that wisdom comes with age. There’s many intelligent and knowlegeable people but when is it that you gain wisdom? My understanding is that when you add life’s experiences with intelligence and knowledge you gain your wisdom.

To consider someone wise you have to consider a few things. I believe in order to be considered wise you must have lived through many of life’s most tough experiences. Living through and learning from those tough experiences will give you more knowledge about life. This knowledge of life will give you the ability to live life well, but in order to be considered wise with this knowledge you MUST live life well or else you’re just wasting this knowledge, in the end not making you wise. I also believe that if you want to be considered wise, you must have some intelligence, you can’t just be some stupid person that has been through a lot of life’s experiences you must have some intelligence. Last you must want to learn more in order to be wise. You must want to go through more of life’s experience and want to gain more knowledge to be considered wise in my book.

When one wishes to define wisdom, they must look at the people our society views as wise. People like Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, Socrates, and Gandhi are almost universally accepted as wise people. They all have achieved great things in their lives by making wise decisions. One uniform thing they all seem to have in common, is that they do not seem to make decisions based on the simple will of society, but on their own intuitions.
Going back to the topic of right and wrong all of these people seemed willing to stand up to traditional conventions to do what they believed was right. Here I see that part of being wise is that one realizes the importance of an individual’s role in helping society. All of these wise men were willing to see that personal sacrifice was a small price to pay for the betterment of society. I believe that kernel piece of wisdom is realizing one’s place in a society and the need to contribute to its betterment.

In my opinion, part of being wise is learning from your experience. Another wards you may be good at certain aspects of your life, to make you a more wise/intelligent person, you have to work on the things you are not good at. Wisdom is something that takes time and work. That is why most wise people that young people name are older people. Nevertheless, experience and understanding qualities of life play huge roles in gaining wisdom.

I think “wisdom” and “intelligence” are often confused and used interchangeably. If I had to differentiate “wisdom” from “intelligence” and only do so with two words (why I would need to do this, I don’t know, but…) I would say “intelligence” is books smarts, while “wisdom” is street smarts.

At first I wanted to say that wisdom required age and years of experience, but the more I think about it, I think it really only requires experience. And maybe not even that… I think that wisdom normally comes with experiences (no matter what the age). Some people are called ‘wise beyond their years’ and that is probably because they have had many more experiences than someone else their own age (either good or bad). That being said, I think that all that is really needed to gain wisdom is insight and intuition.

Wisdom can be classified by many different variables, yet each variable comes equipped with knowledge and understanding. In simplistic terms, wisdom is merely aged knowledge that has been tested and proven to work efficiently in its particular field of application. This knowledge must obtain the credentials for appropriate use and must be known how to be used efficiently and without error for it to be considered wisdom.

In addition to what Cassie said above, I believe that many people will often confuse knowledge with wisdom. Many individuals may possess large quantities of knowledge but may lack the ability to apply it to particular situations. That is the essence of wisdom; possessing the ability to apply one’s knowledge appropriately to a situation for the purpose of achieving a task.

I also agree that you don’t have to be ‘book smart’ to be considered wise. I feel that knowing a lot about a lot of different things is a very important factor in being wise. However, I also feel that you need to have some life experience. Being able to learn from your mistakes makes you wise. Being able to accept when you are wrong makes you wise. Being wise and bein intelligent are definately two different things, but I feel the most important aspect of wisdom is experience. Knowing how to live your life well, and actually living your life well is also really important.

While I have batted around a seemingly countless number of definitions of what wisdom is, I always seem to be left a little disappointed. Not because the definition wasn’t well thought out, but rather because none of them truly grasped what wisdom actually means to me. Surely though after all of these arguments that I have seen I could say “that is the one I like,” but no I haven’t found that exact argument yet. So instead of sitting here and waiting on the argument to come to me, I think the only way I can capture the true essence of wisdom would be to make an argument myself!

To me, wisdom is nothing but a myth? or at least a myth in the fact that we as humans can ever be able to say that someone else is wise. Every definition for wisdom that I’ve heard either makes it sound like something that any old man (including the town idiot) could acquire, or so strict and legalized that on a few elites could gain it because of their superior intellect. While I think that the stricter more legalized approach would be the more proper one, I still think that even it misses the point. Is intellect important? Of course it is, but with these stricter guidelines one could be intelligent alone and pass the strict wisdom tests that are presented.

Now, I am going to clarify a statement here, while I don’t think that we as humans are capable of obtaining wisdom, I think that we are capable of doing wise things. If a child makes a statement talking about how people should never judge each other by what they look like, but rather by what’s in their hearts, most people are going to claim that this kid is wise beyond his age. But then you look at him the next second and he is picking his nose and then eating his boogers. Now, was it wise what he said about people? No doubt in my mind. Is the kid wise? Nope because no wise man would eat his own boogers.

Wisdom to me is something that is more or less only obtainable through some sort of enlightenment by an omniscient being (this is in no way making reference to the enlightenment of per say Buddha). And maybe that omniscient being would never see fit to enlighten us with the wisdom that it holds. I like to believe in the fact that someday some of us will be given this gift of wisdom, and then we will truly be able to define what it really is. But until that day comes, I don’t think I really call any person on the face of this earth wise. Here is my argument for my definition of wisdom.

1.X is wise if and only if they have been enlightened intellectually by a truly omniscient being.

Is this a strict definition of Wisdom? Probably one of the strictest. Would anyone ever be able to truly tell if someone has been enlightened by a truly omniscient being? Definitely not, that’s why I said that I don’t think I could ever call anyone on the face of this earth wise. Yes I know that my own argument focuses a lot on pure intellect which I say is a fault of some other arguments, but the difference here is the fact that if someone is ever enlightened then they would not run into the errors that would make them wrong on some occasions which in turn would make them “unwise.”

Knowing how to live well.