Wisdom, Philosophy & Everyday Life —
Theoretical Perspectives:
An Unconventional Guide

Compiled by Ralph Dumain


“Scholars of wisdom have no rest in this world or in the world to come.” — Talmud

“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” — William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Writings by Ralph Dumain

Wisdom and Abstract Thought. 24 December 2003.

See also: APA Online Special Announcement: 12/27/03 Café Philo DC: “What is the Relation Between Abstract Thought and Wisdom?” (offsite).

How to Integrate Philosophy and Everyday Life: To Think Philosophically in Life, Or Reproduce the Fragmentation of Knowledge?. 27 September 2002.

Philosophy & Everyday Life: Prologue to Discussion. 14 October 2002.

Professional and Popular Philosophy: Online Debates. 27 December 2003.

The Philosophy of Originality: Vignettes. 18 April 2005.

Originality Blues: Tales of the ‘70s. 19 April 2005.

Antonio Gramsci, Organic Intellectuals, & the Division of Labor. 10 February 2000.

Review of Theodore Oizerman, Problems of the History of Philosophy.14 November 2003.

A Memorial Tribute to Endre Tóth. 12 August 2001.

Cave” by Endre Tóth, translated from Esperanto by R. Dumain. 27 June 2000.

"‘Philosophy’ and ‘Literature’: Relationships of Genres and the Frontiers of Thought" by R. Dumain

wisdom @ Studies in a Dying Culture

Paremiology. 13 April 2007.

Reactionary Chinese & other wisdom in comparative perspective. 14 January 2007.

Soviet Philosophy

Groys, Boris. “Elements of Gnosticism in Dialectical Materialism (Soviet Marxism),” e - flux, Issue #127, May 2022

Nonsense overall, but note the supposed ‘new self-understanding’ of dialectical materialism as “wisdom”’, per P. V. Alekseev.

Kirilenko, Galina [Kirilenko, G. G. (Galina Georgievna)]; Korshunova, Lydia. What is Philosophy?, translated from the Russian by Lilia Nakhapetyan (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1985), “A Scientist, or a Man of Wisdom?,” pp. 37-42.  (ABC of Social and Political Knowledge; 4)

Oizerman, Theodore. Problem of Wisdom as a Real Problem, in Problems of the History of Philosophy (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973), chapter 1, section 4, pp. 52-64.

Theodor W. Adorno

Metaphysics: Concept and Problems [lecture series, 1965], edited by Rolf Tiedemann, translated by Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), pp. 124-126 (from Lecture 16, 22 July 1965). See excerpt from this excerpt: Adorno on Truth, Survival, Consolation & Freedom of Thought.

Negative Dialectics, translated by Dennis Redmond (2001), Part III (iii): Models. Meditations on Metaphysics (offsite). Excerpts (on this site): Refusing “Positive Thinking” After Auschwitz.

Negative Dialectics (1966), translated by E.B. Ashton (New York: The Seabury Press, 1973), p. 68: On Zen Buddhism as popular ideology.

Problems of Moral Philosophy, edited by Thomas Schröder, translated by Rodney Livingstone (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001). See remarks on theory and practice, pp. 3-8.

“Resignation,” in Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords, translated by Henry W. Pickford (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), pp. 289-293. See excerpts.

Perspectives from Fiction

Delany, Samuel R. Empire Star. New York: Ace Books, Inc., 1966. See quotations: Simplex, Complex, & Multiplexity according to Samuel R. Delany.

Tóth, Endre. “Cave,” translated from Esperanto by R. Dumain. 27 June 2000.

Other References

After Wisdom: Sapiential Traditions and Ancient Scholarship in Comparative Perspective, edited by Glenn W. Most & Michael Puett. Boston: Brill, 2023.

Aristotle. Metaphysics, Book I, translated by W. D. Ross.

Baltes, Paul B. Wisdom as Orchestration of Mind and Virtue. Berlin: Max Planck Institute for Human Development, book in preparation, 2004.

Baltes, Paul B.; Staudinger, Ursula M. “Wisdom: A Metaheuristic (Pragmatic) to Orchestrate Mind and Virtue Toward Excellence,” American Psychologist, vol. 55, no. 1, pp. 122-136. See also original publication.

Benson, Hugh H. Socratic Wisdom: The Model of Knowledge in Plato’s Early Dialogues. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Bundock, Anne. “The Science of Wisdom: An Exploration of Excellence in Mind and Virtue,” Griffith University Undergraduate Student Psychology Journal, vol. 1, 2009.

Ducasse, C[urt] [John]. Philosophy as a Science, Its Matter and Its Method. New York: Oskar Piest, 1941.Chapter 13: Philosophy, Wisdom, and the Application of Wisdom (offsite): Extract: Curt J. Ducasse on Wisdom, Norms, Theory, & Pragmatism (this site).

Ducasse, Curt J., in Martha Mitchell’s Encyclopedia Brunoniana.

Epstein, Mikhail. “Lyrical Philosophy, or How to Sing with Mind,” Common Knowledge, vol. 20, no. 2, Spring 2014, pp. 204-213.

Etheredge, Lloyd S. “Wisdom and Good Judgment in Politics,” Political Psychology, vol. 13, no. 3, 1992, pp. 497-516.

Gollobin, Ira. “Dialectics and Wisdom,” in Dialectics for the New Century, edited by Bertell Ollman & Tony Smith (Basingstoke, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 246-259. The same version of “Dialectics and Wisdom” appeared earlier in Science & Society, vol. 62, no. 3, 1998, pp. 483-496.

A more extensive version of this article appeared in Dialectical Materialism: Its Laws, Categories and Practice (New York: Petras Press, 1986), pp. 434-456.

Gomez, David. “Philosophy as Deep and Shallow Wisdom,” in What Philosophy Is: Contemporary Philosophy in Action, edited by Havi Carel and David Gamez, with a foreword by Simon Blackburn (London; New York: Continuum, 2004), pp. 255-267.

Hall, Stephen S. Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.

Kekes, John. “Wisdom,” American Philosophical Quarterly, vol 20, no.3, 1983, pp. 277-286.

Lee, Franz J. T. History of Wisdom. Mérida, Venezuela: Pandemonium Books & Publications, 2003.

Lee, Franz J. T. Philosophical Essays on Materialism and Marxism. Mérida, Venezuela: Pandemonium Electronic Publications, April 5, 2001. See H. Wisdom, Philosophy and the Proletariat.

Manders, Dean Wolfe. The Hegemony of Common Sense: Wisdom and Mystification in Everyday Life; introduction by David Norman Smith. New York: Peter Lang, 2006.

Moeller, Hans-Georg; Whitehead, Andrew K. Wisdom and Philosophy: Contemporary and Comparative Approaches. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.

Sadovnichiy, Victor. “Knowledge & Wisdom in the Globalizing World,” Philosophy Now, issue 54, February/March 2006. Opening address to the 4th Russian Congress of Philosophy, on sagacity and sophiology. Russian Philosophy issue.

Sayre, Patricia. “Philosophy as Profession,” in What Philosophy Is: Contemporary Philosophy in Action, edited by Havi Carel and David Gamez, with a foreword by Simon Blackburn (London; New York: Continuum, 2004), pp. 241-255.

Sternberg, Robert J., ed. Wisdom: Its Nature, Origins, and Development. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Stolovich, L. N. “Wisdom and Knowledge.” Department of Logic, Moscow State University.

Swartwood, Jason David. Cultivating Practical Wisdom. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, May 2013. (Abstract)

Tiberius, Valerie; Swartwood, Jason. “Wisdom Revisited: A Case Study in Normative Theorizing,” Philosophical Explorations: An International Journal for the Philosophy of Mind and Action, vol. 14, no. 3, September 2011, pp. 277-295.

Zwicky, Jan. Wisdom & Metaphor. Kentville, Nova Scotia: Gaspereau Press, 2003.

Research / Web sites

Wisdom Research | The University of Chicago

Nicholas Maxwell

Valerie Tiberius

Expert Skill: A Model of Wisdom / Jason D. Swartwood

The Wisdom Page

Reference Works

Kaiser, Walter. “Wisdom of the Fool,” in Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Volume IV: Psychological Ideas in Antiquity to Zeitgeist; Philip P. Wiener, Editor In Chief (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973), pp. 515-520.

Ryan, Sharon. “Wisdom,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, last article revision February 4, 2013.

Bibliographies & Web Guides
(on this site)

Biographical and Psychological Dimensions of Philosophy: Selected Bibliography

The Philosophy of Theory and Practice: Selected Bibliography

Pragmatism and Its Discontents: Selected Bibliography (with annotations)

Pragmatism and Its Discontents: Selected Bibliography (sans annotations)

Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking: A Guide

Popularizing Philosophers: A Selected Bibliography


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Uploaded 26 December 2014
Last update 10 November 2023
Previous update 1 May 2023

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