Wisdom Tradition – See with New Eyes
Common ground and human mutuality
Since time immemorial every person on the planet has participated in the same world, shared the common bond of being human, shared the same basic concerns and interests, and desired and worked toward their fulfilment. Even beyond our most essential needs – water, food, shelter – and regardless of whether we are religious or secular in orientation, all peoples everywhere, in any time, have desired that their children are raised safely and educated, that their societies are ordered and lawful, that poverty and hunger should be overcome, that the suffering of others should be eased, that justice prevail, and so on. Shared basic concerns and interests are the stuff of human mutuality, what we all hold in common. They inspire all of us to agree that there is common good to work toward achieving.Shared basic concerns and interests are the stuff of human mutuality, what we all hold in common
Call it common ground, or common good, or human mutuality: the shared concerns of everyday life and the decisions people will make in them as they live and work together is a central interest of the wisdom tradition. Work and wealth, family and neighbors, relationships and communication, politics and government, diplomacy and negotiations, rulers and the administration of justice, business and finance, prosperity and suffering, sickness and health, happiness and grief, social life and the law, the rich and the poor, the single person and the married, parents and children, earning a living – such are subjects the Hebrew wisdom literature finds as its objects. The Book of Proverbs, in particular, focuses extensively on our common humanity. Today, such interests are typically bracketed as secular life, and according to the Hebrew literature the choices people make about them make them wise or foolish.
More will be said about this under the subhead “Education.” Here I just want to stress the little word all. Near the end of that lovely passage in Proverbs 8, which discloses the agency of wisdom in the founding of the world (see the subhead “The world”), wisdom reveals that she was “rejoicing” in the world and “delighting in mankind.” The Hebrew for “mankind” in this context means the entire human race. All of us. In the New Testament, Jesus put it this way: “Wisdom is made right [vindicated] by all her children.” It’s a poignant remark that plays off of a riddle Jesus has just made about himself, and his point seems to be that all sorts of “sinners” may respond wisely to wisdom, act wisely (Luke 7:35; Matthew 11:19). And in the Epistle of James (1:5), which relies on wisdom themes, “any” who lack wisdom should pray for it, because “God … gives generously to all.”
Conceptual or situational?
Although it is a given in religious traditions that wisdom is a divine gift that can be prayed for, wisdom is also a human task. As the literature explains (e.g., Proverbs 2:3-4), wisdom is to be searched out by us. It can be found in nature, which will be discussed in part two (see the subhead “The world”). Here, I want us to think more fully about searching out wisdom in the give-and-take of human beings who are interacting, experiencing life together. For a key subtext running throughout the literature is the primacy that wisdom gives to human relationships and behavior, whether its subject is the individual, a group, an institution, or a collective as big as a nation. This is a huge topic, but like all the other compass points in this review I’m just trying to supply a heading that can be explored later.
For this effort I want to indicate an area often left unexplored: seeking and finding wisdom in and through relationships with those who are not like us. This means of searching out wisdom may seem foreign to us today, if it does not make us bristle. However disrespected as a way of learning wisdom it may be today, it seems to have been respected by the peoples of the old-world Middle East as indispensable for knowing how to plan and act more wisely together toward common goods.the agency of wisdom stresses the importance of situations over abstract ideas
In its approach to human relations, the agency of wisdom stresses the importance of situations over abstract ideas. This is the way I came to understand how wisdom makes a vital contribution to mutual cooperation. In other words, wisdom gives our race a way of reasoning to help the people who are, say, in a troubled situation to find among themselves wisdom for an equitable resolution, rather than have an answer to the situation imposed on them from an abstract set of ideas.
This is quite a different way of reaching collective agreements among people who are different than we in the West are typically used to. Today we tend to rely, often intuitively, on powerfully influential ideological schools of thought for analyzing collective situations and deciding ways ahead. In international relations, for example, a political ideology can be deployed by a national leader to impose a “solution” from the outside, as it were, and the parties whose situation it is, although they would have some say, can take it or leave it, like it or lump it. This can be just as true for smaller situations, such as family counseling, as it is for bilateral or multilateral international relations.
Conceptual thinking, of course, is certainly so necessary to human integrity and activity that we would never want to be without it. The agency of wisdom, however, is concerned not so much with concepts as with situations. It emphasizes what we might call situational thinking. Perhaps this is because the sages of the old-world Middle East who gave us the tradition tended to be more practical than speculative thinkers, compared to their later Greek counterparts. I don’t know. Whatever the reasons, the wisdom way does not seek to resolve a collective human problem by imposing an answer from an abstract source. Rather, it intends that wisdom would be found within the relationships as the parties themselves engage together in dealing non-martially with a troubled situation, such as through direct talks or negotiations. In this way, wisdom for a more cooperative way ahead comes to light in moments of understanding between the parties.
Perhaps another brief illustration from international relations might be helpful. In constructing a nation’s international relations will look like, it is not uncommon for a Western political leader to submit to some variation of one of two primary political philosophies, realism or idealism. Either one offers sophisticated forms of well-thought-out abstract categories to rely on for analysis and decision-making when thinking about other nations, and either one can be determinative of what foreign policies the nation will enact in its relations with other nations. This approach to international relations may work well enough when it is Western nations around the table.wisdom asks the parties to rely less on their ideologies for an answer and more on human mutuality
But what about when it is Washington and Tehran. The former may say to the latter, “We can improve our bilateral relations if you will sign off on at least seven of these ideological ten points.” The latter, however, pushes back by advancing its own ten point checklist of interests. Such a relationship tends to slide further toward the precipice, in part, because the political ideology of Nation A doesn’t square with Nation B. Each one wants the other to conform to its abstract template. In this way the leadership of each nation can justify limiting its cooperative international relations to those states that agree to participate in a given number of terms and conditions set by a prevailing ideology.
With its alternative way of reasoning for trouble situations, the agency of wisdom asks the parties to rely less on their ideologies for an answer and more on human mutuality, that wisdom might be found for an equitable solution among the parties themselves. I believe the implications are huge for resolving international tensions and conflicts.
The public square
The agency of wisdom in human mutuality sheds light on why the wisdom traditions of the old-world Middle East met, so to speak, at “the gates of the city,” which were places of authority where all sorts of people came to discuss or debate issues and situations between them and hammer out agreements amidst their competing interests. The gates were somewhat equivalent to today’s public square. In times of peace, at or near city gates merchants conducted commerce, business agreements were negotiated, elders heard and settled disputes, judges administered justice, and kings sometimes met with their subjects there. Of course, it would take people with wisdom to oversee such areas, and we can see the premium that was placed on that in the proverb: “Wisdom is too high for a fool; in the assembly at the gate he has nothing to say” (24:7)
It must be remembered that much of the activity at the gates took place among people from diverse cultures. Even at the gates of Jerusalem, pluralist public engagement in daily life was normal and wisdom was present (Prov. 8:1-3). At the gates, a wisdom-based way of reasoning provided a morally responsible means for peoples who were religiously different to reach and sustain more cooperative agreements across all sorts of otherwise unnegotiable boundaries. This salient feature of wisdom, it seems to me, resonates with making external internal human equity.
This is not the place to discuss how this might be a boon to today’s world in working toward common goods, but I would like us to visit how wisdom helped one mixed multitude in the old-world Middle East work toward establishing common good.
