Charles V was one of France’s more intellectual monarchs. He maintained a vast library, and commissioned many French translations of significant works. He was a builder king, as well. During his reign he built (or rebuilt) the Bastille, the Louvre, the Chateau de Vincennes, and the Chateau de Saint-Germaine-en-Laye.
He loved ceremony and held a magnificent court, but he was an adherent of scientific political theory, and was known for his procedural and detailed approach to matters of state.
Charles was adept at military matters, too. He reorganized the army, established a navy, and introduced ordinances that provided for soldier pay, the regular inspection and repair of fortifications, and more clear and reliable disciplinary action.
Chiefly by abandoning the policy of massive engagement with the enemy, Charles used guerilla skirmishes and siege warfare to reverse earlier English conquests during the Hundred Years’ War. He drove Edward the Black Prince back to England, recovered many lost territories, and largely reunified France under his rule.
He was not without his faults, but his legacy is mostly that of a pragmatic, prudent, and shrewd leader. Perhaps that’s how he earned the sobriquet “Charles the Wise.”
Conceptions of wisdom
Was Charles V known as “Charles the Wise” because of his strategic military thinking? His political adroitness? His prudence? His pragmatism? His intellect and acquired knowledge?
I don’t even know if he was ever called “the Wise” during his lifetime, or if it’s a posthumous byname bestowed by some historian or chronicler.
Either way, the specific characteristics that might earn someone such a designation – whether in the fourteenth century or today – might be largely in the eye of the christener, because there still is no broadly accepted definition for “wisdom.”
Most of us have a general idea what wisdom means, though. Likely, we see wisdom along the lines of common dictionary definitions, which typically involve some combination of knowledge, experience, and good judgment.
Academics and professionals take several different approaches to defining wisdom.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development formulated the Berlin wisdom paradigm, which defines wisdom as “expertise in the fundamental pragmatics of life.” Specifically, “knowledge and judgment about the essence of the human condition and the ways and means of planning, managing, and understanding a good life.”[1]
The Berlin paradigm uses five criteria to measure the quality of wisdom and the capacity for judgment:[2]
- Rich factual knowledge about life. Knowledge about human nature, life-long development, interpersonal relations, social norms, and critical events in life.
- Rich procedural knowledge about life. Strategies and heuristics for dealing with the meaning and conduct of life.
- Lifespan contextualism. Knowledge that considers the many themes and contexts of life (e.g., education, family, work, friends, leisure, etc.), and their interrelations and cultural variations. Also incorporates a lifetime temporal perspective.
- Relativism of values and life priorities. Acknowledgment of and tolerance for value differences and the relativity of the values held by individuals and society.
- Recognition and management of uncertainty. Understanding that the validity of human information processing is limited, that individuals have access only to select parts of reality, and that the future cannot be fully known in advance.
Psychologist Robert Sternberg’s balance theory of wisdom suggests that wisdom involves the application of tacit knowledge that underlies practical intelligence.
Tacit knowledge is mediated by values toward the achievement of a common good by balancing multiple interpersonal, intrapersonal, and extrapersonal interests. It is also used to achieve a balance of the responses to the environmental context of adapting to, shaping, and selecting environments.[3]
Monika Ardelt proposes that wisdom should be defined and operationalized as a personality characteristic across three dimensions:[4]
- Cognitive. Understanding of life and desire to know the truth. Knowledge and acceptance of both the positive and negative aspects of human nature, the inherent limits of knowledge, and of life’s unpredictability and uncertainties.
- Reflective. Perception of phenomena and events from different perspectives. Requires self-awareness, self-examination, and self-insight.
- Affective. Sympathy and compassion for others.
Philosopher John Kekes explains that wisdom is connected to judgment, knowledge, and action. The knowledge involved in wisdom concerns means to good ends. It is interpretive – rather than descriptive – knowledge.
Descriptive knowledge allows us to know the facts. Interpretive knowledge allows to understand the significance of those facts.[5]
By most accounts, wisdom goes beyond mere knowledge, cognitive capacity, or experience.
“We are wiser than we know,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson (more or less).
Wisdom often involves the application of knowledge and experience to either realize a benefit or avoid a deficit (e.g., making a wise move). Someone isn’t wise because they know a lot, or have seen a lot, they are wise because they know when this knowledge and experience can be put to good use.
Two people could have the same store of knowledge and experience, and yet one could fail to see how to apply it in any given situation.
Some people think that wisdom, by definition, includes a virtue component, but I’m not sold. I think you can be wise and still not necessarily do the “right” thing all the time. I mean, who’s the arbiter of what’s necessarily “right” or “wrong” in all situations?
Trying to attach an altruistic or benevolent motivation to wisdom seems a little subjective.
Also, I would think that the ability to learn from our own and others’ mistakes might be a factor. After a mistake, people often say things like, “Well, I’m that much wiser for it.”
Maybe a big part of wisdom is simply having a keen understanding of the many possible consequences of a given action.
Types of wisdom (and wisdom theories)
Most wisdom theories fall into one of two categories:[6]
- Implicit theories of wisdom reflect common views of wisdom held by the average person, how wisdom is described in everyday language, and how people typically characterize a “wise” person.
- Explicit theories of wisdom are based on the constructs of expert theorists and researchers and focus largely on behavioral manifestations and expressions of wisdom.
Wisdom itself is also sometimes categorized into types, for example:[7]
- Theoretical wisdom might be regarded as the type of intellectual wisdom that relates primarily to knowledge.
- Practical wisdom may be thought of as the type of wisdom that guides action, and that uses knowledge as means to ends.
According to John Kekes, wisdom is largely corrective, and guides action negatively. Wisdom lets us know what not to do if we want to have a good life. We rely on wisdom the most when things are not going smoothly; when we have to make decisions about “hard cases” where it is unclear what ideals should guide us.[8]
I think Kekes’ idea of wisdom guiding action this way is consistent with many people’s view. We often credit someone’s wisdom when they rely on their knowledge and experience to deftly avoid action that might result in some potential calamity.
Components of wisdom
A review of the literature reveals dozens of commonly cited wisdom components. Some of the more common are presented here, although this list is not intended to be comprehensive.
Wisdom is multidimensional and holistic. While any one of these components might be considered an essential element of wisdom, none are sufficient on their own.
Also, any given “wise” person may more strongly exhibit some characteristics than others.
Knowledge
Almost every wisdom theory – ancient or modern – includes knowledge as a component of wisdom. Opinions vary, however, on the exact type of knowledge someone must possess to be considered wise.
Most people agree that simply having extensive factual knowledge is not enough to be considered wise. Although most wise people are knowledgeable, there are many highly knowledgeable people who would not be considered wise.
Wise people seem to know what’s really important, and are able to transfer this knowledge into an understanding of how to live well, cope with problems, and avoid life’s more serious pitfalls.
For wise people, there is a strong connection between knowledge and truth. Their knowledge tends to be accurate, and their beliefs are justified and rational.
Some may argue that wisdom more accurately reflects a person’s rationality than it does their knowledge, but good judgment often relies on a significant storehouse of theoretical and practical knowledge.
Experience
We tend to associate wisdom with age. However, we’ve all known some old fools.
Maybe we really associate wisdom with experience, which tends to naturally accrue with age, and this just leads us to blur the distinction between age and experience.
The stereotypically wise person tends to be older, simply because it takes the average person a considerable amount of time to acquire the type of life experience that builds wisdom.
When we say that someone is “wise beyond their years,” we imply that they have accumulated – and learned something from – experience that would usually take much longer to obtain.
There are young sages and old fools. As with knowledge, it appears that the type of experience gained is more important than the amount.
Everyone accumulates experience, yet many remain unenlightened. Wisdom tends to come from experiences that are difficult, morally challenging, and require the application of knowledge and insight.[9]
Wisdom is thought to be a positive outcome of aging because our experiences over time enable us to develop a broader, deeper, and richer understanding of our world. We all experience disappointment, frustration, loss, stress, and sometimes even trauma. Yet, some people acquire wisdom while some don’t.
It’s not likely the challenging experiences themselves that make us wise, but rather how we cope with them, what we learn from them, and how we are changed by them.
Reflection
Why do some people learn and grow more than others, even from very similar experiences?
The answer is reflection.
While some people simply roll along with the tide of life, others deeply contemplate the context, implications, and meaning of any given action or experience.
When we reflect on our experiences, we assimilate new approaches, concepts, knowledge, skills, and values into our existing knowledge structures. This assimilation leads to cognitive, emotional, moral, personal, and psychological growth.[10]
Confucius said that reflection is the noblest method by which we acquire wisdom. He believed that while we can acquire knowledge by passively learning and memorizing information, we develop wisdom by actively contemplating and reflecting on this new knowledge.
Many modern wisdom theories acknowledge the reflective component of wisdom. We are transformed not by our experiences, but by reflecting on them.
Some people are probably more naturally reflective than others, but there are techniques we can use to train ourselves to be better reflective thinkers.
In the 1980s, Graham Gibbs developed a “structured debriefing” framework that can be used to support experiential learning and reflective thinking. The Gibbs debriefing process can be used as part of a continuous improvement cycle for repeated experiences, or it can be used to reflect on a single experience.
Progressing through the following steps can help you think reflectively about an experience:[11]
- Description. Describe the details of the experience, such as what happened, when it happened, who was involved, what actions were taken, and what the outcome was. Don’t pass judgment or draw conclusions yet.
- Feelings. How did you react at the time? How were you feeling? What were you thinking? How do you think others were feeling? What might they have been thinking? Just record these thoughts and feelings. Don’t analyze them yet.
- Evaluation. What was good about the experience? What was bad? What went well? What didn’t? Did your actions positively or negatively influence the experience? What about other people’s actions? You can make value judgments here.
- Analysis. Sort things out and try to make sense of the outcome. Why did things go well or poorly? Could you have responded differently? Could others have? What could have been done to achieve a better outcome? Did different participants have a different view of the outcome?
- Conclusions. What have you learned? Did you acquire any new skills? Can you transfer what you learned from this experience to future circumstances? Do you see what you could have done differently?
- Action plan. Will you do things differently in the future? What steps can you take now to build on what you learned from this experience? Do you see opportunities to apply what you learned in other places or other ways?
The Gibbs process could be done formally or informally. You could engage in reflective writing, or you could just mentally walk yourself through the steps.
Either way, by actively following some sort of reflective process, it will eventually become second nature, and your reflective thinking skills will improve over time.
Introspection
Introspection is also a reflective component of wisdom. Introspection may be considered self-reflection.
We use reflection to consider, contemplate, and understand the intricacies of an experience. We use introspection to thoroughly examine our own mental and emotional processes as they relate to the experience.
The mental process can be similar. The Gibbs framework, for example, encompasses both reflection and introspection.
Self-reflection builds self-awareness. It’s difficult to develop wisdom if we don’t even understand our own motives and desires.
Introspection allows us to transcend our own subjectivity and projections, making us less self-centered. This gives us deeper insight into our own and others’ motives and behavior, and enables us to interact with others more compassionately and constructively.[12]
The goal of introspection, though, is insight – not endless rumination that leaves us with no more intuitive understanding of ourselves than we had before. Or even worse, discharges unproductive emotions that hamper our progress.
In her book Insight, organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich suggests using a simple self-reflection tool that she calls What Not Why.
For example, asking yourself why you feel a certain way might lead to a number of unhelpful or irrelevant responses.
Instead, start by simply asking yourself what you are feeling. You can then drill down further by asking what made you feel this way, what other circumstances make you feel this way, what those situations have in common, or what it would take to make you feel more positive.
Asking what instead of why, says Eurich, helps us more effectively identify, understand, and manage our emotions.
According to Eurich:[13]
- Why questions draw us to our limitations; what questions help us see our potential.
- Why questions stir up negative emotions; what questions keep us curious.
- Why questions trap us in our past; what questions help us create a better future.
Asking why is not totally without merit, though. As Eurich explains, why questions are quite useful for helping us understand environmental events. However, what questions tend to be more effective for achieving self-awareness.
Objectivity
Wise people are able to evaluate information and circumstances without letting their own biases, emotions, or interpretations distort reality and cloud the truth.
Without objectivity, it is very difficult to exercise sound judgment. So, objectivity is integral to the kind of good judgment that many think of as a hallmark of the wise.
Unfortunately, we are all vulnerable to cognitive biases that can negatively impact our thinking and decision making. Wise people are aware of these biases, and take steps to challenge them and mitigate their effects.
(I discuss some techniques for challenging biases in my free 20-page guide to priming your mind for serendipity.)
We are, by nature, not as objective as we might think we are. This is due to being mostly unaware of the many biases that plague us. Building self-awareness through introspection can help us recognize our triggers and blind spots, and lets us see where we might be letting our emotions derail our judgment.
Prudence
Exercising prudence means governing ourselves using reason, demonstrating sagacity when managing our lives, and showing good judgment.
Prudence was one of the four Platonic cardinal virtues, and was regarded by the ancient Greeks as the auriga virtutum (the “charioteer”) of the virtues. It is prudence that allows wise people to choose the appropriate course of action given the circumstance.
Prudence is not merely an intellectual virtue, however. It is connected to action.
According to Thomas Aquinas, prudence involves three primary elements:
- Good counsel. We should take counsel from ourselves and others. This involves inquiry, deliberation, and discovery. We must establish the reality of the situation, and we must acknowledge and challenge our own biases.
- Good judgment. Here we consider the facts and the evidence, separate the pertinent from the extraneous, and make an informed and reasoned decision.
- Good command. This is where we apply our judgment and take positive action. We have not really exercised prudence if we fail to do what we have determined to be the right thing to do.
Prudence allows us to restrain our emotions and passions enough to exercise good judgment and act wisely.
Equanimity
Equanimity is a state of mental calmness and emotional equilibrium. Equanimous people are able to maintain their balance and composure, even in challenging situations.
In the scientific literature, equanimity may be referred to as emotional homeostasis, emotional regulation, affect control, or impulse control. It is a core serendipity strategy and one of the key strengths of successful late bloomers.
Constructively managing our emotions is essential to good judgment and effective problem resolution. Wise people tend to be attuned to the full range of their emotions, and are aware of the ways that their emotions can influence their thinking.
Wise people are also open to both positive and negative emotions, and can distinguish among subtle and mixed emotions.[14]
Equanimity allows wise people to reframe negative emotional experiences, resolve internal conflicts, and channel negative emotions into positive thought and action.
Humility
“The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance,” goes a quote often attributed to Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin sums up a view of wisdom held by Socrates. Namely, that a wise person is not epistemically arrogant. A wise person is epistemically humble, that is, they are well aware of the limits of their knowledge.
Understanding and appreciating the limits of our own knowledge is an essential component of wisdom. Basing our beliefs and actions on things we claim to know – but really don’t – leads to foolish and even dangerous behaviors.
Examples of epistemic arrogance abound during a pandemic.
COVID-19 has resulted in far too many pundits and policy makers – with little to no training or expertise in epidemiology, immunology, or public health – insisting that they somehow know the best course of action.
They don’t, and many people have died unnecessarily due to harmful misinformation disseminated by arrogant and overconfident leaders and influencers.
We aren’t always aware of exactly what we don’t know. But wise people are at least aware that there are things that they don’t know – or at least that they don’t know yet.
Buddhists embrace intellectual humility through shoshin, an attitude of openness and lack of preconceptions also known as “beginner’s mind.”
We can’t always avoid the need to make decisions with incomplete or imperfect information, but we can think and act with respect for the limits of our knowledge.
Empathy
I mentioned that I don’t necessarily agree that wisdom requires any sort of altruistic or benevolent motive. I think it’s possible that a wise person can also be selfish, uncaring, or even malevolent.
However, wisdom still requires empathy, that is, a genuine understanding of other people and their emotions. I just think someone can have empathy and still lack compassion.
Broadly, there are two dimensions of empathy:[15]
- Cognitive empathy is our ability to understand the other person’s perspective.
- Emotional empathy is our capacity to respond to the other person’s state with an appropriate emotional reaction.
Wise people are usually skilled at interpersonal relations, chiefly due to their ability to understand how other people might be thinking and feeling in any given situation.
It is possible to understand how another person feels without responding appropriately. Hopefully, though, most wise people have grown to transcend mere cognitive empathy and can demonstrate genuine compassion.
Receptivity
Receptivity refers to our tendency to be open and responsive to new ideas, information, perspectives, and experiences.
Receptive people embrace novelty and opportunity, are intellectually curious, and demonstrate high levels of awareness and creativity. They also tend to make many valuable personal and professional connections.
Wise people are always exploring possibilities. They are open to different views and opinions, and to novel approaches to solving problems and overcoming obstacles.
Receptivity is strongly related to openness to experience, one of the traits described by the five-factor model of human personality.
In one study, openness to experience was found to be one of the strongest predictor variables in terms of its positive correlation with wisdom-related performance.[16]
There are several techniques we can use to cultivate receptivity, including challenging our biases, relaxing our boundaries, suspending judgment, abandoning expectations, asking open-ended questions, and becoming an active listener.
Adaptability
Wise people are able to adjust to changing conditions and environments. They acknowledge, accept, and skillfully manage ambiguity and uncertainty.
According to Sternberg’s balance theory, wisdom often involves striking a balance between adapting to existing environments, shaping existing environments, and selecting new environments. When adaptation is the best course of action, wise people are adept at finding ways to conform to their existing environment.[17]
Adaptability forms part of the cognitive component of Ardelt’s three-dimensional approach to wisdom, as well. Wise people not only acknowledge ambiguity and uncertainty, they maintain an ability to make important decisions despite the unpredictability of life.[18]
We can manage change by adapting ourselves to the situation, or by adapting the situation to better suit us.
Wise people don’t resist change when it frustrates their progress. They expect it, and they have contingencies for the obstacles, problems, disappointment, and stress that change is likely to bring.
Wisdom is multidimensional and integrative
There is no consensus definition of wisdom. However, it is generally accepted that wisdom is not a discrete state or trait, but rather an integration of various characteristics.
So, while most agree that wisdom has components, there is no widely accepted set of specific components that makes someone wise.
How, when, or where wisdom is applied likely determines what particular cognitive, reflective, or affective attributes someone applies to make a “wise choice.”
Some people naturally become wiser than others, but we all have the capacity for personal development and growth. Identifying and isolating some of wisdom’s individual components at least gives us a foundation for building a wiser future.
