Philosophical Health & Wisdom-ing

Hello and welcome to wild:philosophy.

Today’s essay is about the difference (or not) between philosophical health and wisdom. Trying to tear out the distinction has been sitting with me for quite some time. If you have any thoughts on this, I look forward to hear from you.

🗞️: Nathan (Nate) Kinch and I published another episode on philosophy and organizations. Though you can also find it on YouTube, I am also posting it here for your convenience. In this one, we talk about how we conceptualize philosophy and about the conditions that are necessary in organizations to integrate philosophy. This project is very experiential and for us it feels increasingly like an art-project where we get the chance to create something (meaning) together - through the practice of philosophy.

🏋️‍♀️: We had our fourth PhilosophyGym at Grokkist. If you intend to join this Thursday (7pm CET) for the first time, you are warmly invited. It’s best to be 15min early, as I’ll explain some of the theory that we have introduced so far, so we get to “train” in the Gym.

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“Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.” Plato (427–347 BC)

A moment of wisdom-ing:

Monday afternoon. I go grocery shopping. My basket is heavy, full, overflowing. I heave the basket on the counter. When the cashier started registering my weekly goods, it seemed like the groceries - their very existence (and mine) - were an affront to him. A young man, shadows under his eyes and a furrow in his brow, practically killed me with his energy when he asked what was in the bag. Mushrooms, I say. A spike of irritation, hot and sharp, rose in my chest. My first instinct was to mirror his curtness, maybe even make some sort of pointed comment.

But then, I decide on something else: I asked myself what curtness will do to the situation? I paused, mid-scowl. I looked at him again, really looked. The slump of his shoulders, the way his fingers fumbled. This wasn't about me and the groceries. This was… something playing out in his world. Maybe his pet died, maybe he had a fight, maybe just the grind of a job he disliked. Who knew? The point wasn't to diagnose him, but to remember the unseen of another's life.

Instead of the retort that had been forming, I simply said, as I picked up the groceries, "Rough day, huh?"

He blinked, startled out of his defensive posture. The furrow in his brow softened, just a fraction. "You could say that," he mumbled, not quite meeting my eye, but the aggressive edge in his voice had dulled.

"Hope it gets better," I offered, the sentiment felt genuine, unforced.

Walking out, the initial irritation had vanished, replaced by a deep seated satisfaction. It wasn't triumph, not the feeling of winning an argument or fixing him. It was something softer, more expansive. A sense of rightness, of having navigated a small, jagged human moment with a little more grace, a little more spaciousness than my immediate reaction would have allowed. My step felt lighter, my attention sharper. This practice, this constant, gentle re-orientation towards understanding, towards moment to moment deconstruction and simultaneous reconstruction, choosing a response rather than reacting blindly, is not about abstract theories (that I love). It was this. This subtle, internal shift that left the world feeling a little more breathable, a little more connected, and my own small place within it, deeply satisfying.

This active, moment-to-moment navigation isn't just wisdom-ing as I’d call it, it's also a demonstration of what I've come to understand as philosophical health-ing in practice.

Philosophical health as the resonant alignment of one’s ways of knowing, being and acting with one’s ecos - that is, with our internal landscape, our relationships, and the wider world we inhabit.

But how are these two different? Wisdom and philosophical health? Would I act differently if I was wisdom-ing vs. philosophically health-ing?

What others say that wisdom is

In one of his videos, Varveake said that wisdom is the overcoming of foolishness, when foolishness is defined as self deceptive and self destructive behavior. Intelligence overcomes ignorance. A wise person can zero in on the most adequate solution to a problem.

According to Bayo Akomolafe:

"To be wise is to move with the world. It is to be oriented in a certain way and to be in relation with the world's ongoing rehearsals of itself. It is the intensity of a field materializing as a body-in-movement. In this sense, wisdom is not a thing to be had, not a property governed by systems of ownership and identity, and not an achievement per se. Moreover, communicability is not the heart of wisdom: as a nonverbal autistic child might sense, as a murmuration of starlings might intuit, as a flowering plant bending to the glory of the sun might already know, there are other ways for the eloquence of wisdom to move things that have nothing to do with speaking.

But perhaps the most inviting insight gained by reframing wisdom as ecological relations and embodied attunements is that we are suddenly faced with a simultaneous revitalization of stupidity - not as lack, not as evil, not as deficiency, but as that which boundaries wisdom in its flows. That which gives it shape, without which wisdom would make no mark upon the world. If wisdom is orientation, and if orientation invites directionality, then wisdom is not a totalizing grasp of everything - but imperviousness to specific directions in order to touch the world and be touched in return."

The Oxford English Dictionary defines wisdom as the “capacity of judging rightly in matters relating to life and conduct.”

When looking into scientific literature of wisdom, we find that there is also a multitude of definitions, mostly, these definitions contain various criteria and characteristics about what makes wisdom. Those criteria than can be quantified - for example general knowledge of life and social decision making, emotional regulation, prosocial behaviors like compassion and empathy, insight or self-reflection, acceptance of different value systems, and decisiveness - and thus, wisdom can be quantified.

Oh, the beauty of scientism.

A leading theory, developed by psychologists Paul Baltes, defines wisdom as

“expert knowledge in the fundamental pragmatics of life that permits exceptional insight, judgment, and advice about complex and uncertain matters.”

What the hell does that even mean?

According to him, it encompasses five key components: rich procedural knowledge, rich factual knowledge, an understanding of different life contexts, an awareness of the relativism of values and priorities, and the ability to recognize and manage uncertainty.

In a study published in the International Psychogeriatrics journal, Jeste and colleagues propose seven traits that determine a person’s level of wisdom:

• Self-reflection: Understand your own thoughts, motivations, and actions.

• Prosocial behaviors: Maintain positive social connections and act with compassion, empathy, altruism, and a sense of fairness.

• Emotional regulation: Manage negative emotions and stress that can get in the way of decision-making, and lean into positive emotions.

• Acceptance of diverse perspectives: Learn about and accept perspectives and value systems outside your own.

• Decisiveness: Make decisions in a timely manner with comfort.

• Social advising: Give good advice to others.

• Spirituality: Connect with yourself, with nature, or with a transcendent entity such as the soul or God.

One fascinating study even says that wisdom increases longevity.

Where did the soul go?

While I prefer to talk about philosophical health instead of wisdom, I don’t think these two fundamentally differ. Even Epicurus already talked about wisdom as the “health of the soul” - which today sounds too nebulous for most people as we typically don’t have a concept for the soul.

“Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul.” Epicurus (341–270 BC)

I would love to talk about philosophical health in terms of the health of the soul.

As I have written before, sustainability has lost its soul.

If we compare that definition from Epicurus - someone we would today call an expert in wisdom - or maybe not in wisdom, given that, according to Socrates, wisdom involves knowing one knows nothing. If so, one can't be an expert in wisdom, only an expert about wisdom, or perhaps in its pursuit. Anyways, when we compare Epicurus’ with the definitions of today, we can clearly see how it moved away from the idea of health.

While wisdom used to be understood as an integrated state of being, it now tends to be dissected into a collection of quantifiable components and cognitive capacities - a set of expert skills and measurable traits rather than a holistic, resonant way of being. The focus has shifted from an intrinsic quality of soulful health to a more extrinsic, demonstrable expertise in the pragmatics of life, potentially losing some of its ineffable depth to improve empirical clarity.

Philosophical health might help us bring that idea of wisdom as the health of the soul back into the world, grounded in our contemporary understanding.

Reconciling wisdom and philosophical health

Photo by Nationaal Archief on Unsplash

Philosophical health provides a more timely framework for understanding and cultivating wisdom as a lived, dynamic process. It reframes wisdom, not as a static attainment or a collection of virtues, but as the very condition of thriving well, in mind, in action, and in relation to our world.

A lack of wisdom-ing leads to existential unwellness.

Philosophical health, as defined here, takes the soul and re-envisions it through our ways of knowing (our thoughts, beliefs, perspectives), being (our sense of self, our values, our emotional landscape), and acting (our behaviors, our choices, our impact). The health aspect is found in that resonant alignment with our ecos - our inner world, our social circles, our natural environment, the wider cosmos of ideas and realities we inhabit.

Importantly, this perspective shifts wisdom as a state to be achieved to wisdom as a process to be engaged in.

A lack of this alignment, this "philosophical ill-health," or a lack of wisdom-ing is what leads to existential unwellness. It's the feeling of being adrift, out of sync, lost, because our ways of knowing, being, or acting are clashing internally or with the reality we inhabit. We are, in essence, unwise in our approach to life, leading to suffering.

Therefore, the pursuit is not about wisdom or philosophical health per se, but rather about leaning into the process of life-ing or wisdom-ing. This is how Socrates’ famous declaration, "I know that I know nothing," becomes a methodological insight into how to live our lives (something we practice at the PhilosophyGyms).

It is the starting point for genuine inquiry, for the continuous adjustment and refinement of our alignment.

This pursuit, this philosophy-ing or wise-ing, is where the deep fulfillment lies. It’s not the destination of being wise but the active, engaged journey towards greater existential alignment that imbues life with meaning - as I tried to show in the beginning of this essay.

As we cultivate philosophical health-ing, as we become wiser in this dynamic sense, we naturally extend our care and responsibility towards our ecos. Why? Because philosophy-ing, at its heart, is a self-transformative process that is inherently concerned with the whole - our individual lives understood not in isolation, but as integral parts of a larger, entangled reality. As adult development theories confirm, growing maturity extends our world, orienting us increasingly to the whole. Wisdom-ing does the same. Philosophical health-ing, too. They orient us toward the whole.

The whole whole though, always represents our foolishness. The whole is always a hyperobject - meaning it will remain intangible. Our foolishness is the boundary of our wisdom. But it’s through that boundary, through this unavailability of the whole that resonance is created. That’s why we can never be wise, but just wisdom-ing, why we can never be philosophically health, just health-ing.

In his book “Unverfügbarkeit” (unavailability) Rosa writes

“Incessantly, modern humans try to bring the world within reach. In doing so, however, it threatens to become mute and alien to us.”

Resonance requires unavailability, otherwise the world, and we ourselves become mute, lifeless, eros-less.

So if wisdom-ing is orientation towards the whole, and if orientation invites directionality, then wisdom is not a totalizing grasp of everything - but imperviousness to specific directions in order to touch the world and be touched in return - which is the very definition of resonance. And philosophical health.

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