Wisdom as an Ideal Goal of (Auto)formative Activity in Adulthood and Throughout Human Life?
By answering this question, we want to offer a brief and at the same time critical view of a key concept in current education policy: lifelong learning, of which adult education and learning are also part. Since its inception, this concept has been highly diffuse, and therefore many ideas and interests are attached to it. Their common denominator, however, is the idea that lifelong learning is a necessity given contemporary, rapidly changing social and economic demands. In documents from the European Union context, it is stressed that lifelong learning is the key to coping with upcoming challenges connected to growth, which has various qualifiers, such as smart, sustainable, and the like. At the forefront stands employability, along with it targeted support of competencies for new areas of work. Inclusion in the labor market is understood as a basic prerequisite for social participation and the prevention of poverty. Education and learning pursuing goals other than economic ones, such as social and personal development, are typically overlooked. A critical perspective is also deserved for the following dimensions of the concept of lifelong learning:
- Lifelong learning as adaptation. Lifelong learning becomes part of a reality in which people must adapt, or rather submit, to economic needs as if these were immutable natural laws rather than human constructions. Therefore, the goal of the concept is not liberation but submission.
- Lifelong learning as investment in human capital. Lifelong learning is mainly oriented toward the creation of usable human capital. Its central focus is increasing market value through qualifications. However, the risk that the investment may not pay off is borne by the individual alone. The focus on competencies, flexible and modular study programs, the economic utilization of a person as a whole, and so on are interpreted as orientations toward human capital. Knowledge and learning thus become commodities viewed from the perspective of supply and demand.
- Lifelong learning as a strategy of pedagogizing social problems. Many documents from education policy, but also research and practical recommendations for education, create the impression that learning is one of the main starting points in combating unemployment, poverty, discrimination, and various forms of disadvantage. Yet these problems cannot be individualized and solved pedagogically; they should be addressed primarily at political, economic, and social levels.
- Lifelong learning as pressure. Not only must a person learn throughout life; he or she must even want to. A kind of unobserved internalization of this pressure arises. Lifelong learning is expected to become a need, and this scenario seems to be gradually unfolding. Internalizing externally imposed pressures is nothing other than the realization of strategies of domination and power.
The concept of lifelong learning, which without exception turns to each of us, does not merely demand that we learn for our entire lives; its main goal is to build a so-called learning society. Yet this is not possible without the corresponding infrastructure. Educational institutions, therefore, must be able to respond quickly to changing needs of changing clienteles. Fragmented educational provision comes to the fore: modularized components should be able to connect to each other as needed, or be interchangeable, and be governed exclusively by pragmatic effect (Pongratz, 2007, pp. 9-10).
In this situation, so-called competencies come on stage, becoming universal target categories for all areas of education and learning. In essence, these are different abilities, skills, and capacities (e.g., flexibility, creativity, learnability, effective communication, obtaining information, and decision making) that are supposed to be the key to forming an active citizen, an initiative and action-oriented member of a learning society.
K. P. Liessmann (2008, p. 50) warns that those who proclaim teamwork, flexibility, and willingness to communicate as educational goals are speaking about suspending any individuality, which was once both its addressee and actor. He notes that competence, such as teamwork, can be acquired as a property without context (we can be team-capable in a team, as well as without one), and he is struck by the fact that current dominant metaphors of education policy now question exactly those goals that once motivated classical discourse on education—autonomy, sovereignty, and self-ownership of the individual. Liessmann believes that the possible hidden curriculum of today’s education is to not think with one’s own head.
Conversely, the well-known German professor of pedagogy, R. Arnold, argues in favor of competencies. In an interview for Psychologie Heute, he states that at the start of the discourse on traditional education, Wilhelm von Humboldt stood with the idea of the general development of a person freed from all rules and framing conditions. On that background, many beliefs have persisted to this day, for example, faith in the classical content of the gymnasium canon and the preference for vocational, practically oriented education. The claim that education must be purposeless in principle is, according to Arnold, unsupported. He says that a practically oriented idea of competencies brings a clear-headed perspective to the matter and allows education to be better understood.
A reader who now has to decide what should be the goal of learning efforts in adulthood, or over the whole life course (whether “general education,” based on the ancient ideal and humanistic conception, or competencies), may feel maneuvered into a situation where one must choose either one or the other, since no third exists (tertium non datur). Luckily, this is not a matter of formal logic; therefore, that tertium does exist. For us, it is wisdom. This is by no means to devalue the target categories discussed above, nor other categories such as qualification, professional education, erudition, or self-knowledge in the sense of the Greek “gnóthiseauton.” Wisdom surpasses them because, unlike them, it focuses both on personality and on responsible living in society.
There are also other reasons why, in justification of (lifelong) learning efforts—even, it goes without saying, regarding education of seniors—neither traditional “erudition” nor trend-driven “competence” is sufficient. While erudition either identifies with completion of a higher level of school or is understood as a contemplative cultural component, competence is primarily directed toward professional performance, despite contradictory claims. In contrast, wisdom points to “vita activa,” that is, a life of action and prudent conduct within it (Siebert, 2011).
What Is Wisdom?
Although we encounter the term wisdom in the earliest civilizational sources (for example, the five-thousand-year-old Instructions for Living of Ptahhotep, vizier under Pharaoh Djedkare Isesi), we do not find its interdisciplinary accepted definition anywhere. One reason may be the significant dynamism and indeterminacy of the essence of wisdom, which often contains contradictory tendencies (see Ruisel, 2011). Whatever the reason, within our reflection we take as a useful definition of wisdom the formulation by the German journalist, TV host, and philosopher Gert Scobel (2008 in Siebert, 2011, p. 7): “Wisdom includes in both social and cultural realms, as well as in personal mastery of life, some calm stance precisely because of the complexity of life.”
This calm stance likely stems from the fact that a wise person is cautious in decision-making and does not feel compelled to seek truth at any cost. He or she knows that there is no absolute, and therefore true, knowledge that is a reflection of a reality independent from oneself and that would provide unambiguous answers to complex life situations. The pre-Socratics already knew that reality is our construction, ours—the ones who believe we can find and examine it. Yet, as F. Varela notes (2014, p. 306), we forget all that we have contributed to seeing reality exactly as we see it.
Belief in a single, i.e., real reality (understood naturally as one’s own viewpoint) is, as we learn from P. Patzlawick (2013, pp. 218-219), probably in the history of humanity the most murderous and despotic delusion of all, with all the horrific consequences that necessarily follow. The ability to live with relative truths, with questions that have no answers, with awareness that we do not know anything and with the paradoxical uncertainties of being, could be the basis of human maturity and the resulting tolerance toward others. Where this ability is absent, we deliver ourselves—without knowing it—to the world of the great Inquisitor, and live sheep-like lives, dull and irresponsible, while from time to time a sharp stench of smoke from a burning pyre or from the chimney of a crematorium in a concentration camp suddenly breaks through.
A wise person knows that none of us is a detached observer sitting at a “locus observandi” and looking from “God’s Eye View.” He or she comes to terms with the fact that every view of the world is a human view. This stance can also be expressed like this: “Unless we want to claim that somehow in a special way we directly receive mystical revelations, then everything we call guidance—our ideas or concepts and the relations between them, our images of ourselves and of the world—must be human, because this guidance we have created ourselves in a way proper to us, and in relation to our abilities, we are, whether we like it or not, limited.” (von Glasersfeld, 1997, p. 60).
Wisdom presupposes learning to take responsibility for the way we look at the world, because this directly influences our behavior. We could therefore define wisdom as a system of knowledge whose content is the “pragmatics of life.” This necessarily assumes time and rich life experience. In this way, one might think that wisdom automatically comes with age. Yet when we look around us, we quickly realize that wisdom is not given to everyone with age. In this context, we cannot omit what is called age rigidity. Over life, neural networks form in our brain that are the biological basis of the structures of our thinking, perceiving, and feeling. Interpretive and emotional patterns arise that shape our self-perception and identity. As age increases, these patterns become increasingly stable and also less flexible. The more older and younger people communicate and learn together, the more one can reduce rigidity of attitudes and opinions and avoid it. The more people learn from each other, the greater the diversity of perspectives.
How Can We Imagine a Wise Person?
If we set aside perhaps the most famous sage of all time, King Solomon, who simply received his wisdom from God because he asked for it, philosophers are generally regarded as carriers and even lovers of wisdom (philosophy: Gr. φιλοσοφία = love of wisdom), people who laboriously acquire wisdom. This widespread view is probably worth revising, because in the deeds of many of them wisdom seems to be absent. F. Koukolík (2018, p. 124) illustrates this aptly:
The thirsty Heraclitus let himself be buried in manure, convinced that the local heat would evaporate his water. It did not happen. Socrates talked so long about his conscience that besides his defeat of Athens, the democrats who had just come to power accused him of introducing new gods and corrupting youth, so he had to drink a bowl of hemlock. Deeply in love David Hume, the pope of empiricism, resisted his own findings so much that his love—at least as far as is known—never reached empirical saturation. Hegel was reproached with the claim that his philosophy does not match facts. “Then woe to the facts,” Hegel replied. Arthur Schopenhauer, who described the world as will and representation, was condemned because he got into a scuffle in his anteroom with a lady after telling her she was no lady. Karl Marx was not a proletarian and emphasized that he was not a Marxist. Friedrich Nietzsche was afflicted by progressive paralysis, which can have manic phases, giving his intense feeling of superhumanity a fundamental cause.
Koukolík continues: “If wisdom were to increase in proportion to the amount of alcohol drunk during philosophical debates, we would live in its cathedral. We do not. (...) Only later did I notice philosophers hitting each other on the head with their thick volumes. And how, among those I knew, they are able to be furious, argumentative, petty and, what is worse, dogmatic to such an extent that they can reach the format of a theologian of any religion. And also how some of them have approached and still approach power with a bent spine, interpreting whatever they say as needed (...). They resemble court poets. They are overcome by a feeling of their own greatness and influence. Then, on their own or after a quiet top-down prompt, they write petitions and declarations intended to influence the silent majority. If the silent majority does not respond, even mocks, it is its mental shallowness that cannot, or does not want to, understand things given from above.” (ibid., p. 125)
The fact that the majority may perceive things announced by a wise person differently, even problematically, was already considered by Plato. For him, the philosopher is not (a Socratic) seeker of truth, but the one who possesses it. Put differently: He is the prophet of a divine order that remains hidden from the obtuse masses. Who is more appropriate than he to rule over the fates of people and the entire state? What follows from this is represented by Plato in his Republic. For example: It is not enough that the wise person has knowledge of eternal truth; he must transmit it even unconsciously, and, if necessary, against their will. This legitimizes the philosopher-king to use even falsehoods in the service of truth. Any individual interpretation of truth must be suppressed. (Plato recommends institutions that resemble inquisitions and concentration camps in every respect.) A type of person must be cultivated who will unconditionally stand behind their leader, the philosopher-king (Watzlawick, 2014, pp. 77-78). Whether anything like this is a mark of wisdom is for each person to decide.
For our reflections on wisdom and on typical features of wise people, the program Metuzalem of Czech Television was also inspiring. In it, F. Koukolík presents his essays on successful aging. One of them is about wisdom. The following text is an abridged version of it:
There is innate wisdom (in humans, for example, abstract thinking, language). There is group wisdom: the wisdom of philosophers, lawyers, doctors, all craftsmen who pass their “know-how” from generation to generation. There is also individual wisdom (the subject of our authorial interest), consisting of the following parts:
- Altruism. Not reckless altruism. A part of wisdom is refusing help to someone who does not deserve it.
- Knowledge. This is not only about facts. Wise people are not walking encyclopedias, but they know how, when, and where to use knowledge, whom to advise. Wise people think clearly, precisely, concretely, decisively, sufficiently broadly, sufficiently deeply, and logically. Wise people think critically; they are not easily deceived, are patient, wait a long time, and weigh evidence. Critical thinking is not a state; it is a process of lifelong learning.
- Emotional balance. Wise people can handle emotions.
- Self-knowledge. Information that determines us is stored in long-term implicit memory in early childhood and then is not (easily) available to conscious attention. It acts on us as if it were a deep ocean current.
- Simple questions and answers about how people of different ages, genders, nationalities, or faiths view the same problem differently. Wise people know that every kind of knowledge, including their own wisdom, is relative.
- Ability to tolerate uncertainty. Wise people tolerate it well. At the same time, they remain open to new information and new relationships (Koukolík, 2019).
We believe that the listed enumeration of parts of individual wisdom is not meant to be definitive. For example, H. Siebert (1998, p. 99) also associates wisdom with humor, which he sees as optimistic calm in view of human insufficiency and fallibility, incompatible with cruelty. He includes among humor sympathy for all things human, including human weaknesses.
Humor responds to the fragility of our lives. It is Švejk-like double-mindedness, ironic alienation, the exposure of apparent values. Humor is a compassionate way of dealing with oneself and others, an effective strategy for handling critical life events. In the end, humor means knowing how to relativize and not overvalue problems, and also how to come to terms with impermanence (ibid., p. 100).
How Can Adult Education and Learning Help Bring Us Closer to Wisdom?
Before we answer this question, let us pause at the opposite of wisdom. According to F. Koukolík (2018, p. 140), this is not stupidity in the sense of insufficient intelligence, but stupidity. Stupidity can be defined as a collapse of feedback between behavior and environment due to a maladaptive schema. A schema is, in general, a cognitive program. We call the one that in the past led to successful problem-solving an adaptive schema. However, given ongoing changes in the world, the same schema may not be successful in the present or future and can become maladaptive. It then prevents its bearer (regardless of IQ level and experience) from perceiving and distinguishing new experiences and problems.
We believe that effective tools in the fight against stupidity in adulthood (and also across the whole life course), and therefore important milestones on the path to wisdom, are education and learning. These can indeed constitute and transform adults’ life worlds. The condition, however, is that they be founded on systematic, repeatedly reflective, and autonomy-emphasizing adjustment of adults to their own and others’ interpretations.
Adult education and learning must make it possible to articulate existing schemas, i.e., constructs formed on the basis of individual experiences, compare them with each other, test their functionality in light of new situations, reassess them, or further develop them. It is therefore not just about acquiring new knowledge but also confirming, verifying, and modifying already existing interpretations. The task of adult educators is to support reflection on interpretations and openness among learners toward “re-interpretations,” that is, new perspectives (compare Arnold-Siebert, 2006, pp. 5-6).
For this purpose, adult educators may most effectively use conversation, because it supports reflection. To verbalize what we perceive, do, or think, we must consciously distinguish and label the elements and relations we use. This very often brings attention to signs of our construction that we have not noticed so far; one of those signs, once formulated, can lead to the realization that we no longer agree with the conclusion we drew from a particular situation.
Encouraging reflexive conversation requires openness and curiosity from the adult educator, but above all readiness to listen to adult learners. One of their first duties is to create an atmosphere that not only permits but also supports reflexive conversation, both among adult learners and between learners and the adult educator (adapted from von Glasersfeld, 1997, p. 303).
The educator should, in conversation, prompt learners to explain why they solve a task or problem in exactly the way they do, or did. In this way, not only how they interpret concepts and so on is shown, but also how valuable experience can be when they themselves realize that what they do and say makes no sense. Such self-induced crises trigger so-called perturbations (disturbances) and subsequent accommodative adjustments (adaptations) of our schemas sooner than any external criticism would. It is in these situations that the educator becomes especially useful as a helper. Every education must be some kind of conversation (see von Glasersfeld, 1997, pp. 303-304), whose aim is to stimulate independent, lateral thinking: a person should reach their own conclusions rather than the educator’s conclusions. In the end, pedagogy has little in common with knowledge transfer; its main goal is the ability to learn.
The outcome of adult education and learning aimed at developing wisdom, therefore, should not be ready-made contents (“what to think”), but useful ways of thinking (“how to think”). They can contribute to this through, for example, guided reflection on real or fictional dilemmas, development of the ability to solve complex life problems and situations, critical reasoning, maintaining inner distance, or rethinking one’s own perspectives and values.
Another useful way of thinking in relation to adults’ wisdom development could be called “via negativa” (the negative way). What this means can be illustrated by two examples offered by R. Dobelli in his book The Art of Wise Action (2016).
“Pope Michelangelo was asked the following question: ‘Tell me, what is the secret of your genius? How did you manage to create the sculpture of David, which is a truly masterful work surpassing all others?’ Michelangelo replied: ‘Quite simply. I only removed everything that was not David.’” (ibid., p. 1)
“Legendary investor Warren Buffet writes about himself and his partner Charlie Munger this: ‘We did not learn to solve complex business problems; we learned to avoid them.’” (ibid., p. 2)
Both examples suggest that although we cannot always say with certainty what makes us successful or happy, we clearly understand what destroys our success or happiness. Negative experiences (what to avoid) are much stronger than positive ones (what to do). Thinking and acting wiser in the spirit of “via negativa” means learning how to avoid unwise ways of thinking and acting in private or professional life.
Conclusion
We believe that looking at education and learning (at any stage of life) as the fulfillment of an ancient ideal or reducing them solely to economic utility is useless and, in principle, impossible. The goal of education and learning should be to make a person wise, i.e., to the extent possible, capable of acting responsibly toward oneself, society, the state, one’s vocation, and free time. We understand wisdom as the highest ability, a competence of operative and spiritual-ethical handling of tasks in the infinite diversity of rapidly changing work and life reality.
We are aware that wisdom is unquestionably an ideal, or idealistic, target category, which (probably) no one can fully fulfill. We are also aware of the fact that full development of the human personality as an integral part of wisdom is not what most practical andragogical activities are guided by. But are it not precisely ideals and idealism that we lack today? The wish for the ideal of wisdom to become real is not at all superfluous for andragogy (this applies to all educational sciences). Consider physics, where, for example, the idealized concept of a gas makes it possible to understand gas-dynamic processes, express them mathematically, and then solve many practical problems. At this point, however, words are no longer important, but deeds—because the effort to achieve wisdom, like every other mastery, primarily presumes lifelong, conscientious training.
Autori: Mgr. Martin Schubert, PhD., Mgr. Zuzana Neupauer, PhD.
Katedra andragogiky, Pedagogická fakulta, Univerzita Mateja Bela
Práca je súčasťou riešenia grantu VEGA MŠVVaŠ SR č. 1/0526/18 „Konštrukt docility v teórii a praxi edukácie dospelých“ na Katedre andragogiky Pedagogickej fakulty Univerzity Mateja Bela v Banskej Bystrici.
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