A.C.Grayling reviews my favorite book of the year:
"Hall's final chapter is an extended recognition of this point, and ends by making gestures toward the irreducible "mystery" of wisdom. But the complexity of the task does not entail that it is permanently unresolvable; rather, it forces us to think afresh about what questions we are asking and what phenomena we are investigating. If I were to say (as I am inclined to) that the wisdom of an individual consists in maturity, intelligence ("there is no method but to be intelligent," said T. S. Eliot; Hall reports studies distinguishing intelligence from wisdom), and self-possession (understood as resistance to blandishments from without and overweening appetites within), this would seem to indicate that wisdom relates to character and behaviour in a social setting, and that we are therefore more likely to learn about it from literature, history, and philosophy than from other sources. This is not to downplay the importance of the new neurologically-informed social sciences, which are fascinating and promising in equal measure; but it is to insist that all our studies need to connect with all our other studies, and that some of them might merit still taking the lead even though others now have superb new machines to aid them. I suspect that Hall shares this view; which is the most interesting implication of his book."
"Hall's final chapter is an extended recognition of this point, and ends by making gestures toward the irreducible "mystery" of wisdom. But the complexity of the task does not entail that it is permanently unresolvable; rather, it forces us to think afresh about what questions we are asking and what phenomena we are investigating. If I were to say (as I am inclined to) that the wisdom of an individual consists in maturity, intelligence ("there is no method but to be intelligent," said T. S. Eliot; Hall reports studies distinguishing intelligence from wisdom), and self-possession (understood as resistance to blandishments from without and overweening appetites within), this would seem to indicate that wisdom relates to character and behaviour in a social setting, and that we are therefore more likely to learn about it from literature, history, and philosophy than from other sources. This is not to downplay the importance of the new neurologically-informed social sciences, which are fascinating and promising in equal measure; but it is to insist that all our studies need to connect with all our other studies, and that some of them might merit still taking the lead even though others now have superb new machines to aid them. I suspect that Hall shares this view; which is the most interesting implication of his book."
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