On Sagehood and the Love of Wisdom

Since the time of the classical Greeks, it has generally been thought in the West that there are no longer sages to be found, that sage-hood belongs to a bygone era, a mythic era represented by the age of the so called "seven sages". In the classical period, the image of the "sage" comes to be replaced by the figure of Socrates. Rather than being a sage (sophos), one in full possession of wisdom (sophia), Socrates is presented as a mere "lover of wisdom".

There is combined in Socrates two moments: that of wisdom/knowledge and that of folly/ignorance. This is expressed in the somewhat paradoxical formulation that Socrates only knows that he does not know. Here, the "unknowing" of Socrates is itself an expression of a form of "wisdom". It corresponds to the Greek virtue of "sophrosyne", which is translated variously as "practical wisdom", "prudence", or "temperance". According to one interpretation, sophrosyne is the ideal that is meant to be conveyed by the maxim engraved at the oracle of Delphi: "know thyself". According to this interpretation, the meaning of this canon is: know that you are not a god. In contrast to sophrosyne, prudent awareness of one's limitations, the claim of sophia comes, for the ancients, to be associated with a certain vice, that of hubris. To some extent, it is in this context that the classical Greeks spoke of the "sophists", those who claimed knowledge, though as a merely descriptive epithet, "sophist" also referred to anyone with a particular "expertise" in some field.

The virtue of "temperance" came to be expressed in a variety of ways in both the pagan and non-pagan traditions. In the Christian tradition it is one pole in the tension between the complementary teachings that we are both made in the image of God and at the same time are imperfect sinners. In the mystical tradition, the virtue of prudence appears as the ideal of "agnosia", the mystical "unknowing", which, according to some interpretations, stands as a kind of corrective to the "gnosis" of the Gnostics. Nicholas of Cusa writes in his De Docta Ignorantio, "We desire to know that we do not know." In a similar way, Kierkegaard will much later, "It is the duty of human understanding to understand that there are things it cannot understand."

In the classical works, Socrates appears as a kind of "liminal" character. He straddles two worlds, as it were. In the Symposium, he is likened to Eros. Eros is described as an intermediate or "daemonic" being, in that he is neither a god nor merely mortal. Socrates is presented in an analogous manner. He is not a sage, is not an actual incarnation of transcendent wisdom, but at the same time, as a lover of wisdom, he partakes of the divine wisdom to a degree. Eros, we are told, is a kind of "lack", a desiring for something missing. Similarly, the lover of wisdom represents a kind of "lack" of something, here full wisdom.

For the ancients, both Greek and Roman, the practical situation for the lover of wisdom was paradoxical. He was conscious that divine sophia could not be fully embraced, but at the same time he could not relinquish the pursuit of what he loved. Quintillian echoes this sentiment of the ancients: "We too must strive after that which is highest, as the ancients did. Even though they believed that no sage could be found, they continued to teach the precepts of wisdom."

The paradigmatic portrayal of the "figure" of Socrates is perhaps the Platonic dialogues, though Xenophon's and Diogenes' accounts are also important. In the so called "Socratic" Dialogues, Socrates sets out in search of someone who is truly wise, in search of a sage. He finds a number of people who think they are wise, but no sages. In these Dialogues, Socrates assumes a number of guises. He partakes of the Greek ideals of rational discourse and intellectual "combat", but "rationalism" is not his teaching, as the moderns think. His "teaching", in fact, is rather odd. He seems to have no teaching at all and appears only to engage in enquiry. Aristotle notes, "Socrates used to ask questions and not answer them, for he used to confess that he did not know". At the same time Socrates refused to be called a master of wisdom. Epictetus says of him, "When people used to come and see him, they asked him to introduce them to lovers of wisdom; he readily complied, and at the same time willingly accepted to pass unnoticed himself." Pierre Hadot writes, "Since he had nothing to say, and no thesis to defend, all Socrates could do is ask questions, even though he himself refused to answer them." One is reminded here of Nagarjuna's paradoxical utterance in his Vigrahavyavatani: "I have no thesis (pratijna) to defend".

When we look at the "Socratic" Dialogues with this interpretive key, and consider them as literary works, we can see that "Socrates" is not so much interested in teaching a "theory of ideas", or what the "real" definition of justice is. He is actually only interested in his interlocutors. In the Apology he confesses that it has, all along, only ever been about teaching what each of his interlocutors "is". In the Dialogues, the enquiry winds about, comes to an impasse, Socrates takes it over, and then it all comes to a puzzling end, at which point both we and the interlocutor are not clear as to what it is we have learnt. But the pattern is always this: Socrates questions someone who thinks they know what they are talking about, and by the end of the interrogation it becomes quite clear that they don't know what they are talking about. The "teaching" here is simply that one should understand the limits of his knowledge and the limitations of his noetic capacities.

This same Socratic theme of knowing one's limitations reappears in the works of Kierkegaard, and here we find the other dominant "figure" in the West: that of Jesus. Here, the issue becomes not so much whether or not Kierkegaard's contemporaries are sages, but the degree to which they can be called "Christians". Kierkegaard sets an almost impossible standard here; indeed in his version of the "imitation of Christ" the only true Christian can be Christ himself. Just as Socrates finds no true sages among his peers, Kierkegaard finds no true "Christians".

We might say that for the ancients, the image of the "sage" functions entirely as a kind of "transcendent norm". Sage-hood lies beyond the grasp of the mere mortal, but it is something that should be striven after nonetheless. While sage-hood functions as a kind of transcendent norm that can only ever be approached asymptotically, the practical paradigm becomes that of the lover of wisdom, represented by the figure of Socrates (and other figures such as Pyrrho, Diogenes, Epicurus, and so on). Two of the characteristic features of this general teaching of the ancients can be said to be the teaching that the lover of wisdom is a composite of both wisdom/knowledge and folly/ignorance, and that the lover of wisdom unceasingly engages in enquiry (zetesis; skepsis).

According to Nietzsche, there are two sides to Socrates the teacher. One is the seducer of youths who rips the masks from the gods, dissolves their myths, and replaces them with the "knowledge of good and evil". As Hadot points out, this is the Socrates that Nietzsche despises, because this was what Nietzsche himself was so good at. The other is Socrates as the "midwife" of the soul, the Socrates who teaches his students to "care for their self". This is the Socrates that Nietzsche admires and envies, because he found this capacity to be so lacking in himself.

Hadot points out that the teacher as "midwife" does not so much engender the soul of the student as allow the student to engender his own soul. Somewhat paradoxically, the teacher teaches by becoming a kind of student himself. Kierkegaard writes, "The student is an opportunity for the teacher to understand himself, just as the teacher is an opportunity for the student to understand himself." Here, teaching, paedeia, becomes a kind of "spiritual exercise" in itself, and its paradigm of the teacher who remains the perennial student becomes an expression of the ideal of unceasing enquiry.

This brings us, I think, to another great tradition, and to some analogous teachings as to what is means to be "on the way" to sage-hood: the Buddhist tradition.

In the Buddhist tradition, the idea of the "Buddha" also functions as a kind of "transcendent norm". The tradition speaks of people becoming a "arhats" or "bodhisattvas" but it does not speak of actual Buddhas other than the Shakyamuni Gautama. In general, the term "buddha", the "awakened one", is synonymous with terms such as muni and jnani. Gaudapada, for example (with his usual playfulness) uses the term "buddha" throughout his Karikas as synonym for "muni". But for the Buddhist tradition the ideal of the Buddha takes on a special significance.

In the Mahayana tradition in particular, the notion of "Buddha-hood" clearly assumes the role of a kind of transcendent norm. The paradigmatic figure for practice in the Mahayana becomes that of the "bodhisattva", one who is "on the way" to bodhi, "enlightened awareness". The bodhisattva is defined as one who takes a particular vow (pranidhana). He vows to strive for Buddha-hood, but he also vows to renounce his desire for the attainment of nirvana, until such time as all other beings have been awakened. Like the lover of wisdom, who nurtures the "engendering of soul", the bodhisattva dedicates himself to awakening the "mind of enlightenment" (bodhi-citta) in other individuals. This "pedagogic" virtue is an expression of his "care" or "compassion" (karuna) for other beings. In the Mahayana, this "compassion" appears as a kind of sister virtue alongside that of "wisdom" (prajna). The entire practical edifice here is designed to efface the individual practitioner's conception of himself as a "sage" or "buddha", and to replace that conception with the idea that one can only ever be "on the way" to Buddha-hood. In this sense, the "bodhi-sattva" can be said to be analogous to the classical Western ideal of the "lover of wisdom".

Is there an analogue to the ideal of the "love of wisdom" in the Upanishadic traditions? The approximate semantic equivalent of "jijnasa" may be loosely analogous. This term means the "desire to know" - the prefix "ji-" denoting the so-called "desiderative" case. This important term appears at the beginning of both the Brahma Sutras and the Samkhya Karikas, and it would appear to be an indicator of the so called "path of knowledge" (jnana-marga). After its dedicatory verse to Kapila, the Samkhya Karika begins, "Because of the three-fold duhkha, there arises the desire to know (jijnasa)..." In an analogous manner, the Brahma Sutra begins: "Thus the desire to know (jijnasa) Brahman". (The word "thus" here signifies that once the prerequisites to the path of knowledge have been fulfilled, the "desire to know" can begin.)

The term "jijnasa" is often glossed as referring to the practice of "enquiry" (vichara), and so it is also sometimes translated as "enquiry". In this case, the above passages might also be rendered: "Thus the enquiry into Brahman", or "...then there arises enquiry...". "Ji-jnasa" can therefore be understood as both an indicator of the path of knowledge and as a synonym for the primary exercise of that discipline: enquiry.

Paralleling the classical term "jijnasa", the desire to know, is what the Gita refers to as "jnanasya nistha", or "devotion to knowledge" (18.50). The term "nistha" means "devotion" or "steadfastness", but it also means the "completion" or "perfection" of something. The Gita appears to use it in this latter sense at 18.50, since "jnana" appears in the genitive case; so the two terms together must mean, "the completion of knowledge". However, Shankara uses the term throughout his commentary on the Gita (cf. 2.10; 3.3; 5.12) as a description of the path of knowledge, that is, in its sense as the "devotion to knowledge". For example, in his comments at 2.54 he refers to "jnana-yoga-nistha", devotion to the path of knowledge. His choice in using this term appears to have to do with his "creative misinterpretation" of the Gita's preference for bhakti as the best of paths. Shankara agrees: devotion is indeed the best of paths, and the best form of devotion is "devotion to knowledge". (!)

At Gita 18.55 his description of jnana-nishta is identical to the classical description of the practice of "nidhidhyasana", continuous contemplation, the final practice of the path of knowledge. Here and in his comments upon the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, the semantic sense of "nidhidhyasana" as the practice of contemplation "slides" into its sense as intuition itself, that is in its sense as the "completion" of knowledge. The ambiguity of "nidhidhyasana" exactly parallels the semantic ambiguity of the Latin "contemplatio", as contemplation not only refers to the pre-eminent practice of mystical spirituality, it also refers to the act of "noesis", of "intuition", itself.

Paralleling the semantic ambiguity of "nistha" in Shankara's commentary is the Mahayana term "paramita". Literally, the term "paramita" refers to the "completion" or "perfection" of something. The term "prajna-paramita", for example, is usually translated as "the perfection of wisdom" (or "discriminative knowledge"). But at the same time it also refers to that which leads to the "other shore". There is, I think, built into the sense of "prajna-paramita" three layers of meaning. To be sure, it means "final knowledge" or "transcendent wisdom". It also means "wisdom" as a kind of goal that should be sought after. But perhaps most importantly, it would also appear to refer to "perfection" as a kind of ongoing process, the process of "coming to" wisdom, of "becoming" wise. This later sense is particularly important for the Mahayana, as the various "perfections" (paramita) are perhaps the principle image used by the Mahayana to convey the nature of the Bodhisattva-yana, the seemingly unending path of "coming to" Buddha-hood.

At first glance, the classical tradition of Advaita Vedanta would not appear to have any exact parallels to the ideals of the "lover of wisdom" or the "bodhi-sattva". However, there are indeed conceptions built into the tradition that nonetheless can be seen as "tempering" and as setting limitations upon human individuals, both within and without the tradition.

One is how the ancient "rishis" are generally conceived in the classical period. For the classical Vedantins, the "rishi" belongs to a bygone era, just as the "sophos" does for the Classical Greeks and Romans. Shankara concurs with this general attitude. At Brahma Sutra 1.3.33. he notes that for the ancient seers, concourse with the gods was a much more common occurrence, as the spiritual powers of the men of later periods are greatly attenuated . But while certain later interpretations will attempt to establish the authority of the ancient rishis on the basis of their "yogic" attainments (and the Neo-Vedantins will make much of the mystical "experience" of the ancient seers and sages), the classical Advaitins deny that such things form the basis of the rishi's authority.

Even more stringent limitations are set upon the classical sages (muni) such as Kapila and Patanjali by the classical Advaitins. In the opening passages of the second Adhyaya (2.1.1), Shankara addresses a Samkhya interlocutor who argues that since the knowledge (jnana) of Kapila is unobstructed and "rishi-like" (arsha, meaning literally, pertaining to a rishi), it is to be taken as authoritative. Basically, Shankara denies that such knowledge is possible. Nor, he continues, should we think that certain Siddhas possess "supernatural vision" (what the Buddhist refer to as "yogi-pratyaksha") and that such vision is a basis for authority.

In order to set these kind of limits, the classical tradition of Advaita makes some basic distinctions. In very general terms, the classical tradition draws a fairly sharp distinction between what is "paurusha" (literally, relating to the "purusha), which means what is merely human, and what is "a-paurusha", that which is divine. This is related to another distinction it draws between what is "paurusheya", which refers to what is "man-made" and human based, and what is "vastu", based upon "reality". What is merely man-made is "paratantra" and "apeksha", "relative" and "dependent" upon something else for its existence; it is "krtrima", "artificial" and produced from causes. What is based upon reality is "svatantra" and "anapeksha" "independent" and "absolute"; it is "akrtrima" or "sahaja", natural.

It is on the basis of such distinctions that the classical tradition of Advaita Vedanta sets the kind of limitations it does upon the legitimacy of spiritual "experience", upon speculation based upon such experience, and upon any attempt to base personal authority upon such experience. Though "experience" or "intuition" (anubhava; sakshatskara) has its place in the soteriological scheme of classical Advaita, its role is carefully circumscribed by tradition (sampradaya) and revelation (sruti). Wielded in a dogmatic manner, such distinctions might be seen by some as stifling to the human spirit, and as mere vehicles for sustaining the hegemony of orthodoxy. In some sense this may be so, and they can thereby be seen as one of the drawbacks of the classical tradition and as something that contributes to the process of its ossification. But at the same time, for the classical tradition they also serve as important practical mechanisms for checking not only the excesses of human pride and personal self-importance, but the abuse of power based upon such excess.