Principles

Wisdom

F Wisdom

Definition: Wisdom is a property with which the wise understand.

Clarification: Wisdom is a principle extended in the knower, in knowing, in knowledge and in the knowable. Wisdom's power cannot reach beyond these limits. However, when wisdom is an intense principle in each of the above terms severally considered as separate simple essences, it is the effect of some other cause. But there is another, supreme wisdom where the knower, knowledge, knowing and knowable are identical in essence and nature to wisdom; this wisdom on its own is a principle simply within its own intense terms and identical to them in essence and nature. Otherwise, it would be limited by its own terms in goodness, greatness, eternity, power and virtue, and unable to be one infinite principle with regard to finite principles; it would even partake of ignorance, which would be a privation of goodness etc. And this privation would be worse in supreme wisdom than in finite wisdom limited by the terms into which it extends.

Nature: The inherent correlatives of wisdom are: the knower, the knowable, knowing and knowledge.

Without wisdom and its likeness in natural instinct, nothing can be directed in any purposeful way.

As a principle of this Art, wisdom informs the artist's intellect about the supreme principle of wisdom, understood as an exemplar of how good, great, durable, powerful etc. the knower, knowledge and knowing can be. With this principle, the process of the Art easily leads the intellect to the understanding that the will requires and expects of it.