Dove e quando

Jason Swartwood (Saint Paul College)

Practice for Wisdom:  On the Neglected Role of Critical Reflection 

Abstract

To become wise, we need to develop a reliably good grasp of how we ought to live and conduct ourselves, all things considered, across the concrete circumstances that make up our lives.  We need to understand what matters both in general and in particular situations and how this fits together into a well-lived life.  But achieving this understanding requires overcoming obstacles we all inevitably face.  We believe in general principles that are incompatible with our judgments about particular situations.  We judge apparently similar cases differently without good reason.  We are unsure what our general values and principles require in challenging situations.  We fail to take seriously alternative perspectives that could improve our own view of what matters or what we ought to do.  Overcoming these challenges, I argue, requires engaging in a type of critical reflection that has been neglected in contemporary wisdom research.  First, I illustrate the process of critical reflection using historical and contemporary examples.  Second, I show that this critical reflection is necessary for developing wisdom but absent in prominent accounts of wisdom.  Finally, I argue that focusing on the role of critical reflection in wisdom development has significant benefits: it helps us defend and specify the idea that wisdom is an expert decision-making skill, and it can help us better identify factors that contribute to or impede wisdom development.