Analect 9.8-What is wisdom? (ES)

     In analect 9.8 Confucius makes a puzzling statement which I am not sure what and how to take from it.

He says, "Do I possess wisdom? No, I do not. [For example, recently] a common fellow asked a question 

of me, and I came up completely empty. But I discussed the problem with him from the beginning to end 

until we finally got to bottom of it". This brings forth to my mind several questions regarding wisdom. 

First does Confucius mean he does not or has not ever possessed wisdom in his life? Or secondly, does he

mean simply that in this moment while speaking to this individual he felt blank and void of knowledge?

Thirdly, is what Confucius and the common fellow got to the bottom of, whether or not Confucius had 

wisdom? And lastly, what exactly is wisdom? 

    It is unclear to what wisdom is exactly, from this analect one would have to conclude that wisdom is 

somehow separate from knowledge. But why would anyone come to that conclusion. The answer to that 

would be because Confucius has stated in earlier analects that he did posses knowledge. For example in 

analect 7.20 Confucius says, "I am not someone who was born with knowledge. I simply love antiquity, 

and diligently look there for knowledge". This heavily implies at least to me that Confucius is always 

actively searching for knowledge and has acquired some from the ancients. If this is the the case and 

Confucius posses knowledge but still not wisdom, than I can only conclude that they are not one and the

same. Furthermore, it is still unclear to me if the process in which Confucius discussed his worry with the

common fellow was or was not Confucius gaining wisdom? However, the answer to what exactly is

wisdom has been left unanswered in both analect 9.8 and book 9 as whole, and I am eagerly waiting to 

see if Confucius will expand more upon what wisdom is. 

Comments

  1. Krishnan VenkateshFebruary 18, 2022 at 1:48 PM

    So, if the Chinese word for both wisdom and knowledge is the same, "zhi," can you infer more about the range of meaning of this word? There is comparable vagueness with English "know" -- for surely, one does not know a person or a moral truth the same way one "knows" a geometrical theorem. "wisdom" comes from a root that means "know," a word with the same range of vagueness.

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