15. WHAT IS WISDOM?





    For the benefit of those of you who have not yet had the opportunity

to read the book I mentioned at the end of the last lecture, Jonathan

Livingston Seagull, I will begin today by giving you a brief summary of

its contents. After that, I would like to spend most of today's session

hearing how those of you who have read the story would answer the

following three questions about it:



   (1)  What does flying represent in this story?



   (2)  What does the story tell us about the pursuit of wisdom?



   (3)  Where does Jonathan go in Part Two?



Finally, I will end today by trying to explain how some of the lessons

contained in this story are related to the various issues we will be

examining in this third part of the course.



    This little book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, is a story about a

rather unusual bird--a seagull, as the title indicates.  At the beginning

of the story, this bird, named Jonathan, is experimenting with different

ways of flying.  Whereas his fellow birds all use their flying skill only

in order to fulfill their main interest in life, eating, Jonathan sees

flying as a skill which ought to be pursued for its own sake.  However, as

he is trying out a new method for high-speed flying, he offends the

leaders of his flock, who respond by banishing him to the "far cliffs".

After living a long, lonely life, two mysterious birds come and take him

to another place.  In Part Two Jonathan learns about a new kind of flying,

which focuses not on wings and feathers, but on thought and imagination.

He is excelling faster than all the other birds in this new world, when

suddenly he decides he must return to his old world.  So he goes back to

the far cliffs.  The third and final part of the story then tells how he

gathers some outcast birds and begins teaching them how to fly and how to

understand flying.  Once he has taught them some basic skills, he returns

with his students to the old flock, from which they had all been outcast.

They hold their practice sessions right there on the beach, and eventually

some of the birds from the flock show interest in learning how to fly.

When they begin learning for themselves, Jonathan leaves them to continue

on their own.



    Now, let's begin with the first question.  Who has an idea as to what

flying might represent in this story?  By the way, don't say "the search

for wisdom", because that's too obvious.  I've already told you I want us

to view the whole story as giving us insight into the search for wisdom,

so right now I want us to be more specific.  Then, in our discussion of

the second question, we can try to apply what we learn from the symbolism

of flying to the issue of the nature of loving wisdom.  So who would like

to be first?



    Student N.  "Freedom."



    Yes, I suppose that's a good place to start.  Without even reading the

story we could be fairly confident that this is part of the intended

symbolism, since it's quite common to associate a bird in flight with

freedom.  This is probably part of the reason the author chose to write a

story about a bird, rather than, say, a fish or a dog.  The story itself

confirms this by telling how Jonathan saw himself as free from the things

which trapped the other gulls into an unhappy and meaningless life, such

as the desires for food, acceptance by others, and political power.  As he

learned to fly, he also learned to free himself, more and more, from such

entrapments; and in so doing he learned how to live a truly meaningful

life.  In Part Two he even learned to free himself from his life-long

tendency to view literal flying (i.e., flying with his physical body) as

the ultimate purpose of his life.



    But "freedom" is almost as difficult a word to understand as "wisdom".

So did anyone find in this story any clues that can help us understand

what freedom is?  What did Jonathan have to do in order to learn about

true freedom?



    Student O.  "To me, Jonathan seemed to be on a quest for the unknown.

And this always required him to be breaking through the limits that he or

the other birds had previously set."



    Very good.  I agree that the element of the unknown plays an important

role throughout the whole story.  Jonathan was willing to pursue his goal

even though he never seemed to know, until perhaps he returned to the

flock in Part Three, what was around the next corner.  As you suggest, his

quest for "perfect speed" was really a quest for the unattainable.  As a

result he was, paradoxically, only able to reach his goal when he was

willing to give up all his conventional ideas about how it could be

reached, especially his assumption that it would be reached by means of

the "flight of wing and feather". Likewise, I think you've chosen exactly

the right words when you say he was always "breaking through the limits

...".  In fact, one of the reasons why the flight of a bird symbolizes

freedom is that birds seem to have found the secret of breaking through

the chains of the law of gravity, which binds us human beings so firmly to

the earth.  Moreover, the story itself suggests that breaking through old

boundaries is one of the fundamental keys to self- discovery.  Did you

notice that in Part One Jonathan actually referred to one of his major

discoveries about flying as "the breakthrough"?  Then, in Part Two, his

discovery of the "flight" of the imagination was a breakthrough not only

in his level of skill, but also in his understanding.  And his return to

the flock in Part Three represented yet another kind of breakthrough,

which also has to do with the symbolism of flying as it is presented in

the story.



    Did anyone happen to notice how Jonathan's final breakthrough gives us

another way of explaining the symbolism of flying?



    Student P.  "His return to the flock at the end seemed like a really

sacrificial act.  After all, he could have continued learning so much more

if he had stayed where he was!  Could flying represent this kind of self-

sacrifice?"



    Indeed it could.  Remember, Jonathan had to sacrifice a lot at the

beginning of the story just in order to begin his quest for perfect speed.

In fact, precisely this idea is expressed in one of my favorite passages

in the whole book, though it is put in different words than those you have

used.  Just after Jonathan makes his initial breakthrough in Part Two, his

teacher, Chiang, tells him he will soon be ready to begin working on the

breakthrough which is "the most difficult, the most powerful, the most fun

of all.  You will be ready to begin to fly up and know the meaning of

kindness and love" (p.83). Likewise, the teacher's last words to Jonathan

were "keep on working on love" (p.84).  Jonathan showed he had begun to

learn this lesson when he himself became a teacher, at first as Chiang's

replacement, and then, in Part Three, to the gulls back on the far cliffs.

But he only fully demonstrated the extent to which he had learned to "fly

up" when he actually returned to the old flock which had once cast him

out.



    What other lessons can we learn from the symbol of flying?  In a

philosophy class, an obvious answer, which students in the past have

sometimes suggested, is that flying for a bird would correspond to

thinking, or perhaps self- understanding, for a philosopher.  Or another

idea I've heard before is that the whole story is all about the learning

process in general, the passage from ignorance to knowledge, which, of

course, is also one of the main themes we have been developing in this

course.  Do any of you have anything to add to these ideas, before we go

on to the second question?



    Student Q.  "I think flying represents perfection, since the story

mentions 'perfect speed' several times.  Even though we cannot fly, we can

strive to be perfect in the things that we are able to do."



    Maybe so, although I think we have to be careful not to misunderstand

what this kind of "perfection" is all about.  I don't think it merely

refers to being right or good all of the time, otherwise Jonathan would

have had to follow the "Law of the Flock", even though it sometimes went

against the "true law", of "freedom" (p.114).  In any case, perfection is

an awfully high ideal to set for oneself.  What good do you think

Jonathan's quest for perfection did for him?  What can we learn from his

experiences?



    Student Q.  "Well, without that goal, I don't think Jonathan's life

would have been very meaningful.  I think flying is what gave Jonathan's

life its meaning."



    So flying represents not just the quest for perfection, but the quest

for a kind of perfection that can bestow real meaning on our otherwise

mundane life. Yes, I think this is one of the key points of the whole

book. Not everything can function in this way, which means we must be very

careful in choosing just what it is that we will make the object of our

life's quest.  Jonathan himself, as I've already said, changed the way he

viewed flying several times during the story; and with each change he came

closer and closer to achieving the ultimate goal of participation in a

meaning-giving reality.



    We have actually already begun to answer the second question,

concerning the specific lessons this story can teach us about the pursuit

of wisdom.  All the things we have mentioned so far have implications for

this second question, most of which I hope are clear enough without our

going over them again.  So instead of just repeating what we've already

said, let's see if we can draw from the story any further insights about

the nature of wisdom. If we regard the whole story as a story about one

individual's pursuit of wisdom, then what can we learn?



    Student R.  "Those who are really serious about pursuing wisdom are

likely to live a hard and lonely life."



    Perhaps I could add that, if we are to judge by Jonathan's experience,

they are also likely to be misunderstood by others.  Jonathan was

misunderstood not only in the first part, by the members of his flock, but

also by his friend Sullivan in Part Two, and by some of his students in

Part Three.  But we should keep in mind that the difficulties caused by

such hardships are, in a sense, "easy" to cope with for those who have set

their eyes on a goal as high as the pursuit of wisdom.  (This is similar,

by the way, to Jesus' claim--despite the many so-called "hard sayings" he

used to describe those who set their eyes on the "kingdom of God"--that

anyone who follows this heavenly kingdom will discover that "My yoke is

easy, and my load is light" [Matt. 11:30]!)  Jonathan was such a fast

learner precisely because he did not let such apparent burdens weigh him

down for any extended period of time.  In the same way, although the life

of a person who pursues wisdom appears to be lonely by our ordinary

standards, the story itself says Jonathan "lived a long fine life" on the

far cliffs; and the reason, no doubt, is that his hardships had purged him

of "boredom and fear and anger", which "are the reasons that a gull's life

is so short" (p.41).  If the story is true to real life, then the apparent

hardships, failures, and suffering are well worth the price: without them,

a breakthrough would be impossible.



    Student S.  "Jonathan's quest seemed to be continuous, if not

unending; he needed a lot of will power to stick to the task.  I suppose

the same is true for the pursuit of wisdom."



    Yes indeed.  But what is it that gives us the power to stick to such

an endless task?  What keeps us from losing hope and simply giving up in

despair? Does the story give us any clues?



    Student S.  "I believe Jonathan was able to continue pursuing his goal

only because he was able to see a dimension that goes beyond time and

space."



    This is a very important point.  But actually, it takes us directly to

the third question; so before I comment on your answer, does anyone have

any suggestions as to where this strange place was to which Jonathan was

transported in Part Two?



    Student T.  "Doesn't the story say he went to heaven?  I got the

impression that Jonathan was supposed to have died at the end of Part One,

and the two gulls were like angels taking him up to heaven."



    I'm not surprised that the story gave you this impression.  Indeed, it

would certainly be one possible interpretation, especially since Jonathan

himself actually interpreted the new place in this way at the very

beginning of Part Two, when he thought to himself "So this is heaven ..."

(p.57). Nevertheless, a little bit later (p.64), after realizing he had

not yet reached his final goal, Jonathan asked Chiang "this world isn't

heaven at all, is it?" and Chiang answered "there is no such place.

Heaven is not a place and it is not a time.  Heaven is being perfect."

Unfortunately, when Chiang was just about to explain in more detail what

heaven really is, Jonathan interrupted him (p.79)--but not before Chiang

had the chance to make it clear to Jonathan that perfection  is intimately

interconnected with love.



    If the place Jonathan went in Part Two was not heaven, since the story

portrays heaven more as a state of being, then where was that place?  Or,

in other words, what could that place symbolize for us?



    Student U.  "How about the 'self' or 'mind'?"



    This is certainly one good way of looking at it, though I would prefer

to say he went into his imagination.  For he was able to do things in that

place which we can do only in our imaginations.  One of the main points of

Part Two, in fact, seems to be that the imagination is just as real as the

parts of our mind which give us knowledge of the external world.  In any

case, however we wish to interpret this place, it was certainly a place

where the dimension beyond space and time was more readily at hand than it

is for us most of the time.  Thus, if we say that in Part One Jonathan

found a treasure chest within himself, but it remained locked, then Part

Two would be the place where he found the key, in the imagination, or if

you prefer, in the ideas found in his own mind.  And in Part Three he

unlocked the treasure, for the benefit of those who had once cast him out.



    In a sense the place Jonathan went in Part Two could also be compared

to a philosophy class.  Part One is like the life each of you have lived

up until now in the real world, where you have learned a great deal about

how to live. But in Part Two Jonathan learned about learning, which is one

way of describing the task of philosophy.  This little analogy implies

that the purpose of studying philosophy is not to become a professional

philosopher who writes boring, technical papers no one can understand, in

order to publish them in scholarly journals that no one reads; rather, the

purpose is to prepare you to return to exactly the same place you were

before, but with a newfound sense of your connection with a higher

reality, a reality capable of empowering you to pursue the study of wisdom

to the very end of your life, regardless of your profession.  Along

similar lines, if we think of the three parts of the story as

corresponding to three types of skill, arising out of the physical,

mental, and spiritual aspects of human nature, then we can use the map in

Figure 15.1 as a picture of the life-process presented to us in the story

of Jonathan's life.



[Figure 15.1:  The Three Stages in Jonathan's Life]



    Looking back over what we have discussed in today's session, we can

discern three important lessons about wisdom that should be kept in mind

throughout this third part of our course.  First, wisdom requires us to

recognize that there is a boundary between our knowledge and our

ignorance.  This much we should have already learned from our study of

metaphysics in Part One.  Second, wisdom requires us to believe it is

possible, despite our necessary ignorance, to find a way to break through

this very boundary line.  Our study of synthetic logic in Part Two should

have taught us this lesson as well.  Finally, then, the new lesson is that

we only really begin to understand what wisdom is when we recognize that,

even after we succeed in breaking through our former limits, we must

return to our original home.  However, there is a crucial difference

between our original state and our state when we return:  for we now have

some awareness (even if we cannot call it "knowledge") of both sides of

the boundary.  A good way to picture this would be to say that when we

return home, we still live, as it were, on the boundary, as pictured in

Figure 15.2:



[Figure 15.2:  Wisdom As Returning to the Boundary]



    The importance of returning to the boundary of our former world is

powerfully illustrated by the following story--quite different from

Jonathan's story, but with a similar moral.  (The story is adapted from

G.K. Chesterton's book, Orthodoxy.)  Once there was a boy who grew up in a

small village, secluded in the hills of a far-away land.  Throughout his

childhood, he frequently heard the older villagers telling stories about a

Great Mountain that was shaped in the image of a person's face.  He was so

filled with wonder at the tales he heard that he left home at an unusually

early age to search for the famed mountain.  Yet, after many years of

tiresome wandering throughout his entire country, he never caught so much

as a glimpse of the image he sought. Disappointed at what he now regarded

as the deceptions of his youth, he finally decided to return home.  As he

approached his village, however, he was shocked to discover that the

mountain rising up behind it was shaped in the distinct form of a person's

face!  Throughout his entire youth he had never traveled far enough from

home to see "the whole picture", and once he left, he had never turned

back to look. Now, of course, his travels had changed him so much that he

would never be able to fit into the life of the village the way he used

to: he would always remain, we might say, "on the boundary".



    With this new insight in mind, let us now recall that Parts One and

Two of this course have dealt primarily with the two most important areas

of theoretical philosophy. In Parts Three and Four we will be turning our

attention to the two most important areas of practical philosophy.  The

first can be called "applied philosophy", since it requires us to apply

what we have learned about logic to various kinds of human endeavor.  But

it can also be called science, since the aim in each case is to establish

some kind of knowledge.  For the remaining six lectures here in Part Three

we will be examining three of the major branches of the tree of

philosophy, which can be called natural science, moral science, and

political science.  In each case our goal will be to discover the boundary

conditions which, though they can be transcended (e.g., by means of

synthetic logic), constitute the proper home of any philosopher who wishes

to reflect upon these disciplines.  In so doing, we will actually say very

little about wisdom as such.  However, the underlying assumption

throughout our examination of each of these topics will be that in

locating the proper position for the boundary lines, we will in fact be

carrying out one of the most important tasks in the quest for wisdom.







QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT



1. Is it possible to be free from all limitations?



2. Is heaven a place?



3. What is the difference between a limit and a boundary?



4. After experiencing a breakthrough, why should we return to our point of

departure?





RECOMMENDED READINGS



1. Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull (New York:  Avon Books,

1970).



2. Ecclesiastes, The Bible (any translation).



3. Karl Jaspers, Way to Wisdom, tr. Ralph Manheim (New Haven:  Yale

University Press, 1951).



4. Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha, tr. Hilda Rosner (New York:  New Directions

Publications, 1951).