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33 - The Urgent Need for Social Wisdom

from Part VII - Wisdom in Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2019

By
Nicholas Maxwell
Edited by
Robert J. Sternberg  and
Judith Glück
Robert J. Sternberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Judith Glück
Affiliation:
Universität Klagenfurt, Austria
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Summary

In order to solve the grave global problems that confront us – problems of population growth, environmental degradation, mass extinction of species, lethal modern war, pollution, climate change – humanity needs to learn how to do it. We need to acquire a bit more social wisdom. That in turn requires that our institutions of learning – our schools and universities – are rationally designed and devoted for the task. Their basic aim needs to be, not just to acquire knowledge, but rather to seek and promote social wisdom. Academia, when judged from this standpoint, is at present damagingly irrational, in a wholesale, structural way, and is as a result responsible, in part, for the genesis of the global problems we suffer from, and our current incapacity to resolve them. We need urgently to bring about a revolution in academic inquiry so that the basic task becomes to help humanity make social progress towards a wiser world.
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The Cambridge Handbook of Wisdom , pp. 754 - 780
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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