Most of us think we want knowledge and information. We search online, hungrily looking for answers to our questions.
But, according to journalist and author Eric Weiner, what we are really looking for isn’t knowledge, but wisdom.
The difference, he says, is that while information is a jumble of facts, and knowledge a more organized jumble of facts, wisdom is something else all together. Weiner says that wisdom “untangles the facts, makes sense of them and crucially, suggests how best to use them.” Or, more succinctly, “knowledge knows. Widom sees.” In his book The Socrates Express, Weiner details his wisdom-seeking journey – both physical and mental – traveling to locations where past great philosophers lived, worked and thought. And that journey, the very act of traveling from place to place, became just as important to Weiner as did his study of these philosophers’ work. We’ll talk with him about why we need philosophy now, more than ever.
Eric Weiner’s book is The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers. [Bookshop | Amazon | Audible]
