The Wise Life

Yıl 2019, Cilt: 2019 Sayı: 37, 321 - 351, 30.04.2019

Cenan Kuvancı

https://doi.org/10.28949/bilimname.460467

Cited By: 2

Öz

For a wise life, first of all, it is necessary to have a proper opinion on the truth. In order that wise people can sustain their existence among us, there must be a truth that is allied on and conformed to it. Essentially, to be human means to have a particular point of view about the truth. The wise is the person who has a particular attitude concerning the truth. He lives according to his ideas of the truth. These ideas are not just temporary things for the wise person; because they are knots in his mind and heart and determine his understanding of truth, reality and his way of life. Therefore, the ideas deeply determine the direction in which internal and external transformations will take place. The truth encompasses the wise person both from internally (by ideas) and from externally (by behaviors). Moreover he lives with the truth. In addition, wise people make reality visible through their existential boundaries. A person who is not a wise man is, even if he knows to some extent what is truth is, in fact, ignorant of the truth; because the truth surrounds him neither from the inside nor from the outside. As a matter of fact, whether a person is wise or not is determined by the qualities (life, knowledge, will, power, speech, generosity, justice) that govern him/her. If these qualities develop in an unstable and incompatible manner; arrogant, stingy, cowardly or horny, unbalanced persons will emerge.
It can be easily argued that knowledge of wisdom is not just a theoretical effort but a knowledge that gives spiritual qualities (such as unity and integrity) to the person who seeking it. While pure rational knowledge is directed at persuading a person intellectual, wisdom is oriented to make a moral-existential transformation in person. Indeed, it is not possible to be wise without a spiritual transformation. A wise sees the knowledge as a means of attaining spiritual qualities and salvation; not as a means of obtaining domination and benefit. In a wise life, there is an unbreakable connection between knowing and being. We can not fulfill the duty of being human, unless we open up the attributes that exist in our being as much as possible.
In addition, wisdom is the establishment of a harmony between both soul-body, human-nature, and God-man. Wisdom requires us to see the world as a symbol, not as a crude fact, and to discover the meaning that it carries. It can be said that, in one sense, wisdom is to explore the representative meaning of existing things. This is to see human beings and nature as levels of existence that reflect each other on the ground of common existence. Although everything that exists in the world has a physical dimension, as well as there is an inner dimension and meaning that transcends it. To interpret things, only with a one-dimensional point of view, on the basis of physical meaning, may be scientific (logical positivist: a way of assessing existing things according to temporal and spatial factual properties), but not wisely. This kind of scientific attitude is a materialism that claims to be mathematical and sui generis. This attitude, which advocates that there is no other meaning beyond the level of the real phenomenal meaning, narrows the human intellectual power and abilities and the semantics of the language as narrowly as possible and ignores the fact that it is a proof of the truth with its whole existence. In the circumstances, many dimensions of being and existence can not be made meaningful. At this point, wisdom is to discover clear or secret meanings which beings implied and evoked but can not be discovered through a one-dimensional scientific, philosophical, or theological view.
Thus, knowledge of wisdom is a knowledge that can not be expressed in a clear and distinct way and is a very difficult subject to teach as other information. This knowledge sprang from the soul only when a person has been with it for a long time enough and has devoted his life to him. Indeed, time is needed for the possibilities to be realized, it is necessary to undergo a rigorous training of nafs, a process of internal speech and reflection for the birth of a knowledge equivalent to wisdom in the human soul. In human life, rather than ready information and transmitted news, it is important for the individual to discover his own knowledge with his own zeal. As such, abstract written discourse can not give satisfactory answers to existential questions and problems. Because such questions can be answered with knowledge that requires voluntary participation and has a moral dimension.
In this context, we understand that the expressions of wisdom are conveyed not for reporting (announcing) but for educating (constructing). Wise people do not intend to write scientific, philosophical, and theological texts to build a theoretical system of truth and to inform people of this system. Their goal is to transform people by making them experience the truth. In other words, the aim is not to inform the interlocutors about a certain theoretical content, not to convey it to their minds, but to shape them and, at the same time, to carry out collective research with them, and to help them realize a slow assimilation process suitable for forming a continuous positioning in their soul and mental attitude.
To summarize, wisdom indicates a semantic expansion because it allows to interpret existence in a multi-layered structure that is irreducible one to another; and knowledge-action harmony expressed in the form of the integrity of thought and words, actions and words in personal existence area. In other words, this is definitely not to be a conflict between what people think and what they do or what they are and what they think. The personality of a wise person is balanced, harmonious and integral and far from the tendencies and urges that attract different directions, and his/her life is a real embodiment of what he/she thinks.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Philosophy of religion, wisdom, to know-to be, knowledge-action integrity, justice

Bilgece Hayat

Öz

Bilgece bir hayat için öncelikle, hakikate ilişkin uygun bir görüşe sahip olmak gerekmektedir. Haddi zâtında, insan olmak demek, hakikat hakkında hususî bir bakış açısına sahip olmak demektir. Gerçek, bilge kişiyi hem içten (fikirler ile) hem de dıştan (davranışlar ile) kuşatmaktadır. Ayrıca, bilgeler kendi varoluş halleriyle gerçeği görünür hale getirirler. Bir kişinin bilge olup olmadığına da ona hükmeden nitelikler (hayat, bilgi, irade, kudret, konuşma, cömertlik, adalet) ile karar verilir. Nitekim, varlığımızda içkin bulunan nitelikleri olabildiğince açmadıkça, insan olma vazifesini yerine getiremeyiz.
Ayrıca, bilgelik âlemde var bulunan şeyleri, kaba birer gerçek olarak değil, simge olarak görmeyi, ve onların taşıdığı manayı keşfetmeyi gerektirir. Âlemde var olan her şeyin fizikî bir boyutu olmakla birlikte, bir de onu aşan iç boyutu ve anlamı vardır. Âlemin olgusal anlam düzeyinin ötesinde başka bir anlamının olmadığını savunan maddeci tavır, insanın entelektüel güç ve yetiler sahasını ve dilin semantik çerçevesini alabildiğince daraltır ve onun bütün varlığıyla gerçeğin kanıtı olduğunu göz ardı eder.
Bilgelik/hikmet, varlığı biri diğerine indirgenemez çok katlı bir yapıda yorumlama imkânı verdiği için semantik bir genişlemeye; ve kişisel varoluş sahasında düşünce ile sözlerin, sözler ile eylemlerin uyumlu olması şeklinde ifade edilen, bilgi eylem bütünlüğüne delâlet etmektedir. Başka bir ifadeyle, bu, insanların düşündükleri ile yaptıkları ya da oldukları şey ile düşündükleri şeyin uyumlu olmasıdır. Bilge birinin kişiliği, farklı yönlere çeken eğilim ve dürtülerden uzak, uyumlu, dengeli ve bütündür. Çünkü hikemî bilgi, salt nazarî bir uğraş olmayıp, kendisini arayana (birlik ve bütünlük gibi) manevî nitelikler kazandıran bir bilgidir.

Anahtar Kelimeler

“Bilgelik”, “bilgi-eylem bütünlüğü”, “adalet”, “denge”.

Kaynakça

• Aliye Çınar. “Aristoteles`in Nikomakhos`a Etik`inde Pratik Hikmet Kavramı ve Günümüz Açısından Önemi”. Uludağ Üniversitesi İlâhiyat Fakültesi Dergisi 16, sy 1 (2007): 171-92.
• Aristoteles. Nikomakhos`a Etik. Çeviren Furkan Akderin. İstanbul: Say Yayınları, 2014.
• Ayşe Sıdıka Oktay. “Kınalızâde Ali Efendi`de Hikmet Kavramı”. Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, sy 10 (2003): 25-36.
• Burhanettin Tatar. Din, İlim ve Sanatta Hermenötik. İstanbul: İsam Yayınları, 2014.
• Hans-Georg Gadamer. Truth and Method. Çeviren Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. New York: Continuum, 1993.