Western traditional wisdom philosophies and personalitya preliminary study

Zusammenfassung

There are several legitimate ways of conceptualising and studying wisdom. One is largely informed by Western philosophy and treats wisdom as an analytic theory of expert knowledge, judgement, 8fld advice about difficult and uncertain matters of life. Another is more consistent with Asian philosophical non-secularised traditions treats wisdom such a product of wise persons. The second approach is always an approximation to the analytically constructed utopia of wisdom. Wisdom, a concept rich in meaning and cultural history is introduced as a topic of psychological research. The results are discussed in order to propose a multidimensional model of ~ Questionnaires on Stoic and Epicurean wisdom approaches wore fulfilled by two samples (291 and 397 adults). Each que5tiOnn~9íre was factor analysed with a manufactories solution in the first case and tree factorial in the second, and then a common solution W~3 carried out. Also the participants fulfilled various personality questionnaires. The main results are the following: (a) some components of "traditional" wisdom approaches (Stoicism and epicureism), are present contemporary ways of living, but there is not a coherent and different approach for each one; (b) we isolate a common factor pertaining to both traditions, and this factor has an acceptable alpha value (80.);(c) the wisdom factor is a source of individual differences for the usual categories (age, socio-economic level, civil status); (d) the coefficients among 'Wisdom" and personality factors are scare (this result suggests that wisdom and personality are different domains); (e) the isolated factors of 'traditional" wisdom, are potential elements for a new theory of wisdom, as a set of adult competences close to practical intelligence. The results can be relevant for a new theory of adult competences