Ancient wisdom

In cognitive psychology and the cognitive sciences, scholars are rediscovering Plato.

In behavioral sciences and popular self-betterment literature, Stoicism is given a new lease of life.

In mathematics and speculative cosmology, Dante’s Paradiso is being revisited.

In hermeneutics and epistemology, pre-Cartesian models are being unearhed.

It looks like serious people are taking pe-modern wisdom seriously. We are slowly coming to realise, albeit very slowly, that the modern world doesn’t have an exclusive contract with knowledge and wisdom, and that the pre-moderns, in Europe and elsewhere, have something important to add to today’s debates and a credible way to respond to humanity’s perrenial problems.

And we might even discover that any substantial leap to the development of artificial intelligence as a maturity graduation project of homo faber 2.0 depends on abandoning much of the acquis of the historical Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Which is a rediscovery of humility and the importance of self-transcendence, the models of service and gnothi seauton, the alpha and omega of building a civilization centered on compassion and self-optimization.

We can no longer afford to proceed on the basis that we have all the answers and that we find ourselves at the end of the road. That are values and ideas just happened to be ‘picked up’ from some fantasy tree, never to be questioned. For behind every idea and every value there is a long journey of emanation and emergence, having its roots in ancient wisdom.