PERENNIAL 18
The Wisdom of Not Knowing
Socrates
We turn to the philosopher Socrates for wisdom in this reflection. A curious paradox of wisdom is the need to let go of the traditional idea of knowing. Socrates now famously stated, “All that I know is that I know nothing.”
Plato (student of Socrates) wrote,
We do not know — neither the sophists, nor the orators, nor the artists, nor I — what the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are. But there is this difference between us: although these people know nothing, they all believe they know something; whereas, I, if I know nothing, at least have no doubts about it. As a result, all this superiority in wisdom which the oracle has attributed to me reduces itself to the single point that I am strongly convinced that I am ignorant of what I do not know.
During an interview on In Search of Wisdom, Estelle Frankel (author of The Wisdom of Not Knowing) explained that being receptive to the unknown enables us to become open, curious, and expansive…
