by Orestes J. Gonzalez

Created on: October 20, 2008   Last Updated: May 25, 2012

Intelligence and wisdom possess an inherent cognitive scope and operate in accordance with the epistemological standards of human knowledge. It is wisely said that,

"While intelligence notices every nonsense, wisdom is the one that lets some nonsense pass unnoticed." (1)

What exactly, then, is the difference between intelligence and wisdom?

In order to understand the difference between intelligence and wisdom we must first examine the meaning of the terms.

Intelligence

The term "intelligence" has at least three well-defined meanings particularly applicable to the present discussion.

(a) Intelligence is one of the spiritual faculties of the human soul whereby man is able to perform acts of intellection.

(b) Intelligence is the knowledge acquired by study, research, or experience, including the knowledge imparted by teachers, and the cognition of general information.

(c) Intelligence is the "immediate intellection of the principles needed to start and support any valid process of reasoning."

The latter meaning of intelligence is well known in philosophical reflections and can be explained as follows.

Except for the immediate intellection of a first principle, all human intellectual knowledge is conclusion-drawing knowledge. The immediate intellection of a point of departure is the absolutely necessary prerequisite for all valid reasoning.

The immediate intellection of principles is a natural intellectual habit which results from man's manner of knowing. This habit is known as the "intellectus principiorum."

And it is to be noted that, although man's manner of knowing is equally shared by all, the strength and implicit extent of the principles is more known to one person than to another, according to the greater or lesser intellectual capacity of each person. (2)

Wisdom

The term "wisdom" also has more than one meaning. A thorough examination of the meanings of the term "wisdom" can be found in the Helium articles "What is Wisdom." From the studies reported, there emerges a clear picture of what wisdom is. Two remarks are worth recalling briefly.

First, that a wide range of expressions is used to convey the multiplicity of meanings of wisdom, as for example: "uncreated wisdom," "created wisdom," "angelic wisdom," "human wisdom," "the intellectual virtue of wisdom," "the gift of wisdom," "philosophical wisdom," and "theological wisdom."

And second, the definition of human wisdom as "a quality of the soul whereby a person is said to possess an advantage for seeing,

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>