Capturing the Ineffable : : An Anthropology of Wisdom / / ed. by Philip Y. Kao, Joseph S. Alter.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2020 English
• MitwirkendeR: Alter, Joseph S.,; Binsbergen, Wim M.J. Van,; Chilson, Clark,; Doyle, Richard,; Faubion, James D.,; Irvine, Richard D.G.,; Kao, Philip Y.,; Linde, Charlotte,
• HerausgeberIn: Alter, Joseph S.,; Kao, Philip Y.,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2020]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (264 p.) :; 2 figures

Grounded in ethnographic case studies that examine experiences from which wisdom emerges, Capturing the Ineffable provides a rigorous analysis of the sociocultural context of wisdom in the contemporary world. Each chapter in the volume deals with different aspects and showcases how communities in different contexts — nursing homes, religious organizations, corporations, and monastic institutions, for example — engage with the ineffability of wisdom. Contributors draw from a range of disciplines and cross-cultural and historical data in order to interpret the meaning and value of wisdom as a human endeavour. This book also represents an anthropological method for evaluating various philosophical and scientific approaches to understanding wisdom, including how wisdom is learned and taught. Readers will be able to appreciate how action, emotion, uncertainty, and cultural systems come to bear on wisdom as a value in human life and expression. In the end, Capturing the Ineffable reveals how the conception and paradoxical nature of wisdom dispels the dichotomies of self/other, structure/agency, known/unknown, nature/culture, and the like. What is at stake is a recasting of wisdom as a particular kind of anthropological endeavour and, thus, a return to and modification of philosophical anthropology.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Towards an Anthropology of Wisdom -- Part One: Seeking Wisdom -- 1. Revelations of Delusion: Becoming Isomorphic to the Urgrund with Philip K. Dick -- 2. The Social Life of the Inexpressible: English Benedictine Mysticism, the Ineffable, and the Sublime -- Part Two: Discerning Wisdom -- 3. How Wisdom Is Discovered: Discretion and Emotional Insights in Naikan Meditation in Japan -- 4. Navigating Wisdom and Time: Reflections on Aging and Eldercare -- Part Three: Transmitting Wisdom -- 5. Yoga and Wisdom: Reflections on the Body at the Intersection of Epistemology and Ontology -- 6. Social Construction of Wisdom in Institutions -- Part Four: Narrating Wisdom -- 7. Of Uncertainty, Sophiology, and Governance: Zen and the Art of Scenario Planning -- 8. Grappling with the Ineffable in Three African Situations: An Ethnographic Approach -- Contributors -- Index