Condemned to Simplicity (The Wisdom of Love)

This past week, in one of my classes on philosophy of language, we talked about how how having a sophisticated and educated vocabulary is important for understanding the world and each other well. Language is probably the primary way we understand the world. We see and interpret our world through the language we've been taught. But language is not simply a pair of glasses which we can put on or take off. It really is what allows us to experience our world as our world at all. And so, a rich vocabulary leads to the possibility of a rich understanding of the world.

But it's only a possibility; it doesn't necessarily follow. And as a student pursuing higher education, it's important to keep in mind that knowledge about words is not necessarily wisdom. You can have all of the best tools in your toolbox, but you need to use them properly. You can have all of the best words in your vocabulary, but if you need to use them properly.

That is why the wisdom of love is so crucial. Philosophy comes from ancient Greek and is the amalgamation of two words: philia, love, and sophia, wisdom. The history of philosophy has thought of itself as the love of wisdom.

Emmanuel Levinas reconfigured philosophy when he said that philosophy isn't the love of wisdom; it's the wisdom of love. Thinking is not about loving wisdom. It's about being wise lovers. Wisdom is in the service of love.

I sit down to write this blog post, and again I'm frustrated at my lack of wisdom, my lack of control over language, my lack of creativity. I want to be a creative, sophisticated, and loving thinker, but I feel condemned to simplicity. If I can't control my words and thoughts in creative and life-giving ways, then how can I be wise? How can I be loving?

Not just knowledge. Not just wisdom. Not just the love of wisdom. But the wisdom of love.

John Main writes: "We have to confront the annihilating, the loss of self. People are often repelled by the negative language of the mystical tradition and of the scriptures: surrender, death, loss.

But what is surrendered is what is worthless. What is annihilated is what is unreal. What dies is what is impermanent anyway.

The essential experience of prayer is the powerful surge of God's creative love. It is this surge of love that brings about a break-through into the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is simply the power of divine love released and penetrating into every fibre of our being: the Kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:21)."

What needs to be surrendered and annihilated, and what needs to die within me is the need to impress others and impress ourselves with knowledge, wisdom, or even love. Yearning for a beautiful skill of language, of wisdom, for the goal of impressing others, is a false self which needs to die.

The wisdom of love does not belong to our false selves. It doesn't "belong" to anyone, or any thing. Love is always gift, an outpouring of vulnerability and self-offering for the sake of others, vulnerable both in giving and receiving. The desire to have the wisdom of love, to contain or know or control the wisdom of love, necessarily won't allow for love to emerge.

Being condemned to simplicity may be a great gift.