Against Wisdom
Ecclesiastes's Critique of Wisdom
When do we first find wisdom in the Bible?
The answer isn’t what you’d expect.
1. Pharaoh’s advisors are called wise. [Genesis 41:8]
2. Pharaoh plans to enslave the Israelites (“Come let us be wise...” [Exodus 2:10]
Another plot twist: Bezalel, Joshua, Solomon, and Daniel are called wise, but Moses is not.
So wisdom is associated with wielding power, building, and/or conquest.
Wisdom in the Torah is likely about practical exercise of power, not pure contemplation, as it later came to be understood.
The first Israelite to be called wise is a project manager/architect. This puts Ecclesiastes, often read as a critique of wisdom, in a new light.
Practical wisdom is over-hyped, but the inner life of reflection might not be.
Building projects come and go, they blur together, to the chagrin of practically oriented folks. Practical wisdom is positively correlated to agitation (Ecclesiastes 1:18).
Ecclesiastes presents a critique of those who are focused on practicality. What remains after this critique? What is not “futility”?
The inner life remains.
The classical rabbinic response to Ecclesiastes emphasizes that “above the sun” all is not vanity. But “under the sun” can now be understood not as a geographic signifier but a material one. Thus, one needn’t go to the high heavens to circumvent the problem of vanity. One doesn’t need SpaceX to escape the earthly condition. Rather, “above the sun” = “within oneself.”
Ecclesiastes can be read not as a nihilistic argument against wisdom, but as a fruitful critique of Egyptian wisdom in favor of something more quiet and subtle. Kings know all too well how hard it is to make change. Thus, ascribing the book to King Solomon hits particularly hard. The arc from Bezalel to Solomon connects the two builders, the builders of the Tabernacle to the builder of the Temple. Both projects were ephemeral. The Tabernacle was designed to be portable, and just for the desert. The Temple was designed for stability, but was destroyed twice. Buildings don’t last because they are “under the sun.” But prayer and meditation and study do last because they are “under the moon.” (The Egyptians worshipped the sun, and Judaism follows a semi-lunar calendar).
TLDR: Ecclesiastes isn’t anti-wisdom, but associates wisdom with know-how. What emerges from this critique is a positive, religious defense of philosophy and inner life as a devotional search.
Ecclesiastes always seems so Buddhist in its emphasis on the impermanence of material things; the Five Remembrances could have come right from Kohelet's mouth. And their answer to impermanence is also the cultivation of the inner life, not only in attitude adjustment but in careful training of one's own introspection and perception.
Just beautiful! (FYI, I think you meant Exodus 1:10 instead of 2:10). If the Hebrew word חכם means wise in terms of practical technique, and חכמה means wisdom of that ilk, then is there a different Hebrew word you’d suggest for the type of wisdom associated with the σοφία (sophia) of philosophy? Is that word then in some way also different from the word for the wisdom of religion? Perhaps the Hebrew word for religious wisdom would be the Kabbalah’s דַּעַת (da’at), divine transcendent wisdom? Seems that religious wisdom should be distinguishable from philosophical wisdom, to the extent that philosophy seeks to find fundamental truths that should apply in all non-sacred space at all non-sacred times, while religious wisdom applies to sacred space and sacred time. While the profane and the sacred would seem to be separate they can of course coexist as two sides of the same coin, so to speak. So perhaps the special combination you’re describing of philosophical and devotional wisdom gets at some holistic / broadening / merging oneness of the sacred and profane realms of wisdom, which can then further inspire the technical realm of wisdom.