The Happiness Myth_ An Expose - Jennifer Hecht [8]
Wisdom
“What good can we suppose it did Varro and Aristotle to know so many things? Did it exempt them from human discomforts? Were they freed from the accidents that oppress a porter? Did they derive from logic some consolation for the gout?” I wrote the book you are now reading because of these sentences, written by Montaigne in 1576.1 The passage continues:
For knowing how this humor lodges in the joints, did they feel it less? Were they reconciled to death for knowing that some nations rejoice in it, and with cuckoldry for knowing that wives are held in common in some region? On the contrary, though they held the first rank in knowledge, one among the Romans, the other among the Greeks, and in the period when knowledge flourished most, we have not for all that heard that they had any particular excellence in their lives; in fact the Greek has a hard time to clear himself of some notable spots in his.2
Montaigne asks if any happiness can be expected from learning. “Have they found that sensual pleasure and health are more savory to him who knows astrology and grammar?” And he continues: “I have seen in my time a hundred artisans, a hundred plowmen wiser and happier than rectors of the university.”3 It is not only rote learning that he disparages, but even the wisdom that is supposed to come from knowledge. He claims that ignorant men surpass learned men in every virtue of action and conduct. Considering these lines of Montaigne’s, I wondered why I and other professors so confidently insist to our students that philosophy, wisdom literature, and even general knowledge will make them happier. And what about all the very smart, educated, miserable people I know?
Koheleth, the author of the book of Ecclesiastes, also shocks the modern reader with his lack of doting respect for knowledge and wisdom. The second section of Ecclesiastes is called “Wisdom Is Meaningless,” and in it Koheleth tells us that in his own life, he devoted himself “to explore by wisdom” everything “under the sun” and this is what he learned from these paths of wisdom: “All of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. What is twisted cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted…with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.” Koheleth acknowledged that “wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness” but that, in the long run, light and darkness come to the same end. “The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I know that one fate befalls them both…the wise man and the fool alike die!” His exhaustion had a giddy quality to it. “Be not righteous over much,” cautioned Koheleth, “neither make thyself over wise: why should thou die before thy time?” (Eccles. 7:16). Koheleth and Montaigne were scholars, and they joked about knowledge as one jokes about one’s beloved spouse. Still, a lot of the wisest men and women try to warn us that knowledge is not always an aid to happiness, and that even insight and wisdom can be useless against a dark mood.
Half the rank and file of humanity is too sensible to bear with the optimism, certainty, and narcissism of the self-help guru. The other half is trying for relaxation and doesn’t