Cognition is knowledge that grasps the known. Wisdom is knowledge knows how we are grasped.
Cognition stands beside, observing the convex being that constitutes the world. Wisdom stands inside, participating in the concave being that comprises the world.
Cognition masters objects. Wisdom pursues subjects.
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The best being stands upon a broad ground of cognition, under a high dome of wisdom.
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Renee Guenon, from the Great Triad:
‘Heaven covers, Earth supports’; so runs the traditional formula which defines with great conciseness the roles of these two complementary principles, and which symbolically defines their positions, respectively higher and lower, in relation to the ‘ten thousand beings’, that is, to the totality of universal manifestation. Thus are indicated, on one hand, the ‘non-acting’ character of the activity of Heaven or Purusha, and on the other hand the passivity of Earth or Prakriti, which is properly a ‘ground’, or ‘support’ of manifestation, and consequently also a plane of resistance and arrest for the celestial forces or influences acting in a descending direction.
Cognition has foresight, but strictly within the chalkline of its limitations. Foresight cannot foresee the dialectic invalidation of its vision. Wisdom knows all about cognitive limitations, and it knows the otherwise of foresight.
(Prometheus got what was coming to him. When the Olympians, led by Hermes, chained him down, modernity was postponed 2,500 years.)
For the outtakes file:
Despite the apparent solidity of the objective, every thing harbors an otherwise.
A skeptic fixates on the negative aspect of otherwise. Once he breaks the grip of cognition (unknowable by cognition alone), the positive aspect of otherwise emerges.
Freedom at first seems to be the absence of compulsion; later freedom is revealed to be the best compulsion.