KNOWLEDGE AND WISDOM - ALEXIS KARPOUZOS

KNOWLEDGE — WISDOM: ALEXIS KARPOUZOS

From the earliest myths and Pre-Socratic cosmologies to the science of modernity, humanity has sought to understand, classify, and explain the world. Knowledge refers to the process of understanding phenomena. Wisdom, by contrast, concerns the understanding of the meaning behind those phenomena. Knowledge is analytical, wisdom is synthetic; knowledge separates, wisdom unites. The philosophical question posed is: can human beings transform knowledge into wisdom? That is, can one move from the science of the real to the consciousness of Being?

1. Knowledge as the Logic of Distinction

In Platonic philosophy, knowledge (episteme) is contrasted with mere doxa (opinion). In the Republic (VI, 509d), Plato places knowledge within a hierarchy culminating in the noesis of the Good—the pure vision of truth. Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, attributes to knowledge the character of causal understanding: "all men by nature desire to know." Knowledge is, therefore, an exit from ignorance and an appropriation of the world through reason.

2. Knowledge as Power and Limitation

With the Enlightenment and Modernity, knowledge is transformed into a means of power. Francis Bacon declares that "Knowledge is Power," founding the spirit of the scientific age. However, as Martin Heidegger showed in The Question Concerning Technology (1954), this identification of knowledge with power leads to an anthropocentric oblivion of Being, where the world becomes a mere standing reserve (Bestand) for use. Knowledge, severed from wisdom, ceases to reveal and begins to control. Consequently, knowledge moves within linear and causal time; it is the product of analysis, logic, and method. Yet, as Heraclitus would argue, "much learning does not teach understanding"—the accumulation of information does not necessarily lead to prudence. Reason (Logos) must be connected to the xynon—the common meaning of the Whole—to be transformed into wisdom.

3. Wisdom as Insight and Participation in the Whole

Wisdom, unlike knowledge, is an experience of unity. Heraclitus views wisdom as the understanding of the Logos of the world—the unity within the conflict of opposites: "all things are one." Plotinus, in the Enneads, describes wisdom as the return of the soul to the One, where the intellect falls silent and thought is transformed into vision (theoria). Wisdom is, therefore, meta-logical; it does not negate reason but transcends it. Like Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, wisdom is not the result of syllogism, but a tragic acceptance of the unity of life and death.

4. Wisdom in Eastern Traditions

In Taoist and Buddhist thought, wisdom (prajñā) is identified with non-duality: the experience that subject and object, visible and invisible, are but manifestations of the same whole. Lao Tzu writes: "The wise man knows without knowing, acts without acting" (Tao Te Ching, ch. 2). This non-adversarial stance toward the world is close to the spirit of Karpouzos, who links wisdom with empathy for the Whole, with the awareness that existence is not isolated but participatory.

5. The Dialectical Relationship of Knowledge and Wisdom

Knowledge and wisdom, rather than being opposed, constitute two dialectical stages of human consciousness. Hegel, in the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), describes the process of transmuting knowledge through sublation (Aufhebung), where the particular is synthesized into the universal. Knowledge is the thesis—the stage of distinction; wisdom is the sublation—the transcendence of distinction toward unity. Man is not called to reject knowledge, but to complete it within wisdom. Karpouzos, in his work The Cosmology of Consciousness, writes: "Wisdom is not the negation of knowledge; it is its liberation from the prison of the anthropocentric ego." This means that wisdom is the point where knowledge is transformed into self-knowledge—where the subject understands that the object of knowledge is not foreign, but a reflection of its own Being.

6. Knowledge and Wisdom in the Age of Technics

The information age has highlighted the vast expansion of knowledge and, simultaneously, the lack of wisdom. Man knows almost everything about the world, but less and less about himself. Knowledge has become quantitative, not qualitative. Heidegger speaks of the "state of the oblivion of Being"; Karpouzos would say that modern man suffers from metaphysical anesthesia. The world is treated as a given object, not as a sacred mystery. The solution, therefore, lies not in the rejection of knowledge, but in its transmutation into wisdom—in the creation of a holistic/fragmentary consciousness that unites science with poetry, logic with dreams, reason with the heart.

7. Knowledge — Wisdom as a Unity of Logic and Intuition

Knowledge — Wisdom constitutes an existential and epistemological axis of human evolution. Knowledge is the outward journey of the mind, wisdom is the inward return of the spirit. One without the other is incomplete; together they form the complete circular movement of consciousness. Just as Heraclitus saw the unity of opposites and Plato the ascent of the soul toward the Good, so Karpouzos calls us to a new synthesis: "Knowledge is the light that shows the way; wisdom is the love that walks it." In a world where information outweighs meaning, restoring the balance between knowledge and wisdom is perhaps the most urgent task of philosophy—and of humanity.

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BEYOND THE DISTINCTION OF KNOWLEDGE — WISDOM

The Post-Ontological and Post-Philosophical Vision of Alexis Karpouzos

1. From the Knowledge of Distinction to the Wisdom of Unity

The history of philosophy is, in a sense, the history of distinction: of the subject from the object, of man from nature, of time from the eternal. Knowledge was constructed upon these distinctions—it is the act by which the mind delineates, classifies, and separates. Wisdom, conversely, has always been the nostalgia for unity: the return of man to the Whole from which he was detached. Alexis Karpouzos, moving beyond classical philosophical tradition, attempts to transcend this dipole. He does not propose the rejection of knowledge in favor of wisdom, nor the absorption of wisdom into knowledge, but the birth of a new mode of consciousness, which he calls post-ontological and post-philosophical. In this new way of thinking, knowledge and wisdom are no longer distinguished—they are two modes of the same being knowing and being.

2. Ontological Transcendence: The Unity of Man and World

At the heart of Karpouzos’ thought lies the transcendence of the man–world distinction. Modern philosophy was founded upon the subject, the "knowing self," and the corresponding externality of the world as an object. This distinction—from Descartes to Kant—created an ontology of distance: Being became something to be observed, not something to be participated in. Karpouzos proposes a post-ontology of unity. Being is not an object, nor is man a spectator. The World "is" relationship, energy, participation. Man is not standing over against the world, but within it, as a form of the same cosmic consciousness. Knowledge, then, is no longer representation, but a manifestation of the Whole within consciousness. Wisdom is not a superior state, but the very self-knowledge of the world through man. As he writes: "The world is not outside us; it is our self-expanding into infinite forms." The transcendence of the knowledge–wisdom distinction is, therefore, ontological: there is no longer a knower and a known, but a co-being, a unity where thought is a form of Being itself.

3. Metaphysical Transcendence: From Being to the Becoming of the Whole

The contemplative/poetic thought of Karpouzos does not seek a transcendent Being behind phenomena. The Divine, for him, is not "above" the world, but emerges within it, as constant becoming. Knowledge based on fixed ontological categories (being/non-being, matter/spirit) loses its ground because the World is ceaseless creation—a "becoming of Being," not a static entity, but the sum of its transformations. At the metaphysical level, the transcendence of the knowledge–wisdom distinction means that to know and to be coincide. Knowledge is not an interpretation of Being, but participation in the becoming of the Whole. Wisdom, for its part, is not "higher" knowledge, but the consciousness of the transformation of all opposites and contradictions. Karpouzos’ reflection is, therefore, energetic and poetic: the Universe is not a machine, but a poem in motion, where thought is rhythm and not definition.

4. Epistemological Transcendence: From Logic to Consciousness

The epistemology of modernity, based on logic, separates the knowing subject from the studied object. In Karpouzos, this distinction loses its basis because the act of knowing is already a manifestation of the Whole within the mind. Knowledge is no longer the possession of information but participation in consciousness. The world is not "represented" in the mind; it is present—that is, it presents itself within it as a form of the World itself, which manifests in multiple forms and kinds. Thus, knowledge is transformed into insight—not intellectual, but conscious. The mind ceases to be a tool and becomes a mirror of cosmic self-knowledge. And wisdom is nothing other than the full clarity of this mirror. This post-epistemological mode of knowledge in Karpouzos takes a poetic form: "Knowledge is consciousness looking at itself through the eyes of the world."

5. Psychological Transcendence: From the Ego to the Consciousness of the Whole

The transcendence of knowledge–wisdom presupposes a psychological transformation. The distinction between them reflects the very distinction between ego and world, mind and heart, human and divine. Knowledge, when it belongs to the ego, separates; wisdom, when it belongs to consciousness, unifies. Psychological transcendence is the silence of the ego, not as negation but as openness. When the mind ceases to function as the owner of truth, then knowledge is transformed into wisdom. In Karpouzos’ language, this is the passage from "I think" to "it thinks" or otherwise "I am a thought of the world." Psychology, then, becomes ontology: inner experience is identified with the structure of the universe. Just as the soul is the depth of man, so the universe is the soul of the Whole. Transcendence is, simultaneously, inner and cosmic.

6. The Post-Ontological and Post-Philosophical as the Language of Transcendence

Karpouzos calls this thought post-ontological and post-philosophical. This does not mean the abolition of philosophy, but its transmutation into the poetry of consciousness. The language spoken by this thought is no longer analytical or demonstrative; it is symbolic, rhythmic, mythical. It is a poetic logic, where concept and image are interwoven. Post-philosophical thought does not merely "say," but emerges; it does not explain the world, it creates it as word. Language itself becomes the body of the Whole: "Thought does not describe Being; it is Being speaking through thought." Thus, the transcendence of knowledge–wisdom is not an intellectual conclusion, but a poetic act, a rhythm of existence that connects the human with the cosmic.

Wisdom as the Self-Knowledge of the Whole

The transcendence of the distinction between knowledge and wisdom, in Alexis Karpouzos, signifies the transcendence of every duality: man–world, subject–object, nature–history. Knowledge is no longer a confrontation with the world, but a form of cosmic self-consciousness. Wisdom is not a higher stage, but the consciousness of the Whole knowing itself through us. This thought, post-ontological and post-philosophical, is simultaneously mystical and scientific, poetic and dialectical. It is the language of a new humanism—of a human being who does not seek to dominate the world, but to participate in its creative flow. "There is no knowledge without wisdom, nor wisdom without knowledge. There is only consciousness awakening to the infinite face of the world."