The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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Could it be that what distinguishes wisdom from know-how—allowing that both, in their ways, have to do with the meaning of things for us, as distinct from their structure in themselves—is that wisdom has to do with ends, know-how with means? That is, wisdom has to do with the meaning of things for us with respect to the ends of action, whereas know-how has to do with the meaning of things for us with respect to the means of action.

If this is more or less right, there may not be any need after all to distinguish, as I've done, between axiological questions about ends and technological questions about means. So-called axiological questions are simply ways of asking for wisdom, about the ends of action at the level of immediate, categorial reality as well as at the level of ultimate, transcendental reality.

7 December 2005

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