Readings
by Rick Dietrich Philosophers and Kings“Nobody likes a wise-ass.” This was, and remains, one of my mother’s favorite sayings — at least in regard to me. The saying is not intended to be complimentary. The accent on the final hyphenated-noun does not fall on “wise.” But, the way my mother says it, and because, even when nobody else does, she likes me, it holds out hope: Maybe, someday, I’ll cease to be a wiseass; I’ll become (only) wise. Granted, she doesn’t believe that day has come yet. And a thousand words in a summertime Voice
won’t hasten its coming. They don’t provide enough room
even to begin to think about what constitutes wisdom. Well, maybe to
begin . . . The ass decides to push on. The most common Hebrew word,
the biblical scholars among you will remember, is Clearly, definitions are both helpful and silly. They are the wise-ass’s way into a problem that — his mother is right — he still doesn’t know how to solve. Literary criticism is another (misguided) way into it. Samuel Johnson’s poem, “London,” is an imitation of Juvenal’s Third Satire. Juvenal (c. AD 55 – 127) lived in imperial Rome during the reigns of Domitian, Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian. The critic John Johnston (The Poet and the City) thinks Juvenal hated Rome, but the poet’s longing for the innocent countryside may be more literary device than true longing. At any rate, Juvenal remains in the city to write about it, the corruption of its court and its society, and the follies and brutalities of its citizens. (Certainly, folly and brutality is not restricted to the city, but it is a good place for someone, like Juvenal, to observe them. Why risk going somewhere else, where there may not be the same material?) In Samuel Johnson’s poem, the poet-narrator has accompanied his friend, “Thales,” to the city’s edge. Thales is leaving London for good, escaping it for the Welsh countryside. The city is fallen: it has become corrupt; it is dangerous. It is also dangerously artificial. “French” manners have taken over the crown and town; they have infected the government, which is reprehensible, and the court, which is perverted. The country Thales is escaping to is, on the contrary (as it is in Juvenal), innocent, safe and natural, quiet. Indeed, we wonder why the poet stays behind. Why doesn’t he follow his wise friend? We know Thales is wise, in the context of the poem, because Johnson has named him for the philosopher, Thales of Melitus, one of the legendary Seven Wise Men, a Greek equivalent (roughly) of Solomon. Here, in “London,” his wisdom is related particularly, to use the terms of another great philosopher,* in knowing when to fold. But the historical, or legendary, Thales was wise in other ways as well. He could read the heavens. According to Xenophanes, he predicted the solar eclipse that ended the battle between Lydia and Media. He discovered five geometric theorems. He tried, with some success, to understand the order of the universe. At least, he saw the world as reasonable, not dependent on the whims of the gods. And in what ways was Solomon wise? His reputation is based on even slimmer evidence than Thales’. His wisdom with regard to the Queen of Sheba seems to have turned on an ability to solve riddles. She riddled him great riddles, and no riddle was too much for him to unriddle. And it made him rich. She was breathless with his wisdom and gave him great quantities of gold and spices and precious stones. (See 2 Chronicles 9:1-12.) But, there are wise-asses that are good at word and number games. Some of them have become CEOs, and their stockholders and boards have made them offerings beyond the king’s imagination. (Not Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these, in their Armani suits, Cole Haan shoes, and Nadine deLange ties.) Solomon’s solution to the rival claims on an infant does seem to indicate an ability to see into the human heart, at least into the cold heart of the one mother and the true heart of the other, warmed by pity. (See Kings 3:16-28.) Eventually, all Israel came to hear of his wisdom. So, according to legend, he wrote it down, in a significant number of proverbs and — stretching the legend still further — in the book of Ecclesiastes, in which the wise king gave much good counsel, especially with regard to knowing when to fold: “For every dream, [there is] a vanity to match” (5:6, JB). “Better patience than pride” (7:9). About Solomon’s poetry, and the wisdom of that, including what his mother thought of it, another time. For this time, call it enough to know that both the Greeks and the Hebrews thought that at least part of being wise was knowing when to fold. I know, Mom, it’s not much, but in the humid heat of summer, at least as I read it, it’s a start. *I’m thinking, of course, of Kenny Rogers (though the words were actually written by Don Schlitz): You got to know when to hold ’em; know
when to fold ’em,
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(hakam). (“A wise son makes a glad father”
— or mother! — Proverbs 10:1) The Greek word is usually 
(sophos, “having wisdom”) in Paul, but 
(phronimos,
“prudent”) when Jesus refers to the wise man who builds
his house upon the rock (Matthew 7:24), or when he tells the story of
the wise and foolish virgins (Matthew 25). The Latin of the Vulgate
is sapientus in both Paul and Matthew. (The German is klug
(which suggests clever as well as prudent), the French sage
(though it’s prudent in the Matthew passages), the Norwegian
kloke.) The English “wisdom” derives from the verb
witan, meaning to know.
