Practical Wisdom, Well-Being, and Success

Abstract

What is practical wisdom? What does a practically wise person know? It is widely held that a person is practically wise if and only if the person knows how to live well, and that a person knows how to live well only if the person knows what is good or important for well-being. The question is: What is it that contributes to or constitutes well-being known by a wise person? A theory of wisdom without a substantive answer to this question can never be seriously tested and used in practice. In this paper, I propose a fully articulated theory of wisdom by integrating the skill theory of wisdom with the success theory of well-being, arguing that practical wisdom is a skill conducive to well-being conceived as attitude success.