
The Practice of Wisdom
Five Quests
The Belknap Press
Will be published approx. on 6. October 2026
Book
Hardback
168 pages
978-0-674-30662-2 (ISBN)
Description
A master class from four renowned Harvard professors-an anthropologist, a physician, a theologian, and a historian-on discovering wisdom in challenging times.
In moments of uncertainty, to whom do we turn for solace and insight? How can we endure and overcome our own suffering? Harvard University professors David Carrasco, Arthur Kleinman, Stephanie Paulsell, and Michael Puett turn to great thinkers, artists, and religious traditions not for definitive answers, but for lessons we can bring to our own quests for wisdom. Wisdom, they find, is not an abstract ideal but a way of living formed by caring for others and through everyday practices of solitude, ritual, and art. Based on their celebrated Harvard course, The Practice of Wisdom helps us brave loneliness, grief, and crises and bring beauty, healing, and spiritual significance into our lives.
Wisdom, they teach, is an ongoing quest-a practice to be lived and deliberately cultivated. Through five interwoven chapters, we travel from Chinese temples and Hindu ashrams to Emily Dickinson's Homestead and US-Mexico borderlands. We encounter philosopher William James on the power of the subconscious after trauma; theologian Howard Thurman on solitude as a source of dignity; Toni Morrison on the interplay between mercy and goodness; writer John Phillip Santos on generational wisdom; physician Paul Farmer on medical compassion; and Confucius on ritual as a way of breaking the patterns that entrap us. We hear from Wendy Doniger, the eminent scholar of Hinduism, whose reflections present wisdom as a lifelong, unfinished art of seeking meaning, balance, and purpose.
Threaded throughout this short but powerful book is the image of the labyrinth: life as a series of turns that carry us through adversity and loss to hard-won clarity and grace. Led by teachers who have walked these paths, lost their way, and carried on, we learn the art-and practice-of living wisely.
In moments of uncertainty, to whom do we turn for solace and insight? How can we endure and overcome our own suffering? Harvard University professors David Carrasco, Arthur Kleinman, Stephanie Paulsell, and Michael Puett turn to great thinkers, artists, and religious traditions not for definitive answers, but for lessons we can bring to our own quests for wisdom. Wisdom, they find, is not an abstract ideal but a way of living formed by caring for others and through everyday practices of solitude, ritual, and art. Based on their celebrated Harvard course, The Practice of Wisdom helps us brave loneliness, grief, and crises and bring beauty, healing, and spiritual significance into our lives.
Wisdom, they teach, is an ongoing quest-a practice to be lived and deliberately cultivated. Through five interwoven chapters, we travel from Chinese temples and Hindu ashrams to Emily Dickinson's Homestead and US-Mexico borderlands. We encounter philosopher William James on the power of the subconscious after trauma; theologian Howard Thurman on solitude as a source of dignity; Toni Morrison on the interplay between mercy and goodness; writer John Phillip Santos on generational wisdom; physician Paul Farmer on medical compassion; and Confucius on ritual as a way of breaking the patterns that entrap us. We hear from Wendy Doniger, the eminent scholar of Hinduism, whose reflections present wisdom as a lifelong, unfinished art of seeking meaning, balance, and purpose.
Threaded throughout this short but powerful book is the image of the labyrinth: life as a series of turns that carry us through adversity and loss to hard-won clarity and grace. Led by teachers who have walked these paths, lost their way, and carried on, we learn the art-and practice-of living wisely.
Reviews / Votes
This eloquent and elegant book, written by four wise and worldly Harvard scholars, is a gift of love and light in our dark times! The central themes of storytelling, care for others, and rituals that cultivate mature self-knowledge in the best of the West and East take us beyond myopic learning and narrow erudition. Don't miss this intellectual and spiritual gem in the great tradition of the inimitable William James! -- Cornel West The Practice of Wisdom reminds us that human wisdom is developed through our lived experience, religious rituals, texts and traditions, but also through traditions that are not our own. A wonderful conversation partner on the never-ending journey to explore wisdom beyond ourselves. -- Reverend Teresa Hord Owens, General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass.
United States
Publishing group
Harvard University Press
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
9 photos, 6 illus.
Dimensions
Height: 210 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
350 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-674-30662-2 (9780674306622)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
David Carrasco, Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America at Harvard University, is Director of the Moses Mesoamerican Archive, and author of The Religions of Mesoamerica, City of Sacrifice, and Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire. Arthur Kleinman has taught for over forty years in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and in the Department of Anthropology, where he is Rabb Professor. He is the author of The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition and The Soul of Care: The Moral Education of a Husband and a Doctor. Stephanie Paulsell is Professor Emerita at Harvard Divinity School and a long-standing columnist at the Christian Century. She is the author of Religion Around Virginia Woolf and coeditor of Toni Morrison: Goodness and the Literary Imagination. Michael Puett, Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology and Director of the Asia Center at Harvard University, is the author of The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life and To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China.